Went out to Joppa Hill this afternoon and took her up, only to have to land because a women's lacrosse team showed up for practice. Came back a couple of hours later and got in a flight before it got dark enough I couldn't see her orientation and landed.
The grass at the Joppa Hill Field has always been hard on my planes, in particular the landing gear. Today I had to repair the wheel pants, and re-install the rudder. The latter was a bit of a surprise as the bulk of the vertical stress from the tail gear is on the fuse, but the tail wheel gets banged back and forth by the clumps of grass. I think that yanks the tiller and stresses the rudder hinges.
As seen earlier, the wheel pants take a beating.
Repaired the rudder, removed the wheel pants.
Rebuilt both. The port one broke in half, and the other was splitting. just finished repainting them.
I frackin' hate the Rustoleum rattle can spray caps. it took a lot to get it to spray. i just bought a bunch of replacement caps on eBay hoping that helps.
I noticed a crack in the cowl. The muffler header is apparently right against it and its cracking.
This bears close watching. Not quite sure what to do about it. Notice the grass stains on the muffler... cutting grass just taxiing.
Today I also ordered a smaller bullet hub for the prop from True Turn. I think it will look much nicer. Can't wait to get it.
She sounds amazing, I wish I could capture video of her in flight. The sound is so scale its scary. She has so much power I flynher mostly 1/4-1/2 throttle.
Flew the Waco several times this morning, and she flew great! But the thick clumpy grass tipped her over a couple of times and created some tricky take offs and landings. Eventually one of the wheel panta craked off, and the other just cracked. I'll repair them, but suspect I will eventually have to just remove them.
The recently maidened Hobby King Sbach 1200mm is grounded since I changed the servos to the new Tactic TSX10. The included servo arms are probably common in length, but they are narrowed at the end. I needed to drill the holes a bit larger, at the last hole but this made the material too thin for my liking. These were not going to work. Searching on line gives some conflicting data on the spline, but I think they are all Futaba 25T, same size across all the servos but the TSX5. I had ordered Futaba Micro arms, but they are too small, so I think the data is correct that the standard size spline for the Futaba fits all of them. I will be ordering a set tonight...
This morning I took the now HK Orange 3D Stabilization equipped 10cc Sukhoi out for its first flight with the system on board. I wasn't sure how she would fly with the stabilization on board.
She flew just fine! I turned the pitch and roll gains down a little and will fly her again later to see if it needs further adjustment. The higher gain caused a little stiffness in roll initiation and some pitching up in final approach. At some point the damn tail wheel tiller failed again. So when I got home I figured out a way to take a short nose gear tiller arm, put a wire on it with a Z-bend secured with wire ties and shrink wrap along with a touch of CA. I think this is it, I think this solves the problem for good.
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I also finished the aileron connectors I made for the Waco. The horn failed on the right lower aileron due to the bad geometry creating intense leveraging stresses that pried it loose. The ones I had were the wrong length for the new connector horns I had installed on the lower ailerons to change the geometry to something more linear. The movement is still not entirely balanced, and I am not sure why; I suspect its because the upper horns are still curved so there is still some curvilinear geometry.
Tomorrow I am looking forward to flying her in what I hope is her final engineering, so I can get on to just enjoying flying her.
I figured I would setup the original Alpha6 unit using what I had learned about setting up the replacement that is working so well in the Waco, installing it in the 10cc Sukhoi 26. I pulled the reciever off the center post there and moved it behind the fuel tank, created a stable platform for the gyro and installed it.
The platform finished, light coating of epoxy-alcohol painted on to allow the heavy duty double sided tape to stick well.
Alpha6 gyro in place. tried for an hour to get it to program. Reinstalled the 1.2 update, tried setting it using the software... In trying to program the calibration the servos would skew off center when their channel was selected for gain direction and stay there, no movement to adverse direction, so I couldn't even tell if the gain directions were correct. Didn't matter, I still couldn't gef the past the gain switch calibration, so the unit won't work at all. I think the MEMS are bad or there's a problem with the board. Either way, its a brick.
So I replaced the fancy $129 Spektrum Alpha6 gyro stabilizer with a $19 Hobby King Orange 3 Axis unit. I am not even sure this can work in a gas aircraft vibration environment. Took less than 5 min to set up. Took the airplane out to the garage and started her up to see if the vibration created any problems, and it was rock solid and responded to adverse inputs. I do lose programming individual ailerons, flaperons and differential because even though there is an AUX1 channel, it doesn't act like a seperate channel so the ailerons move in the same direction no matter what you do. I suppose I could rig the servo horsn on the same side so the motions are reversed... I can look into that later. HK notes in comments that you have to Y harness the ailerons. Bummer. There is supoosed to be a way to program a remote on-off switch, but there is no manual, and I am not sure how to set that up. This system works very well on the Sbach, and the Stearman, both electrics.
If the winds permit I hope to fly her tomorrow and see what happens. I think its going to work just fine!
Good thing this happened during pre-flight. I think I mentioned that I didn't like the use of the curved aileron control horns on the connectors between the upper and lower ailerons. The geometry was all wrong so the forces that transfer the lower aileron movment to the upper aileron tended to pry the horns in ways that reallly stress them. As I was warming up the engine I ran the controls through their range of motion and this little shit popped out. My wife kindly hopped in her car for the 2 minute drive from my house and brought some CA (failed to have any in my field box), but it popped out again after 15 min drying. So I packed up and headed home.
Shame... the winds were light, the filed recently mowed, the sun obscured.
When I got home I took some epoxy horns and cut them to fit. I wanted straight alignment so the forces are more linear and not trying to pry the horns loose. I didn't change the upper aileron horns... I suppose I should.
I drilled a few holes in the tab to hold the epoxy, and epoxied them into place with 15 min cure. After a couple of hours they are solidly secured. i painted them black, and in the morning will connect them. i am confident this will solve the prying problem. I will consider changing the upper ones too.
Tomorrow is supposed to be rather windy... it may be a few days before I can fly again.
