I had a nice new Radian Pro arrive today and have questions, for starters, about the control surfaces.

The ailerons and flaps are both somewhat "bent" have "hoops" in them, apparently from being boxed, but some seems to come from the "stickers/decals" and on the flaps, also from poorly taped hinges.

So, I pulled off the "stickers/decals" and the wings are sitting so the ailerons and flaps can relax and hopefully return to shape. If not I'll get out the kettle and make steam. I'm deciding about the tape hinges' fate.

Are owners re-hinging the flaps? The tape hinges aren't done too well and the hinges are cut so the flaps are only going down. As delivered, there's going to be no mixing to have the flaps move with the ailerons. Nobody mixing them with the ailerons? No-one using reflex on the flaps?

The rudder hinge doesn't look too good. A good place for using Dubro "door hinges"?

FWIW the decalage is zero on this particular fuselage. Still needs re-inforcing to fix the flexi-flyer tail.

Same old lame excuse!

Originally Posted by JumpySticks

Drag a tip and off they'll rip.

Originally Posted by chronodeco

Same old lame excuse!

As far as I can tell, nearly every full size or model plane has protection of the outboard tip of the aileron. There is good reason for that.

T.Edwards -

I found that hot water, boiled in a measuring cup, is easier to control. If you are dealing with simple ( ) warps, let them sit before you try anything. If they don't return to the correct shape, then weight them carefully. It is real easy to get the foam too hot in boiling water or steam and destroy the part.

Or, you can order a new wing and fuse for less than $100. I'm on my fourth (and last, I just got the Mystique).

You can also try the "fabric" CA hinges - cut the slots and use white Gorilla Glue to attach them rather than CA.


Rick

I got my prop blade selection and aluminum spinner order and will start testing them over the weekend. I will get my GPS logger next week so I can do climb comparisons also.

For straightening bent/warped foam I keep an old kettle in the "hanger" and a bowl and sponge. Boil the water, pour it in the bowl and wet the sponge. Hold the hot sponge against the warped surface and keep applying until the desired effect is reached. This way ensures you do not overheat/burn the foam surface. I have found straightening is ongoing maintenance. If a foam plank is sitting in a hot car or out in the sun at the field it can warp from the heat.

HOW TO FIX WARPS, DENTS, TWISTS OR UNCRUNCH FOAM PARTS -

in the Radian Thread
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...ostcount=11127

In this thread
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...ostcount=10090

Here is a combined video from three flights I did yesterday (an hour of flight time in 5:30). I had the camera pointing straight ahead, straight rearward and to the left at a 45 degree angle (downward between the nose and wing).

What might interest people is the last 45 seconds where I do a full crow descent at about a 45 degree angle using the rudder and elevator to keep it on track. I flair with the elevator and retract the flaps just before touchdown.

Afterwards I discovered my flaps were in reflex some due to the (non-Parkzone) arms I used jumping a couple of splines on one of my Crow landings. You can see this in the rearward segments. I got new Parkzone arms (god are they brittle) to replace the original ones that broke, since. Yes, there are some audio sync issues on at least one of the segments. You can hear the motor come on about a second before you see it.

Radian Pro (5 min 31 sec)

Originally Posted by JumpySticks

As far as I can tell, nearly every full size or model plane has protection of the outboard tip of the aileron. There is good reason for that.

Unless you have actual proof that the aileron would be torn off on landing, this would just be speculation or jumpy-ing to conclusions.

Originally Posted by chronodeco

Unless you have actual proof that the aileron would be torn off on landing, this would just be speculation or jumpy-ing to conclusions.

having ailerons go right to the end of the wing is not unusual.

$1600 Supra Pro. Ailerons go right to the end.

Same for my $400 Blaster 2 DLG

Same for my $400 XP-5 DLG

Mountain Models Smooth E - right to the end

Just to name a few that I own.

Coreman,

Nice clip! I expected to see more tail flex. The crow landing was very cool. BTW - I'm not sure what's up, but HD wasn't available when I watched it.

I think I'll take another look at my latest footage & see if there's anything worth editing.

Tomorrow, it's supposed to be in the mid-50s & mostly sunny, with a 4-9 MPH breeze. Sounds like it might be a good day for catching some lift. At least I'm going to try!

Joel

Originally Posted by turboparker

Coreman,

Nice clip! I expected to see more tail flex. The crow landing was very cool. BTW - I'm not sure what's up, but HD wasn't available when I watched it.

I think I'll take another look at my latest footage & see if there's anything worth editing.

Tomorrow, it's supposed to be in the mid-50s & mostly sunny, with a 4-9 MPH breeze. Sounds like it might be a good day for catching some lift. At least I'm going to try!

Joel

yeah, I might not have put it in HD mode when I encoded it. I was pleasantly surprised with the flex also. Need to put the correct arms on the servos and get the flaps adjusted level again. I had broken one of the original arms when I set up crow initially and just replaced them with some Hextronics ones that I had that seemed to fit. my LHS actually had a set when I went there yesterday. Supposed to be 10-15mph here so I think I will start the prop testing tomorrow and then do the climb testing next week when the GPS data logger comes in. I want to get someone to the field with me to film the chrome telltales in action also. and I will shoot some video of the crow deployed and the descent from the ground. it really is amazing in how steep it comes down without getting going too fast

Originally Posted by t.edwards

I had a nice new Radian Pro arrive today and have questions, for starters, about the control surfaces.

...

Here's a good place to start when you first receive your RP:
http://www.radian-pro.com/

Read as much of that as you care to, and use the Google "site:" parameter to search the forum for more information.
Google search: site:rcgroups.com/forums +"radian pro" rudder hinge

Originally Posted by chronodeco

Unless you have actual proof that the aileron would be torn off on landing, this would just be speculation or jumpy-ing to conclusions.

No proof needed. No guarantee, just more likely.
To each his own....your smileage may vary....

I did a bunch of static prop testing yesterday and have a table of values set up which I will post in the future once I get climb rate values but I wanted to mention that I went out today and test flew with one of the 11x8 props and the difference was amazing. I got almost vertical performance and after about 15 seconds of climb, I was to the height 30 seconds of the stock prop was getting me. This I will verify once my GPS Logger comes in. One thing I did notice during my testing is that all batteries aren't equal and so for my testing I stuck with the same battery which I balance charged in between each run. I ran three runs and my table averages the three

Stock Prop/Spinner

blade (hub to tip) 4.125"
Weight 16g
Pitch 7.5
Amp draw 17.5
RPM 8,288
Watts in 198.42
Pitch speed (calculated) 58.86mph

TGS11x8F Prop/Aluminum Spinner

blade (hub to tip) 4.75"
Weight 17g
Pitch 8
Amp draw 22.7
RPM 7,284
Watts in 250.07
Pitch speed (calculated) 55.18mph

While there is 25% more current draw, the climb rate more than makes up for it. The other interesting thing was that the stock blades on the aluminum spinner (which has a wider hub) drew 20.6 amps, 7,552 RPM and used 229.11 watts in. The stock spinner without the blades weighs 15g while the Aluminum spinner without blades weighs 42g