sbsam

Hi Flyboy25, what muffler did you buy? Pitts?

flyboy25

My Feedback: (5)

Sbsam, you can use the stock muffler that comes with your engines if you mount the motor in the stock mounting position. I am running a four stroke so I dont worry about mufflers. A pitts muffler is definetly the way to go if your going for the cleaner look, you might also want to rotate the engine so its horizontal.

faulknej

My Feedback: (9)

Ifinally got to fly mine today. The gusty winds bounced it around a little, but mostly it flew really well. The first flight was for trimming, and approaches, about 5 minutes. Used less than 1/3 of the tank. Iadded more expo, as it seemed twitchy to me. I've never used expo before, so Imay have been banging the sticks. Ididn't pay attention on the second flight, soIdon't know if more was good, or not. LOL

The second flight I played with it a little, a couple loops and some inverted flight, which I've never done before, except on the sim. Flew it inverted around the pattern once, seemed like it flew fine with no elevator input needed. Imay have been too excited to notice though. This plane flies a lot faster than my trainer, which is all I've had to fly for two months.

The Magnum 91 FS had good power for a rich break-in setting, most of the flight was around half throttle. Idid notice a little sluggishness at the top of the loops, but I don't think I put full throttle to it til I was into the loop. I'll have to work on that, I guess. I'm running an APC 13X8 and CP 15%, getting 9900RPM richened for flight. It sounds great whizzing by.

Both landings were nice and smooth with no bounces, owing partially to the 15 MPH headwind on final. I'll take all the help I can get. The GPextra landing gear Ibought for it worked well.

This plane is much bigger than anything I've flown before. Inoticed Iwas flying it farther out than I usually do. I'll have to work on that, too.

Thanks to the OP for introducing me to this plane, Iwould never had bought one if Ihadn't seen his.

maynardrupp

I flew mine with the new landing gear,(see previous posts), and it worked well. I purposely made a few hard landings,(believe that?), and I could actually see the gear spring out and return to its original position. 10 landings on decent grass and no deformation. This gear is a good answer to the landing gear problem with this airplane.

wingboz

I posted a question a few days back. Have not heard from anyone yet. I am thinking about getting a Phoenix Spitfire 40 for my next plane. Question is, has anyone of you all put one of these together and flown it? Could you maybe post some photos also? I would like to hear from someone.

Wingboz

faulknej

My Feedback: (9)

You might be better off making a new thread to ask your question. This thread has been going on a long time, and some folks may just ignore it if they don't own the Extra.The more threads the merrier, eh?

min$2crash

Faulknej:
Congrats on the successful maiden!
Based on my experience with a Saito 91 on this plane, I'd suggest that you try the APC 14x7. Its probably going to load the engine at about the same level, but may provide more low speed thrust (top of the loop). Someone on an unofficial Saito web page suggested that the 14x7 is the ultimate prop for the Saito 91. Now that I tried one I tend to agree.
Its enough pitch to provide the speed that this airframe needs for knife edge, while being low enough pitch to hover and climb out nicely. A good compromise for the Saito 91 IMHO. Very noticeably different from the 13x8 and 15x6 that I tried despite being "equivalent" using the "up 1 on pitch down 1 on diameter & vice-versa" rule of thumb.

Inverted is rock solid on this plane- glad/surprised you tried it for the first time on a maiden...!?!?!?! No guts, no glory.

Who is the cryptic "OP" that introduced you to this plane? I just can't figger the acronym. Probably feel real dumb when you solve the puzzle for me.

Anyway, welcome to a ton of fun with the Extra. Did you get a dry weight for your build?

Wheels down!

balsadust74

My Feedback: (3)

I have one last problem to resolve before my maiden flight, I can't quite get the travel distance on the elevators the same, especially on high rate, the one on the right side travels further up and the one on the left travels further down. I have the front of both servos facing the rudder to keep the push rods as short as possible. I noted that the push rod on the ride side has more of an angle to the servo and control horn but can't figure a way to keep it as level as the one on the left side of the plane. This is the first time I have used this type of control horn. I am used to the old triangle type with a couple of holes that you attach the push rod to. I have the same type of servo and same size in each side and am using a y harness to drive them. I thought about using two separate channels so that I could adjust the servo travel with the transmitter but I am already using this on the ailerons. I hope to fly this plane this weekend but don't dare put it in the air until this problem is resolved. Thanks in advance for your help.

faulknej

My Feedback: (9)

min, thanks for the encouragement. OP is Original Poster, the one who started the thread way back when. LOL

Iwas going to try a 14X6. I'll have to get one. Idon't know the Magnum will spin a 7 pitch as well as a Saito does, especially with only a half gallon through it.

Ireally like the Extra, but it's really fast for me, a noob, and it's twitchy as heck. I'm going to do the incidence change Bob has suggested, as it feels like I'm always adding down trim to it. I was surprised the inverted flight was so smooth(on the second flight, BTW). Iexpected to have to use a lot of up to maintain altitude, but I didn't.

