Past postings reflect that it has almost never flown properly, and every flight was plagued by problems. I dumped a little more money on it, to no avail. Today's flight was doomed, and there were plenty of clues that gremlins were afoot. Yesterday I completed another refit. she was functioning well, nose to tail. I needed to pick up a 13 inch 2-blade prop to replace the 11x7 3-blade. I took her out to the field and purchased a 13x8 two blade prop on the way. I arrived at the field only to realize I forgot a drill with the 5/16 inch bit, so had to wait until the afternoon when someone showed up with a prop reamer. Installed the prop. Then found out I forgot the batteries. I was determined to fly it, so made the round trip back home to pick them up; one hour down the drain. Then I found out the ESC was alarming and the motor would not turn. In trouble shooting I replaced the HK Orange Reciever with a Spektrum AR6100 which promptly failed. So I put a new Orange reciever and satellite on it. Rebound it, and same problem. I pulled the ESC and found...
So I took it to the club house and resoldered it, and strengthened the solders on the other leads. I replaced the ESC and rewired the motor. Voila, power and prop spin. Finally.
Fired her up and taxied her out towards the south corner as I was dealing with a steady crosswind from the northwest. On the way she decided to spin herself around on the ground, ala Cubby, and it took a moment to get her heading her way again. That was weird as I hadn't put any rudder inputs in. She squared up, the wind died down, and I started my takeoff roll. she ran good, lifted sweet and climbed a nice graceful track. I was thrilled, she was flying great! Then she began to oscillate wildly in roll, but remained level. I took my hands off the controls, no change. She started a right turn and dive, I countered, to no avail. She dived from about 50 feet AGL, and impacted the ground out of control.
She fractured along old fault lines. The wings are fine. The fuse would be easy to repair, haven't inspected the motor. The battery is fine.I just am tired of foamies. I have the Cubby flying awesome, and expect she will continue to do so. I just don't want to dump any more time or money into this airplane. So I am stripping her of electronics and offering the carcass to Steve, for whom so far his MX2 is flying fine. Was it the HK receiver short ranging on me:? It would be two in a row... and I had an externally mounted satellite. And she wasn't more than 50 yards or so away... Who knows? No more HK Orange receivers either...
But I think this plane is a pig, and while I hope its not the case, I expect Steve's plane will be getting wacky any day now.
Done. With. Foamies.
I experienced several of those loss of control issues with OrangeRC receivers (with satellites) on another big foamy (GWS Formosa II). Rebuilt it several times. Then I discovered that the new Spectrum DX6i transmitter ("DSMX") I was using was recalled due to user-reported glitches with non-DSMX receivers (such the older DSM2 receivers like the OrangeRC).
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