Yak it up!

Had 3 flights with the Yak 54 yesterday.  All landings were from the west due to workers on the east end of the field to harvest sod, and luckily a light breeze came from the east to make landings easier!  The OS 120 ran fine, and the Yak flew well.  I was a bit rusty due to flying too many electric planes and choppers recently, but all went well.  Speaking of choppers, I flew the 130X just once and was downed by a bee!  Yes, as impossible and unbelievable as it sounds, a bee kept flying around my face and lid of my cap, continually getting in my vision!  I ended up moving around to lose it, but could not, and finally lost concentration and crashed from about 20' high.  Ended up stripping a main gear and the D gear.  Luckily I had just got a new main gear in the mail the day before, and had several extra D gears in the parts bag.  I repaired the 130X and tested it in the back yard...good to go again!

Quantum Improvement

Created a new fave painting this AM!  I feel I made a quantum leap improvement in how I paint leafy trees and bushes.  Next one will be even better.  I can already see things to improve, but this one is a feel good painting.  Main thing to remember for me is to have very light touch and to use the right amount of thinner to highlight the trees and bushes with color.  Good step forward.

Heavenly Hues

This makes my 77th painting, 6th for 2013!

FINALLY Painted Again!

Gosh it was a long layoff.  I put my painting equipment away in mid January to build the Bravata, finished that a month or more ago, and have just been too lazy to paint.  I watched Bob Ross in the interim though, maintained a spark, and today lit the fire and finally painted again.  This is my own creation, using colors I had in my head during the layoff.  Will use them again because I love em....shades of lavendar and orange.  This one came out ok for the first painting in 8 months, but I do need practice again.   The colors are more vivid than the photo picked up.  I believe this is painting #76, and 5th one for 2013.

Sherbet Peaks

Forgeting the Flight Log!

I flew on Sat Sept 21, and Th Sept 19.  On Th, I think I flew the Stinger II, 130X and MCPX.  On Sat, I flew only the 130X and MCPX, all 9 packs, before it began to rain.  I assembled the SNAFU to fly, but heard the tune of the slowly increasing pitter patter twack on the covering of the wings.  At that point, I put the assembled SNAFU into the truck bed and headed home.  On Th, all went well with a couple flights of the Stinger II.  On both days, the small helis were great, no crashes  and it is getting to be more and more fun, still very challenging, and requiring full and constant attention while in the air.

Bravo Bravata!

Oh yeah, I cured my engine running probs with a new RCEXL optokill switch in the Bravata.  The first (new) one is defective and deserves a hammer death, or at least being returned to the vendor for replacement.  The dummy light for the ignition did not blink an iota today, which if I did not see, I would have known via a dying engine.  Where I got max of two flights per day on each of the first three days of flying this bird, today I got in 4 flights with nary an issue.  I am loving this big bird.  So graceful and impressive in the air.  It looks real up there and creates instant nostalgia on low slow flybys!

I landed twice with no flaps, and twice with half flaps.  Due to a sprinkler on the West end of the runway, I made my landings on the sod farm.  The Bravata loves landings, holding its tail feathers up after the main landing gear have touched terra firma.  The mix of down elevator with half flaps at low throttle seems to be about right.  With this mix, the plane has almost no pitch up when the half flap is deployed.  Takeoffs are easy too, leaving ground in about 25' with very little throttle.  The rolls are a little faster now, but still slow and easy, after I maxed out the upward movements against the hinges AND decreased the aileron differential on the down aileron.  The Bravata loves to loop, and inverted flight requires surprisingly small down elevator input.  And it's pretty awesome seeing this huge plane do knife edge pretty effortlessly, with the nose slightly high.  Stall turns are easy peasy.

LOVING IT!

Also flew 2 packs through the 130X!

Gloomy Day but Fun Flying!

It was a pretty ugly day that seemed like a good day in the middle of Winter rather than a late Summer day!  Cool in the 60's, grey, damp, but winds under 3mph.  Tad, Quang, and I flew...where was everyone.  Stephen flew for a little bit till he totalled a foamy, and Ken came a little later.  I flew my MCPX twice, 130X four times, and Star four times.  While I had my Stinger II, I did not unpack it due to the threatening rain in the distance that never came over the field.  Tad had four packs through his new Red Goblin 500, and it looked smooth and pretty.  Also flew his Kaos Two.  Quang flew his glow 700 and also Trex 700, what a great chopper pilot.  Also flew his very fast Revolver on 8 cells...easily quicker than the Kaos Two.

