Nice flying there Vince!

Ahh. I checked the ESC, and found its working now.
The ESC has a 100C thermo shutdown, which I'm assuming kicked in after my high speeds attempts.

**Actually the ESC isnt working. I put plane back together gave it throttle and it cut out after 1 second. I guess I am one of the unlucky ones whose ESC didnt deal with the demand well.

I bought an 80A ESC and fitted larger 4mm connectors on the dynam stock motor. Works a treat now.

battery on Habu 3300mah 40c 5s
battery on meteor 3000 20c 5s
2:10 over head inverted pass

HABU & 2 METEOR over head inverted pass (2 min 29 sec)

habu vs cameraman

Habu run in to camera-man ouch !! (0 min 16 sec)

Luke flying hes meteor

Meteor (4 min 7 sec)

After perfecting "electric servoless pushrod steerable nose-gear installations", via a few other aircraft, I stripped down and replaced my Meteor retract nose-gear with a pushrod system instead of the RUBBISH pull-pull system! If I never see pull-pull wires again, it will be too soon!! LOL

Doing it pushrod way is not only rock solid perfection of nose-gear operation, for rock solid steering and dead accurate gear (& wheel) alignment all the way through retraction to storage, but it is also EASIER to plan, install and set up anyway. (than pull-pull wire). And the mechnical aspects are very straightforward and simple - a bit of fine tuning in adjustments, but certainly not as hard or messy as pull-pull wires. And pull-pull go sloppy quite soon and often, so they are just sub-standard rubbish really.

So after a fairly long delay of focussing on other aircraft, I did the Meteor nose-gear change, and will finally take it out for 5S tests tomorrow.
Then back to the workshop for a new elevator system - a quick test of a single larger MG servo, in case that works fine - and then on to the twin servo mod.

Any pictures of your pushrod setup PeterVRC? I have a retract kit waiting to be installed.
I have also ordered a new fan and motor for mine:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...Fan_Unit_.html

Getting the recommended 2300 kV motor, it should work well on 5S even if it is rated for 4S only.

Not sure if it will be more powerful than stock, but it is supposed to sound really good

For the main gear, look back not too far in this thread where I did the retracts. Those work fine. Post #1672 Page 112
The nose.... you can look at those older pics too, for a partial clue compared to now, but I will post new pics and info on the nose-gear soon. Tomorrow sometime, after I take some pics.

Here is a pic of the nose-gear assy from my Starmax F-16, which is a pretty good clue seeing it is exactly the same setup. The main difference is you use the mounting plate on the 'bottom' of the retract (eg like this one is sitting, the bottom on the table), instead of the top "U" looking plate as seen here. But the arms are set up the same.
So imagine a plywood (4mm or 5mm) plate is under this retract. Running 20mm longer each way - for great strength. And in the meteor, you epoxy the plate in the body so that the bottom (the top in this pic) of the retract, when it is retracted, is flush to the bottom of the Meteor, The depth measurements - whether the retract is further into the body, or a bit outwards, is not really critical anyway.
So check those other pics from before, and try to imagine this difference mentioned - till I get the real pics posted.

Note the aim of this arm system is to move the pushrod pivot point to be almost identical postion to the trunion pivot point (bush), when you view across the trunion pivot line. Thus as the retract moves the servo/pushrod assembly doesn't have any motion, or pressure, by the steering arm to move at all. It is all a perfect staus quo. There are two 3mm washers under the steering arm, to the trunion, so that the arm clears the edge of the retract as it closes.
You can assemble the arm/lever/pushrod-horn in many different manners - using different parts etc that you might have. All that matters is to get the horn into line with the trunion pivot.
This one needed the top plate cut, to allow the arm to have its required clearance. But a bottom mounted plate setup doesn't need anything cut then.

Originally Posted by Helgeo

Any pictures of your pushrod setup PeterVRC? I have a retract kit waiting to be installed.
I have also ordered a new fan and motor for mine:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...Fan_Unit_.html

Getting the recommended 2300 kV motor, it should work well on 5S even if it is rated for 4S only.

Not sure if it will be more powerful than stock, but it is supposed to sound really good

I'd love to see and hear the results of your powerplant change.
I was thinking to eventually do the same.

