Phoenixcubby Day #3

The resurrection of Phoenixcubby continued today. I need to wait for the canopy before I can do anything else.  When I took the tape off of the wing yesterday, there was still a little dihedral, but this morning the wing was back to its original negative dihedral. I have re-taped it so maybe it will set in permanently this time.

The wing strut attachment point's got pulled in the crash. I have been missing one of the outer attachments since the Tree Incident, and in this crash lost one of the inner attachments.

I cut a piece of plastic from the old wing strut, embedded it in the wing and glued it in place. It will serve as a top to which I can glue the aft wing strut.

Nothing is ever easy... the motor mount did not match exactly, but was pretty close. I used nylon 6-32 3/8" screws I bought this morning at Home Depot. The brass nuts would not fit on the top (the yellow plastic firewall got in the way). I was able to attach the nuts on the bottom of the mount.

A posterior view. All of the screws screwed in nicely so they are not coming loose even without the nuts. I did use a little Locktite, though I don't know how that will work with the nylon...

Phoenixcubby! When the canopy comes I can put the wing on and then complete the landing gear's aft attachment (pics will come when I do. I came up with a fairly ingenious way to dynamically stabilize the aft attachment using a part of the old wing spar). Frankenheli in the background. Put her mini-MEMS gyro on and will be setting that up later this afternoon. May even finally spin her up!

Phoenixcubby Day #2

Today I stopped by my LHS (Orange Grove Hobby Shop) and picked up a roll of Top Flite Econo-cote in Cubby Yellow, and a motor mount to continue my work on resurrecting the Cubby (Click here for Day #1). I decided I didn't want to make the Cubby half red, half yellow... I have not done such an extensive cote job, so it was interesting work. I wasted a lot of the cote when I screwed up the mirror image for the other side of the fuse, but figured it out in the end. The surfaces are pretty irregular, and my lack of skill made for an adequate but not great job. (You can click the pics to see a larger version).

Not a bad job, actually. You can't see the seams and the fit and finish are pretty tight now that I look at it. The color matches the original Cubby paint pretty well. I decided to cover the entire fuselage to provide structural strength, as Greg suggested when I busted her up. You can see the crack seams as I didn't work them out much. Not pictured, I also put some yellow over the middle of the wing where I had put red Ultracote when I originally repaired her after the tree debacle. Wanted more yellow, less red. When I took the tape off that was pulling the wing into a dihedral, it actually had a nice soft dihedral remaining. When I put the stays back on I hope it doesn't pull the wing back down...

The new Exceed Alpha motor doesn't fit the original stock Cubby engine mount. It was a motor-ring-in-a-firewall-ring device. The new motor came with the silver mounting bracket, but it extends beyond the plastic firewall, so it wasn't going to work by itself. I bought another motor mount, the black one, epoxied it into place and set it with screws. That puppy ain't ever coming loose... The motor will be mounted to the silver bracket, and after I find some short counter-sink screws and nuts I can mount the motor mounts together and find out if the cowl will fit over it all. 

Kinda stuck now waiting for the canopy to come from Nitroplanes, notoriously slow shipping. Once that is in, I can finsh the plane. I am working out a plan to stregthen the wheel flange attachement... more on that later.

EXI 450 with Hobby King/Assan mini-MEMS 250 gyro

I rebuilt my EXI 450 after my gyro misadventure... And this time I set it up properly (helps to RTFM, read the frickin' manual...)! Here she awaits her test flight.

I test hovered her in the garage, wanting to keep the flight short because I just spent so much time putting her back together. Rebuilt the tail boom and tail rotor assembly, rebuilt the main rotor head assembly, replaced and re-setup the stripped servo's, reprogrammed the Dx6i, and setup the CCPM. Then I spent a half hour setting up and rechecking the  Hobby King mini-MEMS gyro. Then, it was out to the garage!  Short video clip shot by my 12 yo Luke from a distance with zoom, so apologies for the shakiness of the video.  I totally own the shaky piloting...

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...