Once it crosses the edge if the table its the univeres screw...

 

Well, that was a little adventure...

I've spent so much time this past week on the Alpha Sport 450 since I got the wing back from John, that I have lost track of where and why I started on this last little adventure, but I ended up where I should have started... 

I share these misadventures because I want you to know we all have them in this hobby. For me, most are self induced thru laziness, lack of skill, or carelessness, often a combo of all three. "There is always something",  (I think the difference between nitro/gassers, heli pilots and electric pilots is how much "something" we are willing to deal with. I am at that level after a week of shenanigans where I am not going flying today because I am totally a shit magnet right now and I don't think I could emotionally handle a crash. I am totally up against my something limit).

The jist is that the original ESC, a 40A Hobbywing more than a decade old, just quit working the other day. One moment fine, the next a paperweight. Since I like to use what I have on hand (I am cheap), I used the closest thing I had, a 60A ESC. This works fine with the 450 sized motors, just a lot of reserve for a sport flyer, and not much weight difference. Tested the setup with all the electronics on rhe Alpha, awesome all worked fine the first time. Took a half an hour to tuck it all in and make it all pretty, went to fire it up, dead as a doormat. Nada. Checked everything, nothing wrong. Pulled it out, tested it again still nada. Fine, I have another one, also 60A but a smaller profile. Tested, works fine. Installed. Still works fine. 

But I felt a vibration and noticed that there was a wobble in the prop. Inspection revealed that the motor shaft at the prop end had bent in that crash, actually in the fall from the Ent from which it had impaled itself upon. Inspected the motor and there was an almost undetectable shaft bend, that magnified when the prop shift was in place. Easy peasy, I have changed out motor shafts, and I happen to have a baggy full of them. 

Its easy. Pull the mount X-plate off the back. On the back end of the motor, the shaft is secured with a c-clip. Slip that off, careful not to shoot it across the room. You can now pull the outrunner shell off the back. You are now holding the inner workings in one hand, and the outrunner shell with the connected shaft in the other. On the side of the top of the outrunner there are usually 1-2 lock screws. Remove them. You can now tap the shaft out. Simply reverse the process with your new shaft. Which I don't have... the ones in the baggy are a mm too small. WTF, I have never had a motor smaller than a 450 sized. So I just put it all back together.

Still trying to be cheap (there's my problem right there....), I have another motor, unlabeled, but looks a bit squatter and a bit wider than the 450 outrunner. Looks like maybe a little more powerful. Let's try that! 

This "new" motor has a mounting plate that is about 0.5mm off from the 450. Its really not that much bigger a motor. But this won't fit my firewall, which is that 450 sized. Here's a idea! Lets spend a lot of time and energy, let's build an adapter firewall out of ABS plastic, drill it so that both sets of mounting screws fit: the 450 ones off the firewall secured to the new firewall at the end of the extenders, and attach the new motor to that firewall. Took a while to fabricate: cut the ABS, drill the ABS, install the motor (works fine connected to the electronics in testing), install the firewall, attach the motor. Quick spin, all works! But the prop shaft is one of those that bolts to the outrunner shell, not attached to the motor shaft, and its a touch short. I happen to have a slightly bigger one that fits! Replace the old with the new. Attach the prop. Now I can't use the original aluminum spinner because the new prop shaft is not drilled for the center securing screw, but I have what is probably the original Alpha Sport red spinner NIB. I attach that. But the stock self-tapping screws that secure the cone to the base are crap and one head-strips just trying to screw it in. Spend a lot of time and cursing to remove said stripped screw, and replace with nice 2mm regular hex head. 

Looks great! Let's fire it up! All looks good, advancing throttle, and then the motor screams and slows down, so I shut it down. Try a couple times, same thing, won't reach full throttle without screaming and slowing down, and on the third try shuts itself down. Won't run now at all. No magic smoke, that's good... There was a time when I knew what this was that was happening, but not today*. Crap... did I burn out the ESC???  I removed the entire apparatus, motor, new firewall, extensions, and connected the original motor (fine, just bent shaft). Whew... everything works, ESC is fine. So its the motor. 

* I think it was ESC timing... The new motor has 14 poles so will need high timing setting. Will need to break out the programming card.

And here we are. I am where I should have started but I have been nickle and diming myself to death and was trying to save money and maybe upgrade the motor that didn't need upgrading just replacing. I bought the 880kv version of this little motor that produces about 243 watts (oddly specific) which would be great for this plane. I won't have time until maybe Sat night as I go back to work, but I hope this is the end of my Alpha Sport 450 adventure. 

