Hangar 9 Sopwith Maidened!

Well, the day finally came. I wanted her first flight to be on a calm day so I could flynher without distractions, and yesterday was that day. She fills my Lexus CT200h, so only the Stearman and a coulle helis got to come out to BMF.

Kenny Chanlder helped me set her up, preflight her, and spot her on the runway. I was a little nervus, but I had pschologically gotten to the point I was going to fly her if I had to throw her pieces into the wind. She has a bigger engine an prop, and I had learned a few things with mynfirst two maiden attempts. I throttled her up, worked her stering down the runway, pulling bak the stick, and she took off with a lot of left rudder to overcome the torque roll! I got it off as fast as I could and she straightened out after a brief flirt with a left turn, but she was flying! Kenny was yelling, 'CLIMB, CLIMB!" as I was thrilled she didn't turn into the ground, and was focusing on keeping her level. She climbed out with a lot of work, and it took several passes to get her trimmed out. Despite her twisty wing, she flew awesome! She has power to spare and I stated settling down. She doesn't meed a lot of elevator ofr rudder range of motion, but she needs all of her ailerons. And man is she loud with the wind whipping through the rigging! She handles well, though sometimes she ignores a comand pereferring to fly the wind, then suddenly changing her mind. She is heavy and flies like it. I find she does awesome at half throttle flying scale, with scale aerobatics. Landing her is somehting I need some work on. She needs to land on her mains and roll out without tipping head over heals. Getting her butt down too early can lead to some nasty ground handling, something done carefully with this skid tail dragger. All in all, she's a blast, and I enjoyed several flights before calling it a day! But man, she takes up the whole car and so there are few other aircraft on days I take her out to play...

450 Revival

It would have been a great picture... My Erazor 450 came down hard in wet Mississippi mud, and was half buried. Somehow I failed to take one, probably because I was sinking ankle deep in that mud. I had to take it completely apart, and I mean right down to screws and bearings, to get them mud out. One servo died in the crash, but the electronics all survived. I put it all back together again last night reoiking anything that moved, rest her CCPM, and flew her again this morning! From flight, to crash in thick mud, to unbuilding and cleaning to rebuilding, to resetting the CCPM, to flight testing, all in a day!

Those following my Align GP 780 tail wag problem might be intested that the Erazor's GP 780 has been working fine since I worked her and addressed anything that might cause vibration. I thought she was a clean machine before, but now, especially after yesterday's rebuild, she's an enginnering marvel. The GO 790 gyro came in from mhein18 the other day. I put it on the Frankenheli, and the was a wag. I went back and changed the tail shaft, which I found ever so slightly bent. I also put a new head on it, fresh out of the box, since the used EXI head was pretty loosy-goosy. I snugged things up, cleaned things out, and bang, no wag!

So pretty excited that both of my 450 flybar helis are revived. My EXI 450 flybarless is still awaiting parts. It too should be up soon. Today I found out some electircla provlems I was having yesterday with the HDX 500 were from a failing and now failed BEC. Ordered a new one from HeadsUpRC today, so I think barring another crash, I will soon have all of mynhelis up at the same time!

 

If its not one thing its another...

I took the Erazor up after really working the main rotor and tail rotor mechanisms over, cleaning and lubricating everything. I decided to put the Align GP 780 gyro back on it, and whatta ya know... its working without the wag! I flew it at BMF today and got a couple good flights in, and the tail held perfectly, except when the whole heli would have a split second seizure. Did this every few minutes, quick, then back to normal. Sometimes it was yaw. mostly it was pitch that would suddenly change, once throwing it to the ground in full neg pitch. Sometimes it was a partial roll. I changed out the reciever to one I know is good, and its not the problem. I changed the ESC/BEC at home and in my last hop in the driveway the problem did not occur again. I think I have outed these recent gremilins. Tomorrow I will be back at BMF and flying the crap out of it!

I spun up the HDX 500 and the minute I did the main gear threw teeth... This was after taking the one way bearing out and deep cleaning it. I took the motor out and checked the pinion and its good. I reset it to make sure it meshes well without being tight or loose, and its fine. I fired up the heli without the blades and no lost teeth, no unusual sounds or anything. I had changed the ESC from soft start to very soft a while back. I don't remember when, and I am not certain that I did... but I noticed that the startup stutters in very soft start. Not sure that causes the teeth grinding... I set it to soft start and it doesn't stutter. I wonder if this was the problem? Shouldn't be, but I got nothing else...

Flew the C-47, the Ultimate, and remaidened the eHawk glider. Its an odd bird... doesn't fly smoothly, but she flew well. I will need to take it up again soon. Landing was a mess... tip stalled, needs to come in hot. I am going to set up flaperons.

Another Awesome Bloodbath!

It sucked but it was awesome!

First, I took up the EXI 450 BeastX and flew her like a crazy man. It was a great flight in tight control, figure 8s, hammerheads, everything but loops and rolls. Lost control when I made a conscious decision for a control input instead of just flying her when she was heading towards me, and compounded it by more thinking-flying, putting her in the ground. She suffered a blade strike on the tail, and the head is going to need to be rebuilt. Lots of work, but It was totally worth it.

