Here's an old challenge of building free flight planes that my friend, Pilot Dave, and I use to do. You can find photos and descriptions of our competitions at:
www.rcplanepilot.blogspot.com
I challenge all readers and lurkers of this blog to build a set of functional floats for one of these free flight electric planes and video tape it landing in a pool of water. Or build a plane that will fly for 2 minutes or more and video tape.
Please send me photos and link of the video and I will gladly post it.
Next time the wind is a 0 MPH I will record a video of these birds (in the video) flying and post them.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Friday, November 02, 2007
Repairs after a nose dive
It's been two years since I have had a wreck (not counting screwing around with the Yellow Bee) and sadly . . . as all experienced pilots say:
"Everyone crashes. If you don't then you're not flying."
I have gotten too comfortable . . . I was in the process of landing after a ten minute flight using throttle maintenance, so I should have had plenty of power for landing. I was flying to an adjacent baseball diamond, a last minute decision, because of the wind direction and I had to cross the sun. I juiced the throttle to fly above the sun from my point-of-view to avoid being blinded . . . suddenly my plane dove -- I was 12 to 18 feet from the ground. I panicked. I over sticked and my plane spiraled. I could not tell if I was upside up or upside down.
To this day I wonder if my batt was to low and ESC cut power momentarily. That's the only way I can explain the dive.
The obvious solution would have been to land in the grass next to me so I could see my plane and guide it to the ground safely.
Above is what my plane looked like after the hard nose dive and somersaulted across the grass field at a local park. As you can see this is a critical spot that endures a lot of stress, because it houses my motor mount. The prop didn't fair to well either.
Typically the longer it takes for an epoxy to cure the heavier the epoxy weighs. It is best to use as little epoxy as possible, but in case like this I was generous. You should wipe off all excess glue immediately. Ninety-five percent of the time CA glue or 5-minute Epoxy is the best choice for park flyers, but this time I used 24-hour epoxy because I need this bond to be very strong. This slower epoxy also allows me to set everything perfectly and check and then recheck.
The best way to tighten up the sides in a glue job like this is criss-cross your needles at opposing angles. This will not only pull the sides closer together, but also hold them better. I should have done that more on this job, but if you look at the top end you will see that I did.
I aim to fly again as soon as the weather permits.
"Everyone crashes. If you don't then you're not flying."
I have gotten too comfortable . . . I was in the process of landing after a ten minute flight using throttle maintenance, so I should have had plenty of power for landing. I was flying to an adjacent baseball diamond, a last minute decision, because of the wind direction and I had to cross the sun. I juiced the throttle to fly above the sun from my point-of-view to avoid being blinded . . . suddenly my plane dove -- I was 12 to 18 feet from the ground. I panicked. I over sticked and my plane spiraled. I could not tell if I was upside up or upside down.
To this day I wonder if my batt was to low and ESC cut power momentarily. That's the only way I can explain the dive.
The obvious solution would have been to land in the grass next to me so I could see my plane and guide it to the ground safely.
Above is what my plane looked like after the hard nose dive and somersaulted across the grass field at a local park. As you can see this is a critical spot that endures a lot of stress, because it houses my motor mount. The prop didn't fair to well either.
Typically the longer it takes for an epoxy to cure the heavier the epoxy weighs. It is best to use as little epoxy as possible, but in case like this I was generous. You should wipe off all excess glue immediately. Ninety-five percent of the time CA glue or 5-minute Epoxy is the best choice for park flyers, but this time I used 24-hour epoxy because I need this bond to be very strong. This slower epoxy also allows me to set everything perfectly and check and then recheck.
The best way to tighten up the sides in a glue job like this is criss-cross your needles at opposing angles. This will not only pull the sides closer together, but also hold them better. I should have done that more on this job, but if you look at the top end you will see that I did.I aim to fly again as soon as the weather permits.
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