Beautiful day to fly, but there was carnage...

Finished rounds in the NICU this morning, and left work heading directly for MCRCC's Bob Miller Field. Today was a beautiful day with crystal clear sky, with no winds, occasional gusts. I had an insanely great day! Flew the Cubby over 7 flights, and the Alpha about 4 times! Flew some simple aerobatics, had some great scale take-off's and my landings were successful if not pretty, and some of them were perfect. Unfortunately, Cubby on downwind about 15 feet above the ground, I started a left hand turn and lost her when she stalled and fell like a rock... She shattered into three pieces, the canopy cracked completely though and the motor shaft sheared off. Very ugly, but I should have her back flying within a few days!

Two of my favorite people! Jerry on the left, and Ron on the right, test flying a trainer they were flying together to tune it up. Both have taught me as instructor pilots, and Ron buddy boxes with me on my Alpha 450. I truly enjoy these gentleman, two of the nicest guys it has been my pleasure to know. 

Paul Verger, one of our AMA icons, an amazing pilot with competition cred in pattern aerobatics and a leader in the AMA had a very bad day...

This is Paul's gorgeous Extra 300 by Pirate Aircraft at the Pine Grove fly-in a few weeks ago. This kit is no longer manufactured, which makes this a double tragedy...

Paul had put a new faster prop on it and was flying it today in preparation for a scale fly-in at Mobile, Alabama, tomorrow. He had been in the air for quite some time doing some beautiful aerobatics, and was pulling out of a diving turn with high Gs when a wing seperated from the aircraft and it disintegrated in flight... The rear fuse crashed to the ground, but the rest of the plane slowly fluttered down like confetti. It was terrible and everyone just stood there. Paul took it with his usual grace. It pained him, but he said that if you fly you crash. He had this aircraft for 6 years.

Paul (red hat) discussing the Extra 300's motor over the carnage, with Greg. 

The collected wreckage.

Our sympathies with our good friend over the loss of his good friend, his wonderful Pirate Extra 300.

Looks like the winds will return for the next couple of days so not so much flying...

Downtime... windy dayz...

Both of my 450s are broken, awaiting parts so can't do much for them. Winds are wicked so there won't be any flying; just that time of year down here. So I spent a couple hours in the Phoenix flight sim working on both planks and helis. I am still struggling to do nice coordinated turns on my helis. I can hover fair in all directions, but that too needs some work. Every now and then I try to just fly the pattern but making level coordinated turns is very inconsistent with me at the controls; I am all over the place. So I am just doing them over and over again. Sometimes I just think its impossible for me to fly a heli well, but I refuse to give up. I love these helis so much I won't let that happen...

I am not having any problems flying my planks and enjoy it very much! Practicing approaches and landings, simple aerobatics. Fun stuff, but I'd much rather be flying for real!

MCRCC has been asked by the Vets Home to do a static display and some park flying. This will be fun event, perhaps one we can tie in with our Fly-in coming on June 18th. I would like to display my Stearman and Cornell in US Army training colors.

Well, back to the sim...

Brisk day at MCRCC

It was a crazy windy day at MCRCC today, but I was determined to fly!

Cubby #1 went up and I flew her fair, maybe better considering the wind, but I had a great time. My landings were rough, and some were crashes. Okay, all were crashes to some degree. Each time I patched her up and flew her again. Bent the prop shaft with one hard landing (prop saver worked). Cracked the fuse in the usual places. The last time though, the rudder control horn sheared off the end of the rudder and that was it. Brought her home, spent about 2 hours on her and she is back to flying shape! I had to make a hinge for the rudder and rebuild the control horn corner. She looks rough, but I just can't put anymore paint on her.

I have not had much luck with my helis lately. I took the ERazor, my best flying heli, and immediately planted her. It looks like last time I worked on her I failed to replace a screw on the pitch servo, the horn of which came off the moment the heli spun up, and that was all she wrote. Bent the main rotor, sheared the upper Jesus bolt, bent the feathering shaft, crushed a ball bearing (the ERazor uses ball bearings for thrust  bearings) and chipped gears on the elevator servo. This will be a few hours work. Bummer...  But, I have the parts.

Dickie Ober lent me a CF 450 tail fin so I can finish the EXI 450 repairs today. Thanks, Dickie!

Putting away the Alpha Sport and I noticed too much play in the rudder servo. Turns out at some point it stripped. Replaced the stock Eflite servo with a Speltrum DSP75, no problem.

After 4 hours of flying and waiting for the wind to die down, I finally called it a day. Love my Cubby, and can't wait to fly her again! Maybe Wed!

MX2 CG "Mods"

In retrospect, after some insightful discussion on RCGods about this issue, I think one of the posters was correct that the battery goes forward under the cowl. The 3300 mAh fits in their nicely without any modification (though having the mid-post cut out makes getting it in their easier). The CG is very very skittish; if I merely flex my fingertip it flies off in one direction or the other, no subtlety.  Here are pics of the final result.

The "unmodified" electronics bay of the MX2 (I did cut out a post).

The 3300 mAh pushed as far forward as it will go. Its sitting right up against the ESC. Should the ESC burn, this baby is gonna burst into sunlight...  You can see the post I had cut out before. Serendipitous as it makes getting the big battery in and out easier. The battery fits quite tight, it isn't going anywhere.

I had to cutout the base of the canopy (overhead the battery) to accommodate the battery. The battery lifts as it passes over the wing spar just enough it lifted the canopy.

