Phoenixcubby Reincarnation Day#1

My Cubby #1 is now Phoenixcubby, as it has died many times, and yet once again is coming back! Yesterday I stalled her fuse into three pieces... Today I debrided all the dead stuff, pulled the electronics, and started gluing her back to life. I used thick toothpicks cut in half as structural spars at the three major "joints" and 3-in-1 glue. I also cut out the back upper cabin "posts" where the plastic canopy wedges into the fuselage forming the aft attachment for the wing. You can see the white styrofoam I shaped, sparred and glued to fit (triangle shaped).

The fuselage taped to hold the glued joints together while they set. The white styrofoam can be seen on the top back of the cabin. I plan to cover the forward part of the fuse with Ultracote (red, as that is what I have) to pull it all together snugly. The little square in the front of the cabin is where the front seat went, but I lost that.

Since I have to wait for a new canopy before I can rejoin the wing, I decided to put it under tension to reverse the negative dihedral it has developed. I would settle for a flat wing, but would like to see a little dihedral.

Letting the glue set overnight. Will look to apply the Ultracote to the fuse tomorrow. I will take some tape to the paint and un-paint the sections getting the Ultracote to get better adhesion. I am thinking of painting the interior of the cabin flat black. When the canopy gets here hopefully near the end of this next week, I can put the whole thing back together and fly her again! The motor was toast, but I have an Exceed Alpha motor I had bought a while back for the Cubby that will fit nicely with a new motor mount.

The next question is when do I fly the other brand new Exceed Cubby I got when Phoenix ended up in the tree?

ERazor Feathering Bearing Bad Karma

Got the replacement bearings for the main roto feathering shaft on the ERazor today. I found that, as I suspected, the smaller inner bearing that had shattered left the outer ring firmly stuck to the blade grip. I had to spend some 20 minutes really working it out. In this pic you can see the extracted ring next to the replacement bearing. The larger inner bearing was also bad and I ended up replacing both of them. Put the blades back on, tuned the CCPM and took the ERazor out to the garage for a test run.

Hovered great for about 4 minutes with no tracking deviation, but then one of the main blades, reused from the first crash, cracked away at the grip and I had to hit throttle hold and drop her from about a foot as she became uncontrollable. Fortunately only the blade that cracked was broken but I changed out both of them since there were some signs of damage on the other blade as well (bent the flybar back into position). This blade failed down, not up, as the upper layers of laminate came apart (I bent it down a bit more to show the crack) so I am sure it did not break in the ground strike (the heli came to rest on her skids). New blades, reset everything, and hovered her again without any issues, clean tracking. ERazor is go!

Now if I could just hover at the field...

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.