Finally some peace... Sailing

But first there has to be a little drama. 

When I arrived, at Silver Lake, NH, before I unloaded the gear, I wanted to use the trunk space to take the electronics cover off of the Dragonforce 65 and bind the reciever, following my transmitter debacle of the other day. All went fine, stuffed everything back in the compartment and sealed it. Loaded all the gear in the trailer, hauled it a quarter mile into the state park to my spot and got set up. Radio on, turned on the DF65, and nothing. From the car to my spot...

Reopened the compartment turns out the battery lead came out when I stuffed it all back in. Easy fix, all good to go! 

The winds were not consistent but the speed was good and no bad gusts. The sun came out, I was in a t-shirt and my waders. Life is good. Its like that one perfect golf swing when you about to quit. You are suddenly reminded why you do this.

The Jonesway Dragonforce 65 is my first sailboat, and it is simply the best. Its bigger brother is the Dragonflite 95. If it sails half is well I would love one, but it is rather expensive, so I will likely never own one. Both of these are class racing boats and my DF65 is qualifying (there is a club in Nashua. NH, but they meet ON Saturdays, and I am usually working; someday. I updated the sails and hull art with the craftsmanship of @Start1969 Italy. I love this little speeder and it sailed well today.

Changed to the Volantex Hurricane 1m racer. This is a recreational boat, not a class racer. I modified it by installing an external power switch. The switch is nice, waterproof, but hard to tell when its on or off (flushed is on, raised is off, but raised is 1 mm). I must have left it on last time as I drained the LiFe battery and had to NiMH cheat to recharge it. Once charged I bound it and set it away. That was two days ago.

Today I turn it on, and nada, opened it up, everything looks good. Decided to rebind and voila, problem solved. But curiously failed to bind twice. Is it the reciever or my iX12? More on that later (related to my Alpha Sport and its reciever, same make). This reciever has been quite reliable.

It continued to work fine, even after swapping boats back and forth. She is not much of a sailor, but is pretty on the water. I think a quality set of sails would changeover the water and when underway. The main has too much sail at the top causing quite a twist under all conditions,, and it can't be made tighter with rigging. 

Everything settled down and I simply enjoyed the sun, water, and the boats. 

At home, relaxing, last 2 says of my 10 day staycay, waiting for a replacement reciever. That's likely my next story.

Spektrum iX12 - Never again Spektrum

I have always flown Spektrum. Like religion, for many of us who started without on our own it wasn't a conscious choice, we were born into it. When I went looking for a real transmitter, Spektrum was just there. With my DX6, DX8, and DX7S, I was fine. Simple, efficient, as were my needs. Always seemd to work great (suspicious brown outs and related crashes not withstanding). When I wanted to upgrade several years later, for no particular reason, I again chose Spektrum, and for it being the top of the line at the time, I went all in for the Spektrum iX12. I mean, come on, it was red and came with a hat! 

I would and to this day never fully trust it. I had wierd issues, even had to send it back to Horiizon/Spektrum (top shelf service). It wouldn't always boot from cold and dark, and the only way to get it to when it glitches like this was to pull the battery. This was so common I installed a switch.  (Curiously after side loading the reinstall of Airware I think that has stopped being a problem).

So yesterday it decided that it would not progress past the Airware splash screen. I tried for hours. I finally got to the frustrated notion the nuclear option was required. I had backed up my aircraft files earlier in the week (or HAD I?), so reinstalling Airware was needed and should be easy to do. This would require a rebinding of my entire fleet of aircraft, helicopters and sailboats, but I had no choice.

I found that the Airware software was not available on Google Play as advertised. I went to Spektrum, "MySpektrum" more precisely and learned they don't support it with updates, and that they know there are issues for some getting it from Google Play. But I could download an APK and sideload it. There was a very exact and easy to follow set of instructions on how to do so. It was nice of them to provide this option. 

To insure a clean install I would uninstall Airware. This is where I learned that I wasn't allowed to uninstall Airware. Both the Force Stop and Uninstall icons were grayed out. I have no idea how, but somewhere along the way I went down a rabbit hole trying to unlock it, and when I did it was surprisingly easy, but I have no idea how I got there. I uninstalled it.

Here's a shocker. Following each step by step instruction provided, which was more complex than it should be, I installed the APK. Scratching my head I felt I must have done something wrong. But no, I had actually caught a break: the instructionss matched exactly what my iX12 showed on its screen, and everything just worked. 

It booted perfectly, and has ever since.