I balance the prop (it needed fairly large pieces electrical tape on two blades, or I could have chiseled a sizable chunk out of one blade), but even with the surely slightly out of balance nose cone modification the motor is smooth. Still can't get the cowl off...

MX2 Nose Cone done!

The Gorilla glue finished curing this morning, so I drilled carefully closer to the shoulder (see my previous post).

You can see the 10mm mark on the screw now shows another 10 mm of screw!

It closed the gap and the nose cone is secured to the motor shaft. I ran it and there is ever so slight an imbalance in the prop which I haven't balanced yet. Like the rest of this cool plank, its ginormous.

And there she is! Glad to have a heavy foamie in my hangar!  Still need to balance the prop and figure out the tail heavy CG issue.

MX2 Build!

In the previous post we unboxed my BliztRCWorks MX2 Pro from bananahobby.com, my first purchase form them, though I have made several purchases from their cousins Nitroplanes, xHeli and Hobbypartz.com, whom I love buying from! Here's what it looked like on their website:

Sweet!

This was an easy build, maybe 2 hours, mostly problem solving. There were the usual issues, screws that don't fit mostly. It came together relatively easy, but to fly I have one issue, a major design problem with the prop cone to overcome...

The build started with the main gear which took all of 5 minutes and was uneventful. The next step was the tail assembly. It also went together pretty quickly and easily. The parts fit together well and the mini pics were accurate, or so I think. The control horns went on easily and the clevi were easily adjustable. The preinstalled decals however came up short as you can see where the tail joins and the decal misses...

This thing is really big...

Took the Orange receiver and satellite off the corkscrewed EXI 450 (more on my plans for that later) fitted forward of the battery section. I later had to extend the battery tray by cutting out the left post as the 4S battery I have are 3300 mAh and I think it was designed for 2000 mAh (odd, as it is still waaay tail heavy even with a 3300 mAh shoved as far forward as I can get it. Still need to solve that problem too...).

Here's the problem that has an easy solution that's not available to me... They must have made a design change and not told each other. The nose cone goes on with an M3-30mm machine screw which is way too short. Or actually, its long enough, but can't reach far enough. The chamber for the nose cone screw is supposed to be one size all the way down, but they narrowed it half way down, so the screw can't make it to the end of the channel. Only 10mm of the 30mm screw is past the end of the channel. It needs another 10-15mm to secure into the propshaft...

You can see the step off that shouldn't be there.

A longer M3 would work, but, Home Depot doesn't carry less then M4 and Lowes' has M3 but not a 35-40mm one. Drove around town, no joy. So, what the hell... I think I can shave a little off sides of the narrow chamber, hopefully centered, and get the 15 mm I need, but I worry the walls will be too thin. I poured some Gorrila polyurethane glue in the cone so it would expand up and offer some support. Nothing to lose, will end up buying a new cone either way. Still curing, wonder how this will turn out.

Jack-Jack (The Incredibles) is in the cockpit. No cone yet of course. You can see the Orange satellite just forward of the cockpit on the right. I put some blue electrical tape along the flaked up seam. I forgot to take pics of the wing installation. A CF spar runs across half the width of the wing. I had to struggle to get the wing set screw in on the left side, it just wouldn't pass. I probed it and managed to find the center. On the right the screw popped out of the bottom of the fuse, so I probed the left side down through the fuse and then passed the screw backwards to clear any detritus blocking the screw path and re-thread the nut if needed. It seemed to need both, and I was then able to pass the screw and set it properly. In all that I just forgot to take the pics...

 All in all she looks pretty good, but man, she's big!

Had to shuffle my Stearman over to make room. She takes up some space! 

BlitzRCWorks MX2 foamie, Hobby King Orange receiver and sat, stock servos. Can't say what the ESC or motor are as I can't get to them without really working over the cowl (and I tried). Can't wait to fly her!

Wrote to bananahobby.com and we'll see if they can help me solve the nose cone problem!

BlitzRCWorks MX2 Unboxed

My BlitzRCWorks MX2 arrived yesterday and I unboxed it with much excitement. But I was surprised at some of the poor quality of the design decals, which were awkwardly applied in some places, designed poorly in others, and done nicely in others. Its a ginormous foamie, and it does look very nice! Got it on sale for $150 (regularly $350 they told me) from bananahobby.com. This was my first purchase from them.

The box (added this pic 4.22.11 on its way to recycle).

One wheel pant wasn't glued, the other had a lot of glue spillover (the white dots).

You can see the line where the plastic cowl joins the fuselage. Just with handling this chipped and flaked along the lines. You can see a large folded crease near the front, the black line. These were present on both sides.

The other side. You can see a wavy wrinkle across the front of the cowl too. I wanted to inspect the ESC and the motor, but I could not get the cowl to come off. I feared breaking it if I persisted, and the already chipping decal was coming apart. When something goes wrong it will need to come off... not sure how that is going to go.

My kit was an ARF. They made  my order by taking an RTF kit and pulling the receiver and the transmitter. I know this because the box says RTF and I bought it ARF. In repacking they chipped 2mm off the faux exhaust pipe.

Apparently a simple cross over of flaps was the choice solution for the decals across the top of the fuse at the vertical stabilizer.

It is clear the decals were designed to cross the hinge lines, but weren't always cleanly cut.

The tops of the wings looked awesome. The undersides saw the across-the-hinge-decal problem in several spots.

Micro pictures made up the otherwise generally complete instruction manual. They managed to get it all on one page, but I couldn't make out any details.

The canopy covers the electronics and battery bay.

Next up, the build!