yea i forgot to tell ya that i poked the holes through. This RP has a lot of time in the air, so now im kinda to the point of MOD her lol.

Ive seen that Balance connector ->JST. that is perfect for anyone who wants to power from the flight pack!

I think you can do the 6 pin mod easily. Did you see the Picture i posted recently? just follow that. The pins are small on it, but when the 2 servo wires are twisted together and both the pin and wire are "tinned" its quite easy. The pins are also flat
and angled in different directions. That helps widen the gap of the wires and easier to work with.

Helping Hands are a must!!

Originally Posted by cadders

Here is one of yesterdays flights using P&T with a head tracker I haven't used for years. I forgot how much I loved it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq3Vo...1&feature=plcp
I'll get some photos of my setup today, but I warn you it's not pretty.
Cadders

That is a nice feature. I would like to have that some day when I get a FPV
system going. First Im going to get a 98" or 103" glider to give me some stable flight.

I can't believe it took me so long to notice this, but it never occurred to me to check the lateral balance of this plane. Whenever I set it down on a flat surface, it wants to rest on the left wing. Maybe that explains why I always had a hard time, even now, trimming it to fly straight. I'm going to put a little counter weight on the right wing and see what happens.

At first I thought it was due to the asymmetric locations of the flap servos, but there is actually 4.5 grams difference between the weights of the 2 wings. The right one is 160 and the left one is 164.5 (that is with a paint job and servo protectors).

Originally Posted by videorov

That is a nice feature. I would like to have that some day when I get a FPV
system going. First Im going to get a 98" or 103" glider to give me some stable flight.

maybe like this? chop the pilots head off, install base with camera!! watch at the end. he has the head rigged to his rudder.

ULTIMATE MINIMOA.wmv (6 min 14 sec)

Very nice!! Thanks for that video. Kind of wants me to put a wheel on the RP and cut and paste the wings into a different shape.

Originally Posted by Jovanx

Very nice!! Thanks for that video. Kind of wants me to put a wheel on the RP and cut and paste the wings into a different shape.

Ooh !!! Can I have your motor and ESC ???



--
Greg

Well it has been a month since I flew the RP, and it showed. I had 3 good flights but my landings were off. Last landing I stalled and nosed in and broke the front fuselage off just behind the canopy. Really made me mad to hurt the plane so bad but damage is repairable. Can someone tell me the trick for getting the foam to expand back? One side is slightly compressed in and I would like to get it back out before glueing back.

This was the Ben Walker Fire

Mountain Home Fire Part 2 (5 min 9 sec)

I did see your pics Easter of the 6-pin connector, I'll have to take a look at it again.

& I thought you had servo covers on her since back in the day after those morgan mill covers were posted up here? I believe it was Sonny who posted that link? Didn't know 'til your vid where your landing in the brush broke your AIL servo arm as well as your vid showing your LED's. You plan on any covers?

Just curious 'cause you & a few other pilots here are McGiver'ish when it comes to making stuff for your planes & I'm always looking forward to checking out the ideas posted here! I'm not sure if there is a big enough plastic spoon for the RP servo covers...... (Easter put serov covers on his Eflite UMX AS3X micro MiG 15 EDF, made from 2 plastic spoons! It came out really nice and aerodynamic on the MiG)

Originally Posted by jrtubb

Well it has been a month since I flew the RP, and it showed. I had 3 good flights but my landings were off. Last landing I stalled and nosed in and broke the front fuselage off just behind the canopy. Really made me mad to hurt the plane so bad but damage is repairable. Can someone tell me the trick for getting the foam to expand back? One side is slightly compressed in and I would like to get it back out before glueing back.

Awe man, sorry to hear that. Take a read of this from Aeajr:

HOW TO FIX WARPS, DENTS, AND TWISTS OR UNCRUNCH FOAM PARTS
by Ed Anderson

I never crash, but maybe you do. Crashing can crunch the foam of a Radian or other foam planes to the point that the parts don’t fit or it introduces a twist or warp as you try to put it back together. Or it can introduce a twist or warp in the fuselage. I am going to outline a method of getting the foam back to straight or uncrunching parts. This can also be used to take twists or warps out of new parts and it will take dents out of your foam wings or even bagged wings, like DLG wings.

Let’s suppose your Radian, Easy Glider, Easy Star, etc. has a tendency to turn in the air requiring you to trim in a lot of rudder to get it to fly straight. How can you fix it. Well first we have to find the cause. Turn your foam glider over and site down the fuselage seam. It should be straight from nose to tail. Or, tape a piece of string to the tail end of the fuse, again inverted and then gently stretch the string the nose. It should track down the center of the fuse. If it does not, you have a warp. We are going to fix it.

This can happen at the factory, from a fuse not sitting right in the box or from a crash where one side of the fuselage compressed from an impact. This can also happen if you leave a foam plane in a hot car for a long time. Believe me; what you will learn here will come in handy for the rest of your foam flying life.

Heat does wonderful things to foam. It can stretch it, expand it and help straighten it. You can put twists in or take them out. You can use this when making some foam replacement parts too.

Since we are fixing the fuse, take the wings off, you won't need them. Take the h-stab off too. Tape the rudder so it is straight.

Try to figure out where the warp is centered. I am going to guess it will start behind the wings, somewhere along the boom. Flex the fuse to see if you can get it to look straight. You may have to use something to apply pressure in the center of the curve on the opposite side to get it straight. If you can flex it to straight, you can fix it.

Basically you are going to apply heat to the inside of the curve as you flex the boom away from the curve and a bit past straight. As you apply heat the gas that is trapped in the foam beads will expand. As the beads expand they extend that side of the fuselage making the heated side longer and helping you take that warp out. If this was caused by a crash this will uncrunch the crunched beads.

