E-flite PT-19 Cornell

Well, I bought another plane! Geez, will this ever stop, its like crack...

I have loved this plane since I was a kid. I was one of those who flew the original Cox U-control (line control) 0.049 version of the PT-19 Cornell. It's a classic, and this E-flite version of the PT-19 is on sale for $69 at Horizon Hobby! Here's a pic from xplaneguy on rcdiscuss. The larger is the new E-flite PT 19, and the little guy is the old Cox version. Great pics!

Here's a very nice reveiw on RCDiscuss by Micheal Heer.

The E-flite when it was first on the Horizon website had an optional set of landing gear that was more scale. I am trying to find those. Nice addition beside my PT-17 Stearman.

UPDATE: I was mistaken regarding the landing gear... They are available on the CMP PT-19 sold by nitroplanes. Its a nice looking model, but the drawn on detail makes it a bit cartoonish. I like the look of th E-flite model better, to say nothing of the price! Those optional struts are very overpriced at $55, one hopes for a pair.

Storage

A poster on Helifreak, JC Paint Workz was asking about how we store our stuff. Here are pics of how I organize my parts and equipment. My field boxes consist of my portable charging station and my PDY box. Makes it easy to go: grab these two boxes, toss in the appropriate LiPos, grab the a/c and go!

My PDY Systems Toolbox which I use as my field box. Next to it is a set of plastic drawers from Walmart on wheels for big junk.

I keep my spare parts in Plano tackle boxes that are labeled for each aircraft that has unique parts. I put only the ones I am taking to the field in the PDY. I can fit two plus my spare hardware box (the little one, has nuts, screws, etc. I throw all of these together for all my a/c in one tackle box. I have a larger one I use for connectors, wires, etc, but I don't take that to the field). I also have one set of blades for all my helis and props for all my planks in this top section. I don't carry extra booms, but if the exrra 365mm blades fit, I think the booms will too. The drawers are more or less organized by function, like electrical, tools, build materials (like Goop, Tri-Flow, wire ties, CA, etc).

The top toolbox is my portable charging station (see here).  Below that is a Craftsman non-portable toolbox I keep my batteries and electrical supplies in.  The bottom is a larger set of Rubbermaid drawers from Walmart, without the wheels to better distribute the weight to the floor.

Top shelf is for discharged batteries. Middle drawer for charged and stored batteries (I use the iCharger Storage function to discharge batteries to around 3.85V for storage if not used for more than a day or two). Bottom drawer is electrical supplies. You can see the Plano with my connectors and wires (I keep the wires and connectors from any device I trash).

The top drawer is where I keep the Plano's for a/c I am not taking to the field.

To the right of my work desk is a set of plastic drawers, also from Walmart, that I keep junk in. I have a few other odd bins on my desk and under my work bench. 

My Heli's go in an aluminum 450 case.

I can fit a 450 and a 250 in here, along with my Dx6i.

I like this setup. I don't have a lot of space but I make the most of it.

In support of Eric, the Nitroplanes CS Guy

I posted this on RCDiscuss in the Nitroplanes CS forum after reading some nasty posts from customers.

SUBJ: Thanks, Eric, for doing a job that must suck (the rest of us, chill...)

At the risk of sounding like a Nitroplanes/xheli/hobbypartz/nitroplanes evangelist, I hope you will take a moment to think about my comments here.

I was thinking as I was reading some of these CS request posts about how frustrated we pilots get when things don't go as planned. I expect things not to go quite as well as I wished, but add to that the difficulty getting through to CS described and experienced by many of us, and it gets hard sometimes to be patient. I read comments by users that I hope would never occur face-to-face, taking out their frustrations out on Eric, and it annoys the hell out of me.

Eric is a guy just like us, who goes to work and does his job, one I have no idea why anyone whould choose. I am sure, like the rest of us, there are days he has his A game, and days when he brings his B game. I am sure he does what he can for us. I am also pretty sure he wishes there were more of him, (assuming he is really one guy, and not a bunch of people at NP under the same name). His job is to get to as many of us as he can, and to try to do right by us. We will tell him our troubles, give him good and worthless info about our problems, and expect him to move the world for us. Some of us will lie to him, abuse him and his company, rob from them and rarely thank them when they come through. Some of us blow things up, burn them out, and find other ways of abusing their products, and expect them to compensate us. Some of us have expectations that can never be met, even if he was the owner of the company. And yes, every now and then he or one of his "minions" screws up. And yes, sometimes we get the short end of the stick, usually through no fault of his. But more often than not, Nitroplanes comes through when our concerns are valid, our expectations appropriate, and the info we provide useful to solving the problem. He doesn't have any control over most of the things that piss us off. The customer isn't always right, and I have never seen Eric treat us the way some of us treat him. While we would like it to be, its not all about just you, its about all of us, waiting our turns. Please keep these things in mind when you work with CS.

Put your order number in your email. Sends pics, vid, whatever will make it easier for him to help you. It can be a PITA, but if you want quick results, get him what he needs to help you. Realize how many CS requests he gets (I understand, not our problem, but really, if you want much higher prices they'll be glad to hire more people), and wait your turn. If he misses your email, send him a kind bump.

