I finally was able to do the maiden flight on this Dynam Waco this Oct 31st morning.
Take off was fine, rudder not very sensitive but the plane tracked straight. Power with the new four cell 2200 battery was not very energetic.
It needed a few clicks of right aileron and a couple of up elevator, then flew pretty good hands off. I will want to refine the trims more in the future. After about 3-4 minutes, it seemed to be loosing power so I brought it in. I actually thought it wasn’t going to make it but managed to do the last couple hundred feet at about a yard high. The landing was good and the plane taxis easily enough.
After working to see if I could ‘reset’ the ESC, and finding the power felt okay with the battery at about 70%, I tried another flight. The takeoff was
fine again but it exactly didn’t leap into the air. Nonetheless, I had a strong 2 minute+ flight and decided, the trims being okay, to bring it in. The landing was quite good by my lax standards but, it was slightly aimed at the fence. I gave it full right rudder but couldn’t avoid the damn fence.
The repair will be doable but I am still p#### about the lack of rudder response. I had full right rudder for the last 50 feet and didn’t see much response at all.
It had been set to the low end of the manual’s recommendations but it is clearly not enough. I am not the best flyer but hate to accept blame for a poorly setup plane when I was following the manual’s exact recommendations.
Other issues on the model:
- Balance according to the manual is right on.
- Elevator distortion from packing, when the surface is lined up perfectly, the aerobalance section on the ends is distorted and may be causing slight problems.
- Same thing with rudder, distortion makes it hard to determine when the surface is properly lined up with the fuselage.
- As mentioned in the maiden flight report, I do not have a lot of confidence in this 2200 battery. This may be because my not being used to the ESC and it’s power output but, at the end of the day, I am struggling to keep altitude without resorting to a higher throttle setting than I am used to. Hopefully I can adjust to this situation without resorting to the bigger batteries, which I do have for all my other electrics.
- Plane looks great and draws lots of positive attention (partly because of the painted struts and Acrylic finish which brings out the color so much better.
_ EASY to see and fly!
_ I think the plane could be built and in the air with maybe three hours or so but I took about 15.