GLRogers

My Feedback: (2)

Maiden flight status. I am glad that my 14 oz of nose weight has reopened this thread. Now get this, not one click of trim anywhere. Inverted only slight down to level and it held at neutral stick. Go figure. Balanced according to book at 127mm. Held an edge nicely with only a slight pull to the belly. Ailerons a little more sensitive than I am used to at center stick and yes I use expo. I will have to figure that out because I lost my line on a couple loops. I tried test landing at about 300 feet to test the stall abilities, one time it fell off to left and next time it fell off the right, so need to land with a little power, no biggie. Very nice rudder control. Will almost do a flat turn. Plenty of power, ran the Syssa at half to 3/4 throttle most of the time. Did not hang it from the prop since I am still breaking in the Syssa. 12 minute flight, had 2/3 16oz tank left. The back 1/3 of the tank is over the CG. Nice turn and approach for landing with only about a 3 mph crosswind. Sbach held a nice line and at about 1/4 throttle slowed down and decended nicely to a beautiful touch down pretty much in front of me. Hope I can do that again. As it started to roll, the gear spread out and I broke my prop. Unfortunately, I did not have a spare 18 X 6 prop. The onlly issue I have with the Slipstream Sbach is that I think the gear is way to flemsy and not high enough. I will replace the gear with something stronger and taller. That may also let me remove some of the weight since the gear is forward of the CG. Another possible explanation for part of the weight is that I had to move my engine back about 3/8'' so that my chock would clear on the back side of the firewall. I slid the cowl back to compensate. My canopy slides under the cowl very nicely. Overall view point is that the Syssa is way over powering the Slipstream Sbach and it is going to be a great combination.

RPool

Congrats on the maiden! What is the weight of the slipstream all in?

Joystick TX

GL,

Great writeup on the maiden flight. It may take a week to get that grin off your face.

I used longer standoffs on my engine so I did not need to cut the hole in the engine box for the carb and choke plate clearance. Worked out great since I had room to move the cowl almost 7/8" farther forward than normal.

You may want to check and see what the max distance you could move your cowl forward before you ran into mounting problems. It is pretty easy to put on longer engine standoffs. That would be an easy way to get some of the weight out of the nose. Once you start hovering, that 14 oz will bother you.

Too bad about the landing gear. I had a tough time finding a good fuselage mounted gear for my GS Sportster. The hobby supply places don't give enough info on the gear specs to be much help. Mine was a little too weak and I had to add some springs to keep it from spreading out during some of my not-so-great landings.

Glad to hear you did not go with the 24-32 oz fuel tank.

GLRogers

My Feedback: (2)

13 lbs all in. I know where 14 oz of it is.

GLRogers

My Feedback: (2)

The slipstream cowl is set to mount flush with the canopy so there is no allowance to move it forward. I was lucky that I could slide it back mounting very tight to the bottom and the canopy slide under in the front. The paint lines also met. The way it is, my cowl is only about 1/16 inch from the spinner. Looks great but if I had it to do over, I think I would have used the longer stand off and let the engine move forward which would have probably left about 3/8 to 1/2" between the cowl and the spinner. I love the way the chock works on the Syssa but it either has to be in front or behind the firewall. A butterfly type would have allowed more flexibility but doesn't work as well. Sometimes you are DDDD if you do and DDDD if you don't and we get hung up too much on how the things looks to the detriment of how they work!

The gear is another matter. First off with an 18" prop, there is only a couple inches clearance with the tail wheel down. With the plane level, maybe only an inch and I fly off grass. I did not (this time) have a hard landing and the gear spread enough in 5 or 6 feet of roll out to break the prop. Way too weak and too low. I have ordered along with a couple props, the gear for a 74" EF YAK which should be much stronger and raise me up another 2 1/2". Won't know about weight until I get it but I have plenty of weight I can remove so it won't add anything to the plane.

