On Sunday (10dec17) I took the T-33 out for its maiden flight. It was sunny and a slight/medium breeze.
When I got there one main gear faring was 'amiss'... one of its bolts had fallen out at some stage. doh.
Luckily I had bits there to fix that up.
Note: Check EVERY screw/bolt in the plane!! Locktite or CA them all.

I had not had time to do a Power test, but I had revved up the fan at home to check its balance and it was extremely well balanced!

I decided to use 10S to be sure of having enough Power on hand, for the grass, or if needed in flight.

The AUW was 4600g region. The CofG was 130mm. Which reminds me.....
The manual says 120mm +-5mm, but that seems ridiculously too far forwards. When I placed the 9S batteries in the CofG was 130mm and I decided that seemed a better position anyway. And for 10S it ended up close to that exact same position anyway.

I set the "Glasses Cam Mobius1" to record..... BUT it ends up I did something wrong and it DI D NOT record anything at all !! DOH!
No Maiden Flight video!!

I used a "Take-Off" Flaps setting and off it went.....
It ran across the grass beautifully, with no issue. It tracked dead straight.... and didn't bob and bounce at all really.
It used a bit of UP Elevator and it just rotated a small amount and rose off the ground in a shallow climb - it was great, well suited to scale!!!
I had been a bit worried about how far it might need to run before lifting off but it was very typical of any other jet that could take off in a sensible distance from grass. Probably equal to the best of them (best at taking off from grass easily).

It flew beautifully too!!
The straight Wings make any aircraft a 'clean' flier with very 'true' aerodynamic/flight behaviours. Versus swept/delta wings etc with their vices.
Rolls were perfectly axial, and with very little down Elevator required as it goes over inverted.
Loops... well, on 10S it has a LOT of Power so it can climb very well. Thus loops can be quite large and kept round. But on the first loop I didn't from about a 25ft entry height, as it came down through about 270deg (nose down vertical) I might have used too much UP Elevator whilst calculating how low it might be coming down to, and I think I verged on an Accelerated Stall. Too much Pitch Up versus the inertia of the descent. It suddenly 'flicked' the right wing 'down' (relative to that to was heading vertically) and I quickly reduced Up Elevator whilst correcting the Right Roll and the loop continued to completion fine. But it was SCAREY for that split second! Heading downwards fast and vertical, on what was already a quite low loop entry/exit height. It could have been a disaster really.

So the next loop, later on, I was much more cautious with Elevator use!

By almost 2mins it was 1800mAH used (of the 10S 5000mAH total), flying at approx 40 Amps.
By about.... ???? mins.... when I had totally forgotten about checking the Voltage/Capacity at all again(!!).... it went into LVC !!
It ends up that it was almost 6 minutes.

I heard and 'felt' the low Power state right away and immediately went into a 'Landing NOW emergency' sequence! It was only about 30 ft height so it was going to need everything done right from that very instant!
No Flaps!! And I had just gone past into the wind, so I needed to turn BACK... and then back again! Two 180's..... hmm, not really viable!!

I turned back and monitored the descent rate to determine how far I could go and still turn again. Not really possible....
All I got to do was come back past myself and do a left turn to just 90deg - almost cross wind - but there was no more height to play with! So cross wind, and away from me, was the way it was going to have to be landed!

I had gone to zero throttle to reset the LVC as soon as it happened, but throttling up achieved nothing at all again.... it was FLAT !

Flying away from me made it a bit hard to judge things well, but it was still quite a good landing - dead stick effectively. Not too steep in descent rate and even with a bit of a flare still.
But the instant it touched down it tore out one main gear!!!
This flung it into a small 'spin' and the lateral forces on the remaining main gear leg tore the tire off its rim when it shattered the plastic hub!
This sidewards spin/force also battered the nose gear and thus broke the nose gear MOUNT loose in the nose!

Nothing of real note really broke. Just all those landing gear issues.
The whole underside was still perfect. I guess the grass helped that too.
Oh.... the retract that broke right out tore off its servo wiring.

The main gear mounting blocks had just pulled right out cleanly!! Crappy, and not enough, glue!!!
Plus that nose gear mounting plate was obviously not strong enough fitted either!
ALL of their stuff is done with HOT GLUE!!!
No that I have SEEN it all... it is just woeful and not truly fit for purpose. At least not on grass!

So now for some Landing Gear mods..... repairs and mods....

The main gear in the Wing has a large plywood RIB in the wing to one end of the mounting blocks. And a small rib portion at their other end.
If the blocks were fixed to those solidly then it would be very strong! But not when done with Hot Glue!!

I rewired the retract servo lead and added a servo plug onto that.

I decided that it would be best to also have some extra Longitudinal supports - to stop fore/aft ability to 'rock' and tear out. The 10mm wood mounts do not give a large amount of contact area to those Ribs - especially if under fore-aft forces.

For the front mount I drilled two angled holes to take some 4mm pine rods. Thus skewering those 4mm rods deep into the wing by about 1inch (25mm)

At the rear mounts I added a 1.24inch long, 1/2inch deep 'vertical ribs'. These ones support rearwards forces and will do a HUGE job of preventing the retract/leg ever breaking rearwards.

These were all EPOXIED back in, with the foam 'roughened' and scored to allow a better bond into it.
I was going to use PU Glue, but that expands madly to go EVERYWHERE and is also very slow to dry. Though it would be a more suited glue for this really.