Thanks Eric, for doing what you can and not going postal on us. You have helped many more of us than have missed out getting what we need, and I for one appreciate it. Sorry you job sucks, but man, "choose your rate, choose your fate".  I just hope you are an RC pilot too, and can fly off that stress!

BZ

Stearman Emerges

I finished the Stearman, completely, this afternoon. She is beautiful... And sounds so sweet running up. I look forward to the day I get to fly her!

The HeadsUpRC motor is a thing to behold. Quiet, powerful, sweet! Installed the AR500 and bound her to my Dx6i. I love it when everything comes together! Here running her under 1/3 throttle to make sure it stays together and nothing overheats.

The battery compartment, the AR500, and the elevator/rudder servos.

Prop on, all finished!

And with her friends in the hangar!

I have been flying the E-flite Stearman on the Phoenix flight sim. She is much harder to fly there than I suspect she is in real. On the sim she has very high wing loading, glides like a brick, and is very, very twitchy, even with a 50% dual rate and 30% expo. She is nearly impossible to maneuver on the ground. I have a feeling that is not what she is like in real life, from the videos I have seen on YouTube.

It remains stormy, and I fear tomorrow and the weekend may be a bust too... More sim...

Another One Just Like The First One...

The stock "ExceedRC" generic ESC in the Cubby is a POS... The first one burned out after a few flights while tuning Cubby up on the bench (see below, Feb 24, 2011). Nitroplanes sent me a new one, and it arrived yesterday. They provided great customer service for this issue, but I wonder what they will do now. I had a bad feeling about the stock ESC and had purchased a ExceedRC Proton 30A ESC from hobbypartz in anticipation of this failure... And it did fail. Here's the vid:

I plugged it in and it got hot fast... I unplugged it, and got Aidan to video a second try in case something exciting happened. It just got wicked hot and started to smell, so I unplugged it before it burst into flames. These are bad ESCs.

Looking forward to flying her tomorrow! Wonder if the gyro, dual rates and more confidence will come together for a great flying day?  Up late charging her batteries... never sleep on a charging LiPo.

Frankenheli Gets Her Blades!

Frankenheli remains a bit of a hangar queen. Her blades came in, and I put them on tonight. I had removed the chintzy GY192, and put it in the Cubby (we'll see how that works tomorrow). I am waiting for the HK mini-MEMS gyro (at an amazing $10) to come back in stock and be shipped to me. I'll be putting one of them on Franky. Today I thought the AR6100e I had in the Cubby had burned out (it didn't, but that's another story, video above). Before I realized it was just low voltage that kept it from lighting up, I had removed it and taken Franky's Orange receiver and satellite receiver, and put them in the Cubby. So now Franky has the Spektrum AR6100e in her. Once the gyro comes in, we can spin her up and test her out!

The prop saver I ordered from HeadsUpRC arrived the other day. I'm a little tired of breaking props and motors that I decided to install a new motor and the prop saver. I have a new ExceedRC motor for the Cubby, but I won't install it unless I break the one in the Cubby now, its second motor.  Cubby is pretty beat up... My first plane. Looking forward to flying her and seeing how the gyro works out!

Hopefully tomorrow will be a good morning to fly. I had planned to meet up with a pilot at MCRCC's Bob Miller Field, but the winds were too brisk and we cancelled. I am excited about going out there this weekend, and plan to take Luke. 

The Backwards Motor

Well, something new everyday...

I received the HeadsUpRC 3542-10 ginormous motor, and its mounting hardware this afternoon, and set about installing it in the Stearman. I was baffled because they sent me the "wrong" motor mount. The holes in the motor did not line up with the holes in the mount. I emailed HURC and sent them these pics:

At a glance you can see the holes don't match up...

Can't tell so much from this pic, but I was making my point here...

And to make sure they didn't send the "wrong" mount again, I sent them a pic of the motor tag for good measure.

Rather quickly I received a polite email response with this pic attached from Jeff at HURC:

Its the picture from their website. Its not apparent at first, but Jeff's kind guidance points out what should be painfully obvious once I though about it. So much so that I had actually had test fit the parts in the right place trying to figure it out feeling that it was just wrong and set the idea aside right away. You can see a tip of the shaft sticking up from behind the motor mount, right up there by the motor wires. Note the wires coming out the back. Jeff pointed out the prop shaft assembly goes on the "back" of the motor, and the shaft faces out the rear... Really? Wouldn't you know that once I "shifted my paradigm" I had the thing together in 45 seconds.

There's the shaft, going out the back through the motor mount. (Its just wrong... so wrong...)

And here's the prop shaft and spinner coming off the back of the motor.

Here's my assembled motor, with a clear view of the shaft coming out of the back. Sort of a Hermaphrodite motor...

Installed on the Stearman and wired up, simply beautiful. A very nice motor. Can't put the cowl back on until I know which way the motor spins when powered up as I may need to reverse a couple wires. I don't have the Spektrum AR500 receiver yet anyway.

Kinda nice how things fit together when you do it right, even if it just looks wrong...