Oh man that SOOOO sucks!!! We all get dumb thumbs!!! I lost my first one on week two. I believe the on off switch failed. I bought another. The only salvagable part (of the kit) was one wing and of course the tail feathers.

So I'm saying from expierence....if funds permit.... get another. You wont regret it. I didnt.

Sorry bout your loss dude. Hope everything works out.

Rick, so sorry to see that!!

Somehow, I think you will be able to repair it. It will take a fair bit of work, so perhaps a winter project?

I know how you feel... unfortunately multiple times over, and recently "refreshed" with the loss of my Venus which I put a lot of work into.

Looks like banking left and clipped a fence. If flying at an unfamiliar field, this is a common occurrence!

I appreciate the sentiments. []



I had such high hopes with this plane. [>:]

Here is the link once again to the excerpts of the first two flights.
http://www.rcuvideos.com/video/For-P...tra-thread-WMV

Look at this....... 1000 post on this airplane........

It indeed was a very sad day, even for me. I kinda regret not going out to see the maiden now instead of doing yard work. Oh well my crystal ball wasnt working.. For me it was pretty shocking to see something like that happen, after all the time go into a project to see it ruin so fast =(

The video looked like it was going to be a great plane and it sure did look very nice!!

Sorry to see the damage. I have mine about 95% done. I am not to happy with the way things look. It is built really flimsy. Looks to me as if a hard look would make it break in half. Nice and light okay, but think it needs to be flown with kidd gloves and landed daintly.

AA2DD

Bruce

I'll sell you mine for $300 rtf with a o.s. 91 fx ds921 servos < 1 is broke going to afgansitan do not really need it too scared to fly it anyways all you do is just pay shipping or pick it up at my house I live in ne arkansas 1-870-450-6874

This is a real shame, Rick. I hate to think of things like that, that can happen to a new plane. I had a similar situation happen to me once. I had bought a Sig Spacewalker, 1/4 scale, that someone else built, it was covered, badly, with MonoKote. I took it home and re-covered it in a scale coverite paint job, Yellow and Black, took 2 1/2 months. it looked great. My friend took it off and trimmed it out, then I took over and flew it. It flew great, and so we waited for the 2nd flight, 1/2 way thru, I was doing a high speed, low flyby, when it buzzed, and the wing summarily exploded, it augered itself into the middle of the field. A bag of balsa sticks....that's all I had left. Aileron flutter was the culprit.

Getting back to the shear webs...My buddy was repairing a rip in the covering of his Tower Kaos 40 ARF, and looked inside and his shear webbing is just like these, with the grain running spanwise .

In case anyone is interested in making a full baffle…..

Here is a PDF file of the pattern I made for mine. This one is specifically for the Super Tigre 90. But it will be a good starting place for any engine using the stock mounting configuration.

The perimeter will get you real close for a fit that is about 1.5� behind the face of the cowl openings.

For pictures see post # 993

I did a test print for scale using Adobe Reader 9 making sure “page scaling� was off and uncheck auto rotate and center (all on the Adobe print screen).

So the work is done. The 1.20 is in!!! I took a few shots for comparison's sake between the .90 and 1.20. As you can see it needed a bit of firewall modification to fit the ax muffler. I have had good luck on my edge with the muffler so I didnt wanna throw down another $60-$70 on a pitts muffler that I didnt feel was needed.

Balancing this monster was a bit of an issue, I ended up with the 5 cell AA rx pack in the tail.... I mean..... if it was any farther back it would be in the rudder. I actually installed it with a bit of surgery. I opened up the bottom of the fuse between the tailwheel block and the elevator servos, and pushed in some foam and stuck her in. I capped it off by ca'ing the original piece back in and then covered it up with a scrap of blue I cut out from behind the canopy.

I ran a break in tank thru her in the yard this evening. The next chance I will be able to get to the field to try her out will be tuesday. So no maiden report till then!

Im just glad I got it in finally!!!

Stevo,

That thing has got to be just "NUTS"[sm=stupid.gif] with that 1.20 in the nose. I sure hope you have the chance to shoot and post some video. Let us know how it all goes.

Insane power![X(]

Make sure the control surface linkages are rock solid because terminal flutter is just a flick of the stick away.

And be wary of rudder wag as well. Even with a strong rudder servo and pull-pull cables tight as banjo strings it can still happen. Consider bracing the rudder servo mount.

Looking forward to the flight reports.[sm=spinnyeyes.gif]

probably no more nuts than those larger scale extra with the gas engines. Though i still dont think this plane is capable of doing tricks like that fella was doing at that fly in (i guess it was 3d stuff). Not with a Glow/Gas engine. I could be wrong it just seems you need more power and the larger engines weigh to much.