RPool

Mine maidened today. Awesome! Pilot-RC 73" came in at 11lbs. wet. Syssa 30cc had simply been fired up and run a couple of minutes to fiddle before maiden flight. It performed flawlessly! Here's a picture and a link to a short take-off video. I am a happy (!) customer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7HuV-Pf1Fc

PlaneKrazee

My Feedback: (14)

RPool,

Nice job!

RPool

Here you go PlaneKrazee. Cylinder fits inside without any cutting. It gets good air flow. I cut a circle for the plug cap, but you'll see it is virtually flush with the cowl...it does not protrude out. The exhaust barely protrudes out. I vented the sides of the cowl using louvers instead of opening up the bottom. Look closely at the photo taken at our field; you also see I plugged the top openings in the cowl. I am going to replace the white balsa I used with some old metal speaker grill material I have. It is rigid and black with very small holes. I am doing so for cosmetic reasons only. Engine stayed nice and cool.

Joystick TX

Randy,

I went out early Thursday, but didn't take a float plane. Guess the field dried out okay later.

Glad you got the maiden out of the way before the Saturday fly-in.

At 11 lbs, you will have one hot plane. Looks like you will be happy with the verticals and hovering.

bigben

My Feedback: (24)

For those of us that also bought the carbon spiiner you will remember the good advice like using an inner tube cut to create some traction on the hub. Finding that that was not very succesful Todd has engineered the fix of fixes. He has built a new hub and installed it on mine. It has less agressive teeth but also sports two holes which get filled with hardened pins and there are two threaded holes. He has also supplied a drill jig which makes drilling holes in the back of the prop and the spinner back plate a breeze. I got it all buttoned up so quick I then realized I forgot to snap a few photos. I only am using the two pins to secure my arrangement. I'm not sure the function of the threaded holes.
That fine engine looks even better with that carbon spinner out front. Todd came through again where there was a need! Owning a Syssa couldn't be better.
Enjoy the holiday and if it weren't raining I wouldn't be sitting here at the computer. Pray for sun and calm winds....

50%plane

My Feedback: (5)

I was able to get three flights on my 78" Extra yesterday... with the stock muffler, Vess 18.5X5.5 and running Royal Purple @ 50:1, my power is absolutely perfect! At first I was woried about not having enough power without the pipe, as I could barely hover... now that I'm off of break-in oil, retuned, it is a very sweet combination! I still don't understand why some folks are having balance issues... unless they built the E-version of the plane.... I set everything up like in the manual and it's perfect....
I could really use that "fix"!

ghoffman

My Feedback: (3)

I have the first version with 3 drive pins and it works great! This engine is so much better than the Chinese 30cc it is not even close. I bought the same brand of 55cc China engine and the quality was so bad I sold it at a loss, almost new. I really am not into castings with shifted cores and voids, con rods with off center bores, low grade fasteners, etc. I wish Syssa made a 20cc and a 60cc.

MTK

I would love to see a 40-45cc SAP that's a little more stroked and less aggressively timed. Higher compression would be great to take advantage of no smell Avgas. I need about 5 hp at around 7000 rpm and 20x12- 20x14 on pipe. Also can't weigh more than 37 ozs. I'm not an engine designer but it seems to me that this is doable

ghoffman

My Feedback: (3)

Ok, I finally got to fly EF Extra/Syssa today without any issues (almost). Thanks to Cody, my pipe stayed on, everything ran well, and what a blast I had! It was very warm today, high 90's, and the Syssa/ES pipe combo still had huge power. It pulls out of a hover like an Estes model rocket Now, if I can keep the tail wheel on, this will become my new default plane. I think I will order a White Rose Engineering tail wheel, but I will move that subject to the EF Extra thread. The other guys at the field were very impressed. BTW, always the engineer, the cyl head temp was 185 after I taxi'ed in and shut it down, so the airflow through the cowl seems adequate. Well done Todd, you should be very proud!

juanes1969

can someone post a picture of the new prop hub? and if someone has a picture of the old one too, just for comparision purpuses. Thanks.

Joystick TX

Goffman,

Nothing scientific, just another data point. I don't have a piped engine.

