Well I talked to VF on the proper way. They says it doesn't matter if you balanced it upside down or not since its a mid-wing. So I guess anything works..

Hi Everyone! I've been away from this thread for quite a while and I didn't have the time to see where I left off! I'll give you an update on my Edge, and I apologize if I've said any parts of it before!

I had loads of trouble getting my Evolution 1.00NX running correctly......before this I had only one flight on the Edge, which lasted less than a minute, and resulted in a dead stick. After I thought I had the engine problem solved, I took her up again, and had a dead stick on my climbout. The plane came down hard and busted up the landing gear mounting block and the area under the tank.....when I repaired the damage, I noticed that my fuel lines were twisted a bit before they came through the firewall.......I fixed this and repaired the plane. Last weekend I took it out again, and the engine seemed to be running great....I took her up, and got a great 10 minute flight on the plane....WOW this thing flies fantastic....point rolls were a thing of beauty!
A little while later, I took her up again and flew around for about 5 minutes....then the engine quit again.....unfortunately my problem with the Evolution 1.00 is not completely solved.....I was in a bad position for this dead stick landing, but I was able to bring it in just a little hard......no damage besides the tailwheel bending a bit.

I'm getting very frustrated with this engine.......hopefully I can figure this out soon. I'm out of ideas and don't know what else to try.

Glowplug!!! long time to type. Im sorry about the bad luck your having with your motor. Granted im not well versed in the evolution motors but, i can try to help. Sounds like it just wants to shut off when it wants to, correct? When you start the motor up hold the plane vertical if you can (may need help with some other people), you shouldn't hear an RPM drop. Also the low speed may be a tad to lean. What glow plug are you using / fuel?

Glowplug, that worries me as that is the engine I bought for this plane. The time it did run fine, how was it on the plane?

Glowplug,

I'm with rcfury, check the low end. How is the transition? I had the same problem with an engine, would run fine on the ground. Get it in the air.... the most I got out of it was a 5 min flight. Then one of the older flyers came over and showed me how to tune an engine. My best engine running now for 2 yrs so far. Only other time since I had a dead stick with it was when I ran out of fuel.

Hope your flights get better.

In the process of charging up now for a maiden tomorrow.

glowplug have you heard of the pinch method to help tune the lowend? Its another way to help determine the culprite.
If you pinch the fuel line and the engine speeds up, it is on the rich side of the adjustment. HOW MUCH is speeds up shows how close you are. If it speeds up a lot, you are rich. If it speeds up just a little, you are just right. If it doesn't speed up, you are just going lean. If it slows down, you are LEAN.
Get back to us on what you find out. I bet that motor will really haul the edge around.

Well now its again to turn this around for a motor question. For the life of me i cant get the muffler to stay put. The header itself if making itself loose from the block. Ill tighten it down and after a couple of flights it just come loose again.

I just keep having a blast with this plane. (Edge540) Very stable and holds her own in windy conditions . Added more throw to elevator for some 3/D flying. Worked great with my triple rates. But all that elev in faster flight can cause some snap during a loop if not expo'd in carefully. Of course when I tried to get her to snap during a loop for my buddies she wouldn't do it. LOL !!!!!
Again,,, this baby point rolls like a pattern ship. Knife edge is easy . I didn't notice any belly pitch or other coupling as long as your trims are centered to start with. Any plane will pitch during a knife when the trims are off.

Just waiting to get the Extra next.

Hey guys, thanks for the replies......the engine is acting very strange to me.....it seems like it will periodically start running lean, and heat up and shut down....that's the only thing I can see that might be happening. I don't know how to stop it.....here is an example: I had it running on the plane in the pits.....it was running rich.......I'm varying the throttle for about 5 minutes....it's running well....then, the engine gets lean....I can hear the RPM's take a big jump....a minute later, it shuts down. This is exactly what happened the last time I ran it. It was running good, and on the rich side, then bam, it leans out.......any other ideas?
I've tried the stock plug, an OS #8, and a Fox Gold RC Long plug.....all with the same results. I'm using Omega 15% nitro/18% castor fuel.

Shakes, I wouldn't be too concerned with it yet......I don't think it's a compatibility problem with the plane and the engine......my problems were happening when the plane was running in the pits also. Every other Evolution engine that I've seen ran great.....(which is why I bought this one), so I'm guessing I might have an isolated case here.

Glowplug, I hope you get it worked out. I'll let you know how mine runs hopefully in the next few weeks. I'm running into a problem right now where one of the wings doesn't want to seat properly - no gap on top but a pretty good size gap on bottom. The joiner is straight. I plan on getting some pictures of it this evening.

Shakes, good luck with that joiner. That wing joiner was by far the most difficult wing that I have ever dealt with on an ARF......I was lucky to get mine to fit perfectly with no gaps along the fuselage on either side. I hope you can get that worked out relatively easily.

I'm going to keep trying with this engine for a little while longer........if I still can't get it to run properly, I'll send it back and get an exchange.

It must be bad engine season or something. I took mine out to the field for a maiden on Sat and the engine wouldn't run. I would get it started and it would die after running a bit. I thought I finally had it and when I was taxing out it died again. I figured it would be best to not push it so I packed it up and just flew my stick. It was running fine here at the house, I'll play with it some more tomorrow and take it back out later.