I also took up the Erazor 450 for several flights, also doing some awesome fast forward flight with good control. She has that cheap gyro on her the Assan GY250, I think its called, and the tail kept kicking out, not holding well in hover (held fine in forward flight). I was bringing her in after another awesome flight and about half a foot off the ground a gust hit her and she spun her head around hard, a main blade striking the ground. The head needs work, but the blades are good. Plan to have both of these ready to fly again tomorrow!

Not to be outdone, I took the Sbach 342 up for a couple of spins. I flew her with the 10 x7 prop and liked her performance. I tried the 11x5 and she was mushy. Then she killed herself. Like my PulseXT she would not come out of a dive in the Dangerous Quadrant in Mordor, and slammed into the ground at high speed. Witnesses heard me call out that she wasn't responding to elevator just before the crash. On inspection she had not lost bind, the servos all work, the control rods are all fine. We have no idea why this happened... crap.

4 Blades of Fury

While I wait for another twin flybarless head to come back after my Yee-Haw flight a couple weeks ago, I decided to put the quad blade head back together. Last time I put it on, while stil trying to figure out the BeastX, I struck the blades on a box in the garage and became discouraged. Now that I have learned how to use the BeastX and to program it, and have figured out a few things to get the blades tracking well, which was an issue for me before. with the quad head The new quad blades came in the other day, so today I replaced a bent flybar screw on the quad, and set up the head on a new main shaft since the crash bent the shit out of the other one (bad word intended, it was a good 30 deg bend). I took out the new blades, weighed them to see which was the heaviest and made it the maeter blade, balanced each blade to get its CG, and then balanced each blade against the master blade. One blade matched the master perfectly, and the other two blades were easily balanced with tape, so in the end all four blades balanced with each other. This all worked excellent as there was no spin up vibrations at all! I put it all together. I flipped the swash stabilizer around so that when the blade grip control rods are 90 degrees blade to swash it no longer comes close to one of the swash attachments for the control rods, something I think may have contributed to the maiden crash a few months ago. The blades have to be 90 degree out of phase, the control rod for the blade joining the swash 90 degrees ahead of the blade. I then programmed the BeastX going through it step by step. I also made sure I went through not just the programming menu, but also the parameters menu. To get the tracking right, I like to set the zero pitch on each blade one by one with the cyclic at zero pitch. I like to have it mechanically squared up at zero. I find that I often have no problems with tracking when I do this. I took her out to the driveway for a hover test, and spun her up. She had great head speed, and lifted off, blades in perfect track! I did find that the plastic blades will flap a little with quick pitch changes, so I have to fly her scale, but she was stable and easily controlled. I am thrilled she flew exactly as she is supposed to, vibration free! I think I will keep her a quad head for now!

A-10 Powered Up!

I noted that my BlitzRCWorks A-10 Warthog had the odd bad luck for both ESCs to burn out at the same time, having flown it not more than a couple of times. I blogged ab out this in What are the Odds? a couple of weeks ago. I ordered new 30A ESCs from HeadsUpRC because they stock good products and ship so fast the parts arrive as you finish the order! I wasn't disappointed and they arrived 2 days later. Today I had a chance today to test and install them.

ESCs removed.

The dual HURC 30A ESCs installed for the test. I soldered the power connectors to the ESC battery leads rather than solder the wires themselves together (not pictured).

Here the wiring harnesses are in place and the ESCs tucked in the nacelles. You can see the green shrink wrap around the power connectors I soldered. I cut small paths in the nacelle foam for the wires leading off the ESCs (the orange labeled computers) This cleaned up the wires in the nacelle, where they dangled in the stock setup. You can see the white foam where the stock wires had been hot glued to the bottom of the nacelle. I pulled the motor wire straight off the motor to the center, and the ESC power wires are pulled right out of the nacelle to the center. I taped this all in place with clear packing tape.

Here the nacelle is all closed up. I chose not to re-glue the nacelles and found the screws and straps that hold them together were not sturdy, so I used tape along the side.

Everything fired up nicely! Looking forward to trying her again on the flightline!

What are the odds?

That two ESCs would fail at the same time?

A few weeks ago I took the A-10 Warthog out to BMF because the grass was short and the winds were right. Plugged her in, checked surfaces, carried her out to the flight line, rechecked surfaces free, clear and appropriate, then firewalled the throttle for a whole lotta nothin'...a couple times like in a sitcom. Reversed the process and put her back in the car a bit pissed. She 's only flown twice!

Hung her on the wall for a few weeks where I would occasionally look at her with disdain.

Today, lacking anything better to do, I took her down and began troubleshooting. The motors get power, giving the start-up sequence tones. No throttle response. I checked the transmitter programming, reset the throttle limits on the ESCs, checked the reciever bind, swapped recievers out, changed the Y-cable (twin motors), connected each ESC directly to the receiver independently, and then finally swapped out the ESCs one at a time with one I have on hand and with that, power and throttle on both motors! Both ESCs are bad.

I've ordered a couple of 30 amp Heads Up RC ESCs to replace them. These guys ship so fast I am almost surprised they aren't here already!