Dewalt17

I have finally come to the conclusion to take my speed brakes off my Nexstar for good. I have close to 50 flights with her now and I am pretty comfortable with the plane. My first flight with them removed had me puckering up pretty good. I took off and could not get the plane trimmed, it just wanted to go down,down,down. I didnt have enough trim left in my radio so i brought her back in, and used every last inch of the runway to do so.(HOT. HOT. HOT.)[X(]

I fixed the servo rod to get the trim I needed. I also took out the 3/4 ounce of weight in the nose. Took her up again. She flew great. Gained a little speed but the big difference was doing loops and rolls. MUCH BETTER!!!! Its almost like a different plane. Landing didnt seem any hotter than with the flaps on. It may slow down faster with them on but i dont notice much. I have been using much more throttle control when landing and i believe that is why. In the beginning I would cut the throttle and forget about my left hand, it was ALL elevator and aileron. That made for some pretty hot landings and I guess the flaps helped a lot. Since I have been using more throttle control when landing I dont think the flaps really matter much.

Next comes the wing tip stabilizers, gonna fly with them on for now, but im sure a "wild hair" will pop up again soon.

Happy Landings,

Sean

Geistware

My Feedback: (16)

I am glad your new experence with your old plane went well!

Dewalt17

Yeah I figured she is about worn out. At least that is what im telling my wife. I told her those trainers just arent built to last. I said my second plane should at least last me a year before it wears out. Not sure if she will buy that one?????

dkf1979

I'm still waiting for my nexstar to arrive. EBAY SUCKS!!

BadAtti2de

Hey Dewalt,
I took both spin and breaks off at same time and really did not have to trim it too much. It seemed to fly the same just not slow down as much. I am already up to 4 planes and have only been flying since beginning of January.

SENZA

MY instructor left mine off from day one,he helped me assemble it and all the time im thinking o shi.. , but it was no problem, in fact i use a little power when landing any way, but if it wasnt for the software i would probably telling you about the horrific crash i had lol.............fly on

Shamas

Ok, what's the diff between a Nexstar without the brakes & cuffs vs an Alpha 40 or an easy 2 or ? ? Is a Nexstar without a more "advanced" plane?

ifixairplanes

My Feedback: (9)

its not a more advanced plane. with them on it just makes it more stable. i told senza to leave them off because i didnt think they are needed to learn to fly. the plane fly beautifally without them. We did leave the drooped LE at the tips on though. Still trying to get him to take them off...lol. Also 2nd flight we disabled the AFS thing. Make the plane fly like crap IMHO. senza's nexstar just wanted to roll left and dive with it on. What a fight to landing the first flight was....argh. With the AFS off, and some sim time, i had senza doing takeoff his 3rd flight, landing approaches (not touching down) the 4th flight, and touch and goes the 5th flight. He soloed about a week after that with his cub. One thing i have noticed with the nexstar is it loves to bounce. even on a smooth landing, it hops right back into the air. other then that, a great plane. even with a nice flare with just the mains touching down, nice and slow, it will hop a little

sean

Bax

My Feedback: (11)

Please note that the Hobbico NexSTAR instructions do mention the pitch change if you remove one or the other of the flaps and cuffs. If you remove both at the same time, then their effects cancel out.

CafeenMan

Personally, I think all these training wheels that manufacturers are pushing are slowing down everyone's learning curve. Seems like everyone is taking a lot longer to learn to fly now that they're using speed brakes and auto-pilots.

A good trainer and a decent instructor will teach anyone with the slightest aptitude to learn to fly. Glad you took them off. You should start having more fun and progress more quickly now.

Geistware

My Feedback: (16)

If you are hard to buy presents for then getting your wife to buy you the plane is the way to go!

Dewalt17

Quite the contrary Coffee Man. I actually never had an instructor and my learning curve has been quite short.(Thanks to realflight sim)
These "training wheels" are a good thing. They help to build confidence in the early stages and fly on your own without an instructor. Dont get me wrong instructors are great for teaching the very basics but you will learn faster by doing it YOURSELF. There are guys at my field that have been on buddy boxes for 6 months. I keep telling them to get a simulator and they will be flying on their own sooner.

I dont know many people who tried to fly without an instructor and still have their plane in one piece. So i dont think the new innovations with model aircraft are slowing down anyones curve, if anything its helping to keep more people in this wonderful hobby.

CafeenMan

I don't drink coffee.

You're one person. If you're thinking I have some attitude about using auto-pilots and such I don't - or didn't, until I observed almost every person who uses auto-pilots in two clubs taking forever to learn to fly. Is that enough to make a blanket statement? Probably not, but they're fairly average clubs.

I'm sure there haven't been any real studies done on it so it's all based on personal observation and that's what I observed.

dkf1979

I FINALLY got my NexStar in the mail today!!!! Put it together in about 20 minutes like it says. And it looks beautiful! To bad I have to wait to set a day with an instructor to get her started up. I'm not taking the chance of smashing this delicate work of art!
I'll tell you one thing. I've never even pretended to fly an RC plane before. This simulator was a real eye opener. I've only played for about 45 minutes and i'm sure I've saved myself about 1400 HOURS OF LABOR and about $3000 in repairs. [:-] Crash after crash after crash. But with the minimal time i've spent on it... Already i'm starting to get the gist of it. Now landing is another story!!!I had my wife sit down and try and fly. She couldn't believe how complicating it can get. She had a blast of course. She also told me never to give her control of the plane!! I had to agree. Anyways. Can't wait to really get it up in the air. Wish me luck!