This is where I discovered that when I thought I had backed up my model files last week, I, in fact, had not.. crap. I did something wrong and nothing was saved on my dedicated SDcard. I did not want to go through setting up all my models again especially not the MXBach, which has some complex mix I will never do again to get two servo elevators to work.  What I had done several years ago was to accidentally save my files current at that time somewhere internally, and for some reason, those babies loaded! All my helis, my complex mixes, and all but my most recent additions were there. Curiously, for the second time, the Cubby was not though it is one of my oldest planes.

I still need to rebind everything, and make new models for the sailboats, but my now my suffering was avoided. 

Its probably my imagination, but I think the iX12 is working better. I am still going to replace it with a Frsky x18 with a Lite XJT module, and then all my recievers until I die, once I find some joney my wife doesn't know about. Which pretty much means I will die with the iX12 un my hands.

Yeah... thats oretty much the best I can do...

 Cote on a flat piece of wood, sure, no problem. But it seems I will never mast the art of applying tight cote over a frame. My friend John doesn't appreciate just how wide the expanse is between our cote skill levels is, that makes me swoon at his work. I need to have him teach me. For now, after many tries to fix the cote on the top of the Cub, this is where I quit and know it will not get better.

If I try to snug those corners the edges peel up and/or I will get shrink-burn wrinkles along the edges. Tried different heats, air gun and iron.

Complex shapes like the smooth area at the front of the vertical fin. I can't master the "almost melt and stretch" technique required.

For me the issue is heat management. My Hangar 9 iron finally burned out and yesterday I got a digital one. This may help.

And see those little sets of 3m or so wrinkles on the horizontal stab. Have never managed to shrink them out.

This is a skill I will master someday.

That day is not today.

What I need is to go sailing.

12v Power Tap on My Lexus CT200H

 

To power my iCharger 208B when out at the field I decided the least expensive and easiest way was to revisit the simple battery tap off my car a 2012 Lexus CT200H. The idea is a set of leads from the aux battery in the way back of the car to a set of female banana plugs that will allow the male banana plugs from the iCharger (not the power supply) to tap power from the battery. For safety I wanted a fuse and found instead a nifty 10A breaker. 

For completeness here are the parts, all from Amazon:

Redwolf 10A marine breaker

Making the cable

The parts. The cable, breaker, solder and flux, 

Estimate how much of the cable to remove to easily fit the breaker inline. I sanded the insides of the O-ring connectors, and the cable. I didn't have a butane torch, so tried using my air solder thingy at its max setting of 480. I now have a butane torch after a run out to Wallyworld because yeah, that air solder thingy might melt off your hand, but it barely warmed the heavy duty copper O-ring connectors. Go with a simple butane torch, that baby melted the solder and boiled the flux within a couple of seconds. By the way, for some reason Wallyworld stocks them in the camping section.

Shrink wrapped the ends for a clean professional look.

To heep the battery cable from splitting further I secured it with a wire tie and then shrink wrapped that to make it look smart. I think it came out grand! This was much cleaner than when I made one myself last time and that had no breaker.

Installation  in the CT200H

The battery that controls the aux systems when the car is not running in the Lexus CT200H is located in the way back on the right under the trunk deck. This is NOT the massive LiPo for the drive train. Remove the decking and the ccorner facing by simply unsnapping and unscrewing the large finger screws. Leave the battery in place, no need to do anything but expose it.

 

Uncover the right post safety cover; it simply lifts up and doesn't come detached. It will however keep trying to fall back into place, quite annoying.. Simply remove the nut attached to the battery connectors. I put a work towel behind the negative post in case the nut decided to challenge my patience and fall back there. It did not.

Close the red cover and replace the decking, and you are done!

The XT60-EC5 adapter is because they don't apparently make one to female banana plugs (why are they called banana plugs?), and I can easily make an EC5 m feale -banana plug female, I have a couple female plugs from over a decade ago when theynused to come on batteries. I have now depleted my supply. That blue EC5 you see actually secures and covers the two banana plugs. I CA'd them onto the larger EC5 housing (that would normally house male EC5 plugs). It has a EC5 plug on the other end that will connect to the adapter that comes tomorrow.  I'll post a pic of the whole somewhat Rube Goldbergy thing when I test it.

There it is comfy in its little home all set to go. Trunk floor simply falls over the top.

Simple, clean, even a failure like me can do it.

I made Master Airscrew's Facebook page!

 

My second Hangar 9 10cc Ultrastick is pictured here. I am using that specific prop on my current third build.  So cool!