Though Stevo, post some vid =) Looks good.

So anyone else have a lot of trouble with the coating on the plane? You iron out all the wrinkles and make it tight again. Then you take it out in the sun and bam its wrinkled mess again. Though its been 100+ degrees here for over a month.

Take it out in the sun before you try to iron out the wrinkles.

I'll be comparing the props this weekend, I have a Zinger Pro 14x4 with the pointed tips, and the Xoar 14x4 to compare.

RICKSTUBBZ, bad news- it was beautiful in the dozins of build pics and flew well in the maiden vid. I think that somehow you will salvage what must be 200 hours of build and mods. Uberbuilder is the word that comes to mind. A setback at most, eh? (but a biggie)

Stevo, that on sure looks pretty- if I remember right you had one before this, did you recover it or is this a new one? Nice mod on the firewall-I have heard of people getting into a bit of hassle tuning AX motors with pitts mufflers, due to different backpressure characteristics. So your work should payoff. With the exception of less fuel draw, I found my 46AX to be a nice motor. Lean it out early per the book.... then run it 5or6 click rich of peak if you can for 10-20 flights. Then you can lean it down to 2-3 rich of peak later. That m.o. worked great for my 46AX. Once in a while I'd run a click or two leaner for a "special" flight, but then back to normal rich mode for durability. That's a 21 oz 3 Hp motor so you should be able to get below 7 lb- and it will punch out vertically for sure. I, for one am jealous- flying it on an 20oz Saito 91 at 1.6 Hp. Mine climbs forever, but no punchout-still havin a ball!

min$2crash.........this is my second one.... but the first one died last year in June.... not even 3 weeks old. Switch failure, I believe. Thanks for the compliments!! This one I have been flying since July of last year. I agree about the ax mufflers too. A guy in the club modified his stock muffler and TOTALLY killed the power of that motor. Made it like a .90 or less.

So I did get the maiden in tonite between rain showers. Mainly wanted to get some more rich tanks through it. Motor ran well, even being rich. I kept her on low rates so I would behave and concentrate on just flying the pattern to get the fuel through it. Ill start to wring her out after I get at least 5 good rich tanks through her.

I also went through the linkages and made sure all was well in that department.... thanks cmoulder for the reminder.

All went well..... except the cg is just a mess.

Cmoulder this is aimed at you, I'd like your opinion on this one.........

I set my cg at 120mm EXACTLY, which is almost 4.75 inches..... without fuel of course. I run a 16 oz tank in the nose, and the header tank is now gone. So I fueled her up, and got her off the ground. Did a few quick trim adjustments and had her straight and level at 1/3 throttle. Air was completely dead, so easy to trim and check out a few things. First I played with power on and off, to check up and down thrust angles (which is currently zero). The aircraft maintained a straight and level path when at wot or at a low throttle setting (not idle). Good there. Then I rolled to inverted to check cg, and I only had to maintain a slight bit of down elevator to hold it.

As I continued to fly out the tank, she started to drag her tail, more and more, like a dog does when.....well you know. Anyway it just continued to get progressively worse. It got so bad that at a low power setting it would just pitch the nose up until it stalled.

I brought it in for landing, and lets just say it was a bit tricky even without wind. I had to keep power on and push the nose down to keep her level. Total crap.

I refueled and took her up again to try landing with a full tank, and it was just fine...... hmmmm I said......

I made the horrible mistake when I tore out the old engine..... I didnt check ANYTHING.... cg, thrust angles, nothing. I was in too much of a hurry to get started. So I have no idea where my cg was set at before.

Anyway, when it was flying around dragging its tail, I was thinking about your incidence change on the wing........

This case seems more like a bad cg placement to me. I brought the plane home and I checked cg with a full tank of fuel. It came in at about 4 1/8 inches..... about 5/8 more foreward than the book calls for.

I really think the way to go with this is to set the cg at 4 1/8, DRY, and I might even try to bring the tank back against the wing tube, to minimize the effect on cg later in flight. I will run 1/8 line to be sure not to restrict fuel supply.

Im still debating on the incedence change though. The plane used to fly much better later in the tank of fuel..... but I never usually got below half and now I can suck it dry with a rich 1.20. It still used to drop its tail though on landing, but nowhere this bad.

So what do you think? Wouldnt the incidence change worsen this? You are raising the te of the wing, which is already high in relationship to the fuse when landing.......you've done it though, so it must work. I just dont quite understand the mechanics of it...........could you explain it a bit?

Btw, sorry about the novel.... I hate super long posts as much as the next guy..............

