I found some photos of planes which are LONG gone from my hanger. Crashed, retired or sold, these are all no longer flying.

(one exception, I still have my 28" EPP wing... it may fly again!)...Continue Reading

I've been doing some 'hanger shuffling' and repair work now that the weather in Wisconsin has officially turned nasty.

I've sold a number of NIB kits I had sitting around which were on the small side wingspan-wise.

This weekend I fixed up the Brio. Looks like it will fly again in spring. It turns out that repairing the wing was really pretty easy. Since I have only five 2.4Ghz receivers, I might move one of my 72Mhz receivers into the Brio. I ordered another NIB Brio off R/C groups... just in case. ;-)

I also picked up an 3D Hobby Shop Aspera airframe from a guy I met from McFarland. I'm placing the motor from the Sky Cat into this airframe. It needs smaller servos than I used in the Sky Cat, so I'll be using HiTec HS-65's. This one gets a Spektrum 2.4Ghz receiver.

So it looks like I'll have two pattern type planes ready to fly in the spring.

I think my comments about not having an 'incident' were heard by the R/C gods. My luck has turned pretty ugly.

Since that post, I've had several 'incidents':

1) Crashed the Brio 10 on landing. Ran out battery power on final approach, stalled it, ripped left wing right off. Looks repairable, but will take some fiddling around. Sure would be nice to find something with a spare left wing, so I don't have to mess about with it. Fall/Winter project.

2) Sky Cat caught a gust on taxing back to the flight line, caught air and hit the snow fence. Damage was minor, repaired it.

3) Saturday ... flying the Sky Cat nicely when cowling came loose, and mixed it up with the prop... ugly result. The Sky Cat is no more. I've rescued the motor, ESC, radio, and servos and they will be placed in a new plane.

4) Saturday ... helping my buddy by doing a trim flight of his GWS ME-109 when an guy with 3D Gasser mid-aired me. My first mid-air... the ME-109 was totaled. Gearbox wrecked, one servo wrecked. I felt pretty bad for Rick, so I gifted him with a GWS P-51 kit I had sitting on the shelf as a replacement.

5) Early Sunday thought the wind was going to be low... but got the field and it was 10 MPH and gusty. Like the fool I am, I tried to fly the 10-size Hyperion YAK 55SP. Crashed it on takeoff due to dumb-thumbs and a gust. Snapped the motor shaft, ripped off the landing gear and knocked a piece off the elevator. Damage was actually pretty minor except for motor shaft and I...Continue Reading

I've been trying to get in as much flying as possible. I've flown the Hyperion YAK 55SP 10e for around 6 flights now. I'm very happy with it, the power system is very good and the plane performs extremely well. The only draw back with the 10e size is landing on grass. Not that I cannot land it, it lands fine but it is very hard to keep from nosing over when the plane slows up. I've so far done only one 'perfect' landing where the Yak didn't nose over.

Yesterday I went to the field with all 5 of my planes. The day started well, with nearly calm conditions. I flew the Sopwith Camel first. It is a fun and very slow flying plane. Nice flight. Next was the Yak 55 SP 10e. Next up the Fokker D VII. Another fun little flight. I noticed it was starting to get a little gusty. But no problems so far.

My friend Dave showed up with the T-34. I watched him do a flight on it. He commented on the gusty conditions, but had no problems.

I took up my Sky Cat for a short flight, but when taxing back to the flight line I was probably going a bit fast, and caught a gust which cased the plane to take off. I was too low to clear the snow fence. The Sky Cat sustained minor damage. I'll have to remount the motor and re-attach the rudder. It is EPP foam, so it bounces well. :-)

My last flight of the day started out nice. I took the Brio up and had a nice flight with it, but I was really noticing the the wind gusts. As I was bringing in the Brio, the battery went completely flat. Since I was landing into the wind, this was NOT a good time for a strong gust, which slowed me down so much I just ran out of airspeed well short of the landing area. Stall. Crash. Then the long walk of dread. Damage was pretty bad, but perhaps is repairable. Ripped one wing completely off. Broke the prop. Bent the axle on one of the landing gear.

