First keychain videos with Ritewing TL50

Ritewing TL50 Baylands first flight vid.wmv (6 min 35 sec)

tl50 baylands 2nd flight 07_16 (8 min 51 sec)

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Well Eric and I just picked up a Ritewing RC 36" Lightning for our birthdays. I can't wait to get mine going. This will be added to my fairly exclusive Ritewing fleet. To date I have the following in this order and all flying.
* Ritewing RC TL50
* Ritewing RC FS-33 (built lite)
* Ritewing RC Mini Demon
* Ritewing RC FS-36 Lightning
* Ritewing RC 36" Lightning Sloper

My FS-33 (built lite) has been pulled out of retirement after 3+ years of enjoyment and abuse. I've taken it to the Reno Air races for flying early in the morning, camping on multiple trips near Lake Tahoe, flown over lake tahoe,etc. All the planes are still flying.

Beyond this I have the following cores waiting to be built
*36" Sport
*TL50
*FS-33
*TL40 Lite (whatever the thinner core is)

I still find myself wanting to pick up a spare FS-36 Lighting, FS-48 Lighting, etc. I have an addiction to Ritewings.

Fishrfly and I brought our planes along on our family camping trip. We spent a few days at D.L. Bliss just north of Emerald Bay when we weren't hanging out at Fallen Leaf Lake. It was absolutely beautiful. There was a private beach just next to us. It was perfect for launching my plane at 6200' elevation and landing. At sea level it has enough power to launch ok. But at elevation the prop didn't bite as much. Any way, once flying it was a blast to fly out over the water. To date this has to have been one of the most incredible places to fly.

By the way, Fishrfly calls this a franknplane because it has been beat to death. I resurrected it in order to go on a Memorial Day Camping trip. A friend asked to fly it so I handed him the controls and within 10 seconds it augured straight in. Besides that I have hit telephone poles and other immovable objects with it. This has to be one of my favorite planes for parks.

thanks for videoing Eric!!

Ritewing FS 33 over Lake Tahoe (7 min 24 sec)

Fishrfly had his superfly plane rekitted in more pieces than it originally came in. I'm sure the look on Fishrfly's face would have been priceless. I'm sure the look of horror on my face would have been priceless knowing that I completely and utterly demolished / totaled his superfly which was entirely my fault. Reviewing the situation I remember doing one pass on the inside and within 10' or so, one pass under them when Adam and Eric were hovering about 10 - 15' off the ground, and I'm not sure where I was planning on zipping by but the next thing I know I see a Superfly explode and the TL40 flip, spin, or something and hit the ground...
I keep laughing everytime I saw his Superfly in a mangled pile on his kitchen table. It did fly again so no Superflys were destroyed... Sorry Eric!

I just dont' understand why forum users place completely blurry photos in posts, classifieds, etc. They typically are so bad that it just does not seem to provide any value at all. Just take the photo over again. If it is blurry then don't post it. But then again I'm a photo snob.

Well my last sloper built was probably a Sagitta 600 or a Talon. I can't remember. Now after delving into electric I am building a Ritewing 36 Lightning Sloper. I should be posting some photos in the next week or so.

So far it will have a 2s 1100 mah a123 battery setup for the RX, AR6200 RX, HS-225mg servos and about a 6" inner section which will be fixed. Ailerons will run from the tip of the wing to this innner fixed section (not full lenght ailerons). I based it on looks. My goal is to keep the setup fairly efficient for speed retention.

For the build, I have secured all carbon bars on top, bottom, and main spar. A light coat of PU over Henry's 183 roofing cloth on the bottom w/o water to make a hard shell to take the abuse of landings.

More to come in the following days.
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08/18/09 Well I skipped the build process. Here is the completed 36" Lightning Ritewing Sloper in action. It comes in at about 19.4 ounces. Great plane!!! Great way to get back into sloping for sure!

Coyote Hills California, Ritewingrc 36 Inch Lightning Reefboy (3 min 34 sec)

More photos and info can be found here https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...971566&page=12

My boy a flyby. Next time I'll keep the shutter open longer in order to not stop the prop (Stopped props in photos is a pet peeve of mine!!!)

Having fun with photoshop.

I ran across this the other day and thought others would enjoy it.

RC MAYDAY Crash Investigation (8 min 34 sec)

This plane rocks!

ritewing fs 36 lightning birthday weekend.wmv (7 min 43 sec)

I have had more trouble with my Top FLite prop balancer. As it is now I would say it is worthless for balancing smaller props like the APC 4.1 x 4.1 , 4.5 x 4.1 etc. I've tried reading up on the "balancing your balancers" articles on-line. I must be to impatient or unable to ascertain how to do that. Can I send it in to someone to have my balancer balanced and good to go?

Stupid worthless balancers!!!

