Well that's just disappointing.

 So...

Lets start with "I had to reset the crash clock today".

I maddened the Ultra Stick today, and the maiden went really well. I had to put in a lot of up elevator, indicating that her CG was supposed to be a lot more aft than advertised. She ran fine once she was warmed up, in the air smooth throttle responses, great power and wonderful speed, decent vertical. I kept her up tossing her around a bit for a nice 10 min flight, landed, and on roll out she hit a bump and tipped forward stopping the engine. No harm.

All systems go!

Setting up.

After the maiden landing.

I took a break, shaking thumbs calmed down, breathing evenly again. I was really impressed, she was exactly what I expected and hoped for! I took the 1lb of lead out, increased the expos to 40%, added the down elevator to the flaps, needed 10 and 15% down for approach and landing flaps, fueled her up and took off again! Trimmed her out, and again really was having a blast. About 10 min into the flight I was flying from north to south. I had been flying high to test transitions between dual rates on the ailerons and elevator. Having the elevator go to 100% was way more than she needed, so intended to drop that down to about 75. I slowed, flicked the elevator to high rates, the right wing dropped, and then kept going. She stalled at about 40 feet AGL, spun clockwise twice and thumbed nose first into the ground. Somehow I stalled her...

Split into 4 pieces, landing gear, shattered fuse, and the wing in two. Not salvageable.

Some planes last for years, some for one to two flights... I am so disappointed. Not just the cost of the model, but the hours spent building her, the joy I was finding in her flight handling. Just so disappointed. I will get another, but not for a few months of grieving. So very disappointed. In a few days I will inspect and salvage parts, put the engine on the test stand and make sure she runs. Then I will put them all away until I feel like loving again.

Ultra Stick 10cc Flight Ready and Aileron Fixed!

 The other day I dusted off the EVO 10cc Ultra Stick and fixed a few gripes.  Today I finished and she is flight ready.

Last year the Ugly Stick died a fantastic death when the un-commanded aileron flutter caught up with me a year ago last June. I put the same electronics into the Ultra Stick, and the flutter was still there. So I exchanged the servos in the ailerons, and put a capacitor on the receiver to clean up and stabilize the power (see that last link). Today I finally put the wing back on and in the process of tuning the engine, noted the flutter is gone. G-O-N-E, gone.

Finally, a nice idle that is a little unstable, but not quitting, 

very nice high end RPM output, and no aileron flutter!

I love this plane. I hope her performance doesn't disappoint.

Evolution 10cc. Not a big fan of the carb.

Weighs in at 9-1/2 lbs, consistent with the weight last fall. She is "designed" for 7 lbs, I wonder if that's her electric weight? Her dry CG is spot on.

But it took a pound of lead (473gms) as one momma block under that white piece of foam, up against the forward bulkhead. It took almost as much if I used smaller weights packed in more forward, around the fuel tank. Opted to just keep the honker in place.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we fly!

Fixing Gripes: 10cc Ultra Stick

Today I dusted off the Evolution 10cc equipped Ultra Stick, which has yet to be maidened, and set her up for flight.

The electronics looked good. When I checked the bind and the throttle, rudder and elevator, the latter wasn't moving, and I smelled the invisible magic smoke. Further examination revealed that the elevator connection at the control arm was kinda frozen, stiff. I loosened it up, lubricated it. 

I removed the elevator servo, and it was hot and unresponsive. I replaced it with a generic Tianjin RC MG996 high torque metal gear digital standard servo, and all tested good.

Took her out to the backyard and she started right up, ran fine, still spewing oil. I let it run for a bit, ran the range of the throttle. She runs up fine, but still tends to delay on pulling back to idle then slowly come down. This is a sign the high needle is actually too lean. I didn't spend time on it today.

I decided that I wanted to just go ahead and replace the aileron servos as well, using the same MG996 servos.

Tomorrow I will attach the wing and run her up to see if I get the aileron flutter on the left.  Between the capicitor and the new servos I hope not. Then the next step is to see if I really need the 1kg of lead to make CG. Traditionally this is done dry,  but the fuel tank is far forward and adds a lot of weight forward of the CG. I think I will cheat that and try to keep her light.

First Flight of the Season

 

It feels like I got off to a late start this year... 

I usually fly almost all year around, but work this past year took so much of my time that I left most of my hobbies behind. Now that I am "on sabbatical"  between gigs, I have some time.