Well I new I had to do it sometime. This weekend I pulled all of the electronics (except motors) out of my GWS DC-3 (see below for pix). The GWS DC-3 is an OK flyer, but the small wheels are just a problem on a grass field. I was constantly messing up take-offs and landings on it. The airframe is still in pretty good shape. Perhaps I can find it a home.

I just need the servos for new planes. I will also probably re-use the receiver.

I'm mostly using my Spektrum 2.4Ghz radio now, but I do still use my 72Mhz Futaba radio for some planes (Fokker D-VII). I think I'll use these to build up some more 'park' size planes that I can goof around with in the local parks.

Even though I've become a bit of a balsa snob, I will still fly foamies ... especially when I want to build something myself from fanfold or depron and bash it around.

I finally had a chance to fly my Hyperion YAK 55SP 10e this morning before work. I have been waiting for a low wind situation to test it out. Wind was almost non-existent, so I quickly packed the plane, transmitter and a charged battery into my car.

There is a public park on my drive into work (in Westport on the north side of the lake Mendota). It has some big soccer fields as well as a large empty field to the south. I've only flow there once before. I figured what the heck, this is a small plane, so a small field should be no problem.

Take off was nice and controlled. It climbed out easily at about 60% throttle. Only needed one or two clicks of right aileron trim and it was flying perfectly level. Did a couple of simple loops and rolls, the plane handles very well. I flew the entire flight on low rates, so no crazy stunts. Flew around for about 6 minutes. Since I was unfamiliar with the field, I didn't to a bunch of landings. Just the one landing, and it was smooth as butter. The grass was long, so when the plane slowed up, it gently nosed over.

This makes the fifth new plane of put together this year and flown. So far no major incidents. True - I've dorked up the landings a few times. :-)

Four of the five planes have been balsa ARFs. One EPP foam plane; the Sky Cat, which is still my favorite for 'trying new things' since I'm not all all worried about mishaps.

I must say, I'm totally convinced of the superiority of flying experience of a balsa and monocote style plane vs. a foamie. Perhaps I'm just a better flier now and I can notice the difference more, or perhaps the balsa ARFs I'm currently flying are better than average.

Yes, I finally got another plane that had been sitting in a box for over a year off the shelf and built up. I picked up the Yak 55SP 10e blue and yellow version with the motor and ESC as a package from Hobby Horse about a year ago. Price sticker says it cost $230. (Wow, that seemed like a deal then, but now you can get (on sale) a 25e size Yak 55SP w/ motor and ESC from ALLeRC.com for $222.)

The Yak has a 38.6" WS and comes with a 30A ESC and the HP-Z3007-26 motor.

I used four HS-55 servos and I'll probably fly it with a 1500 mAH 3S pack.

With the APC 10x5e prop it pulls around 20A static.

17 5/8 oz, 670g total weight - which is right on the numbers according to the instructions.

Seems so small in comparison to the Brio and Sky Cat...

Dave has solo'd on his T-34. We flew one last buddy box flight Friday night, and then he flew several more on his own.

He is doing great and really loves the plane. He is experimenting with dialing the flaps down. I think he will probably add a servo to control the flaps so he can use them for take-offs and landings.

Now that he has three battery packs (got a couple of Rhino packs from Hobby King) he is getting in at least three flights each time he goes out.

The T-34 is really a pretty darn nice plane. It flies nice and looks great doing it. And the RTF starter package is one of the best deals around.

I flew the 32" WS Fokker DVII for the first time Friday evening. First flight was a bit scary, the trims were really far off and the plane is pretty responsive on the controls. It was also a bit windy. I managed to get it sorted out, flew around a bit, landed reasonably well.

Today I flew it again early in the morning before any wind had a chance to build. It is a pretty fun little flier. It moves right along on the little 400 size brushless motor. I'm using an APC 8x6 prop, cheapo ESC, and a 1300 mAh 3S lipo. Landing was an ugly one with a big bounce. No damage.

Since this is a 'fun scale' only, and the kit was very cheap, I don't feel as much concern when flying it as some of my nicer planes like the Sopwith Camel and Brio. So I flung it around the sky with abandon; doing loops, rolls, and stall turns.

I've built a 32" WS Fokker DVII from an el cheapo ARF kit from Ebay.

The instructions were terrible and the ARF was definitely a lower quality level than other balsa ARFs I've built.

More after I fly it...