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The nose gear mount already had a pair of 'side blocks' that were of good use to add onto. I added a longer central 'rail' to match those side block heights, thus forming three 'rails'. This then got a 2.5mm thick Plywood plate epoxied onto it. This plate is epoxied to the sides of the nose also.
Even just this mod alone would make it a lot stronger.

Then on the upper nose (cut off) portion, I added some 5mm 'walls' inside the inner foam wall (epoxied on) so that when the upper nose is all epoxied back on these will also support the plywood plate of the lower half. Thus forming a nose gear mount support system covering a HUGE total foam area that is epoxied onto.
I expect the whole nose will snap off before the mount ever gives way again!! LOL

I forgot to take pics of all the stages of doing this.
You virtually cannot see the upper nose had been cut off and reglued back on. The razor sharp blade I used made for a perfect 'seamless' joint.

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Well, it was sort of another maiden flight... re-maiden... after more repairs/mods.

I changed the main gear wheels to the RC Lander alloy hub type (bought from HK long ago, labeled Turnigy then).
I had some 70mm sets, plus the 64mm, or 68mm ??? size also.
The "70mm" alloy ones are notably larger diameter than the stock 2.75"/70mm ones, so they would not fit! (huh!?)
I used the 64/68mm ones.... which I suspect are "64mm" - or maybe 68mm in true final diameter. You can't buy those anymore from Lander nor HK.

I remembered to video it this time! (uploading now)

It took off very well, as per the real Maiden Flight, but this time the Left Main Gear wouldn't retract! I cycled the gear a number of times but it never budged. DOH. Oh well... fly around with it out... and being OUT is fine for Landing of course.

Too bad then when it was time to land the NOSE gear would not come out!
It tried to and got about 15% of the way out.... it pushed the doors open, but that approx 15%/15deg was it.
Many cycles later I had to give up and BELLY land it..... err, belly with the ONE main gear leg out.
I could have lowered the gear to have the two mains out but I was worried about the nose wheel being out a BIT, as that would then take all the nose end weight at that 'steep' angle and maybe break the mounting(?), even though it is now all SUPER strong. Plus the nose gear DOORS would open fully and hit the ground before the wheel too! Which they would HATE for sure, lol.

As it turned out it landed and skidded along straight anyway.
It still broke one nose gear door and scrubbed a bit under the nose. But all else was fine.

When getting it sorted to fly again it took a few cycles but the Nose Gear finally came out then..... typical...
These large Lander retracts are as bad as their MEDIUM sized ones!! UNRELIABLE, or fail after X amount of time! (not too long!)
I have had about 12 or more of the mediums, and more than half are dead or dodgy!
Then also the SLOP in the trunion pivot, as Microlyn had mentioned....
It looks like PZ large ones are set to go in..... but I do LIKE the way the Landers are SLOW in operation and thus give a nicer scale look.

The next two flights I flew with the Gear left OUT all flight (of course). It doesn't really even change its flight behaviour with the gear in or out. And also not for Flaps being extended or not - I didn't need any Elevator mixing added.

It looks great on the ground... great in the air... and it flies beautifully. It just needs all the CHANGES (mods, upgrades) to fix the crap Lander shortfalls!
I guess it is still 'worth' the AUD$520 anyway.... but certainly no more than that!

It flies just over 5.0mins on the 10S 5000mAH. You need to use about '50Amps' to fly a good brisk cruise airspeed that suits it very well.
Getting to be that bit larger than typical 90mm jets (this is really a 105mm jet) it has more lift (Reynolds Numbers) and can thus fly slower viably - more to scale - so it really looks true to scale in flight.
The thrust level is quite good so you can enter a quite large loop straight from level flight at the brisk cruise speed - no 'run up' needed. But the 12 blade is typical in having high thrust/'torque' with 'poor' efflux speed, and thus top speed suffers. Which is OK as this type of jet never was fast anyway!
Going from 50Amps to 110Amps (WOT).... uses over 100% more power to go maybe 20% faster.... so it is only of use to use WOT for strong climbs or loop type things etc.

A few spectators came over to check it out after seeing it fly around from afar..... one who even knew what it was! And its size and paint scheme/decals really make it more of a show stopper than most other military jets. (maybe equal to my HSD Viper Jet "Racing Ferrari" in spectator terms)

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T-33 Thunderbird - RC Lander 90mm EDF 1680mm Span - Flight 2 (6 min 36 sec)

The left main gear Retract (which stopped working) died because the internal Limit Microswitch had broken 'open' and thus stopped working.
I tried putting it back 'together', with a bit of epoxy to hold it all intact, but after a short while it broke apart again. So that was that... it is dead.
It is quite hard to get the circuit board out, so that a new Microswitch could be put into it - which I don't even know where you would get one of those type from anyway!
I will complain to RCLander and see what they offer.....

So I decided to remove the NOSE gear Retract and use that as the main gear, and put a PZ Retract into the nose instead. That way the two main gear retracts are the same.
This meant I needed to make a 'base mount' for the PZ Retract, which also then allows making the mounting hole pattern the same as the RC Lander retracts use. So that was easy enough and I completed that..... but various 'nuances' of it all meant it took two hours in total!!
Just some more TIME wasted.... fixing up RC Lander junk!

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Blurry pics! You can't really see the Microswitch fault... but the 'side (top) metal of the housing of it, has been flipped up due to being over-driven by the retract drive bar, so I pressed that back down flat and epoxied over it.

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