Sweet Baby Pitts Model 12!

Looky what daddy is bring home!  On Facebook today when I ran across an add for this beautiful 57" Pitts Model 12., NIB, for a decent price. Short trip to pick it up tomorrow. Psyche!

Who doesn't love a Pitts? A bipe with a round cowl, two of my favorite things, in an aerobatic beast. I bought this thinking I could use one of the two 10cc engines I have, but I think this one deserves an  RCGF-USA 15cc engine, so I am saving my pennies. I have been searching for something like this, ever since I had a midair with my Eflite Ultimate (the original balsa; why the hell they went on to replace it with a foamie???). I am super excited that Todd made this available. Happy, happy, joy, joy!

My Baby is off to the shop...

My iX12 was developing some curious behaviors these past couple of weeks, and today simply quit working. 

Over a long hiatus of several weeks, I had left the transmitter off. Not in sleep, off. When I went to turn it on, nothing. Battery dead. I recharged it, and it wouldn't boot. Orange light came on, few seconds later flickered 2-3 times and turned off. Trial and error discovered that if I unplugged and replugged the battery, it would boot. This became our game. It would operate fine. Usually woke from sleep, but if I turned it off, I would have to unplug the battery. Putting off the inevitable, this lead to me putting a switch in inline with the battery to stop abusing the battery plug. Curiously it would start and operate fine if plugged into the charger. There's a clue in that.  Today it would not boot, just orange light, then flicker. Then off. Often it wouldn't even do that. If it did load, after loading Airware, it turned itself off.

So, today I am shipping her off the Horizon, most wonderful customer service by the way. Their wizards will magic it back to normalcy. Being non-flying for 2 weeks will kill me, but a boy gotta do what a boy gotta do. 

I still love this radio. This isn't a software issue, I am pretty sure it's hardware. It has behaved through Airware updates, until this last one. I too have a timer that doesn't display properly, though the audio countdown works.

2 weeks. Hmm... there's my DX7S I use for Real Flight sim... I have never actually flown with it though...

Great Flight Day!

The weather was perfect, occasionally gusty, but right down the runway North-to-South. I packed out the RCGF-USA 26cc PulseXT 60, and the newly repaired RCGF-USA 26cc Phoenix Waco F5C. Excited to get to the field, and fly, fly, fly!

Love this plane, the Pulse XT60! It flies sweet, is fast as anything I have, with power to spare!  

SO much frickin' fun!

Since replacing the sparky the  is back to her old reliable self again. What a joy to fly!

The Waco was ready to fly, and fly she did!

I flew her for a 20 min flight, getting her trimmed out. She needed a bit of nose down trim, but roll was fine. It was a bit gusty up high, but she handled it well. Take off has to be done gracefully, slow power up, just like the real Waco. She is squirrelly on the ground with a tremendous P-Factor (that's how she ended up in the weeds last year). A bit touchy in flight, but I was getting used to her and in the end was feeling very comfortable with her.

On my second take off as I was gaining speed she caught a clump of grass and tipped enough to ground strike the prop, breaking it, and flipped. This side of our field (the gasser side) is lumpy, adding to the take-off challenges. Fortunately I have another 18x10 at home, and she is already back up.

I expect to take this duo out again next flying day!

Spektrum iX12 Start Up Issue

 

My Spektrum iX12 has been more or less stress free and operating well, even through updates that raised issues for so many other users. Well, I had left my radio "off" for several weeks, and when I went to turn it on, it would not boot. Plugged it in, booted fine, and checked the battery, it was red line low. I charged it overnight, and it took its charge fine, as expected. But my iX12 has a new trick. It will no longer boot Android if it has been turned off. I have to unplug the battery, plug it back in, and then it will boot. Curiously, it will also boot every time if plugged in. I tried the original battery, same issues, so its not the battery. No one seems to know why this happened. It started before the last update. I thought maybe its an Android OS issue, but there is no way that I can see to repair or update the Android system, and to my knowledge it has never been updated. It is set to automatically update. I am using the latest Airware.

I didn't want to damage the battery plug in the radio, so I installed a switch I happen to have. It fits nicely in the battery bay, and isn't tall enough to block the cover. It works perfectly.

A simple Radio Shack On-Off switch. I had a couple of these sitting around unused.  Soldered it in-line, then covered it in shrink wrap.

Here it is in situ. The wires on the MaxxPack are long, allowing this. Took 5 minutes.

Here's hoping this problem gets solved, or I figure out a new way. I may buy another MaxxPack just to see if it somehow turns out to be a battery thing after all.

I would rather have a Spektrum NX10 radio.

Waco 26cc is ready to fly!

Yes! I have completed the repairs on the Waco and programmed it into the iX12 transmitter! Tomorrow I plan to get the engine running, and if time permits, get her to the club field to fly. The conditions look great.

I have admitted the complex curves with cote are not my strong point. Here I am halfway completed on the starboard side wing root, using a cote iron, and some heat gun.

It looks pretty darn good. Close up its not perfect, but that'll do.

Tank reinstalled, installed the battery tray (velcro).

Tank is offset a bit for the battery.

Aileron leads out, battery in, cozied up.

Flight ready!

