clolson

My Feedback: (7)

I finally got my Mariner 40 up in the air this weekend and just wanted to share my excitement! I flew it yesterday at my parent's lake and there wasn't a breath of wind ... perfect maiden test flight conditions.

This plane is slightly wierd because the engine is mounted on a pod/pylon above the wing. Thus, full throttle causes the aircraft to want to pitch down ... which isn't usually the direction you want to go when you cram full throttle. So, until I got used to that and got the aircraft trimmed out in the pitch direction, I was kind of up and down a lot and a bit shakey in the pitch dimension.

Fortunately it flew off the building board close to perfectly in trim for ailerons/rudder so I only had a squirelly pitch problem to worry about.

Other than that (and once I got a handle on how the aircraft behaved) it was incredibly smooth and stable in the still air ... beautiful to watch and a joy to fly. Take offs were easy and fairly short with a Magnum .45. Touch down on the water gorgeous, and watching it come down off step and sink into the water and resume a slow/idle taxi was *really* cool. Seaplane flying is the greatest thing!

I flew a couple flights again this morning in slightly windier conditions. I observed that once I had the aircraft trimmed up reasonably well in pitch, the pitch changes due to throttle changes became much less noticable. The pylon thrustline is designed with just about the right amount of down thrust (aka up pull) to compensate for the asymetric thrust. I found that at a single trim point, the plane flew great at full throttle and then when I cut the throttle to idle for approach, slowed right down and had almost the perfect approach pitch/speed ... they must have worked on the thrust lines a bit before they kitted the plane. :-)

The ARF is on the pricey side, but I'm really happy with it, and *really* happy with how it flies.

Oh, one other story to relate ... I wouldn't try this near the city where I live, but since I was flying way out in the boonies and have never seen an aircraft near this lake, and the weather conditions were crap for full scale flying anyway (low clouds due to a dense fog layer starting to break up with the mid-morning sun.) Anyway, I noticed I seemed kind of close to one of the low broken fog/cloud chunks a couple hundred feet AGL (or should I say ALL, above lake level) so I decided to keep climbing and aim for it. After a bit of climbing my plane started to get a bit "fuzzy" and suddently disappeared entirely ... into the cloud. I cut the throttle expecting to pop right out again, but I didn't. It turns out I flew in from the side, not the bottom, hard to tell from the ground perspective, and I only say that because my plane didn't just pop right back out. So with the throttle idled I put it in a tight spiral ... and waited ... and waited ... still no plane ... finally, after about an eternity and a half, it popped out, happy as could be ... I recovered from the spiral and resumed normal flying ...

So let me just say that sea plane flying is a blast. The Mariner 40 is a great option ... looks great, flies great, pretty good quality arf. I ran into a couple issues with it, but nothing insurmountable. I have a pictures of the build and comments, and hopefully will get a few flight pictures and movies posted this weekend at my Mariner 40 web page:

[link=http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/Models/Mariner/]www.flightgear.org/~curt/Models/Mariner/[/link]

If I thought there was a small chance my wife wouldn't shoot me, I'd quite my day job and go into flying seaplanes full time!

Curt.

sky_dancer

Hi Curt,
I'm glad to hear you had a good first flight with the Mariner. I'm still working on mine and I have it just about complete. I was shooting for being able to fly this weekend but I couldn't get quite that far. I t shouldn't be more than a few days now though before I can finally get airborne. The plane is sitting here with silicone and waxpaper between the wing and wing saddle as Lanier suggest to make a water tight seal. I'll pull the wing back loose tomorrow and install the radio gear and then get the GMS .47 broken in as soon as possible. The only real problem I've had besides my earlier post about joining the wing halves is that I messed up the windshield. I'll have to get another one from Lanier but it shouldn't keep from flying without it. I'm really looking forward to flying the plane and your post just makes me that much more motivated to get done. BTW, there is yet another favorable review of the plane in this month's RCM.
Regards,
Michael

clolson

My Feedback: (7)

My main advice when you fly it is to be ready to be quick on pitch, and expect to hold some up elevator to keep from visiting the fishies. Of course I can never find my trim tabs when I'm trying to keep the thing airborn, but it turned out that I had to dial in full up elevator trim on my transmitter for the first flight. This was to almost (but not quite) hold level flight at full throttle. For what it's worth I did have the aircraft balanced exactly as per the instructions. After my first flight I cranked in some more permanent up trim and then things were much better. But for level flight, I needed some very noticable amount of up elevator.

