Hello all,
I will add more notes to this later. The wind has died down even more, and I have plenty of charge left in the battery and plenty of daylight. I think another flight is in order!
Ok sun is down, kids are down, videos uploaded to YouTube, time to thttp://youtu.be/yHfwkC2548calk about the flights! The videos were not uploaded in HD, they were taken with my iPad and uploaded diretly out of the built-in app. I did not want to have the data size be 100 megs per upload. I may upload again in HD as it is too grainy in my opinon!
Any way lets talk about the filghts. The first "toss" was just below half throttle, wind was bouncing around between 7 to 13 mph roughly. The plane was still a little tail heavy. Yes I do have a CG machine, but did want to dig it out so I did the "finger" thing and tried to look at it from the side while holding it and said to myself "that looks pretty good". Well, it was still just tad bit tail heavy and it showed! I flew the plane about 4 minutes I wll have to look at the time index to know for sure. Most of the flight wasbetween 1/2 and 3/4throttle, higher than I was originally hoping for. Even at that power setting she was just "squierrly". Into the wind it would almost hover, with the wind to her back she zoomed down wind!
Just a little side note, I'm editing this in my iPad and for whatever reason when it scrolls down past the first screen full, it goes blank! I thought I had lost what I had just typed! So I did a select all and copy and then pasted it into "notes". Nothing loss! Now back to the flight logs...
Ok, after landing, it was a little rough, no damage, just not pretty! The grass is tall so it really softens the landings. Anyway I removed the battery and immediately put my battery checker on it, it had only gone down one bar out of eight!
After dinner I looked out at the field and my wind speed and decided that I had to get another flight in! Added another quarter to the nose hatch and the iPad to the wife and went flying again. What difference calmer winds make, but what a greater difference a little more nose weight makes!
This flight was much better! On this launch I set the throttle just over 1/2 probably closer to 65% as you can see from the videos, you just "lob" it into the air and the rest as they say is history! She fly quite nicely, gave it some "up" elevator trim and a little "right" aileron/rudder trim. When it's all said and done and the plane is flying just how I want it. I will "lock" control surfaces in place, turn off the plane and physically adjust the throw locations to be in the place of the trim.
Now she is starting to fly more like what I was expecting! She handled the wind quite nicely was able to "dodge" a bird or two that was insistent on picking a fight! Coming in to land was easy enough, I just pulled her around into the wind, throttle back and let her come on down. I did have to push her over just a little so I know the trim still is not how I want it. I will have to work on that. The battery levels after all 4 flights, roughly 9 minutes of flight, was at 5 bars, still in the "green". So it looks like my hopeful flight time 10 to 15 minutes will be accomplished!
The current propeller on it is a Zinger 6x3, I'm thinking about trying a different size. I would like to get it to fly around level at 1/2 throttle or a little less and still maintain a 10 to 15 minute flight time. The motor is a Rimfire 300. Does anybody have any suggestions?
In short I think this will turn out just like I hope! It's current "name" is "6 bits". It was "4 bits" before I add the additional quarter. I may try one more to see how it does. In which case the name will become "8 bits"!
Anyway enjoy the video from the links above and enjoy the pictures!
Thanks,
Bill