Mine was up in a tree again yesterday. We drove home to find my 42 ft. rod. And when we came back. The wind had blown it down again. Lesson learned, stupid of me to fly in wind so strong, that I lost control, and drifted in to that tree. The little plane got just a little crack, in the stabilizer. Last time, the fuselage of this model, spend six weeks in a tree.

Originally Posted by ArneHu

Mine was up in a tree again yesterday. We drove home to find my 42 ft. rod. And when we came back. The wind had blown it down again. Lesson learned, stupid of me to fly in wind so strong, that I lost control, and drifted in to that tree. The little plane got just a little crack, in the stabilizer. Last time, the fuselage of this model, spend six weeks in a tree.

Good for you!!!.I am glad you were able to get back the aircraft.
Being still a Rookie I learnt also the hard way.Lost already 3 mini Ventus gliders from Revell,one of them was a ditch in the sea.They had only 2 Channels.
Now with the Sky Surfer I feel strange with 4 Ch!!!!

Cheers.

I have learned a lot from the Sky Surfer. It's not so difficult to fly, in calmer days. Can stand a crash, and harder landings. It was my fault, flying the light model in the wind, blowing it in to the wood.

Originally Posted by studioRS

Painted wing tips and underside with Krylon Short Cuts pepper red.

How did you paint the wing?.Did you apply directly the paint or did you apply any primer?

Cheers.

Originally Posted by ArneHu

I have learned a lot from the Sky Surfer. It's not so difficult to fly, in calmer days. Can stand a crash, and harder landings. It was my fault, flying the light model in the wind, blowing it in to the wood.

The second day I had it we got very bad mechanical turbulence due to the wind coming from the mountain behind my place on the beach.I decided to stop the flight right away.I am glad I did.Just waiting for the 350 mah zippys.Non stop flying

Cheers.

Originally Posted by supermoth

How did you paint the wing?.Did you apply directly the paint or did you apply any primer?

Cheers.

I prepared the foam surface by wiping it clean with isopropyl alcohol and lightly sanding the surface. This cleans off any mould release and provides a little grab for the paint. EPO doesn't really like to be painted. You can coat over with water based MINWax polycrylic wood finish or similar clear coat spray.

Last weekend I lost the surfer into the 8+ft tall corn field! I thought it was gone for good.

I have been lucky with this little guy.
- lost the original canopy, made a new clear one, then found the original one week later!

- Lost the propeller and spinner while slope soaring at the beach, found one hour later...!

- Now this! But I got lucky again -" Lucky the Surfer".. We have many club members that have lost planes in the corn, never to be found again. Except found by the farmer driving the harvester - chunky foam pieces and bits, yucky!

Oops! must have had a bad thumb servo or something?!? Put it into the corn field about 100+ft in easy and, I was the only one there... Ruhro.

I saw exactly where it went in and made a B line walk with Tx still on around my neck. After what seemed like 25 rows of corn I stopped and wagged the rudder. A distant bzzz, bzzz, bzzz back and forth was heard over the crickets! Wahoo!

MoF, I flew a reconnaissance filming for a lost glider in the corn field the next day using my Radian and key fob camera. We still haven't found it...

The connections to the servos are weak. That's a problem, and I always do a pre flight control. But I am impressed over the little TX. It actually have a long range, But don't know how long. Have been caught by thermal, and could nearly see a little dot high up in the sky. Still control, and manged to get it down in one piece.
The trick to use a tiny servo screw to make it just a bit more tail heavy, makes it a more controllable little plane. Screw it in at the end of the fuselage.

Originally Posted by ArneHu

The connections to the servos are weak. That's a problem, and I always do a pre flight control. But I am impressed over the little TX. It actually have a long range, But don't know how long. Have been caught by thermal, and could nearly see a little dot high up in the sky. Still control, and manged to get it down in one piece.
The trick to use a tiny servo screw to make it just a bit more tail heavy, makes it a more controllable little plane. Screw it in at the end of the fuselage.

The connections to the servos are terrible. Must check the alignement of the control surfaces, especially the rudder, every time I grab the plane (well, I should, anyway, shouldn't I?...)

According to the manual I got from BMI (part 3 - Introduction) the range should be 250-300 meters. I certainly am not going to check this, at least not in flight.

I had to ad a much larger screw than a "tiny servo screw" to get a proper CoG - actually a self tapping screw, can't remember the weight but I mentioned it before somewhere in this thread.

And, BTW, they also state "Fly this model by little wind. (≤ Beaufort 2)", which is about 2-3 m/s max.

G.

Ah, and about the Beaufort scale, if anyone is interested, here goes an interesting file (don't know where I got this from, somewhere in the net, so sorry, I have no link to refer to)

Some photos from last Sunday before the corn grabbed my Surfer. Professional photography work by markusvt - thanks!

studioRS,
thanks, beautiful photos, I will copy them to a file if you don't mind.

