Work in progress.. our take on the Red Baron

dflash

Member
Work in progress. Almost done completed body and electronics, still needs landing gear. Second scratch build only using $1 foam board and printed plans. Painted with Airbrush and multiple light coats of airbrush paint. Iron cross are decals made with inkjet sticker paper. - I think it we are improving from our first build: http://forum.flitetest.com/showthread.php?14271-First-Built!-Mighty-Mini-Speedster


red baron.jpg
 

dflash

Member
Forgot to thank the folks at Flitetest for their excellent plans and great walkthrough videos. Never thought I would have so much fun doing this. Cant wait for the maiden!
 

Failed God

Learning to fly
Let us now how it turns out because i was actually thinking about turning the mini scout into a triplane myself.
 

dflash

Member
Well.. took it out for a maiden and it was not good. It didnt break but it would not fly straight, it would fly to the right only and when throttle was reduced it would fall to the right. Everything is leveled and centered and CG is correct. But, I'm using a motor rotating CCW and I noticed Josh gave the power pod turn to the right. The prop is pulling not pushing. Can someone tell me whats wrong?:confused:
 

dingmike

Member
First thing I would check is the control surfaces. I can't tell from the photo but my guess would be your elevator control horn not pulling the whole elevator evenly when the wind is putting pressure on it. Causing an aileron effect. My second guess would be your rudder is hard for the servo to go left for two reasons, first the glue hinge is too full of glue causing the need for more force to be needed to move it. Second is the control rod, which I assume is 1mm music wire, flexing too much when being pushed.

To test these, power it up, take prop off first, and move the control surface and hold full defection and apply force with your finger in opposition to simulate the winds force. Do this in multiple places on the control surfaces to see if, 1, the surface warps, 2 the control rod bends excessively, 3, any thing else is moving wrong i.e. servo mount pulling away from board, it's happened to me.

The power pod is set up for ccw props ,when looking from the front, if I'm not mistaken. One other fun fact, props are neither pushers or pullers they are just air screws, pushers and pullers refer to motor/prop position relationship. Just be sure to keep the letters/numbers printed on the prop, pointed in the direction you what your plane to fly.

Hope any of this helps.

edit;
Oh and about props, counter rotating and normal direction, counter rotating would be clockwise when looking at the numbers like in this flite test video.

edit2;
Okay, just re-read every thing twice. You refer spin direction from the drivers seat and I refer from when looking withe plane pointed at me, I am probably wrong in this semantics.
So if your running everything backwards, when your on power it would yaw crazy right then when power is cut you should have normal left and right yaw. If you are running a backwards setup the easiest fix would to get a new prop. In one of the videos I thought I heard that the wings are different lengths as well as down and to the right to help with the thrust angle.

I won't post up until we hear more from you.

I'm trying to help, but sometimes it comes off as a mad mans rambling,lol.
 
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Christopher14

Driftin' with the wind...
dingmike is right, the prop in not a "standard rotation", but is a counter rotating prop. The FT Minis are designed around a standard rotation prop, and due to the torque of the prop the power pod has some right thrust in it. When you used a counter rotating prop you made the prop torque worse. To fix it, you can put some left thrust in the power pod, that should fix it, or you could just get a standard rotation prop.
 

dflash

Member
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.
How about changing the rotation of the motor? and a CCW prop? would that fix it?
 

dflash

Member
Ok.. so I finally had a few minutes to reverse two of the motor cables and install another prop and that did it! - Not that ever doubted your advice, just stating it in case someone else had the same problem.
 

MikeJM

Member
very nice

That is very cool, I was thinking of building a Red Baron to go with my Snoopy Mini mini Scout. I have all my parts that I ordered, may be time to get started.

Good job