By the second day I had that mostly sorted out and then the aircraft really started to fly awsome. I was suprised at how well it handled rolls (probably the best rolling aircraft I have.) I was surprised at how hard loops were to get right ... some of that might be the strange mounting position of the engine. With my super sportster and ultra sport and tiger bipe, and just about every other aircraft I've flown, you just pull back on the elevator and the plane happily goes around the loop with little effort, but it the Mariner doesn't quite do it so effortlessly. Could be the pilot too, we can't rule that out!

One interesting thing is that because of the way it trims out, with full throttle the plane comes up on step almost immediately, but then it just wants to skim along the tops of the waves. Perhaps the big rudder in the back is giving some tail up/nose down force as it skims through the water. I found that if I waggled the elevator a bit it would break free and then climb skyward normally.

Here's one other tip that hopefully you won't have a problem with but I did. I mounted my battery up front in the nose compartment along with a few ounces of lead to get proper balance. However, I wasn't careful enough to secure the battery from moving around. On one landing I smacked a little harder than I intended (I was trying to fly from the dock and had to land too far away from me for good depth perception I guess ... I flew from a boat the rest of the time and that was much better.) Anyway, when I smacked down, the battery was thrown forward and came disconnected ... fortunately at idle throttle. Left it doing very large lazy loops in the middle of the lake. Yet another reason you want to have a boat handy when you fly these things. So anyway, if you mount your battery up in that big spacious nose section, make sure it is well padded and well secured.

Despite a couple issues I had with the construction, I still think this is an awsome plane. The only thing I can imagine that would be better would be some sort of "twin" version with a smaller cockpit relative to the rest of the aircraft so it "looks" like a bigger bird.

The Mariner is really well thought out and really well designed. It handles great in the water. Take offs are pretty much a no brainer ... with that big old rudder hanging down below water level it's impossible not to go straight ... even if you hook a wing tip float, the rudder wins every time. I had a couple cross wind take offs because of the lake geometry and relative sun position and I didn't even notice the wind.

I know there are other good designs out there too, I'm not saying the Mariner is the best, just saying that is really good and a great choice for someone who's looking to get into seaplane flying. Not for the first time pilot, and it kept me on my toes until I got the pitch trimmed out, but after that it is smooth, steady, predictable, and very forgiving. It's hard to stall at slow speed, and if you manage to do it accidentally, it's more of a slow stall or maybe a wallow. I can't stop saying nice things about it, but I guess I have to since it's way past my daughter's bed time and she's still up running around and my wife is giving me that "look". :-)

Curt.

silje11

If you are interested in any other float planes you may want to check this out... I have one and it's absolutely awesome. It's all plastic with floats vice fuse in the water. It has amazing aerobatic capabilities considering and is really fun to perfect landings. Dwayne.



http://www.falcon-trading.com/product.cfm?prodID=9

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

I've flown lots of seaplanes, and last summer, I did the review of the Mariner for the RCUniverse Magazine. The mariner really hit a chord with me. I liked it a lot. My other favorite is the Seamaster.

clolson, where in Minneapolis are you, and where did you fly it?

I'm in Willmar. The Mariner review videos were taken at Green Lake in Spicer.

clolson

My Feedback: (7)

Hi Mike,

I'm in the Twin Cites ... on the north side, not to far from KANE. I flew my mariner at my parent's place up a bit NW of St. Cloud.

I agree, the Mariner struck a chord with me too and I really love flying it. I did have a shaky start trying to stay ahead of it in the pitch axis until I got it all trimmed out, but having survived that, it's an awsome aircraft. I really love it.

I've been flying a super sportster and tiger bipe lately which are fun, but a little on the hot/tricky side because of their thinner/lower aspect ratio wing. The mariner has a nice big symmetrical wing with big chord and is a joy to fly ... I guess I'd say it's a lot like a "stik" once it's in the air. The control surfaces have good authority so you can do quite a bit of aerobatic stuff. It has a *lot* of down elevator authority and combined with it's non-standard geometry, inverted spins are really funky looking.

It also looks great in the air and on the water ... the big fuselage gives it a solid, stable, "scale-like" appearance.

Other than being initially tricky to trim out for pitch which led to one "close call", I'll sing the praises of the mariner to whoever will listen. :-)

Do you know if there any "float fly's" in Minnesota? I asked once somewhere else and got pointed to web sites that were either long gone, or not updated this year.

Regards,

Curt.

JimCasey

My Feedback: (1)

I think you still need a little more upthrust.

My flying boat had 3 degrees up, and it did not want to pitch with throttle. OR you could mix throttle with elevator, so when you give fiull throttle you get a couple of percent up elev.


Bottom line: the thrust/pitch coupling can be trimmed to a much less noticeable amount.

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

Ditto to what Jim said. We have a float fly here every September. It's out at Lake Koronus (sp?) in Paynesville. I'll give you a nudge when I have dates.