In programming it I worked on the Eagle A3 stabilization system. Why does she have one? I don't know, just felt like it since the original had the doomed Spektrum Alpha6 system. Replaced that with an Orange Stabilized System, and replaced that with this A3. The gain pots are hard to adjust. I turn them up, to set the directions of the surfaces, and turn them down as low as I can, but they still seem a bit aggressive. I'll be careful. The pot screws don't move negative well. I have it set up on Flight Mode switch. 

Tomorrow, we fly!

Waco Repairs Day 3

I made a lot of progress yesterday on the Waco repairs. While my work is not always elegant, and I really have no idea how to lay down large areas of cote with complex curves, I did a pretty decent job on this project!

The port side of the fuse had one minor cote cut out where I made a small sheet repair.

You can see the reconstructed wing root surface here, painted red. I didn't feel like cote-ing over.

Managed to match the curve nicely.

This is the starboard side. this required massive puzzle reconstruction because my skill set does not include forming balsa sheet into complex curves. Its not fully apparent here but there is a continuous S curve along the side through the wing root. The patch work came out smooth and follows the contours nicely. Spackle smoothed the remaining cracks and crevices. Allowing this to set overnight before a light sanding and ironing on the cote.

As I feared, I didn't manage to align the port wing root hardpoint and its wing tab. This happened because of a curious "oversight". See that piece of vertical wood with the hold in it on the left of the hardpoint and screw? So that fit perfectly, both on the tab side, and almost on the bulkhead (you can see it duplicates part of the wood its attached to). That hole in the wood also clearly has red on it from the cardboard wing tube guide; that indicates it should be in FRONT of the tab, not behind. This assembly of the hardpoint and this piece of wood fit so nearly perfectly in the spot I decided to go with it hoping the alignment would be spot on as a result. Later I would realize that this piece of wood was certainly on the WRONG SIDE OF THE AIRCRAFT. Nothing survived of the starboard side internal attachment of the hardpoint so I couldn't match fit it, but the clues were obvious I had repaired this wrong. So, no surprise the hardpoint and the wing root tab did not align. I popped out that piece of wood with the hole in it and discarded it, and with less difficulty than I expected, extricated the hardpoint, aligned it properly and reinstalled it.

Perfect. The port wing attachment hardpoint after realignment repair. Put a cross piece between the hardpoints spanning the fuse, will strengthen this with the goal of distributing any forces across both hardpoints. It does not touch the stringers underneath.

The underside, sanded and sealed with thinned epoxy (like fuel proofing). 

Wanted to seal the spackle from moisture. The lower (port) side is the side that externally took severe sheet damage that required extensive puzzle piece repair. It came out awesome. You can see the complex curves.

As admitted, my large complex curve cote skills are lacking, but this came out decent. I applied 3 layers of cote to strengthen the underside, having decided not to fiberglass it.

The underside is also done!!!

This whole repair project is going much better than I had ever imagined. Not wanting to deal with the complexity of the repair, and worried it was trashed inside, I had set it aside all fall, winter and spring. I am pleased this has gone so well, can't wait to finish up that starboard side, put the wings on, start her up and FLY!

Waco Repairs Continue Day 2

The wing tube was really just a pair of cardboard guides. All of the wing lift forces were transferred to the fuse only at the two wing mounting lock tabs, secured with one screw on each side used to mount and dismount the wings. Any yaw torque on the wings was transfered to the thin balsa sheeting and stringers, not capable of withstanding that. So when the weeds yawed the wings they tore the sheeting and stringers and the serious damage resulted from a light force applied just wrong. I am replacing them with a carbon fiber tube that traverses the fuse and is firmly secured in all planes. Its not going anywhere.

Ugly patch work. Replanted the formed pieces that had been attached to the cote that laid over it when it was fractured. Lots of epoxy on curved surfaces will be very hard to sand.

As discussed above, the wing mount hardpoint was more firmly attached to the port side, ripping out the entire underside it was attached to. The Starboard side mount popped without taking the fuselage sheeting with it..

I am not entirely confident that the wing mount hardpoints are properly placed and aligned, but that sucker is firmly epoxied now. I would go on to strengthen the surrounding structures for more support. 

Here you can see the carbon fiber wing spar tube being measured in place. It was nicely perpendicular to the midline. I am sure its aligned properly.

Now installed. You can see the tube is perfectly aligned with the frame. Note that the port (lower) wing hardpoint is against the tube, but the starboard one (top) has a couple of mm of space. I am not confident these are aligned. They are placed where the nearby attached parts made them fit. They may not have been aligned before but worked.

To act as a hardpoint for the wing tube I installed a dowel in front of the wing tube, epoxied in full contact with the wing tube and a frame abutting the bottom tray. The wing tube is going to affect fuel tank fit, but we will deal with that later. This firmly transfers forces to the major fuselage structures rather than  just a few stringers and sheeting.

That heavily epoxied ares sanded as best as I could.

Spackled, done for the day to allow all the sparkling a good 24 hr dry before hand sanding smooth.

This repaired area underside was more patch worked than the side was. Thought I had a pic, but alas here it is spackled. After sanding I plan to apply a thinned coat of epoxy, and then will put a Sheet of cote across the stringers there. I am considering laying down a sheet or two of fine fiberglass onto provide a lot of structural strength. I think that may be needless, and add more weight than benefit.

So tomorrow will be telling. I will test fit the wings and see if I will need to come up with a new way to secure them to the fuse if the hard points don't allow an aligned fit. The space difference between the tube, which is true,and the mounting hardpoints suggests this isn't going to go well.