Now, about the "slow" motor on my Sky Surfer:

Some may remember that a couple of weeks ago I decided to replace the motor on my Sky Surfer, as the original one was likely out of order – it would not rev up to speed (see back posts)

At the time I asked in the forum if anyone knew how to remove the motor from this plane and some well-meaning soul suggested I split the front of the fuse (“in reverse”…), and then glue it back after replacing the motor.

Well, when I got the new motor I remembered to ask at my LHS how it was done. The answer? “Easy, just remove the three small screws at the front and pull the motor from the front”! Heck, this plane has a proper motor mount.

So, for the benefit of some other newbie who decides he needs to replace the original motor, here goes a description with pictures.

Ah, and before anyone goes for it, I advise you to read to the end of this post, as I was in for a surprise…

Steps:
1 – Remove the prop
2 – (photo 1) Remove the three outmost screws from the motor. I suggest that you do this over a flat, even-colored, clear surface – if one of this tiny screws falls on the floor, especially if there is a rug on it, you are bound to do a lot of searching (experience, experience…). A magnetized screwdriver helps.
3 – (photo 2) Disconnect the plug to the ESC. Note: on re-assembling, the two small brass tabs visible on the plug (picture on the right) should look to the same way they were originally seated, for the motor to have the correct polarity.
4 – (photo 3) Remove the motor from the front of the fuse. You can now see the motor mount.
5 – (photo 4) The new motor before assembling
6 – (photo 5) Check how the capacitors on the back of the new motor are positioned. Mine were all spread out, which made it impossible to fully seat the motor on the mount. If that is the case, you must bend the wires so the capacitors can enter the opening on the back of the mount (picture on the right)
7 – (photo 6) Finally, after seating the motor (no force needed!), check it is correctly seated and re-attach it to the mount via the three tiny screws. Screw and tighten evenly - do not start by fully tightening one screw and then trying to tighten the remaining two, this is bound to result in bad distortions. Connect the plug to the ESC, and it’s done.

Finally, do a working test.
Everything done and fine. Right? Well, in my case, wrong!

I assembled the old prop and spinner for a working test, and everything went the same as before – not enough RPM!
When moved by hand the prop seemed to wobble a little, so on a hunch I decided to remove it and put on a new one I had bought at the same time. Surprise, surprise - up to proper revs immediately!!!

The only explanation I can find for this is that the old prop in some way was slipping on the shaft, not enough to fly out front, but enough to not to get to revs (drag, inertia, whatever…) even though the motor accelerated correctly (now, this is a guess, as did not bother to disassemble/reassemble everything back for confirmation; but I’ll keep the old motor – as for the old prop, I binned it).
But I am open to other explanations.

Anyway, if anyone of you feels the prop on you Sky Surfer does not seem to go up to the right RPM, try replacing your prop before buying a new motor. It had already been commented on this thread about this prop slipping – it had happened to me too – but I expected it to slip off, not to slip slow…

And, supermoth, you are right in buying that extra prop. It is quite sturdy, but as shown it may have other, not so obvious shortcomings.

Sorry for longish post, just though it might be useful for someone...

G.

studioRS,

And where did you get that clear canopy?
Much neater than the original black one!

G.

Brilliant! Thank you for this remedy with the motor. You might also want to put one small drop of oil on the bronze bushings front and rear of the motor.

Yes, all good with the photos. If you click through, the larger version is nice.

I used a Polar Grape Diet soda bottle. I think it is 1 liter, fits perfectly. Look back in this thread for my building photos.

First off yes it is an easy motor to replace, and the BL that I listed is an inrunner that bolts right in place, too bad the stock electronics can not run it.... But having more authority is great, although it does reduce the low wind thermal greatly.

As for 250-300 meters, I can vouch it goes further than that, I have flown with the stock set up to the point it was just a speck, hold the rudder for about 2-3 seconds and wait to see where it is going to figure out the direction it is pointing, mind you I have 20/5 vision so I can see @ 20 feet what most can see @ 5 makes flying gliders high much easier for me I suppose.

Originally Posted by GLFaria

The connections to the servos are terrible. Must check the alignement of the control surfaces, especially the rudder, every time I grab the plane (well, I should, anyway, shouldn't I?...)

According to the manual I got from BMI (part 3 - Introduction) the range should be 250-300 meters. I certainly am not going to check this, at least not in flight.

I had to ad a much larger screw than a "tiny servo screw" to get a proper CoG - actually a self tapping screw, can't remember the weight but I mentioned it before somewhere in this thread.

And, BTW, they also state "Fly this model by little wind. (≤ Beaufort 2)", which is about 2-3 m/s max.

G.