Aidan and I headed out this morning for a date on the MCRCC flightline, looking to maiden his Alpha Sport 450 and my PulseXT 25e after a breakfast of southerner at Das House of Waffles. It was a spectacular day!
The Alpha flew tail heavy, which surprised me for two reasons. Firstly, despite telling Aidan we needed to check CG I completely forgot to do it, and secondly, this is not a tail heavy plane. I ended up putting an ounce in the nose. So the first flight was brief and I had to land cross field because I didn't feel like dealing with the cross wind, and at the last minute her upwindish wing tossed up a bit. Rough landing, no damage.
In setting up the weight we pulled a loose solder out from the EC3-EC5 adapter I had made out of an old EC3 battery lead. The solder was about 4 years old... I hadn't brought my soldering torch, and at first thought all was lost, but McGyver Me used the clubhouse electric stove to heat the remaining solder in the bad EC3 pin, and voila, fixed it after a couple of tries. I noticed the motor clicking, but couldn't figure out what was up, it otherwise ran fine. We got the plane up and Aidan got to make a few runs on it before we brought her back in. I still heard the clicking and inspected the motor, pulling on the prop. It was then I noticed the brand new Eflite 450 motor's rotor (the can) was pulling off the stator by a good quarter inch. I didn't have a hex driver small enough to fit it, nor did anyone else on the field, so that ended the flight day for the 450. In the meantime we put the bigger tires on her since the stock ones were tripping her up in the grass.
When I got home I removed the motor (none of it was locktited), reset the back "rotor holder thingy", a wheel lock actually and tightened it with some locktite. I reset the stator and replaced the SAE lock nut with a metric as it was stipped in the frickin' lock hole, which is why it slipped, and snugged it all in with locktite. Put it all back together with locktite and gave her a spin up. Ran great, click was gone, rotor stayed put on the stator. I'm going back out tomorrow wx permitting and will fly her through a proper maiden workout; we'll see if I have prevailed over the wayward stator.
I maidened PulseXT 25e #4 today! She flew perfectely as designed. I wasn't feeling lucky, so I put her away after that first flight, but will fly the snot out of her tomorrow!
Ended the day with a nice flight of the Sbach 70, took her through the first aerobatics I have flown for some time, and she did marvelously. it is a distinct pleasure watching her unlimited vertical at high speed. I landed her after 4 minutes, having flown her on a 6S 3300, and the battery was down to 3.7 per cell... This is disappointing as I was getting 6 minutes to that level on 2 x 3S 2560 in series... Tomorrow I will put a 4000 in her and see what time I get. I think putting her on the ground after 4 minutes will be safe until I get a better feel for the run time. 4 minutes sucks... And I flew most of that at half throttle (at which she still hauls ass). After one flight I was done... Spent too much time farting around with fixing the 450.
Good Guy Jerry Gollot, who taught me how to fly, took Aidan up on his 40 sized nitro trainer. Aidan made several turns, getting a feel for how an airplane flies and turns, learning the nuance of a little elevator in a turn, and a light finger on the sticks. He did pretty darn well and of course I failed to take a pic...
All in all, a very successful day! Looking forward to getting out there very early tomorrow and flying before the winds pick up!
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