Well its been a wile sense I have had the time to drop a blog here but today is a special day. Finals are all over and I can now say that I am a certified solid works associate

I posted a joke thread a wile back about a Stumaxx knock off that contained photos of my work in progress final solid works school project. Man was that a bad idea. Some people didn't get it was a joke, Haha.

Below are some photos and renderings of the Stumaxx-like EDF unit that I created for my solid works final project. This project was by far the most fulfilling project I have ever done to date.

Just a little thing I have been working on for fun. Its all show and no science. I would love to do some fluid simulation or understand the relationship when it comes to fan acoustics to make a better sounding fan but I have no idea how to do such things.

I had the time today to finally post the pics from the last float and fly of the year for my club. once a month during the warm months, we go to a lake called Millerton about 30mins drive from were I live in the foot hills. I don't have a float plane, but I go almost every time because its just good fun. I took my F27 Styker with me this time and was landing it on the beach. The club news editor took some amazing shots of it over the water that I wanted to share here.

So I started taking a Solidworks class in the fall of this year at Fresno City Collage. I have learned allot more then I knew, and have only just barley scratched the surface of what this tool is capable of. Some times when I'm trying to use Solidworks to make something I just feel like a kid that some one has just handed a light saber to and all I can do is cut off my own legs .

Still, I can't wait until I can use Solidworks to its full potenal to create all sorts of nifty things for the RC hobby industry. That's if the industry will have anything I can come up with .

:Update: Just added a pic of something else I modeled yesterday, nice little fpv camera.

I'm here now to tell you a little story. This story does not have a happy ending, at least not yet anyways. I am a web admin for a small friendly RC club called the Madera Aeromodelers Radio Control Society. As of 10/11/2010 our club flying site was closed down indefinitely by California department of transportation other wise know as CalTrans. Apparently they feel that 28 years of indecent free and complaint free operations from the emergency runway at the Madera municipal airport was just cause for threatening to shut down the airport unless our dangerous little RC airplanes were removed from the property. When asked to site the regulations that sate that this kind of activity was not lawful or dangerous, they came up empty handed and used pure bureaucratic bull to force the managers of the airport to do as they were told. We were not the first club that this has happened to and I don't think we will be the last if things keep going the way they are.

When I think about RC of any kind, I think thats it one of the last wholesome environment's in this country were family's can come out to the field and have some good clean fun. That has not just been taken away from us, but is has been taken away form our children, our family's and the community. People are outraged when they hear that most children in this country are over weight and don't get out as much as they should. I don't have any problem believing why that is. When siting at home and playing on the computer, video games, and watching tv takes so little effort and doing something real is so hard, hard because there is no ware to do anything real anymore. This is the direction our hobby is heading and we are going to see it slowly wither and die. Why would I want to go out side and risk losing something that cost so much time and money when I could just stay home, sit on my a$$ and play a flight sim, it would be cheaper and safer for every one involved right?

-Q

So I had allot of fun this past weekend at the field. I wanted to see how low I could go......I had a full day of low high speed fly by's, with the fun of hearing people in the back ground gasping as they thought I was going to put her in the deck. Well the last flight of the day was the one that caught up with me. I was doing about 80 right on the deck, maybe a foot off the ground and then I took it to low and clipped the propeller. Funny thing is that it just bounds into the air and then I dead sticked her into a landing in the grass. No damage on the bottom side but it looks like the mount is trashed and the propeller took a chunk out of the foam on her right wing, no biggy. That day was so much fun.

Well I went test flying today with my first A123 pack, couldn't get any pics or video unfortunately. The flight was a success . It felt like I even had a little more power over the 3 cell lipo I was using before. The test plane was a ParkZone F-27 Stryker. I got a rock solid 6 mins of heavy flying out of it and only used 1524mha. After doing the math I could have done about 1 mins more flight but with only 10mins charging, why risk it .

When I got home I got to building a new 4 cell A123 pack for non-stop flying ability. I'm cycling it now to get it in balance and ready for flying tomorrow at the lake.

I also tested my new ASSAN 2.4Ghz radio system in my Futaba cap 9. It also worked with out any problems. Not a single glitch during range testing and flight.

Using my CD battery tab spot welder to weld some .5 inch wide, .005 inch thick nickel tabs to A123 cells. It works pretty well but with an upgraded Cap I could get even better welds. Used fiber tape for the pack and end weight was 309 grams, about 120 grams more then a 3 cell lipo, but should be fine on this old delta wing. Test flying will be done some time next weekend.

Well I have had a box full of stock with just about ever connector there is in the hobby. Along with the rest there was a box with 45amp and 75amp Anderson's power poles along with the crimps I got at the same time form powerwerx.com. I had no idea how easy it was to switch, the old connectors that I soldered on used to take me hours to get them on just right for my small arsenal of battery packs and air craft, but the crimping only took minuets, in less then a half hour I had cut and replaced all my old connectors with APP. I am very happy with how easy it is to connect and disconnect them and how you can build them up side by side or on top of each other like legos.

When I was looking at the price per unit I put 20x5 pair pack of XT60 connectors with shipping and looked at how much 100 pair of Red/black 45amp connectors cost. surprisingly its about the same with APP costing just a slight bit more, well worth I think thou simply because of there versatility and easy of crimping.

-Q

Well this is my new used certified pre-owned Stryker F27, came across an ad in crags list about some one who had lots of plane stuff they need to sell and when I saw it in the garage I just fell in love with the red paint job. guy had one that was still in the box is sold me to.

I took it out flying this afternoon and just wow, tons of fun and flew just grate. plenty of speed for a parkflyer, although I did get a few cuts from a failed launch that the prop caught me on .

Now just to build the second one and get it to fly on a 4 cell A123 setup

Out of 50 china ebay A123 cells I graded and sorted 48 of them. Two were completely DOA so I have been using them as test subjects for welding cells into battery packs. testing has gone very very well.