georgee

Hey Folks,

Finally.....The long awaited maiden flight of the Pawwnee"s happened.What a nice flying airplane ..........
The power setup of my plane is perfect,having enough power for all the necessary manouvers .
This will be my favorite slowflyer plane The Pawnee landing with the flaps like feather.Its hard to find a plane easier to fly like this.I love it.


Cheers,

Georgee

BountyHunter51

Congrats on the successful maiden Georgee. The Pawnee is a really sweet fling plane and one of my favorites. Plenty fun and relaxing.
Cheers!

jpanhalt

I like my Pawnee 40 too and would like to share come comments for potential newbies. I am a newbie to powered flight, but had been flying sailplanes for the past 15 years or so, including some high performance ones. The Pawnee was and still is my trainer. I have been flying it for about 2 months.

Build: Used Hitec 225's on wing and elevator halves (2). Put the elevator servos in the tail cone with direct linkages. Dubro tail wheel. OS Surpass 70 engine. Fuel tank about 1.5 to 2" back,i.e., about in the middle of the compartment. Battery and radio as shown in the instructions. Barbie was the pilot.

Balance: Plane balanced without any adjustments a little forward of the recommended c.g. range (done upside down), but flew nicely. I was having a difficult time with landings. They were "heavy" to say the least even broke a wheel hub and lost the tire on one. Eventually considered that I was running out of elevator (on low rate), so re-balanced the plane right at 3-1/8" on the mean cord line from LE. Required 1 oz lead right over tail wheel. Plane flew fine, but was light on the controls. Club instructor and one of the best pilots agreed, so removed 1/2 oz. Plane now flies great and my landings are much improved. I have plenty of elevator on low rates. I have used only 1 gal of fuel so far, so I consider myself still a newbie.

Question: Has anyone modified the gear to allow more give? A tack weld on the cross wire popped on one of my heavy landings. I cut the remaining welds, added fuel tubing around it, then tied that to the cross brace with brass straps. That added a little give, but I was wondering about other approaches.

Love the airplane.

John

piperpawnee235

Hi, I have over 200 flights on my Pawnee and absolutely love it. I have recovered it though as some of the blue and green film began to lift but that was always going to be my intention to do it up as the Pawnee that tows me up in full size gliders(refer earlier posts for pics). I also had trouble with bouncing on landings but found the sweet spot after lots of trial and effort. I found it is best stalled on at virtually zero airspeed. My approach is done normally and let it float just above the ground and gently feed in up elevator to bleed of airspeed, i enthasize gently otherwise she balloons up and u may tip stall. 9 times out of 10 she settles perfect. The other way is to fly it on the main wheels but u have to be careful here not to apply up elevator to quick when the mains hit otherwise she will balloon up and good ol tip stall might come and say hello.
After speaking to many full size pawnee pilots they all say there is an art to landing the real one also so don't feel to bad if u get the odd bouncer every now and then cause even full size pilots with thousands of hrs still do it.

happy flying to all and may all your landings be right side up..............

rv9-a

I have stiffened up the gear by adding two more landing gear clamps on the front gear leg. The first hard landing I had bent this part of the gear away from the fuse.
See attached pictures. A solution I thought I that might try is to put some more spring into the gear by modifying the smaller wire on the front leg. Cut a short section of the gear out shown between the two pieces of yellow tape in the third picture. Bend a hook towards the fuse in the upper section, in the lower section bend a hook toward the wheel. This would be done on both sides. A rubber band could then be attached between the two hooks simulating the bungees on a full scale plane. Ideally you would have "hinges" on the upper sections of the gear but I think with the proper amount rubber band you could get the right amount of give. I intend to try this as son as Horizon has the gear in stock.

hope this helps
rv9-a

rv9-a

Sorry about the double picture post

rv9-a

jpanhalt

I have done something very similar to what rv9-a suggests. It seems we have all discovered that the front cross-bar bends with a medium hard landing. First, I cut the smaller cross-wire loose. Then, I added a 5/32 doubler between the two mounting straps. I then put a piece of slit fuel tubing over the smaller cross-wire and tied it to the doubler with soldered brass straps. It allows just a little give and has been working for lots of hard landings since.

Everything is packed and ready to go for tomorrow, so I can't get picures tonight. I will post some tomorrow after flying.