Iflew it again on Sunday and Monday. Iwanted to verify the inverted flight characteristics. Iguess having to put in down trim flying upright converts to not needing up input when inverted. It is actually is easier for me to fly the Extra inverted. I can't wait for a day with less wind than we've been having lately. I'd like to see if the twitchiness would be less if the winds weren't gusting to 25MPH all the time.

Idon't know how to hover a plane, and I've only tried knife edge twice, both attempts resulting in spectacular crashes.It might be quite a few flights before Itry again. LOL

Dry weight was 7 lbs even, on my new digtal scale.

cmoulder

Which TX are you using?

How many channels on your RX?

If you are using 7-channel or above Futaba it is fairly easy to fix this with TX programming. Alternatively, you can use a Smart-Fly Equalizer or a Futaba MSA-10, or a JR Matchbox if you are using Spektrum/JR.

cmoulder

Are you using expo?

faulknej

My Feedback: (9)

Put the servo arms on the front, away from the rudder, it will decrease the angle some. Youwant to get the geometry of the arms as close to equal as possible. The more they are different, the less the elevator halves will track together.

Itried different length arms until I found the ones that would give me the best fit. I blocked the tail up and measured the distance from the bench to the hole in the servo arm on each side, changing arms until I got that distance really close to equal. The elevator halves travel together.

Ibought this plane in August, but I was hesitant to put it together because of this problem. My old radio didn't have a dedicated dual elevator capability. When I got my new radio, which is capable of dual elevators, I put the plane together. Equalizing the geometry of the servos made it a snap, almost no adjustments were necessary to get the elevator halves to move together.

The other way to do it is to mount both servos at the same height in the fuselage, then they will be a mirror of each other. A couple guys have done this, with pics to show how in this thread. Ithink it may be the only way to use a Y harness on the elevator.

Good luck on your maiden, Jim

faulknej

My Feedback: (9)

Yeah, I am. I have my dual rates both set to the same throws , with 25% expo on the low and 35% on the high, just to see if Icould tell a difference. Icouldn't. LOL My RDS doesn't do rudder expo, only elevator and aileron. If I buy an SD-10G, my wife will flip. The RDS is only two months old.

wingboz

Would like to start a thread about Phoenix Spitfire 40. Is there a thread on this model now? I DO NOT know the first thing about setting up a new thread. Maybe someone could help me with this!!

Wingboz

faulknej

My Feedback: (9)

Go back to the ARF or RTF page, where it lists all the threads. Just above the list, there is a "New Post" button. Click on it, put in a subject, i.e. "Phoenix Spitfire 40", and type in your question. You'll get answers.

maynardrupp

I am learning a lot about those "spoilerons". I have been using them both in Detroit, and here in Florida. When it is windy I generally just use the low rate, (10mm.), setting. So yesterday I set the transmitter down to get my hands free to put the airplane on the ground, picked up the transmitter and flew. I was trying to practice the AMA sportsman maneuvers. I was doing aweful and even worse. 2/3 of the way through I looked at the transmitter and was shocked to find the flap lever in full travel. This gives we 15mm. of spoilerons. Flipped the switch up and went through my practice much better. The point is that those 2 spoileron settings are not death defying and do kill the float on landing. From now on I will check the switch prior to takeoff. On my Spectrum DX7 transmitter that switch has a long arm and is easy to bump.

balsadust74

My Feedback: (3)

Would having one servos facing the front of the plane and the other facing the rudder help? I am using a Futaba 6XHs for the radio. Thanks again for your help and suggestions.

faulknej

My Feedback: (9)

Oops, Iforgot, I enlarged the hole for the lower servo to lower it's height 1/4 inch. This allowed me to get the correct angle on both arms.

faulknej

My Feedback: (9)

This is what mine looks like. Note the angle of the arms is similar, and the location of the servo arm holeis similar.

cmoulder

With throws like those pictured, you're going to need a heckuva lot more expo than that.

Don't be afraid to experiment a little. If the control surfaces are still more sensitive than you'd like, add some more expo. I routinely use 50-75% expo.

If you are running both those elevator servos with a Y connector, there is no way you're going to get them in synch mechanically. If you don't have the capability with your radio to slave one elevator servo off the other, you will have to use an electronic device such as one of those I recommended above. My favorite is the [link=http://www.smart-fly.com/Products/EqualizerII/equalizer.htm]Smart-Fly Equalizer II[/link].

