Eflite UMX Turbo Timber

Have been so impressed by my Eflite UMX Pitts S1S that I was looking at another UMX, and I liked the Turbo Timber. Today Instopped at my LHS, ABC Hobbies in Windham and after touching it I bought it.

Very nice!  700 mm wingspan.

Pleasant surprise was that it comes with the VSTOL leading edges!  Bound and programmed her today, and tomorrow plan to maiden! She looks so fragile, the horizontal stabilizers are really thin, but word on the street is she is sturdy. The Pitts is rugged.

Excited!

Maidened the Eflite UMX Pitts S-1S and I am such an idiot.

I LOVE THIS THING! Flew her in the small front yard off the driveway and between my neighbor's house and mine. It flies amazingly well! My first UMX. I can drive her around these tight spaces without much thought. I now have a plane I can just toss up anywhere!

Maiden, took off, rolled inverted, full throttle for an outside loop, immediately lost all power, came down hard. This baby is hardy! "Landed" wheels down, and nothing broke, so I'm not calling it a crash. Another battery, right after full throttle take off engine quit. Another battery, same, another, same. Happened with all 4 new batteries. Watch the vid, solve the mystery!

And this is why.

Dusting off the Align 600 EFL

Cleaned up and lubed! My Align 600 EFL

Scorpion, MonsterX, Sweet!

Will be flying it 10S. Homie ain't shelling out coin for 6S batteries just to fly sport.

It Was The ALIGN GP780?

I read up a bit and found out it was the GP780 gyro. Maybe... Online people noted the wag was a common problem with it.

I removed it and put on the Assan 250 MEMS gyro. I can't say I like it, not sure it holds well, but no wag.

It's a simple gyro. I think it will just take some time to find the right %. I saved the new KST tail servo for the rebuild of the 450 FBL (more on that later).

EXI 450 Tail Wag Update

I once again tackled the tail wag on the EXI 450. I have tightened up everything, still wagging.

Installed the all metal Tarot 450 Tail Slide. I found the it needed offsets between the arms and the blade control arms. An M2 lock nut fit the bill perfectly.

Changed the tail servo control arm to a smaller wheel, to decrease the mechanical advantage, to see if that will decrease the wag.

Reset the end points and have a pretty good range despite the small mechanical advantage.

It was dark and cold by the time I finished, so it will need to wait a few days.

I ordered a better tail servo to replace the cheap Emax 9257 I have on there now. I picked up  KST 215MG froem Amainhobbies and will install it when it arrives.

UPDATE 3/10/2020: Decreasing the mechanical advantage did the trick. There is virtually no wag now at 33% gain. Good enough for me! Not sure I will swap out the servo.

Amazing low cost aluminum signs!

On a whim I thought how nice it would be to have a metal sign in my workshop with my AMA and FAA numbers on it. I looked around and ended up on eBay, and bought one. I ordered the size I wanted, $11.50 shipped for a color 8" x 12" metal sign. I had created an image in PowerPoint, saved a full screen image as a screen shopt in jpg format. I sent it to the seller, he sent me a pic sample, I made one minor adjustment, and within a week I received this beauty. It is gorgeous! I love it and highly recommend them!

8 x 12 inches

In my shop!

The seller!

Look for this on eBay!

Flight Sim Setup

An HP p6654y I bought about 9 years ago with an AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8 GHz processor with 4 GB RAM in 64 bit (x64) System with AMD Radeon HD5570 graphics card, Windows 10, on a Panasonic 41 inch LED TV at 1776x1000 resolution. The keyboard is a Rii (Real Internet Idea) K18 RT518 Bluetooth keyboard from Amazon. I use a spare Spektrum DX7 transmitter. I bought the computer only, no monitor, I think for around $600 from BestBuy. I wanted to upgrade the graphics card to one my son replaced (he's a graphics super user), but it needed a power supply upgrade I wasn't interested in doing. This card works fine, excellent framerates and resolution.  The TV doesn't like the highes resolution making the edges go off screen, so I have to go one down, and magnify icons 125%. The keyboard is nice, but I haven't figured out how to drag and drop with the touch pad.

Spektrum WS100 Wireless Dongle for Real Flight 8 allows wireless connection with my transmitter. A few months after buying RF8 HH Edition, of course RF9 came out...

A SimStick with an HK Orange Reciever for Phoenix 5.5 Flight Sim, my preferred sim. Can do only 4 channels unless I wire in. Sad Phoenix went out of business. I can add a lot of aircraft, including my new Eflite UMX Pitts, not available on the Horizon Hobby RF8.

This setup works fine for me! I fly helis and planks, and need a lot of sim time, especially in the winter. My basement is unfinished so in the winter it's about 40F degrees down there, with two space heaters going O can get it to almost 60F. Its at the other end from my RC workshop.

Aircraft seem to float a bit in sims, 

Sweet!