Diamonddave,

I'm his old man... he wants to fly this weekend really bad. We are learning together, and he is a 3D nutcase spamming me here to get me to bring the new F90 for some more flying up in the high desert. It's supposed to rain all weekend... we'll see if we can get a break. He has a HellRaiser foamie that he thrashes every day, and the big nitro planes get him all excited. He gets way more practice than I do, so he teases me about doing crazy stuff with the big planes. Dad has to keep the rieghns on him .

yeh i'm in the high desert here in az, they say it may stop by sunday morning, we'll see, it was funny, he had ask you in both posts i was watching too, and i was one of the last posts, so for a minute i was worried about "the one that got away", haha, thats cool you guys are flying together, keep it going as long as you can

Yea, this is a hobby we both obsess over. It is just too much fun. We started with a control line back in August last year, went to a trainer, then a Funtana 40, and now a Funtana 90... got matching Hellraisers at Christmas to get more stick time and practice 3D. The little terd (15) has passed me up bigtime now that he has a practice bird that can do anything. This Cap Maniac is actually my father-in-law's plane. I'm gonna get him on the buddy box maybe next weekend, weather permitting. He is getting pretty good on the sim, but the real planes give him trouble... hard to see out in the distance. Just needs more stick time with real planes. This Cap flies so easy, he should be able to handle it soon. It's easier to fly than his NexStar trainer, but the CAP will react if you over-control, unlike the trainer. He'll get the hang of it. It sure is a serious male-bonding hobby though... I think we're all hooked for life. I flew 25 years ago, then gave it up when life got in the way... always wanted to get back in it. We're learning fast, with the help of forums like this and the sims.

Here's my boy up at Rabbit, the dry lakebed we fly out in the Lucerne valley.

Sorry all for spamming up the thread with this stuff. Back to the CAP Maniac...

thats cool, i'm still not sure i want to get this cap, there is a good thread for that new cap580 from great planes, sounds like that one is pretty good too, i think i want both, but will only get one, may be selling my funtana, i could let you know when i put it up in the classified if you want a second, then you guys can hover down to 1 foot together, whoohoo

Tman
It's made in Canton. You are welcome to come with me next time when I travel....LOL. You'll have a lot of fun.
Aeromax

I did my maden today. there was plenty of wind and COLD.. first flight was on conservative low rates and what i thought would be hairy high rates with 80% expo. it lifted off no problem and needed slight elevator and aileron trim.. after flying it around a little i went to high rates,, flew it around some more and realized high wasnt as high as i like them .. landed a little on the fast side but smooth. I bolted on some dubro 1 1/2" arms and reset high rates making what i had for high low.. took it up again and WOW alot better. tried a harrier to see if it would snap. It was solid away from the wind and slight wing rock into the wind (alot of wind about 10-15 gusts) then proceeded to hover. it will torque roll imediately in a hover. i got 3 or 4 spins before the wind had carried it so far away also noticing a tendancy to pull left on me. so i pulled a vertical line and was still noticing a left pull. so i will put some more right thrust in it. KE pilled tward belly some but not bad. tried an elevator but couldnt get it to drop. It did do a rollout at that low speed. I dont have my flaperons working right either. i tried inverted flat. Good. couldnt get a right side up one and decided to lay off those untill i put my brace on. it will KE loop with some coupling (about the same as my U-Can-Do. Nice snap rolls. inverted was good with slight down added. I made 1 3rd flight this time i had high rate on aileron too high.. I must have pulled some good Gs because my pilot tried to eject (see picture) breaking wood and all.. With a little fine tuning and tweaking it should be great!! I was running a 15x6 on my O.S. I havent put my 15x4W on it yet.

Oh yea my all up weight is 7lbs 5oz. running 6v regulator 1500 kokam lipos CG 4 3/4

Happy to see another CAP Maniac flies...

I told you, high rates aileron = corkscrew from hell. Did she puke too?

Sounds like you had fun... congrats on a good maiden. Hope to take ours up again next weekend, weather permitting.