(Apparently these are still getting flogged off on Ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-R-C-RADIO-CONTROL-FOKKER-D7-ELECTRIC-ARF_W0QQitemZ380060630409QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item3 80060630409&_trkparms=72%3A1142|39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3 A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14)

Dave and I returned to the flying field yesterday, and brought the T-34 out for its second maiden attempt.

The weather was great, but a tad more wind that the previous night. In theory, for the larger planes like the T-34 and the Sky Cat this isn't a huge problem.

To start with we setup my Sky Cat and the buddy box and double checked all the trims. For the first flight I handled take off and landing, but Dave flew the rest of the flight un-aided. The Sky Cat is pretty responsive, but Dave did a good job and got a feel for what happens when you get a gust of wind strong enough to knock the plane around a bit.

Next up was the T-34. I took it up for a short flight and trimmed it out for neutral flight. As per the official blog, it actually just needed some down elevator to compensate for the full down fixed flaps (part of the 'training' setup). The plane flew very nicely and has very good coloration for orientation. As many people have told me, the larger the plane the 'smoother' it feels in the sky. I'd say this is definitely true with the T-34. My landing was decent, but not perfection.

We hooked up the buddy cord on the two Spektrum 6xi radios, and once again made sure the trims were properly entered into both radios so they were setup identically. For this flight I was on the Master and Dave on the Slave radio. I gave Dave control, and he taxed out and took off like a pro!

He flew a bunch of nice circuits, and looked to have nice control of the aircraft. He...Continue Reading

As I've mentioned previously my friend Dave has a new T-34. Well we attempted to fly it last night using a trainer / buddy setup. The T-34 is a large balsa ARF - 55" wingspan. Around the size of a ".40" gasser, but the electric power system is supposed to be .25 equivalent. We tested it static, and it pulled a bit over 40 amps on the bench, and almost 500 watts of power at full throttle.

I was on 'Master' and Dave was on the 'Slave' controller. I gave him control so he could taxi and take off, the idea being he needed to learn how and gee whiz, as long as you are gentle on the sticks and give the plane some time to build up speed, take offs are normally not a big deal.

Not this take off... Dave throttled the T-34 up and right after it left the ground it pitched back almost completely vertical! There was a lot of exclamations of "oh sh*t" all around. I took over and punched the throttle to full and gave it full nose down. I got it back under control and throttled back to 40% to 50% throttle ... the plane wanted to climb like crazy. It was all I could do to keep pushing the nose down trying to keep it level. I did a few circuits like this and then I started trying to shoot landings and bring it down. It did NOT want to come down. Even though killing the throttle completely would slow it some, I had to really push the nose down to get it to decrease altitude. Needless to say the landing was very scary, but I did finally get it down all in one piece. I don't believe there was any damage that I saw. Not my smoothest landing.

Afterwords I was shaking from the adrenaline rush. It was by far the most hair-raising flight I've had in quite a while. This is a *beautiful* balsa plane which I would have hated to damage.

From what we can tell, the CG was aft of what it should have been and/or the idea of having full down flaps (see E-Flite T-34 thread) isn't such a great one.

I finally got around to building one of two Brio 10 ARFs I've had on the shelf for about a year. Here are my impressions on the build, my setup and my first flight.

Build

The build was very straight forward. The ARF kit was very complete hardware-wise and the manual was well written and illustrated with nice black and white photos showing most steps. I had to do a bit of warp removal with the stab, tail, rudder and elevator. Wings looked pretty warp free. I added larger wheels and left off the wheel pants since I fly off grass. I also replaced the stock spinner with a nicer 3rd party black 1 3/4" spinner. I'd say it took maybe 12 hours to build give or take. Pretty fast. Nothing tricky at all (unlike the Sopwith Camel I just built).

I went with a TowerPro 2908-10 brushless motor and TowerPro 30A ESC that I had pulled from my scrapped GWS Formosa II. APC 11.5x5.5 prop. FlightPower EVO25 1800 mAh 25C 3S lipo. Two HS-55's on the ailerons, two bluebird servos which as a tad stronger than the HS-55's installed in the rear locations for rudder and elevator. Total weight 33 oz.

I may prop up to a 12x6 in future.