Here are a couple pics of the finished product.

glowplug, since you are saying that the motor starts leaning itself out after a while I think your fuel tank is set to low. Try rasing your tank up a bit and see how that is. Or put the motor on a bench and run it. So that way you can adjust the fuel tank up or down and see how it effects the motor. Do you see air bubbles in the line when the motor starts leaning out?

Fury, no bubbles in the line, but I'll definitely try raising the tank! I did think about that......but the tank seemed to be in the correct location with respect to the carb, but hey, it's worth a shot!!!

Glowplug,,,,,
Check for pinched lines at the firewall area. It sure sounds like either a pinched line or a small tear in a line somewhere to me. Hope you get it sorted out soon.

Thanks Kurt. The lines were twisted a bit and slightly pinched before I crashed the plane. When the bottom of the front fuse was off of the plane, and I was repairing it, I noticed the twisting. It seemed to run better after I fixed that, but the last dead-stick was after I had fixed that problem. I also pressure tested the tank and lines before the last flights and everything checked out OK.

Well, if you know the tuning is fine and you tested the fuel tank then it could be an internal thing but, that is really hard to diagnose. One time i had just an impossible time trying to get an OS .15 cva to start, checked everything 3 times and still no hope. If i got it to start it would just die when i add throttle. With experience with rc car engines i decided to take the motor apart and see if the sleeve was in correctly. Looking at the sleeve ended up the bypass port on the sleeve wasn't milled enough. It was to small. Contacted OS and they sent me a new sleeve and works wonders.

I do have a question with my saito. I cant seem to keep the exhuast to stay tight. The header keeps on backing out of the block. Anyone had that problem. I was thinking of some lock-tite but I dont think it would work with the temps these mufflers see.

Seen a plane that ran fine on the ground but put it in the air and it would die everey time after about 1 or 2 minutes. We tore it down and found a big piece of crap in the tank. Would move around and finally find it's way into the pickup clunk. Then plug it up and die. It evidently would unlodge it self and float around again till next time. Cleaned all out and worked fine. He wasn't using a filter!!!!!!!

Nathan,

I'm not sure what temp loc-tite is rated for so I can't say if it would work. Did you think about using an extra nut; like they use on props. Or maybe going to a hardware store and getting a lock washer big enough to fit, they are suppose to keep nuts from backing off.

I've seen loc-tite used on two stroke motors and it worked fine so it may be worth a try.

I'm going to try and tune my engine again tomorrow. Maybe I'll take it up if I can get it working right.

I use Blue Locktite on all my 4 stroke exhaust systems to hold them in place. Heat won't bother it on a glow engine. But you have to have all items spotless clean and dry before assembly. And if you don't use Locktite Primer it takes a while to cure.

Eagle thanks... I tryed everything oiling the threads warming up the block and tightening it down. Just keeps working itself loose again. I did some looking around, red locktite it high heat but then again its perminant. So count that out of the question. Let me try some blue loc-tite and see if that works. Should i heat up the block up and torque it down with loc-tite? Thinking that will be better.

Loc-Tite is nothing but liquid plastic. The red called permanent is for high heat but still you can get whatever you're putting it on loose by adding a little heat to it. If the blue doesn't hold, I wouldn't be afraid to use the red at all.

Well I finally got some wheel pants on this Edge. Hanger-9 Funtana .90 painted red. Also painted the nylon gear red . Turned out well.
The Funtana pants fit well and worked with the 3" Dubro tires.

Well.... finally finished mine... too many other projects were in front of the line
Question


I have 2 peices of red trim tape/sticker left over...about 18" long in a bit of a "V" shape.....where do they go????

Now... the plane is done and it is beautiful, but...I need to rant for a minute..
I really didn't enjoy the assembly...
belly pan? Please, that plastic thing?? could be much better and maybe even fit[:@]
plastic "thing" to cover the tail feathers? again...cheesy..
wheel pants? didn't bother... A. I fly off of grass, and B. they were just chincy
fuel tank mount? we were on our own
throttle servo? again, you can try in the try but it might not fit, so just build a mount up front....no biggie to do, but come on....design it better to start
wing joiner? royal pain in the ***... I tried and tried and still have about a 1/16" gap between the wing and the fuse...is this normal??


I guess those are my major ones.....nothing really big...but just enough to make the build a chore and not a joy...but that is just me..
once done...it looks good (except for the belly pan) and balanced perfectly with a Saito 1.00
I wish I had an accurate scale, because it seems heavy, but I have been spoiled with a .46 size profile plane lately

I guess the weight will be good for precision on windy days...and it sounds like this is where the plane excels...

will report back after the maiden


but in the meantime if anyone knows where the two red tape pieces go...that would be great....


Cheers
Exeter

Exeter,

I'm not sure where that piece goes. I just kept it and the extra white for future small repairs. I did cut some off and use it to hold the plastic over the tail section.

I also had a small gap at the wing root. If you look at some of the photos from others build they seem to have the same gap without any problems in flight.

Did you get the new belly pan or the old one? I got the old one with my kit but John at VF sent me one of the new ones. It attaches much better, I just had to get a small piece of dowel to put on the front.

It seems like everyone was getting different wheel pants to use. I had some extra pants from a Global Magic Extra that fit well and they were already red so I only had to trim them out and put em on.

I still haven't gotten a maiden out of mine. [:@] With Hot August Nights going on now I'm working everyday. I'll have to wait for a week or two before I can get some time off to try for a maiden. I was having engine issues when I took it out to the field. It runs great here at the house but when I get to the field I'm having a hard time maintaining a good idle and transition.

Good luck and enjoy.