Dewalt17

You're one person. If you're thinking I have some attitude about using auto-pilots and such I don't - or didn't, until I observed almost every person who uses auto-pilots in two clubs taking forever to learn to fly. Is that enough to make a blanket statement? Probably not, but they're fairly average clubs.

I'm sure there haven't been any real studies done on it so it's all based on personal observation and that's what I observed.
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OK Coffee Man no harm no foul. I didnt think you had "attitude". As for autopilots i agree that they probably would lessen your ability over someone who hasnt used them. Most of us Nexstar users dont use it. Mostly because it doesnt work well and secondly it doesnt feel right when you fly to have a plane leveling itself while trying to turn.

As for the other features such as speed brakes and wing tip stabilizers, they dont control the airplane, they just make it harder for the plane to stall. Which is a great characteristic for a trainer. The best part about it is that its not built into the plane, you can remove them when your skill improve.

Sorry for the misunderstanding,

Sean

ethrjock

Dewalt..you may remember my post 2 monhs ago. I ran my nexstar into a tree. Well I finally rebuilt the wing and rejoined the fuse back together. I have had several sucessful flights since.

I too am considering taking off the flaps. I had to add nose weight too as do most nexstar owners. did the plane balance diferently after removing the flaps? I see you said you removed the nose weight and it flew much better and not so hot. I currently have push trim in the elevator to keep it level as it really wants to climb. Should I start back at neutral for elevator trim when I remove the flaps.

Thanks

SENZA

dkf1979 congratulation's,.........I recommend putting some time into the flight simulator you will be happy you did i took off and landed my first day with my instructor..the plane flys awesome remove your brakes i did from the start, and the afs disconnected also that things lame........good luck Bill...........fly on!

Dewalt17

Hey Jock!!!!

My Nexstar actually balanced perfectly out of the box.(a smidge of nose down) But due to the speed brake flaps they tend to(or at least on mine) pitch the nose up. So we added about 3/4 oz to the nose. She flys and trims easier with this setup with the flaps ON.
My Nexstar acts the same way with speed brakes on, I use a bit of down trim to keep her flying level.(approx 10 clicks from neutral)

When you remove the flaps you have to TOTALLY re trim. You wont have enough to compensate for on your radio. NOW SHE WANTS TO DIVE!!!![X(]When i first took off the mains came off first.[:-]HOLLY MOLY!!! Instant pucker. [&:]
I brought her in and UN-screwed(backed-off) the clevis 4 turns. I took the weight out of the front.(CG was now pretty close to dead on) You can trim with your radio from there. You may have to tweak a bit more or less, probably varies between planes. Experiment and see what works for you.

Happy Landings,

Sean

frankiev

hope people are still checking this thread cause i have an issue!

my friend and i started our season today cause we finally had decent weather and snow melted off the runway. i decided to remove the speed brakes on my nexstar and once i got it up in the air it would nose down aggressively. used about 30-40% of trim to get her leveled out enough to land. whats going on? i put the flaps back on and it flew normal. i know my cg is spot on. my surfaces are level. could it have too much downward thrust?
or should i just adjust the clevis on the the elevator to match the trim i added during flight?

Bax

My Feedback: (11)

Please read my post farther up the thread. The speed brakes and wintip droops DO affect the model's trim. If you have both on and remove one, the model's trim will be affected. Remove both at the same time, and the trim will be relatively unchanged. The instructions DO mention this.

DenverJayhawk

you'll find that the model flies great without the brakes and wing tip extension. My instructor had me remove them from day 1.

CGRetired

My Feedback: (1)

Well, I had them on mine from day one and took them off after I solo'ed. I never had even one problem with them before or after. In fact, after I took them off, I learned something about trim... and never crashed that plane. I bumped it in on landing a few times requiring replacement of the prop and repair of the landing gear once, but that was about it.

They never hurt me nor aided me in my learning to fly. As I said, though, I did learn a bit about trim after I took them off.

I never used the AFS, though. It was disabled, and later, I removed the basic four channel Futaba system and replaced it with my Airtroncis RD6000 6 channel computer system. That paid off after I solo'ed because I had the advantage of the computer radio to learn how to use with the trainer.

CGr.

upsman522

My Feedback: (1)

Think about it for a minute.... your speed brakes on there are acting like flaps at full throttle, on any airplane with flaps when you retract them you get a "nose down effect" because you are not just increasing speed with the breaks, you are changing the direction of your thrust.

Food for thought,
Frank

CGRetired

My Feedback: (1)

That might be so, but I would venture to say that not many beginners out there really understand that nor care. I know I didn't. All I knew was that I was flying the trainer and learning as I gained more experience. Once I solo'ed, I took them off, first the wing tip gizmo's then a couple of flights later, the "brakes". I DO know, as I said, that I had to learn a bit more about trim, which I managed to get done both using the trim tabs on my transmitter followed up by the mechanical adjustments to re-center my trims.

This is something that I consider very important for a beginner to learn, since it was so important to me and, as my instructor pointed out, really starts to make a good pilot.

My second plane was a Tiger 60. What was nice about that plane was it was larger than the Nexstar so it was more visible to me and I was able to actually see the effects of my inputs, including trim.

CGr.