Aloha and Welcome to my small speck of cyberspace! Dec 8, 2010 is the birth date of my blog. Never had one before, but my son encouraged me to have one, and it seemed like a good way to at least keep a log of my RC airplane building and flying. With the initial design kicked off by my son, I'll carry on from here and have fun with it. Now that I have it, I will use it to also keep track of my oil painting efforts, and any other ideas, hobbies, travels, or whatever else that come up. LIFE IS GOOD!

Update on 02/25/2011. It's been a few months since I began this blog, and I am enjoying creating and having it! I like documenting the things I have done in my hobbies, and sharing with my small family. I think Jer and Tad actually view it fairly regularly, as a means to see what I've been up to lately. At worst, it serves as a reference for my own use.

Update on 12/22/2011. This blog stuff is habit forming. My blog is a year old now, and I make an entry about every other day or so as that seems to be the frequency of doing something in one of my hobbies. Like my hobbies, this blog is a lot of fun, and it has become in itself another hobby that I enjoy.

Years are flying by...update on 01/11/2013. Still enjoying maintaining this blog even though hardly anyone sees it. I don't advertise it anywhere or to anyone, and it is mainly just a way for me to keep my own notes and thoughts on my flying, painting, and cars. If a stranger happens upon it, I think it is by pressing NEXT at the top of the current blog they are visiting, lol. It's a great device for me.

August 2014: still here! Took up flying RC helicopters one year ago and got hooked. Had flown micro Helis up to then, but got serious with 450 size for a couple months, then bought the Goblin 500 and Gaui X5 . Also got my Boxster in April 2013. Most importantly, Ariel was born 12/02/12 followed by Skylar 07/20/13, and they are little beacons of joy in our lives. Life is indeed good!!!

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Failure to Launch!

Bravata in the Scion XB!

It's so funny that my largest plane fits inside my smallest car!

Yup, 112" wingspan and 82" long fuselage!

Big Beautiful Bird!

Made up the Coke and tail stickers (variation in color
of the Hawaiian Airlines logo)  myself on the Cricut machine!


The pics came out good, that went well to start the day, then I could not get the DLE-30 to run right.  It would start easy peasy, but would falter when throttle approached half throttle and more.  I tried every manner of setting on the high and low needles.  Finally I gave up after over 2 hours of sweating in the sun and not getting any satisfaction.  Went home, got the manual out, and reset both needles to factory settings.  Tried again to tune the engine in the backyard.  No joy.  But while doing so, I observed a random flickering in the red dummy light that shows optokill and ignition functionality.  Resorted to asking for help on RCUniverse.  I thought it was either the ignition, optokill switch, or unintended mixing in my transmitter programming.  After much testing and isolation, determined the ignition and optokill AND batteries AND heavy duty switch were all AOK.  So what the heck.  I investigated mixing in my xmitter and found NO inadvertent mixing with the kill switch channel.  Then someone on RCU suggested increasing the throw on the optokill switch channel.  Doesn't seem to make sense, but I went to programming and found that the optokill channel (5) had NO EPA settings.  Default was 0%.  I increased it to 100% like almost any servo would be set at, and lo and behold the red dummy light ran steady for 5 minutes and did not flicker at all, so I knew the engine would now have good ignition power and would run well.  I tried the engine in the backyard again, and it ran like a top, strong, and smooth, with excellent transition from idle to WOT!  Great news, and can now maiden the Bravata with high expectations, lol.
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