Sukhoi 10cc Back in Flight Ready Status

The other day I once again peeled the landing gear off the Sukhoi 10cc. This airframe has been with me for 4 years now, and her only issue has been her weak knees. I have always held to the practice that it's better the landing gear than the entire bottom of the plane, but I have had nothing but trouble keeping the gear on at all. Since I am quite willing to go back to the 10cc Sukhoi with the red Honda livery, I decided to build this baby up like a fortress. If she crashes the only thing left standing will the the frickin' landing gear!

So a landing in a head wind, a foot off the ground, wind stops, plane drops, should be no problem, but here we are.

And ate a bit of dirt... You can see the gear cleanly came off.

There really wasn't more than a middle block of wood left as the front attachment. This and some epoxy is all that held the front end of the gear in.  The screws were not strong, just RTL Fastener Servo Screws. She tore clean off as designed, just should not have.

This plank of wood on the right is tucked under each side of the fuse, so it's buttressed well. Covered the entire thing with epoxy. The left piece bears no stress as the back of the hardpoint has tabs into the back wall of the landing gear box.

Installed two beams of wood to fortify the fuse and the back of the landing gear box. These are wrapped in epoxy, and the upper piece (closest to the bottom of the fuse) is buttressed under the sides of the fuse.

The gear hardpoint with T-nuts, epoxied in place with 30 min epoxy. The left end (aft) has two large tabs that are in the buttressed and fortified back wall of the box. Put a piece of wood at the near end of the box to fortify this end, the other has one.

Put two long countersunk wood screws straight down into the base. Didn't want to weaken the hardpoint with the countersink, but had to for obvious reasons. This anchors the hardpoint to the piece of wood that is buttressed into the fuse. This is now very damn solid.

Further insurance. I put another long wood screw through the center of the landing gear through the hardpoint into the box. And if that's not enough, I threw two more through a piece of wood that is CA'd to the front wall and the landing gear, angled into the front wall of the box. Like I said, this will be the only part left in a crash. I didn't try to get it perfectly centered...

Painted with gloss black to make it a little less ugly.

Took a moment to install the 14 oz (414cc) Du-Bro tank. It had an 8 oz (255cc) tank. She will fly all day...

The previous post is about my surprise to find a black rubber stopper in the old tank. I usually spend more for the gas stopper I think they should just include. The old tank was splitting at the stopper so it was leaking, but the stopper itself is in perfect condition. I decided to use the new black one that came with the tank.

The Sukhoi 10cc is flight ready!

Black Rubber Stopper and Gas Fuel

4 years, worked out just fine... And the Tygon is still soft!

My New Hangar 9 XT60 (Late Post)

I picked up the Hangar 9 XT 60 today!

She is as big as one of my 30 cc planes.

She has these Tower Pro servos on the wings. I haven't tested them yet.

Installed a fuel vent. First made a hard point.

There was a small hole in the cote.

Cote and installed!

Fixed the hole.

The elevator servo was bad, went rogue, so I had to remove both. Well, I wanted them to match and replace them with two HITECs, but turns out I only had one, and the other was a digital servo, So I fuess I could have kept the rudder servo, but I replaced it anyway.

Southern New Hampshire Radio Control Club - Wagner Field

I fly out of a remarkable field, SNHRCC in Hudson, New Hampshire. It's sits on top of a closed landfill dome.  Its about 15 miles, or 30-40 minutes from my house in Chester, NH. The west side (I think I have it backwards on the vid) is nice, flat and long, but to avoid complaints from a housing development in the north west side, we only fly electrics on that side. On the east side we fly our nitro/gassers. The west side is more of the domed side, and curves steeply down on the west side beyond the road, and on the south side. The tall yellow grass on the west side marks the drop off. So when you dead-stick, like I did yesterday, and you have to put her down over there, not only can you not see the actual landing as its over the hill, but it may be a slope lateral to your line of flight. If you are way down there you will run into a concrete drain. The Ents on the south side bear close watching as they are huge so deceptively closer than the eye thinks. It also tends to be rather windy up here on Mt. Hudson, so one learns to fly in high winds with any degree of cross wind. It's a great place to learn stick and rudder, but is also a good place for stabilizer systems. Like most fields, the grass is kept nice and short (Thanks, Clarence, who is in the van that drives up in my video), but it's not putting green quality that would allow small wheeled EDF, sadly (and not so sadly, as there's another money pit I don't need). The dump that we drive through to get to the field is open on Saturday mornings so we can't fly on those days, as we not only can overfly the dump, but the traffic gets bad. I like flying alone and I get to most days. (I used to love flying with others, but at previous clubs the club politics, one-upsmanship, bullying, show boating, ruined that for me. I like not waiting to fly, doing as much tuning as I want, and not being judged).