I was there she had a hard time!!!!!!!!! It looked good in the air very responsive well just look at his picture (HE HE!!!) but it still seemed to land just like a cap HOT and SNAPPY! That is just my observation. I will say it looked rock solid in a Harrier and flt spinned great!

Drumbum, how'd the horz stab act with no brace, a bit wobbly?

a little but i dont know if that is just the plane or lack of brace (it was windy too).. it will be on there next time i fly,,

Drumbum, you give new meaning to the old saying: "Lady who fly upside down have hairy crackup"...

Hey, you didn't say... how was your pitch trim and float at various throttle positions? (down-thrustline issue).

We will fly Saturday if weather permits. We'll shim the motor 1/8" on the bottom to test the thrustline effect, fly it without the cowl until we get it dialed in so we don't have to make swiss cheese out of it.

I did keep hitting the throttle to see if there was any.. I was still getting the feel of the plane.. I defanantly noticed a right thrust issue on vertical lines and hovering which i will fix with some washers. i could have swarn there was a tad of up or down thrust but cant remember wich .. i was concentrating on so many things at the time. I like to address 1 thing at a time so i dont get things way off. I will try it again after right thrust change.. also im going to switch to a 15X4W.. the O.S. 91 does great with that prop. that will probably make a difference too. I have also got to find a happy medeum on aileron high rates. I like mega deflection but it is WAY touchy on high rates the way i had it on last flight.. also need to bump my expo on aileron low rate for smoother landings as ADDICT was talking about.. does yours land a little on the HOT side?

I would not say it was hot at all, it was really floaty. But, we had a high idle rpm, so it wouldn't slow down enough to settle in. My impression was it was going to land really sweet and slow. If you look back at that one photo posted of the plane coming in for landing, it was almost in a harrier, and felt really stable in roll for me. It just wouldn't decend...

Lee, just a thought... did you accedentally set up positive expo on the ailerons? I had mine set at 15% negative expo with about 3/4" deflect on low rates, and it was not at all roll touchy. Just wondering why you would have a sense of instability when ours was real mellow, in the wind even.

[link=http://www.rcgroups.com/articles/rcpowermag/2005/feb/maniac/capglowlarge.wmv]HERE[/link] is a link for the video in my review. Mine lands very nice.

Nice flying Iflyit... pretty agressive for a first flight. Perfect landing too... what is your setup?

Your camerman needs some practice though

Saito 100 and 15x6 prop. I thought the cameraman did an excellent job, it wasn't the best day out though as it was dark and cloudy. I could have edited the few parts out but left them in so there werent many scene changes.

I watched the vid, mine is a little hotter than that on landing, Nothing bad i got 3 pionters evrytime. Im not saying the plane is hairy. its my settings. I am running -40% expo on low rates and -80% on high (Hitec Eclipse 7). low rates are pretty high settings. thats just the way i like them. Its OK i just have to fine tune it in. It usually takes me about 10 to 12 flights to get a plane Exactly the way i want

Iflyit,

When will your review be up on RCGroups? Post a link when they have put it up for us....