I updated the iX12, expecting that to derive any number of nightmares, but it actually went pretty flawlessly. I think. It may have this new trick where it needs to have the battery unplugged and plugged back in to turn on, but we'll see. I charged it up completely having let the batter die over the winter. Update done. Cleaned out the planes I killed last fall, no need to be reminded every time I scroll looking for today's aircraft.

I took the Eflite Alpha Sport 450 out, as the first plane I fly every season. It was my first real plane, the one I learned to fly some 11-12 years ago, and I know it so well that it's comforting to renew my thumbs every season, and settle the "new field jitters" when I fly somewhere I haven't before. I thought I had taken a photo at the field, but alas... I did take a pic of the Cubbie. I flew several packs on the Alpha, and then just one on the Cubbie. It was a bit gusty, so the Cubbie took a beating, but landed fine. The grass at Wason Pond, in Chester, NH, where I went today instead of hauling all the way out to Hudson, was long and clumpy, so I took off from the dirt on the baseball diamond. 8 packs in all, about 40 min of flight. The first flight I overcontrolled a little, but by the end I was hand launching with no issues. It really felt good. A dad with some kids had just finished flying a Blue Angels F-18 Kite, enjoyed the show and I invited them over for some show-and-tell!  They loved it, and it was good to see them so happy. The dad has found a new hobby!

Tomorrow I think it's time to get the 10cc Ultra Stick flight ready, see if I can solve the "flickering left aileron" problem. Then the 26cc Hanger 9 Pulse XT going. Think the two 30cc's will follow. I am scared of maidening the 10cc Spitfire... past being prologue, but that too will come. 

And not let us forget the babies, my helis!!!!

Time to get up, clean up and tune up!

Ah, the smell of flying season, mmm... kinda musty.

Its time to start making things happen for the 2021 flying season. Renewed my AMA a couple months ago, but for no real reason didn't renew my club membership until today.  Been thinking about getting around to it for a couple of weeks as the weather warmed and the winds settled down. Getting my club application in today, made me a little itchy to shake off the COVID and winter blues, get downstairs and instead of just walking by, start cleaning and organizing the workshop, see what batteries I killed leaving them charged, and which engines are going to give me crap, see if I can get over being annoyed at how little it took to put serious hurt on the Waco I still haven't gotten around to wanting to fix.

At the top of the stairs to the basement. If I am running engines out back through the basement bulkhead I cat free the basement and then make sure no one listens to them crying to be let in.

Ah, the doorway to heaven. Or hell. Depends on my mood and how many parts my returning aircraft come down in. Painted the pole as people kept running into it.

I didn't even bother to put anything away last fall.... its a mess.

Here is my conundrum to start the season. My beloved UNFLOWN Hangar 9 Ultrastick 10cc that I have waited years to get and fly, is two pounds over her designed dry flying weight.  I put the servos for the rudder and elevator aft as the equipment bay, as you can see here, is packed. This puts a bit of weigh aft out on a long lever. I had to put that 1 lb (500gm) lead weight there to get her on CG. Literal dead weight. Between that and the oversized receiver/ignition pack, she comes in at 9 lbs dry, her design weight is 7 lbs. I could save maybe a quarter pound (250gm) or so if I changed to a smaller LiPO. I am not sure it would save even that much, forget how much it weighs. Half that 5200 mAh is more than adequate, and I could always go with to swappable smaller LiPOs. I am pretty sure I am going to do that. 5200 mAh is far more than a days flying would need. I could move the aft servos to the bay and remove the lead, but thats going to take a lot more work than it might be worth. I am going to add a capacitor, which I am not optimistic will solve the weird left aileron twitch. (These are the same servos but not in the same place, and I think a different receiver, so no idea why the same servo twitches. I also have a Tech Aero IBEC that may help. More on this problem here.  I have changed the servos before, and I have replacement ones on hand. I think I will step through it. Capacitor, IBEC, servos).

The tail servos aft.

I could squeeze those aft servos here, but still aft of CG, albeit not so far out on the lever.

I really don't want to go there... That block and spar support the satellite receiver.

The Waco spent all winter sitting there after I hurt her. I just don't want to find out what its going to take to fix her, but I do love this plane, so it won't be long.

And then there is the Spitfire and my long history with them... she has yet to be maidened and won't be until I get some fresh hours under my thumbs.

I am off tomorrow afternoon.  

I am feeling the call.

It is time.

Finally, a flying day!

Dark, heavy, but high clouds threatened rain, but the drought made this unlikely, a coy deception. Pretty much windless, and a comfortable mid 60s temps, I had been itching, and Saturday afternoon was time to scratch!