PeterVRC, thanks for the info. I think I understand how it works, but more pics will still be good

Juice555, I will post a video with sound when I have installed the power plant. It will be a while before that happens though

I ordered that 10 blade fan too, but to use in either my F-15 or F-18. (almost the same size as the Meteor).
But I don't like the Meteor "Leaf blower" sound! So if that 10-blade, or any of the two others (high speed 3 blade too) I also ordered to try, are better then I will probably change the Meteor one.

Originally Posted by PeterVRC

I ordered that 10 blade fan too, but to use in either my F-15 or F-18. (almost the same size as the Meteor).
But I don't like the Meteor "Leaf blower" sound! So if that 10-blade, or any of the two others (high speed 3 blade too) I also ordered to try, are better then I will probably change the Meteor one.

I have the 10 blade Changesun fan in my Meteor. Flies well on 4S plenty of verticle. Draws a lot of amps , about 80 amps on WOT.
Most of my flying is at 3/4 power.

Regards

Tom Watson
Sydney Australia

80 Amps! For 4S, and on the stock motor?
I would be thinking more like 40A - 50A area or so, for the stock fan. And maybe a bit more off a better fan. Then maybe a bit more if 5S.
Would probably need 6S for 80A.
If it is 80A, it would want to be ballistic speed! LOL
I can't remember what I measured 4S at (all stock), I will have to test 4S and 5S again...

Originally Posted by PeterVRC

80 Amps! For 4S, and on the stock motor?
I would be thinking more like 40A - 50A area or so, for the stock fan. And maybe a bit more off a better fan. Then maybe a bit more if 5S.
Would probably need 6S for 80A.
If it is 80A, it would want to be ballistic speed! LOL
I can't remember what I measured 4S at (all stock), I will have to test 4S and 5S again...

Sorry, I forgot it was not the stock motor. It was from xflight, Cyclone Power CS480-3300KV-3.17shaft .
For my second meteor I have the same motor but only 2500 KV. I have not flow it yet as I am fitting retracts and still need to finish the steering.

Retract pics:

I have two plywood plates because the original retract mod had the retract mounted at its 'outer aircraft' portion, so that mount was a different height to the servo mount. But doing it like these pics means one plate could be made to do both jobs.

The wheel retracts in almost totally flush to the body. To get it fully flush (or more) just bend the leg 'backwards' a few degrees, soon after it clears the retract motor body. Or use a smaller wheel. Or mount the retract deeper down into the fuselage.

The front retract is a HKD-312 22g retract. The rears are HK-5094 18g units. That rears were smaller so that the retract 'height' can fit within the wing thickness, and the 18g are fine anyway - more so because there stresses are sideways to them, not along the worm drive mechanism, and they are stronger in that sideways direction. Both retract types have 3mm leg holes, but they can clamp 2.3mm legs (original rears) fine anyway.
The HKD-312 uses 3mm grub screws to clamp the leg inserted, and the HK-5094 use 2mm grub screws for that. (I use 2, 1 for each trunion bush side).
Grind flats onto the legs so the wheels can't rotate away from their correct direction.

Using the original rear landing gear legs is not really great - it is ok for hard runways, but too soft for grass and they will bend backwards a bit, and then the wheels can't retract into the cutout anymore. It is easy enough to make up some 3mm legs instead, with coils (2 or 3) if you want some shock absorption (I have been too slack so far!). Nicer would be to use 3mm mini legs, made just long enough to feed into oleo legs with suspension. And the front could use a suspension oleo too. I will check that out soon, as I have quite a few types of roughly suitable size alloy leg/wheel assemblies around.

Oleo options:

The trailing arms types are generally better to absorb bumps in a more useful fashion, so they are good on all surfaces. The cheaper set, though made well, are telescopic so they are far better suited to hard runways.

Fantastic pictures PeterVRC, thanks a lot

Does it retract OK if you have some rudder input or do you use a separate channel for the front steering with a mix that centers the front servo when retracting?

As for the 10 blade fan, it must have a lower kV motor, I assume this fan has higher pitch on the blades than the stock fan does. I'm hoping that the 2300 kV motor will be a good match for it on 5S.