I had no problems setting the CG to a bit behind the forward-most CG location from the manual. With the nice battery location setup, it appears that it won't be hard to tweak the CG back a tad when I'm fully comfortable flying the Brio and want to try more tricky stuff.

First Flight

A beautiful WI late summer evening at the Badger Prairie field....Continue Reading

My friend Dave is getting into R/C and has picked up a sweet RTF trainer package (E-Flite T-34). It comes with the same 2.4Ghz radio I've been using so we figured we would test out the trainer / buddy system with my Sky Cat.

Long story short, this wasn't quite as straight forward as you would think. Apparently the way things work you have to have each radio programmed EXACTLY the same, right down to the trims.

Needless to say, I missed the trims when programming Dave's radio to match mine. Dave was attempting to fly my now completely un-trimmed Sky Cat. Since he was new to R/C, he didn't realize he needed to trim it out (nor did I) so he experienced some very frustrating attempts at flight. The good news is the switch between master / slave worked flawlessly, so I was able to save things on each loss of control. This was good practice for me. :-)

Dave blamed himself, but upon further review it was clearly a setup problem with not getting his radio tweaked to match mine. We will continue to work on this, and I think now that we understand the problem it will work better in the future.

The Sky Cat has now transitioned to a solid sport aerobat in its current setup. Nice and predicable flights, some simple aerobatics. Decent power, but not overpowered. I might be able to prop it up a bit from the 11x7. Handles winds decently and landings are nice and predicable.

Got a chance to log a few more Sky Cat flights this weekend. I tried new props; an 11x8, 12x6 and an 11x7. I like the 11x7 best. Good balance of speed to thrust.

Also tried some new battery packs from United Hobbies, 2200 3S lipo packs rated at 25C. Very nice performance / value for the price.

Now that I've got majority of the 'bugs' worked out of the 'Cat, I'm really liking it. It handles a bit of wind with no problem. Take offs and landings are easy.

The black and yellow color scheme works pretty well, but I think for a future one I'd go with more to distinguish the top and bottom. More stripes on the bottom of the wings for example.

Even though it seems like I tend to abuse it, the DC-3 keeps on ticking!

Here are a few higher res pix from a recent outing.

Went out flying near dusk on Monday. A friend came along to take some photos. Here is a nice one of the Sopwith Camel.

So I did a pretty significant re-work of the Sky-Cat after getting it home from the maiden flight. Found out that the glue I used for some of the assembly just wasn't working well at all. (Ultimate R/C Foam glue - go figure. Seems to work well on blucore and depron, but not Elapor.)

So I tore much of the plane apart, cleaned off the offending glue, repainted some spots and re-assembled it. For the re-assembly I used medium viscosity CA and kicker. This worked VERY well. All the Elapor joints feel much more solid. Also added a magnet for the battery hatch. I re-hinged the ailerons, I'm much happier with this hinging job than the last.

I dropped the prop down to an APC 11x8 - just to try it out for the next flight.

So it is all set for next flight. Weather seems crap today, but we shall see.

I got up early today and went to the Badger Prairie field in an attempt to beat the weather (which looks iffy at best today). Badger Prairie aeromodel field is a Dane county park with large grass area for take-off and landing surrounded by a mostly tree-free prairie.

I had three totally new items with me to try out, new Spektrum 6xi radio and two new planes which I had not flown previously.

Winds were 0-5 MPH. Pretty calm, but not totally.

I flew the Green Models / Powerline Sopwith Camel first. I was pleasantly surprised to find it seemed to have plenty of get up and go, even with the tiny little stock brushless motor. When I tested it out static it only pulled 10 Amps, so with a 3C lipo that is only 110 watts input power.

After a bit of trim it flew pretty well, although it may need a bit more weight in the nose. It seemed a tad pitch sensitive, which usually indicates the CG may be a bit aft of where it should be. With my 1700 mAH 3C lipo, it had plenty of juice. I didn't time it, but I flew two roughly 5 minute flights and it didn't seem even close to out of juice.

Flying was very scale-like. Not too slow but not all that fast. The Sopwith would loop happily. Landing was interesting, since with the draggy airframe you needed a fair amount of throttle to keep the plane moving as you bring it in. I did several landings and the large wheels worked quite well on the grass. Ground taxing was pretty good, although I did nose it over once when I taxed a bit fast...Continue Reading