Bill Renault brought out a couple of fun old school classics. This nitro 2-stroke of course flew marvelously, that sweet nitro smell and soft purr powered her through the skies effortlessly!

He also had the Sig 4 Star 120 with its awe worthy 4-stroke. 

Bill flies 72 mHz. He clearly enjoys flying and talking about flying! He was wonderful company at Wagner. Clarence, who I swear lives in the filed shed, was there since morning, and hung around to chat. Always nice to see him. 

Anthony was there too, flying the little mosquito of a 370. This is an old pic as I don't think he stopped flying the whole time he was there. I suspect he flew the bigger one too, getting in 14 flights! Perfect temps and winds for these guys! He reminded me I need to be bringing my helis out!

I got in about 5 flights, most about 10 min as the engine is still running rich in flight, or theirs an airleak in the carb path. Starts fine, runs with power but in the air she starts popping and running "wet".  She is always an amazing flier! I plan tomrebuild the carb, not sure if I have done that before. She used to be an amazing engine, an RCGF 26cc. At some point this year this rich running airborne became a problem.

Brought the Hangar 9 Ultra Stick out to maiden. Engine ran just fine, but the Twitch Curse showed up, so I grounded her on the runway. Just drove her around a bit. Man, I really wanted to fly her...

Its Baaack... The servo twitch curse.

The Ugly Stik had this aileron twitch I could not get rid of... it eventually lead to the loss of the Stik. I guess I haven't fired up the Ultra Stik with the wing on, because I would have noticed this twitch curse has come to the new plane. I had her out at the field and set her up, excited to maiden her, even drove her around to range test her, but I noticed that at idle and WOT the twitch showed up, curiously not in midrange. The video doesn't capture the worst of it, it would occasionally go full deflection. The only parts that are the same are the Hitec HS-485HB servos, except for the elevator which is new. Odd, the left aileron is again affected, and the elevator! The connections are all solid but will get a second look. These are usually voltage issues.

Needless to say, I grounded her, "fool me once" sorta thing. I am thinking about the facts: only the servos are the same. I ave no idea why its the left aileron again... The elevator is a brand new servo; the old one locked up and failed without the engine on. I am thinking these discontinued Hitec HS-485HB are the problem, but possibly fixable. The other clue is that with the engine off they are perfect, no twitch, rock solid, function perfectly. This suggests the ignition is somehow involved. Now the ignition is in perfect condition, and this is a different engine, the EVO 10cc and its CDI. Its a different battery from the old Stik. This aircraft has a simple RCexl opto remote kill switch, not sure if it was on the Sbach or the Stik... 

So here's my plan. I can't afford to change out the aileron and elevator servos to higher end digital metal gear servos at about $35+ a pop (I would need 4), so I am working up the food chain.

1. A capacitor.  The theory here is that the twitch is from voltage spikes and drops, and the milliamps stored in the capacitor acts to buffer this letting those variations come from the capacitor per se, and not the reciever. This plugs into a spare port on the reciever. I am not sure they work, and people seem to find them controversial as to their effectiveness or need for that matter. This one from Amazon for $8 delivered (had a coupon, cost me $3).

2. Tech-Aero Ultra IBEC. This is what I prefer to the simple RCexl remote opto switch. The optical switch is supposed to isolate the electrical noise from the ignition and keep it out of the reciever by using a optical interrupt (the electrical signal gets turned into an optical (photon) signal, back to electrical, with that light isolating the two sides from on another, or something like that). It runs about $17. The Ultra IBEC instead filters the signal 4 times through various capacitors and then stabilizes the power to remove any noise. I honestly don't know if these have any functional differences otherwise. They both could be replaced from a noise cleanup standpoint, by using a ignition only battery. Clearly if this is an ignition noise issue the RCexel switch is not stopping it. Since I think it would, if the IBEC instead works, then its a voltage stabilizing issue that the capacitor could not solve.

3. Change the servos.  People knock "budget" servos, but honestly the only difference I have seen is initial quality. If they work out of the bag/box, they work fine, but yeah there are some junk brands out there so you have to know what you are buying. Reviews show these to be very reliable and I get 4 metal gear digital servos for a great price, $18 for 4. I have never had one that failed, even out of the bag. Someday when I can drop $150 on 4 name brand servos I may change them, but right now, this is the way to go.

I will probably end up doing all these things, leaving the Hitecs on the flaps, but one at a time to see what fixes the twitch. Something has to work...