Ritewing spreadsheet for systems put together by others.
I wanted to start something that could be used by other Ritewingers Newbies or even Ritewingers who have been around for a while who may be looking to put together a new ritewing.

Here is a link for the current spreadsheet. It is a work in process. There are currently a few ways of getting the data in. If you have suggestions feel free to shoot them my way.

Well on 05/07/08 I had my 200th Ritewing flight! I believe it is over 114 flights on my TL50 in 13 months, close to 77 flights on my FS-33, and over 15 on my Mini Demon. Something like that. Anyway, my favorites are definitely the TL50 and FS-33! Both are a blast to fly. I have a FS-36 Lightning that I'm currently building and hope to finish in the next month or so and retire the FS-33. After that it will be time to start on my 36 Sportster. (I need to put together a new Mini demon as I had to mod mine some since it was an early early one. My finished mini demon wing is a bit more than 10% narrower after adding sweep to get it close to the new design, chord is about 10% shorter, and AUW is heavier so all in all the wing loading is high... no fault of the newer design. Torque rolls on launch and needs higher throws to pull out of dives... It just feels heavy.) I'm absolutely positive that if I build a new one it will feel like I"m flying the TL50. It will be a dream. Well I've been flying the Mini Demon more and I have to say I'm getting more accustomed to it. It is fun to fly. It flys fast and responsive. Being small adds to the adrenaline for sure!

So the 200 flights is probably not much for some of you. But for me at this point of my life raising two kids I get out here or there at lunch time during the week and get a few flights in or if Fishrfly and I get together we might get 3-6 flights in...

Yes, I do have an excel spreadsheet that I keep track of all my plane stuff. I have a separate sheet for each plane and general notes. It must be the engineer in me. Go ahead and laugh...

A few months ago I got my hands on my first RC helicopter. I mentioned to a co-worker that if I were to buy one it would be the Blade CP pro. Well he quickly proceeded to purchase 2 Blade CP Pros, and 1 Blade CP on ebay.

My only experience previous to getting the Blade CP Pro was FMS and taking my friends Micron V2 home for a weekend and dialing it in. Pretty funny that I brought it home to dial it in and understand it. I had a blast and was able to make some adjustments and get it to the point that I could hover it and fly it around in the garage. Tail in predominately of course.

So I brought it home and fired it up in the garage. Compared to the Micron V2 it was a dream to fly. So much more stable!!! Flew it outside of the garage and was very impressed.

03/22/08
I can hover tail in all day long now. No worries. I decided I need to start flipping the idle up switch for now on. I've been playing with it and generally like it. The more I've been playing in the wind the more times it gets out of shape to some degree... Sometimes more than I like and my hands start shaking and throttle is going up and down radically because of the shaking. I remember this with my Ritewings... I guess the adrenaline gets the better of me. The good thing is I"m not nervous at all with my Ritewings now so I imagine in a month or so I won't be with the Heli's either. Still no major crashes. Last crash was me being silly in the garage and showing off for family.

03/23/08
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FishRFly (Eric) and I went back packing into Point Reyes, CA last weekend with 3 other friends from Eric's church in Elk Grove. Since Eric and I are addicted RC'ers he came up with the idea of making small wings for packing in with us. Since we were going to the coast and figured there would be plenty of steep cliffs for great lift I was in. I admit I was very leary of packing in my DX7 as I've broken the antenna of my DX6 rather easily. I was also leary of packing in all of the other ancillary equipment.

So ordered 4 of the sim air planes (2 chuck gliders for the kids and 2 for us). We quickly got to work on converting them to RC. We determined we could pack in a few 4 cell a123 packs to power a Multiplex LN-5014 charger to charge our transmitters and small lipos for the receivers. This proved to work out rather nicely. In addition we packed in strapping tape, electrical tape, thick CA, knives, lead, charging adapters, gallon size freezer bags to keep the transmitters dry...

Photos and more to come

Next few builds after the Ritewing Mini Demon....

• Ritewing 36 Sportster ( I plan to outfit this with a Microdan 2505 motor like Methos. He guesses he is in the 120+ mph range. Not bad. Can't wait!)

• Slipso400 Pylon Racer (Might have to depart from a Ritewing build for the first time in a while for this guy... Don't tell CK!)

• Douglas Aircraft Silhoutte. I started this sloper 15 years ago and figure I'm 90% completed. It is time to finish this off. This should be a great ripper!

Long story... but my 2 year old son loves playing with my brother in laws smaller ex RC wings!!! He could play with them for hours. So I mentioned it to Punkrockd and mentioned buying someones old beat up plane. Punkrockd offered one of his older planes and then offered an even better idea. So Dario graciously gave me the smaller ritewing in the picture. Dario even glassed it and monokoted it in the usual Ritewing fashion! My son is going to absolutely love it! I can't wait to see his expression on Christmas day.

