Hangar Day

I had to wait for the new DX8 Gen1 Antenna to arrive, and Amazon delivered it damn near next day. It arrived this afternoon and took me a couple of minutes to install. 

Once I had it installed, I took the MX-Bach outside and took Joe Nelson's (Owner RCGF-USA) advice and used my 12V electric starter to get the new 30cc engine to start. As he said it would, she started right up! Got her idle settled, I believe, so I am very, very happy about that. Was going to take her out to fly but someone said, "Lunch at the Beach Plum?", so that happened instead. 

When I got back I decided to fix the wonky and broke vertical stabilizer. on the Ugly Stik. That thing has taken a beating over the years.

I removed the vert stab, and if I had given it any thought whatsoever, I would have repaired the cote on it then, but no I did it the hard way, repairing it after I reinstalled it. Here I have removed the stab and drilled 4 holes for posts to help strengthen it.

I mirrored these on the bottom of the vert stab. Thought I had a pic of the posts... nope. I just used "match stick" wood.

I used 30 min epoxy to install it, and after a couple of hours, I epoxied in two runners, one on either side of the base of the vert stab to stiffen it, also using 30 min epoxy.

Re-coting the stab was not as easy as it could have been, but this thing has been repaired several times. The cote is quite a patchwork.

The "American" on this side interprets the German on the other, a play on  Shakespeare (see what I did there?).

In preparation for the new 10mm stock replacement carb I ordered from Joe, I removed the 7mm smaller carb I tried out. I don't know, maybe it would work fine, but I have had more trouble getting and keeping her running and tuned since putting the smaller carb on. The thought is that the 10mm carb is big for this size engine and tends to run it rich. That may be, but I think this small engine prefers to be rich because even when I had her tuned as well as I could, I could not get her not to stall out on pulling the throttle back quickly from WOT or half even if I slowed the servo speed. If I eased it back, she tolerated it. I am going to send that smaller carb to Joe to play with. It wasn't designed for RC aircraft, but he is good with this sort of thing and it may be better for the engine in the right hands.  Once the carb is in, I need to check out the ignition and maybe replace it to see if that is the cause of the ailerons going rogue, usually full RT roll, left full down, right full up in a spasm, then it returns to normal, just at WOT.  Is there a noise leak? It happens with the two receivers I tried so I know that's not the problem. The receiver is way back in the fuse. I need to research how to further shield it...

The Stik has been ridden hard since I got her back in July 2016. She has been my go to gasser, capable, stable and predictable, my Alpha 450 with power. Her engine has also been the most cantankerous... but I have learned a tremendous amount from her. Looking forward to getting her back to reliable flight status.