John

rv9-a

Another weak area in the plane is the motor mount, this thing looks like a piece of Swiss cheese. It was ruined after a not so hard crash. I stalled the plane at about 3' above the ground. It came down on the left wingtip then hit on the nose. Didn't even break the prop. The left wing was bent back a small amount bending the large wing tube. The wing attachment tab that goes into the fuse was pulled loose from the wing....no glue! The motor mount was made of two pieces of approx. 1/8' thick ply glued (?) together. There are 8 blind nuts and four multiple choice slots in this mount not leaving much solid wood. I usually catch something like this and reinforce it.

rv9-a

dmyers0403

My Feedback: (48)

Well I finally changed my gearBent original wire a little a couple of times but was letting friend fly it and after a couple of landings I said to take it around one more time-it is electric powered and the ESC cut out at about 3 ft above ground on take offhe was not familar with electrics and did not know he could pull throttle back then advance for enough power to get out of the situation-even do a go around, so it ended up making a hard landing and really spread the gear outsince one of our friends flying with us makes T6 landing gear I walked over and he voluntered to do me a gear for the Pawneeadded 1/2" to hieght-Now I can land it with out any worry
PS: Great flying aircraftI luv it.

jpanhalt

Here's the picture of the modified gear mentioned above after a hard day's flying.

John

Lotsofcrashes

Hi guys, Im new to this thread and the Pawnee so I have been reading with much interest, in particular about the cog. I have an os .75 motor in mine and the rest of the setup is stock. Battery behind the seat in the cockpit. I still have to add about 165 grams ( 5.8 ounces ) to the tail with the  cog 7mm back from the most forward position of the revised cog position on horizons site.  

rv9-a

Lotsofcrashes,

I had the same thing come up on mine they were 1/4" off from what the manual said. I went from the leading edge of the wing. Don't know why H/9 had to confuse people by giving to points to measure from..............dumb[] You may also want to check glue joints where you can, especially the wing attach tabs where they are glued in the wing. I was doing a pull test on mine at the field and it pulled out!



rv9-a

Lotsofcrashes

Hi rv9-a, thanks for the feedback and tips. I will set cog from the leading edge of the wings as you did. Im a little worried about the strength of the motor mount area too but if I get into that it would probably result in more weight in the tail so I will leave well enough alone for now.

rv9-a

Lotsofcrashes,

Yes the motor mount box is a weak area, see the attached photos. The mount is made of two pieces of about 1/8" ply that is glued (?) together. I had a hard landing, that didn't even break the prop, that caused the mount to fail. At the least I would knock out the 4 blind nuts you are not going to use. Drill out those holes to to about 1/4" and epoxy some short pieces of dowels 1/4 to 3/8" long into the holes. Then sand them flush to the face of the firewall. If they protrude a little behind the f/w it shouldn't hurt a thing. If you aren't going to use any of the four rectangular slots you can wick some thin CA around their edges and strengthen these up quite a bit. And yes, throw that excuse for a tail wheel as far as you can.......Sullivan makes a good replacement.

hope this helps, rv9-a

Lotsofcrashes

Rv9-a, I see what you mean about the motor mount. I may have to do what you recommend in time. I just set the plane upright on the balancer and measured back 70mm from the wing leading edge. Seems to need less weight in the back end now so I will get some lead for it today and see if I can wrap this project up and maybe test fly it soon.

rv9-a

I screwed the canopy on, it makes it very easy to get in to that area if need be. I also made a hatch, as have others have, for the battery in the tail of the fuselage.

rv9-a

Lotsofcrashes

Thanks again for the tips, these threads and the guys on them are a big help.

Bent Larsen

I made some modifications to my Pawnee, first of all I made a new gear from inox steel, works great. I put glass fiber around the motor mount and a leatherstrip inside the motorcowl to take away vibrations.

regards Bent

Lotsofcrashes

Hi Bent, your mods look really good. Now why didnt H9 put on landing gear like that. I like the light up front too and some of the other things you have done. I guess this plane is one of your favourites.

Bent Larsen

Sure, it IS my favourit plane!

Bent

Lotsofcrashes

Im nearly ready for a maiden flight on mine but keep reading how nice this plane flies. What makes it special to you .

turboratt

it pulls my banners lol

Lotsofcrashes

okay Im laughing, I guess I will have to find out for myself.

Johnny C!

Bent,
Nice mods. What kind of light did you use? Is it
functional? Based on your ideas, I guess I have
more work to do. I really like your new struts.

I still intend to add a smoke system & booms.

I got the scale Dave Clarke headset for my GI
Joe, and added the Gem Tech strobe in the top
of the canopy.

It is a great flying plane. I like the fact that this
model looks good in the air, and it doesn't have
to be going like stink to look scale. It's a very
relaxing plane to fly...

Thanks for sharing!

John

Bent Larsen

Thanks John!

All the lights are funktional LED. The landing light is from a pencil torch and has a strong LED diode.

Bent