Hudson Landfill, SNHRCC

Weak in the knees...

Got the Stik with the RCGF-USA 10cc and Walbro WT-80A carb out and she started right up. Needed no tuning, so we are making good progress! She flew wonderfully, and the more she flew the better she behaved. I flew 4 tanks, tuned the high needle a little. She dead-sticked 3 times though.

3 Dead-sticks. Two ended on the runway. The first she leaned out and then died going full vertical several hundred feet up. She did wonderfully up to the quit. She leans out in vertical and goes and goes! She was high when she died, brought her back in just fine. The second I was inverted, then rolled back to upside-up, and she just quit, again good altitude to make the runway. The third was a touch and go, climb out and she quit. I didn't have a lot of altitude to work with and she was 180 off in the wrong direction. Lost altitude getting her around, the wind was tail and too strong to land with it behind her, had to put her down as she lost what little altitude she had, and she disappeared below the infamous edge of the hill. Kept her level and she landed just fine. Flew another tank just fine. Notice no oil all over her! Running leaner.

THIS is what the RCGF-USA 10cc sounds like when its healthy! This one has always run well without any need for tinkering. I have a 13x8x on it now, thinking of trying a 12x8x3, but not sure it needs a smaller prop.

Taxi out. I don't have a way to fly and video at the same time, so... just the taxi out.

The weak knees... and why I had to reset the crash clock. This Sukhoi RCGF-USA 10cc flies amazingly well, and her engine is amazing. But on a simple touch and go her landing gear gave way...   again. It's her thing. I have rebuilt the gear so many times. I have always gone with trying to let them be capable of breaking away, but they do too easily, so this time I am hammering down.

She wasn't even going that fast, just touched and gone.

That's a lotta dirt right there... and that's the gear hardpoint all nekkid.

The landing gear hard point ain't so hard...

Built up the base, tons of epoxy. Put a small block of wood on this near end to cap it.

The black bulkhead with the two holes is the back of the gear hardpoint. I put in those two huge pieces of lumber to buttress up the frame, and I will put a couple of vertical posts on top of those. I intend to really bolt this new hardpoint down this time. Those stringers are new where clean as they were broken too. This plane has seen so much work here.

Not pictured now, but I am building a new attachment for the gear and am laminating some plywood for it. That thing ain't coming out... More to come in a few days, have to make the donuts.

Cat blocked from blogging....

Hangar 9 Pulse XT60

One of my absolutley favorite planes was the Mike McConville designed Eflite Pulse XT25e. Apparently, as I review the few blog entries I had on it, I had at least 4. I flew this plane almost every single time I went out, as a 4S. It was fast, maneuverable, stable and predictable. I managed to destroy 3, the last one destroyed itself, and curiously, from a known flaw in the design that I did not manage to provoke before. The wings folded at the bottom of a moderate loop on like the 3rd time I ever flew it. It was a common problem for this plane, likely the small joiner was not enough to adequately distribute the lift forces and the wing commonlty folded in the middle. Eflite would deny this, but why else can an otherwise exquisite design? I miss this one, a lot. Sadly, the main build blog lost its pics in the Great Google Picture Rapture (I deleted a lot of pictures back when Google limited the storage space, not realizing I was also then removing them from the blog posts). What a shame. Simple build, fun to fly.

It was with excitement that I found a flying club aquaintence selling a Hanger 9 XT60, incluing a brand new RCGF-USA 20cc engine, the servos and IBEC (I am hoping its the Tech Aero Ultra IBEC, which knowing Ken, it is).

This is sweet. She is a larger version, is 20cc gasser powered, which if I converted correctly is a big engine for this (I believe that she is designed for a 0.6 glow, which is about 10cc, so 20cc should give great performance). She has a proper aluminum wing spar, so one hopes her classic Hershey Bar wing won't fold. She is pre-hinged, and Ken has done a lot of the build already (pic below), so I hope to be able to plug a receiver in and fly. She would get by with a 6 channel, since she is designed with two aileons (and I would want to program in flaperons, so each their own channel), one elevator, rudder and throttle. I will also need to pick up a wing bag. I think I won't glue the halves together to make her easier to transport. If all goes as planned I will be picking her up tomorrow! More to follow!

Actual Build Photo