Having trouble getting the motor mounts from Tower for my Phoneix Ertra 330s 60-90 Size. The plane came with all type
of problems in the box. Tower has been good about replacing the damaged parts. Now I have found that the plane was
shipped to me with two left motor mounts. I tried to get them to sell me the hardware for mounting the motor. They say
that they do not sell this hardware. They told me they would sent me one from another Phoenix extra 330S ARF. They
did so, but it is not the one that came with the ARF. To use it I would have to do a lot of changing and fitting of this to the
firewall. NOT A HAPPY COUSTOMER. I told them at Tower, I should have this plane finished and flown it and CRASHED by
now !!

Has any body elese had this type of problem with this ARF??

Wingboz

Stevo,

Seems to me you are correct that it is a CG issue with the plane flying progressively worse as the tank empties.

However, remember that the elevator trim was set when the plane was flying with a full tank. Did you give it down trim to maintain level flight as the tank emptied? Without changing elevator trim, does the the plane fly straight and level at a high-ish throttle setting with a low fuel level?

Getting the tank on (or at least closer to) CG will help. If you could find a flat 14 oz tank and put it on CG and use a Perry VP-30 regulator, that would eliminate the CG question.

Might or might not have the wing incidence issue (it flew fine with the previous engine?), but you don't want to start messing with that until the CG problem is sorted out.

I didnt do enough flying to test what you said in your second paragraph............but I did do some thinking as to where the cg just might have been with the .90.........

I always set my cg to factory specs initially. This plane is no exception. The BIG difference is that I added the header tank AFTER balance. Thats 2oz of fuel in the nose that never went away. I also never ran the plane past half empty. Id have to fly it for 15-20 minutes to suck a 16oz tank dry with that .90.

So the cg must have been far more foreward than I had thought. It used to land dragging the tail a bit, but I think the extreme difference in fuel and cg point made all the difference in the world as to how it flies now.

So heres what Ive done. I fueled up the plane (since thats where it flew good) and marked the cg. I then drained the tank, moved it back 3 1/2 inches to the wing tube. Then I brought the battery foreward to set the cg where it was marked with the tank full.

I hope I can get by with having the tank farther back without causing a lean condition. I opened up the pressure nipple on the exhaust as far as safely possible. I also ran 1/8" line for the pressure line. I believe the 1.20 makes good enough pressure to push the fuel another 3 inches, but I guess we will see.

I hope to do some more test flights on friday, so I can have some fun with her this weekend.

I'll keep you posted.

stevo,

What is the measurement of your new CG location? Absolutely interested in hearing how she behaves with this change. I am also curious how that tank position works. Especially when you have it standing on the tail (hanging on the prop)[]?

Thanks for all the info....

The cg is currently at 4 1/8". This is 5/8" foreward from factory spec. When I fill the tank in its current location it moves only about 3/16 inch foreward.

Another quick note.............when I removed my cowl last nite to run the new fuel line, I had to also remove my needle valve extention. So I counted how many turns open I was before removal. AMAZINGLY it was only 1.5 turns open. I KNOW it is filthy rich at this setting, because I could see my smoke trail well against a cloudy dark sky. And it sucked that 16 oz tank dry in 10 minutes.

Its been my experience that usually a rich setting is more than 2 turns, up to 3 before it starts to four stroke. So knowing this, it is my speculation that the 1.20 develops alot of tank pressure, hence the 1.5 turns open.

So I believe (and hope) that the 1.20 will develop good enough pressure to deliver the fuel another 3 inches properly. I will do some nose high testing on the ground before I make this assumption though............. and AFTER I get a few more break in tanks through her.

Guess NO one has had a problem like I aks about earlier.

Wingbos

Wingbos,

You're statement Guess NO one has had a problem like I aks about earlier. would be correct based on my experience. But sometimes different things happen. Sounds like Tower is trying to make you happy. Drilling 4 new holes and moving the blind nuts is not a big deal for me.

I certainly figured out how to crash mine faster than I could assemble it. [&o]

Good Luck, I hope it all works out for you. We'd love to read about your build and flight set-up.

wingboz, like Rick said, sorry to hear about the motor mount issue, but it really isn't that critical to have the exact motor mount.

In fact, I usually put the engine in a different position than that depicted in the instructions, so I often use different mounts. The model is none the wiser.

It's easy to knock the blind nuts out and re-rill. Just thread one of the bolts in and tap out the blind nut. To fill the hole, I often use a chopstick (rom Chinese take-out orders) and CA it into the old holes, cut off with a razor saw and re-drill the new holes, per the photos. The pics are from a Seagull Super Decathlon, but the prinicple is identical.

stevo, that's a lot of change in CG on such a small model!

3 inches doesn't sound like much, but I'm betting it'll go lean vertical when it's adjusted properly with the model positioned level on the ground. Especially with that engine on that plane, it'll be pulling some pretty good G's going vertical.

Easy enough to check, but be ready for a deadstick.