Also, it is a poor practice to try to control rates with the amount of expo. Dual rates and expo are 2 different things. Read up on it [link=http://www.rmfm.org/dual_rates_and_exponential1.htm]HERE [/link] and it will get you a long way toward understanding what is going on and how to set up a plane properly.

min$2crash

Balsadust-
First welcome.... as you can tell we're having waaay too much fun for grownups!
Next- Ricklstubbz once pointed out that Phoenix offset the servos to make it easy to use a 4 channel radio with a simple Y harness to manage the 2 elevator servos. Because they will both go, say, CW on a simple non-reversing Y harness, you need one mounted horn up and one mounted horn down to get both elevators going up when the servos both go CW. This is not the normal mechanical setup for dual elevator servos- by having the servos "up and down" per the Phoenix instructions, you will introduce an asymmetry to the linkages that need to either be accepted by you or compensated electronically. Cmoulder tied his elevators together with a steel rod and uses one servo- a good mechanical solution. Many of us have put the two servos back to back, "horn up" to eliminate the asymmetry which still requires some kind of electronic reversal. To do it electronically, the above suggestions from cmoulder are all good, and probably easier, but if you want to make the most of what you've got....
I am pretty sure that you can use the PMIX function (there's two of them, pick one) to slave the second elevator servo to channel 2. I say this because I scanned the manual for your radio and page 37 even mentions this. The biggest downside is that you have to leave the elevator dual rate switch DOWN AT ALL TIMES to have the mixes working. If you flip it up, you could lose one elevator in flight!!!! The other limitation is that you can get the full throws to match this way, but will probably still see some small (flyable) L/R Elevator differences between neutral and full throws. I guess it all depends how picky you want to be. I have flown my Phoenix Extra with 1/16"-1/8" differences Left to Right and its still fun. It wouldn't do for pattern flying, but the roll effect of mismatched elevators is pretty small. Because of the "up and down" setup, you want each elevator servo on its own wire to the Rx Ch2 and Ch5 and then you want Ch5 to copy Ch2 ALMOST perfectly. The only (small) changes you will make to Ch5's response will be to compensate for the linkage asymmetry. Programming this is a tad complicated but doable if you think about it this way. Rough instructions follow:
Buy two extensions so that each ele servo can be wired direct to the Rx.
Plug one into Channel 2, leaving the other unplugged for now.
Setup your linkages as close to Horizontal as practical so that the asymmetry is minimized.
Setup the one elevator normally with reversing, travel(ATV) to your liking. You probably want to put in some expo (like -45?) because you can't go to high rate on ele as mentioned above.
Set channel 5 ATV to 0% up and 0% down. That way your gear switch position can't bugger anything up....!
Activate PMIX1 or PMIX2 with the beeping of buttons per the manual. Set the master to 2 and the slave channel to 5.
Make the second elevator servo channel 5 (That's normally the landing gear retract servo channel) by plugging that servo direct into channel 5 on the Rx.
Using the default 50% throws for now, check the direction of travel for the second elevator servo and reverse as necessary.
Adjust the subtrim on channel 5 until the elevators line up at neutral (center stick).
Adjust the PMIX value for each direction up from 50% until the endpoints of throw match.
In case you haven't done this before or recently, the two values for PMIX will show up depending on the direction of elevator (master)stick input.
If you do this right, I'd expect that the PMIX values will be pretty close to the ATV values for Ch2-m only differing by the asymmetry you're trying to correct.
Good luck.... it can be done! I'd give you a beep by beep but I have been doing Spektrum for 2 years now and would screw you up fer sure.

Philosophically- you may want to set the best match L/R at neutral (with subtrim CH5) and then maybe 60% of stick throweach way so that the max error L/R is minimized. If you just match neutral and endpoints as described above, you will have a larger deviation L/R somewhere about mid throw.

Cheers and, again, welcome.

balsadust74

My Feedback: (3)

min$2crash,
Thank you for all the time you spent looking up my radio, reading the manual and putting it and your knowledge on RCUniverse for me and others to learn from and better prepare our aircraft. I can tell you spend a good amount of time, so I wanted to let you know it is greatly appreciated. Also thanks to everyone else that has posted and uploaded pictures in regard to my post. It is great being able to use this site to ask questions that I would not be able to get answered where I currently fly.

Weather pending I may test fly the plane this weekend on low rates since the elevator are pretty closely matched and not use high rates because this is where the difference in the travel between the two elevators becomes great.

I will give try PMIX tonight and if that doesn't work for some reason will probably try the equalizer, as I don't want to cut another hole in the side of the airplane. If I could only afford a new 2.4GHz radio now, maybe at Perry next month I will get one. I will let you guys know how it turns out.

min$2crash

You're welcome, of course.
This topic was covered a while ago:
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_47...tm.htm#8684314
In posts on that page, Ricklstubbz seemed to conclude that it is not doable with the older 6ch Futabas with PMIX, but you can try what I suggested and see- or get the matchbox that cmoulder suggests.
Again, getting the control rods horizontal will minimize this asymmetry effect if you just want to fly "as is" mechanically. Even the 5-10 degrees of rise in the pushrods that I see in faulknej's recent pics will give quite a bit of up/down differential action as seen in any surface setup. Some use this to their advantage for mechanical aileron differential.

balsadust74

My Feedback: (3)

I hope to get the throws as close to prefect as possible, I don't compete but my flying style is IMAC aerobatics.

faulknej

My Feedback: (9)

Bob, Thanks for the advice. I'm not trying to control rates with expo. Iset the throws the same on both rates so I couldfeel only the difference in expo settings. This is the only way I could find on my radio tochange expo values on a switch. Once I get a feel for expo settings, I'll add the high rates back in. Ihad them set originally, but changed them to do the expo test.

My elevator servos work fine, the RDS works well for that.