Flight Log: 09/12/13

Got in one flight with the Sbach but the JB boys were vacuuming the farm intensely at the north end where our runway is.  So I flew 4 packs through the 130X and 3 packs through the MCPX.   Just one low intensity crash with the 130X when I got disoriented once, but no harm done.  Did not put the MCPX in the ground at all, but it is vibrating a lot and needs a new main shaft or something else to calm it down again.  At least it still flies.  Beautiful weather, nobody from the club there.  Two non-KRCA guys were there but they had AMA so I let them fly as my guest.  One says he has the KRCA membership form and just has to get it in to me.  Both are apparently members of the FlyAways up in Hillsboro, but one moved to Salem and he intends to join our club.  Both are full scale pilots!

All Electrics Today

I went to mow the field but it was already done, so I just flew, flew, flew.  Went through all my packs for the Star, 130X and MCPX.  That is 14 packs of at least 4 minutes each.  Had a couple crashes of the MCPX and 130X.  Craziness overcame me and I tried a loop with the MCPX.  My timing was bad, I did not hit reverse pitch at inverted, more like on the way down.  Should have hit full up or full down while aiming vertically down, but did not think fast enough.  All I did was shut throttle.  I think I bent or split the main CF shaft.  I took it out at home and tried to wick in CA to strengthen it, but there is still a good vibration in the chopper.  Still flyable though.  For the 130X, I got behind me and lost perspective down very low.  It landed skidding with no direct impact, and I took off again with no apparent ill effects!  Getting better and better with choppers, as I was doing many many circles and 8's and fairly low passes.  Might need a bigger chopper to see it better!

Weekend Flying

I flew on Sat and Sun, with the Bravata, MCPX, and 130X.  On both days, I only got 2 flights each with the Bravata due to some malfunction of the ignition.  After two flights, I start the engine up and it dies.  Thinking it is just a low idle, I up the idle and the engine dies again.  Then I view the dummy ignition light, and see that it once again is randomly flickering off momentarily, which of course kills power to the ignition, and then the engine dies.  After this happened the first day last week, I thought it was programming of the xmitter that was the cause...I had not input an EPA for the kill switch channel.  So I did that and thought I had the cure.  Then yesterday it happened again after two flights.  Came home and scratched my head, and decided to assign the kill to the landing gear channel instead of Aux 1.  This is how it is assigned on my Sbach, so I thought this indeed would be the cure.  Happy after two flights today, the problem reared its ugly head yet again.  Mike thinks I need a bigger battery on the ignition since I said I am using a Nicad at 4.8V and only 600mah.  At home after flying today, I took that batt out and installed a 2500 mah 6V NiMh battery on ignition instead.  Let's see if that does the trick.

On the chopper side, I had a bunch of packs through both the 130X and MCPX this weekend, and am feeling pretty good about flying around in forward flight.  I made quantum strides ever since owning the MCPX that Tad gave me.  Soon who knows, maybe I will try flying backwards!

BTW Jer came out today/Sun and flew his choppers, Hyper Taxi, and the Showtime.  Great fun!

5X *, 4X 130X, 5X MCPX

Ok who deciphered that title?  I went flying today and had 5 flights/packs on the Star, 4 flights/packs on the Blade 130X, and 5 on the Blade MCPX, haha!  Fourteen packs in all, and I was at the field around 9:30 till noon.  Only Ken was there, the whole time.  With all those packs through the choppers, I am proud to announce that I did not crash even once today...quite a feat, lol!  I did lose orientation on the 130X a couple times, but managed to right the ship so to speak, and did not meet terra firma.  I had lots of passes back and forth in front of me, as well as many circles both clockwise and counter.  I also flew directly towards me quite a few times.  Great fun and maybe I should eventually get a larger chopper since I might actually be able to not crash it!  I like my yellow overglasses that block blue and UV, and sure brighten and clarify the plane and chopper in both grey skies as well as partly cloudy.

NOTE: by 1:30 the skies darkened with thunderstorms bringing rain, lighting, and thunder for the rest of the day!  I was so lucky to get all that flying in.

Stinger has a Stinger Again

Last time out the Stinger II stinked due to YS 63 problems.  I thought about it a lot...the first YS 63 had the same prob as the replacement I installed.  So that meant a tank or fuel line issue, or a check valve issue.  When I had the tank out for the engine switch, all the lines and stopper looked good.   I decided to switch the check valve with the one that came with my used YS 110.  I did this the other day and ran the engine yesterday at home, and it ran well.  Took the Stinger to the field today, and it was awesome.  It ran so well that I could again hear the plane whistle on low flyby's...music to my ears!  I was able to take 4 flights with great enjoyment.  After the first flight, I moved the elevator control rod one hole closer on the control horn to get a little more responsiveness.  Also reduced the expo from 70% to 40%.  Feels more reactive and positive now.