Thanks!

~~~~~~~~~~
Drumbum,

We fly Eclipse 7's too. That's a lot of expo... I have not been brave enough to try that much on a plane yet. I crashed a plane (Hellraiser) and attributed it to too much expo (could not explain what happened any other way). Now I am shy to go high on expo.

So, did you run a splitter on your elevator servos? I was frustrated to find that the only way to put the elevators into thier own channels with the Eclipse 7 was to have a switch on all the time with a mix. Am I missing something? I have the same issue on the F90. Don't want to rely on a switch being on for both ele servos to work together... just too much possibility of an oops... so I used a Y-splitter and digital servos to coordinate their action on both planes.

i make all of my extentions and Ys.. i am using a Y on the elevators.. with the new optic 6 you can use 2 seperate channels. A reverser Y works best but I still cut the ends off and manually solder them and heat shrink.. Ever since i lost a U-Can-Do to a plug that was connected but intermittently not i do all of them like that. just makes me feal safer.. plus all those extentions at $7 a piece add up. I just bought a 50` roll of servo wire . after i make 2 the roll is paid for.. Soldered properly it will never come apart. also good solder and iron.. no radio shack stuff..

It all ready is:

http://www.rcgroups.com/links/index.php?id=4709

Also Expo is just a tool to help make a plane feel like its on low rates better when in execessive high rate throws. it makes the center area deader to help comensate. the more expo you put in the futher the stick travel is before this deadend or should i say "dampened" effect is present. so if you were on high rates say with your hellraiser and had it set up at a radical deflection. it wouldnt be so touchy around the normal flying movements of the stick. but when you bang it hard you will still get your full deflection you had set...The object is to not just pick a number and stick it in . Its to get the plane to fly close to the same in low and high rates in NORMAl flying around.. Then also different people like different throw settings for low and high rates so then the expo settings would be different to get the same NORMAL flying effect. also some people like their planes more touchy than others. this will also change the expo setting... its all in what you are used to and feel comfortable with. for example when on low rates with my cap maniac i have about 40 degrees of deflection in my elevators and ailerons.. so where i ended up on my expo was 40%.. i have them really swinging on high rates. i plan on moving the ailerons back down a little though because at 80% it is still twichy.. so on high i still havent found my "happy point" yet. I would say my elevator is around 52 to 55 degrees on high and i like it there. my rudder almost touches the stab on high rates but on low it is at the recommended. so if i want to do a normal KE i switch rudder to low. but if i want to get crazy i go high... I have been flying my planes this way long enough that sometimes i dont switch it to low on rudder but just dont move the stick as much to get the same effect because the expo is dampening the effect in that area.but i just have to be prepaired if i get in trouble. i cant just bang the sticks around to try to save it because them it will just be a snap fight to the ground Ive done that..

now that i wrote a book on expo.. anyway hope this helps. no one can just give you an expo # and expect you to be happy they can just give you one at the certain throws and then you can tailor it to your taste

Ok im done he he

Thats the link, it has been up for a few days, if you look at the bottom of it there is also a link to the electric one.

Nice write up Iflyit... looks like you hit most all the same challenges we had. When did you receive the kit for your article? It doesn't look like any of our complaints were addressed by the time you got yours.

So, not being a previous CAP flier, I take it this bird doesn't have the "Snappy CAP" behavior that most have? Only having one flight thus far, We haven't really had much time in the air, but when I pulled full back on high rates at 1/2 throttle it just did a wall/flip without any rollout. I gather that's a good thing .

So, I noticed a lot of trimming beeps in the video. How would you assess the thrustline? Do you suspect any excessive down-thrust? Side thrust?

We hope to go up again this weekend if the storms don't wash us away. The dirt road to our field is really bad, almost requires a 4x4 to get to it right now. Still gotta add some dark blue stripes to border the big yellow stripes under the wing... then work on the down-thrust issue. We'll take her up one more time and try inverted and KE before we begin shimming.

Bum Drummer,

Thanks, that's pretty much the way I thought it worked. Just haven't played with it much. Never enough time to fly and really dial in a sweet setup on any of our birds. I relate to the "snap fight to the ground" comment, that's how the Hellraiser went in. I repaired it well enough that it flies okay, so all is good.

I have been more agressive with expo lately, and I really like what it does for mellowing out the plane. But, it's obvious it can slap you if you have a scary moment of reflex stop-to-stop stick play. I think that's what got me... I hate planes that snap like that... my Funtana 40 was terrible that way. It looks like the CAP Maniac is going to be a favorite... it really flies easy in pattern. Hope to get better with 3D so I can get down low with it some day. It's really hard to 3D 3-4 mistakes up, you just can't see the subtle twitches that you need to adjust for... I can do it all day on th sims, but I haven't developed enough testicular fortitude to bring the big birds down close yet.