So my wife mentioned that my daughter is going to need one to as she will steal his plane. So I talked to CK and he said he could hook me up with some more of the smaller wings. So I thought for my daughter I would do it up as Hello Kitty since she likes Hello Kitty. I did build it rite! I have a coro hatch on the top. My goal is to balance it and attach the elevons with normal linkages so that I can trim the plane and throw it at the parks.

Here it is... it came out even better than I expected. I'm bummed it isn't RC! I probably could have been done with my mini demon if it weren't for the time I put into this. O well, the kids should like them.

I might have to build my Mini Demon with the same scheme. I think it would be funny to see a guy walk out with a cute looking plane like this and then have it zipping around at 90+mph!

Ritewing Mini Demon II (Early beta w/o as much sweep. Based on others build of this w/o the sweep and their difficult time in attaining CG I cut mine and added more sweep / 22.25" wingspan)

- Razor400 motor (used)
- CC Phoenix 25 ESC (used)
- APC 4.1 x 4.1 prop ?
- Hi-tech HS-55 servos
- TP Pro-lite 1320 3s batts
- AR6100E RX
- Anticipating current to be under 15 amps WOT (Revised... based on feedback from others it appears as though I'll be closer to 20 amps)


Colors and trim... TBD I'm hoping something will come to me quickly as I really don't know what I want to do for color and trim. I'm also kicking around the idea of using Callie Graphics

I started building a few weeks ago. I have the wings glued together. Most of the carbon is glued in now and battery bay and electronics bay are cut out as well as the lip to support the coroplast lid. I have now glued the lower coroplast in place as well as used a dremel to route out holes for the servos. Cleaned up the electronics bay a bit with the dremel. I am not as good as CK or Adam with the soldering gun so feel much more precise with the dremel and router attachment! Well I spent a few hours yesterday and was able to finish routing out the servo locations as well as placing the EPP caps on and trimming to the shape of the wing. I also placed the bevel at the TE of the wing. I used the technique Atom1025 shows here with the exception that I placed double sided tape on both straight...Continue Reading

A blast to fly.... more to come

- Ritewing FS-33 (FS-Spanker ?)
- Justgofly 300DF motor
- Castle Creations Phoenix-10 Brushless ESC
- APC 4.5 x 4.0 combat prop (I will switch to 4.7 x 4.2 speed 400 soon)
- Vislero 13C 1300 mah (puffed after a short while) I have now switched to Thunderpower 1300 Prolites...

Here is a video of my FS-33 flying. This was fairly early on and I had just applied henry's to the main fuselage. I have since monokoted over the henrys. So it looks a tad more finished. This plane is a blast to fly! It tracks extremely well. I can fly low and slow or zip around. It is pretty quite and a blast to fly.

video

Me flying my RC plane in the wind and rain (6 min 26 sec)

FS33 in the wind and rain (9 min 6 sec)

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My TL50 after repairs...
Back and flying.

TL50, HET-4W, Currently 5s A123 batts, APC 6x4 Sport prop, Spektrum BR6000 rx. I have been flying this wing since early May 07. This wing is absolutely awesome to fly. I'm guessing with my setup it does about 80 in level flight. It tracks like it is on rails. It flies smoothly and is fun to do big graceful maneuvers. This will be a staple plane of mine. Flies fast yet slows down with no bad tendencies like the Zagi I had. If you want a wing capable from 30 to 150 mph then this is a perfect wing!!!

One side note... Don't use the FLourescent Orange Monokote as it fades very fast. Leave it covered whenver you can!

Not that any one at all cares...

Background:
I was heavily into slope soaring when I was younger. I built my first Gentle Lady when I was about 15. My dad had an old Malibu 2m slope soaring RC glider. The thing looked beautiful. If I could find one today I would buy it.... Any way, it sat in the garage busted for many years. Since having two kids, the glider sat until I pestered him to fix it and take me flying.
So he fixed it and he took me to Coyote Hills in Fremont, CA. I enjoyed flying and started the Gentle Lady. I got my drivers license and started flying almost every day during the summers before going to work. Over the years my dad and I would fly Saturday mornings / afternoons and Sunday after church. It was great fun.
I flew the Gentle Lady for many years. Built 6' flat mid-section wings with ailerons and added the outboard wing tips from the stock plane to make close to a 9' wing.
Toward the end of my high-school years I started building a Sagitta 600 with ailerons. I built it with the internal linkage / control horn so that the outer wings were completely clean. The only control horn sticking out was the one for the rudder. I glassed the fuselage for extra strength. The plane was a joy to fly. Put a bit of down elevator in and it would speed across the sky! Big large loops were almost effortless. Rolls weren't too bad either. This was my favorite plane and only flown when conditions were right. My dad would joke that it was a hangar queen.
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