This goes under various names, but you might hear it called the Elapor soup method as it really became popular with the Mulitplex Elapor foam planes. But it works well with most beaded type foams. Easy Star pilots would crunch the nose of the plane in a crash. They would plunge the nose, Elapor foam, it into boiling water and the foam would expand, thus the soup reference.

Heat Methods

HOT running tap water - You hold the part to be expanded under the hot water while you shape it. In this case you flex the fuse just a little past straight while it is under the running hot water. The foam beads will expand, extending that side of the fuse. After a minute or two you take the fuse out from under the water, still holding it and let it cool. Then site and see if it took. Go back under the water if needed. As tap water is only 100 to 140 degrees sometimes this is not hot enough to do the job. So we need more heat.

Placing the part into boiling water - this works well for small pieces like a rudder a wing tip or a crunched nose. You can also pour boiling water over the area.

Steam from boiling water sometimes works. Use a BIG pot and make lots of steam. This works well for large areas like wings.

My favorite is using a heat gun/hair dryer to heat a wet cloth or paper towels. Don't let the towels dry out completely. You heat the wet cloth till it steams and starts to dry out. You have the part stretched while you do it, just as above.

BTW this works well for bagged composite wings, like DLG wings. It can take a dent our by heating the foam under the skin. I use paper towels and my covering iron. They just magically disappear. Works well for dents in your Radian, Easy Glider, etc. here you want to be more focused, so a covering iron or a hot clothes iron is best.

In each case the purpose of the water is to keep the foam from getting too hot and melting. We want to get it up to about the temperature of boiling water, though sometimes hot tap water, 120 to 140 degrees can do it too.

Using these methods I have taken Radians and Easy Gliders that have been broken into numerous smashed and crushed pieces, reshaped the foam and glued it back together with great success. Recently I shredded my Radian while slope soaring. A high speed crash through bare tree branches did a nice job on the fuse. The wings just came and got a few dents, but the fuse was in 5 pieces. It flies today!

Regardless of the method, you want to spread the expand over a somewhat broad area, not a pinpoint. Again, in the case of dents in a wing you want to be more targeted. That is why I use my covering iron rather than a heat gun.

In the case of the fuse we are using as our example, you want to expand the most in the center of the warp curve but you want to extend that somewhat forward and back of the center or you will have to overheat one area too much and perhaps not have enough expansion ability to make it work.

Try it! If you have some scrap Styrofoam or other beaded foam you can try this out for practice. Take a foam drinking cup. Cut out the bottom. Now do a top to bottom slice. Use the method above and see if you can take the curve out of the foam and make it flat. You may not get it totally flat but you will see the impact. Note that the cup material is thin so don’t heat it to much at once or you will expand the entire bead instead of just the ones on the inside of the curve. The heated beads will get bigger.

When working on a fuse, wings or other parts, be sure you don't introduce a twist as you do this or you will have another problem. But no worry, that can be fixed too.

Clear Skies and Safe Flying.

Good luck, I used his steam method with my micro Stryker and she came out PERFECT!!

Originally Posted by jrtubb

Well it has been a month since I flew the RP, and it showed. I had 3 good flights but my landings were off. Last landing I stalled and nosed in and broke the front fuselage off just behind the canopy. Really made me mad to hurt the plane so bad but damage is repairable. Can someone tell me the trick for getting the foam to expand back? One side is slightly compressed in and I would like to get it back out before glueing back.

steam! boil pot of water, take it off the heat, hold the fuse 2ft above the steaming h2o untill you get it nice and warm, with condensation built up on the foam.

Then bend the fuse back the shape you want and hold it till it cools off.

another way is to soak a lager hand towel in the hot water, ring it out a bit and cover the foam with it to heat up the faom.
then do the same as above.

don't put the plane over the boiling pot when its on the hot plate etc... the heat well ailigator your foam.

Originally Posted by Eastcoast78

steam! boil pot of water, take it off the heat, hold the fuse 2ft above the steaming h2o untill you get it nice and warm, with condensation built up on the foam.

Then bend the fuse back the shape you want and hold it till it cools off.

another way is to soak a lager hand towel in the hot water, ring it out a bit and cover the foam with it to heat up the faom.
then do the same as above.

don't put the plane over the boiling pot when its on the hot plate etc... the heat well ailigator your foam.

LOL, I did fail to mention to "take it off the heat"!! Although the wings on my micro Stryker came out PERFECT (they got bent from the shipping from the Classifieds section here) since I didn't remove the boilong pot of water from the heat the flame warped BOTH rudders & vertical fins into a candy cane shape

So I now had to do use the steam method to get both RUDD & vertical fin straight. It worked!!

Originally Posted by Eastcoast78

maybe like this? chop the pilots head off, install base with camera!! watch at the end. he has the head rigged to his rudder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BtE79cV4Kw

THAT is a cool video! Those Speed Brakes are neat! She's HUGE!!!

Originally Posted by botulism

Ooh !!! Can I have your motor and ESC ???



--
Greg

If I had as good a place to slope-soar as that guy, I might be tempted. For now I'm going to have to hang onto those 2 items. There aren't many options for sloping around here because the hills are all covered with trees. I did it once, by driving up to the ski hill and hiking to the top. That was back in May when there was still snow and they had just closed. Now the bugs are so bad up there that flying would be almost impossible.

Thanks for the heat and water fix my RP is back together! I also used clear packing tape across the break on the outside while the gorilla glue dried to keep a nice smooth finish. Repair is very hard to even see unless you are looking for it.

I think I know why my landings sucked today too. I was playing with setting up compensation elevator with flaps and I just noticed it was compensating with 20% up elevator instead of down elevator! This was causing very extrem ballooning that I was fighting today. I think this was because I use gear switch position 0 as off for flaps and the manual uses position 1 as off.