Kenny's Edge

Kenny Chandler flying his Seagull Edge 540 with an OS55 engine and a 10x4 prop. Setup to landing! It was a long flight, so I edited out a lot of the long flight sections. The boy got skills!

Hobby King Mini F-86 Sabre

Quick note, ordered my first EDF jet last night. Its the Hobby King F-86 Mini Sabre 50mm EDF. This is an exciting addition to the Piratey Squadron and I look forward to sharing more abut her when she arrives and gets her first flight!

Dynam C-47 Skytrain from Nitroplanes

Wow... all I can say is, wow... Not really, there'a a whole lot to say about this amazing model! Yesterday I maidened the Dynam C-47 Skytrain from Nitroplanes whose build I outlined earlier. This model is a crowd pleaser. She looks spectacular on the ground and in the air, flies gracefully and so scale like, but can easily perform basic aerobatics. Solid construction, wicked easy build, and a completely unbelievable price for the receiver ready ARF!

I am flying her with a single 3S 2200 25C battery and a Spektrum AR6100 receiver. She gives me an easy 8 minutes of scale flying. When I set her up I wanted a touch of nose heavy CG. She, however, did not. Nor did she appreciate my lack of attention to detail in missing that the right aileron was deflecting up at mid stick. On her maiden she took off, came out of ground effect and went all psycho on me! This thing is supposed to be docile! Several times I nearly crushed her miserably until I figured out I needed to hold her nose up, power back and left aileron to keep her level, then I nearly lost her as she flew off into the distance when I was psychologically reluctant to turn her having just got her wings level and in controlled flight. I manged to turn her back inbound and I brought her in for a squeaker of a sweet landing. It was kinda nice, having everyone start yelling supportive (and good) advice as I fought to control her, and cheering me when I finally landed her. Thanks guys!

I removed the 3/4 oz nose weight, fixed the aileron and took her up again. This time it was breathtaking, smooth, sweet and just a pleasure to fly! The video below is her third flight. I included the entire, shortened flight, since I don't have any other video of me doing a complete flight. Today I flew her again and she showed the same docile habits, giving me and the crowd the same enjoyable flight. I added flaperons today which dramatically improved (slowed) her sink rate as I pulled the power back on final approach to landing.

Thanks to Steve Burton for doing the video work using my phone's camera. Enjoy!

Stearman revisits the Southern Ents

First flight of the day went wonderfully. Took the Stearman up, toodled about a bit, shot some practice approaches coming over the fence to land into the east wing. Decided it was time, came in, and realised I was a little more hot than I wanted to be, a touch higher. I should have made a missed approach, but opted to try the landing. Realized that was a mistake, powered up to go around, a good option, except I was on a lean battery and the power punch I needed wasn't there. Pulling back, pulling back, she's nearly hovering on her prop, looks like she might clear the trees, but still very high alpha (nose up), lost her behind some closer trees, and WHACK! She struck the tree nearly bottom on at slow speed, but the whack was wicked loud!

I trudged into the woods, with one of the guys (Greg or Bobby) gunning the Stearman's motor so I could locate it. I found it in the highest tree. Its in this pic. Can you see it?

Here's a closer look, can you see it now?

Greg came in with a chainsaw (he was working on clearing out some of the highest trees to open up the approach from the south, and this tree was slated to fall). He had the clever idea of cutting it down bit by bit, starting at the bottom. The tree fell, but the brush held it up a bit, so he cut again, it fell a bit more, repeating this several times.

Finally it tipped enough she fell out of the highest branches into the brush and I was able to grab her.

I set her down, and lucky me, she was essentially intact! Neither the crash or the piecemeal decent of the tree eating plane caused much more than breaking the ends off the prop (from running it in the tree), and a few poke holes in the cote!

Here she is with some packing tape over the pinpoint holes and one 1/2 inch tear, with the new (and old) prop. I took her up after checking her out, and she flew wonderfully for the rest of the day!

Thanks Greg Castellan for helping me recover the Stearman!

Beautiful Maiden!

