Just got back from the flying field after deciding this morning to pack up our veteran LT-40 powered with a Thunder Tiger 46 Pro and a guided by our Futaba 6XAS on PCM. This is our 3rd year flying this trainer. Now that we're pretty comfortable with it we (my 15 year old son and I) moved the CG back from our training point of 27% to 30% per instructions and bumped up the rates a bit. At the start of this flying season I swapped out the RX and TX 600mAH NiCD packs with 1100mAH NiCD packs.
When we arrived at the field there were 3 other members there but said they had just finished and were packing up to head home. It's a little gusty but we've flown in blustery weather before so my son goes up first. Makes a nice takeoff, circles around and descends and lands right away. "What's the matter," I ask? He said it seemed to be rolling left and right on it's own a bit much. I said that's probably the wind affecting you plus I did bump up the rates a bit. We did a range check and everything looks fine so he goes up again. He puts in a full flight. With the std 8oz tank, we limit our air time to 10 minutes. He said it seemed OK that time.
We refuel and I take my turn, and did some rolls, flew the length of the field inverted and a lot of climbing turns, low and high speed passes, lots and lots of touch and goes. I started doing some full up elevator takeoffs and can get the LT-40 airborne in about 20 feet with 3/4 power. The LT-40 can take off at half throttle with the TT 46 pulling an 11-5 prop. We fly with the needle a tad on the rich side and can climb out at 60ยบ attitude. By this time any trace of wind had died down completely so we do touch and goes from both directions. Our landowner planted corn surrounding our field so long & low approaches are not recommended.
With the 1100mAH packs we can extend our flying time to purt near 2 hours. We each had 4 full flights (8 total @ 10 minutes each) and still had battery and fuel left for a few more but it was getting on dinner time so we decide to end our very productive sport flying day. And a heckuva day it was with an hour and 20 minutes of total air time, a nearly dead gallon of fuel, a very oily unbroken airplane left and 2 hungry guys.
A perfect summer afternoon of flying! [8D]