Your cylinder head temp seemed high to me so I checked mine today. I taxied in and made the measurement immediately after I shut off the engine. It was 140 deg. The outside air temp was 98 deg, with the humidity around 95%. After the engine sat for a while the temp started going up, I don't know what the peak was. Did you have a delay between engine shut down and your temp measurement?

BTW - In the spring when our temps got in the 80's, I noticed my cowl was pretty warm after a flight so I doubled the area of the air exit in the cowl. That meant I did not have enough exit area (3x inlet) for optimum cooling.

ghoffman

My Feedback: (3)

Well, I do have a large exit area with the pipe, and I taxi'ed back so I am sure it was hotter than 185 when it was flying. When I ran it without the pipe on a test stand, it got alot hotter than that without any cowl. It ran perfectly, the plug looks good. The cowl does not appear to be burnt, and it did not get soft (but I added some CF tow/CA in the thin areas).

Joystick TX

Sounds good.

I almost wish I had a pipe on mine, but the extra power would rip the wings off my plane. It is hard to keep off the throttle, I love the short takeoffs and verticals.

cmoulder

Comparing temperature readings between engines using the little handheld IR thermometers is of little value.

Even when getting readings from the same engine, a tiny shift in the aim of the IR sensor can make a huge difference in the results, depending on whether the sensor was aimed primarily at a cooling fin or at the cylinder itself, or somewhere in between.

A seriously overheating engine will stop running fairly quickly. If the engine does not sag on long uplines and is still idling happily upon landing after a vigorous run, it is highly unlikely that it is overheating.

w8ye

My Feedback: (16)

A combination of the human senses can be more accurate than a IR gun because of position and emissivity differences.

w8ye

My Feedback: (16)

A combination of the human senses can be more accurate than a IR gun because of position and emissivity differences.

ghoffman

My Feedback: (3)

Realistically, for an IR gun to indicate semi-realistic temps, the target should be flat black. My IR gun is for tires so the emissitivity is calibrated at .9 and has a big spot size. Since it was a really a shakedown cruise, I was taking it fairly easy, but I could not help myself, I had to see how it worked in the vertical, so I did open it up some. After I landed it (BTW, easiest plane to land I have ever flown, easier than a trainer or Stick), it just idled nicely, and taxi'ed back to me like a puppy. I am amazed how low the vibration is, must be like an electric motor with the soft mount you pattern guys are using.

Joystick TX

That's why I started off with "nothing scientific."

My hand on the warmer than normal cowl was a better indication than the temperature sensor reading "somewhere", "somehow", with "something" on the engine. I opened up the cowl vent before I had engine overheating problems rather than wait for them to happen in our 100+ degree weather. My theory is overheating = reduced engine life.

The temp measurements we made do have "relative" value or merit. Mine will work okay for my plane and engine, if I make them the same way with the same calibrated sensor, and don't change the air-flow by adding ducting, etc. Due to all the variables, who, where, with what, on what, etc., the mesurements I take will always have low "valitity" when compaired to other plane and engine combinations. It is like I said, just another data point. Hopefully, if someone takes a measurement and comes up with 210 deg at engine shutoff, they may ask some questions or check things out.

Sorry for the confusion. Hope this clears it up.

MTK

The shake with a soft mount is similar to a 2 stroke glow engine. We use the device as much for the quality of sound as servo life. The sound quality is better than hard mounting, and noise down at least 3 dB compared to hard mounting. But then again, we use pattern sized props and tuned pipes to keep noise down too

The EF Extra carries a huge wing area for the size model....about 200 squares more than other 78" planes. Wing loading is reduced 15%-20% compared to some others in this size range, which makes this thing a floater. Overall, I've not been as pleased with the accuracy of this arfie as I've been with others. Maybe I got the only crooked one in the bunch. The flying suffered

cloudancer03

My Feedback: (22)

is anybody or has anyone flown the syssa 30 on a aerobatic plane weighing more than 12 pounds??mine will weigh nearly 13 pounds and I am fearing the worst that once I take off it will lug itself around.I dont want the china engine I very much want this one just afraid of how well a 30cc engine will pull my extra 260 180..