Beautiful day to maiden a beautiful aircraft! Its my practice, as it is of many who trained me, to allow someone else to maiden my newly built aircraft when I can, since I am still a bit of a novice pilot. This way if something goes wrong its the wand and not the magician. Today I nervously took the Eflite Pulse XT out to BMF to maiden. I asked Dickie Ober, our club prez, to take her up for me. We checked her out, and then he took her out to the flightline, shortened a bit while the scars of the recent repairs heal. There was no wind, beautiful cloudless sky. He powered her up and with a smidge of back stick she lifted off clean and sweet. She flew so incredibly well it was mind-boggling! This is what you get when you purchase a well made kit by skilled designers, follow their lead and install quality electronics. She was sharp in her maneuvers, speedy, great vertical, and calm on takeoff and landing. He took her through mid and high rates, and we trialed the flaperons. They worked smoothly and had a sound effect, but I think a bit more is in order. I had -25% and -40% dialed in, but reprogrammed it at the end of the day with -40% and -50% which I will try tomorrow. I flew her myself for the remaining 2 flights. I am so excited and pleased with this, my favorite plane!

Oh, and I managed to get my Tail-Hook Ticket punched! There was a yellow ribbon about 6-8 inches off the ground cordoning off the repaired runway which is closed. The approach to the remaining runway to the south requires an approach right over the patch. I brought her in low, thinking I would clear the tape, but at the last minute realized I wouldn't... I could power up and hope to clear it, or land and roll into it. I chose the latter and she touched down, rolled out snagging the 2-wire! Not bad!

It was a lot of fun, the couple hours I was out! I flew the Stearman, amazingly well behaved though she tried to tip stall on landing twice, and the Trojan. All in all a great day!

We hung out in the south pit since the northern end of the runway is still closed. Jerry, Joe, Bobby and Ron in this pic. My Stearman, Pulse and Trojan on my bench with my IS in the background.

Dynam C-47 Skytrain/Dakota

As an aviation buff, one of my all time favorite aircraft was the Douglas DC-3, and its modified military variant, the C-47 Skytrain. I have been chewing on getting the Dynam version from Nitroplanes since I got into this hobby almost a year ago. Venom makes one, quite similar though larger with more scale features, but way, way overpriced, and it doesn't have the engine cowls that look more scale. Last week I finally did buy the Dynam plane, and yesterday I started on the build, finishing it today. This was one of the easiest planes to build, and it really surprised me how nice looking it came out!

The build was so easy I skipped doing the build shots. There is a very good set of build videos on the Nitroplanes page for this airplane which I found very useful. A couple of issues. I chose not to do the steerable tail wheel mod as it was going to be a pain in the butt to drill a hole in the top of the lock button for the castering assembly inside. It would have been nice but I didn't want to risk damaging anything (because for some reason there are NO replacement parts available for this plane...). The elevator is a bit shabby. I epoxied the uni-hinge control horn attachment where it joins the elevator, and that should do the trick. Also, the wire connector to the control horn is just barely long enough, and was challenging to get tight enough not to slip. Tossed some Locktite into the wire assembly to help keep it from slipping. The bottoms of my two wing halves were different shades of gray, so I painted the entire bottom surface with gray auto primer, looks awesome. I didn't glue in the panel that covers the wing joiner and aileron/ESC wires since I am expecting at some point to have to replace the aileron servos. I just pushed it into place and used the Normandy stripe stickers to hold the edges in place. Its snug and shouldn't go anywhere. They tail numbers are screwey... on one side it ends in 6351 and on the other it ends in 6531. QI a little? I added 3/4 oz of weight to the nose to get an ever so slightly nose heavy CG. Lastly, the darn thing was glossy shiny... I covered it with a dusting of clear enamel and that took the edge off nicely. I wanted a used, dirty look. I am quite happy! She will be flying 3S 2200 mAh batteries, an AR6000 (I know, its a parkflyer receiver, but I accidently gave Kenny my last Orange/Satellite that I had set aside for this plane).

A ginormous box...  I got the ARF, so the radio etc was not included.

Three metal plates, 1/4 oz each, for CG corretction. The upper two plates are the canopy magnets. The black velcco came installed in the battery compartment.

I did the blade tips. Sweet details! I want to enjoy her for a bit before I challenge her with a maiden flight! 

Windy Day at KAMS

Our field at BMF remains half of what it is as the recent repairs have to be allowed to settle in. So Kenny Chandler and I visited KAMS Field in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and flew on a very windy cross wind day. I flew my Alpha Sport 450 and my T-28 Trojan, and he flew his Parkzone Super Cub, Striker and his 3-channel  Thunder Tiger Corsair. He flies the Corsair on full rates with no expo... made even more challenging by the winds.

Our station.

Kenny strapping on the wing. He had forgotten the wing bolt, so we used large wire ties and later rubber bands to strap the wing on.

Kenny and his Thunder Tiger 3-channel Corsair.

Wire ties holding the wing on.