Before flying the Stinger, I got in all 5 batt packs on the MCPX and all 4 packs on the 130X.  Both flew well.  I dumped the 130X a few times due to disorientation, and knocked off most of one tooth on the beveled gear on the main rotor.  Still flies fine, and I will get a replacement, or ask Jer to get one for me.  It hardly sounds different with most of that tooth missing, lol.  I was able to do many circles, figure 8's, and much flying towards myself.  Pretty much a quantum step forward today.  Some circles were the tiny level ones and others were the fast forward  and banked big ones!

Dean came today and flew his Star MkII with great delight.  We both enjoy our purchases from Dick!

UPDATE: Found genuine YS check valves online so I ordered a couple.  Geesh it works out to about $10.50 each, including the shipping!  Talk about a ripoff.

Beautiful Bravata Maiden Flights!

My maiden went WELL today!!! It was probably my most relaxful maiden ever, thankfully. I will get to the point people on RCU want to hear about....aileron trim. Mine required just one click of right aileron trim, just ONE. Recall though that I warped my wings as close to resembling each other with my heat gun at the very beginning of assembly, which was Jan 2013 for me. Apparently that was enough, and it stayed put all this time while sitting in the house during assembly. We'll see how the sun affects the wings over time. Elevator trim was....none needed! Nor rudder. My engine started easy peasy and ran like a clock for both flights. I took the plane down the runway to test ground handling first, and it is very positive. Steered straight as can be, and turned around in half the width of our grass runway, which is 50' across. With that done, I brought her to the east end of the runway and took off. Gradually applying throttle, she ran straight down the runway with nary a rudder input, and she rose off ground before I hit half throttle, and in just at most 25'! Surprised me to be up so fast. She flies docile as can be. I think this plane could easily be used for a trainer! I did a number of inside loops (hey my wings did NOT fold), cuban 8's, rolls, inverted flight, and knife edge. All are predictable and graceful. Note that all rolls are basically slow rolls with this large wingspan. I will see if I can get more throw. It would be cool if the flaps could act both as inner ailerons while also being flaps...that would help the roll rate. Then again, this is a high wing plane with a huge span and not a 3D plane. Landings...piece of cake. I did not use flaps on both landings and wow the plane still comes in slow and drops in light as a feather. Winds were less than 3mph for my flights. I did deploy half and full flaps during the flights. There is lots of pitch up so I will mix in some down elevator with the flaps for further tests. I really like this plane now. My buddies at the field all oohed and aahed over it too. Might have to wipe off their drool from the Bravata! Few pics from today follow.

Some pics show how little trim my ailerons needed. These pics are with 2 clicks right trim. I later reduced it to one by recentering the left flap down a few more percentage points in my xmitter.

Note to self:  Next day, I programmed in -10% elevator with the flaps, so that means the elev will go down 10% of whatever the flap deflection is.  I had to give quite a bit of down elevator yesterday when I deployed the flaps.  I think the -10% amounts to about 3/16" deflection, not much, and it should be a good starting point for the next flights.  Also, I changed the aileron differential from 80% (down travel compared to up travel) to 90% in an attempt to get more roll authority.  Also moved the right flap up a couple more percent so it matches the right aileron even better, and I centered the left aileron down a percent or two to match the wingtip trailing edge and the left flap trailing edge.  Just trying to reach a good compromise on trailing edge settings to make it all look and FLY good, without right aileron trim that is unsightly and common among other Bravata's discussed on RCU.

Day of Perfection

What a gorgeous day, starting with coolish 65F and warming to 88F, with blue sky and sunshine all the while.  Light winds up to 5mph early and up to 9mph after noon were variable in direction (wind speeds based on my new mini anemometer!)  I flew the Toledo Special four times, the Star for all four packs, the MCPX thrice, and the 130X once.  I left the house around 7:30PM and got home around 2PM, haha.  It was just lots of fun.  Delivered the NIB RV-8 to Joe and met a new member Ralph.  Got him introduced to those present, and he learned a lot by talking to all of us as a group and also individually.  I think he will suspend his work-in-progress, a scratch Cessna 182, in favor of a cheaper ARF to get him in the air faster.  Looks like he will arrange training from Mike with the club trainer plane.  John DiG came with a nice clipped wing Cub that he made full span and later reworked to the current clip wing config.  Powered with a Saito 120 it was just a real nice flying plane.  John has a way with flying at low speeds in a very realistic manner.  My TS flew like a charm, and I had fun with the Star in both the early calm air and the later windier crosswinds.  Loved the time at the field today.