My friend and I have the Magic with an OS 61 and Magic Extra with the Saito 72 respectively. Our CG's were close to 3.5" and after reading in this forum we both moved our CG's back to 4.75" behind LE. Hovering is much easier, however the Magic will no longer fly inverted! Any ideas why or what to do?
JS

What do you mean "won't" fly inverted?

Mike

Cause and effect man!

What's happening? Are you running out of elevator authority?

You might want to make sure that your ailerons are not drooping. (look at the bottoms, not just the top)....this can cause some issues....

Ailerons are right on the money. When inverted it loses altitude with 3-4" of elevator deflection and acts like it wants to stall out, the wings dropping off. This is at 1/4 throttle where it used to fly well inverted. Upright at this throttle the plane flies well with no stall tendency.

When you say "losing altitude" is the nose dropping and you have to compensate with elevator?

If it's more tail heavy, it will climb while inverted. FYI, with a 46FX, I had to add tail weight and move the battery back to the rear above the servos.

Keep in mind, your plane will definetly fly different when you move the weight around. A super stable plane will become very unstable when you move weight to the back.

Now it will 3D better, just not be as stable for normal flight.

Mike

Full elevator, yep. When I can I'll try with more speed as it just acts like it stalls.

did you move things around to achieve the new cg or did you just ad led to the tail???

if you have increased the weight of the plane it may indeed be stalling do to the slow speed.....especially if it was heavy to begin with.

Don't forget that the Magic does not have a sym. airfoil. In fact, it is almost a flat bottom! I learned that inverted slow flight is not too stable with this plane. (I tried once too many times to drag the rudder down the runway ) Mid and high speeds were ok. Just remember that this plane will only do some things well and other things not so well. Thats why you need more planes!

Didn't add weight, just moved the battery pack back to move the CG from 3 1/2" to 4 3/4". It flew inverted well at the first CG at quarter throttle. It's been raining here in UT so we haven't been able to try inverted at a higher speed. As for more planes, working on 3 right now! We are going to try to crank out 2 SPADs tonight.

I flew my Magic today for the first time. It is powered by an older OS Max 45. The battery pack is mounted over the rear servo. When it is trimmed for level flight at low to mid throttle, if I roll to inverted, it wants to climb slightly with no elevator input. This is the first plane I have owned that will do that.

Nashcat

OS 61??

Are you talking about the Modeltech Magic?

If so, man, talk about power to weight?

The plane hovers with a .32, what do you have a .61 on it for??


Jim!

I agree!! I fly mine with a .40 la and a 12 1/4 X3 3/4 APC and it will do it all.

Thank you flytlust. I was gonna stick my 52FS on it but I got worried about the weight. It's gettin' the LA!

Well my buddy would rather fly inverted instead of trying to hover so he moved the CG back to 3.75" and is happy. As for the 61, well, he just loves to power things... and doesn't seem to learn. He had the SIG extra and put a Saito 2 cyl 300 in it . It weighs in at nearly 18 lbs (about 4-5 lbs over). It's great to watch him fly it and the thing really books but I don't think I've seen a plane lander faster than that one has to. He finally put it for sale in the LHS.

I concur with some of the other posts. That little Magic was designed for a .40 sized engine. That O.S. 61 is too much! Probably has something to do with your problem. My buddy has this plane, and I've flown it several times. She'll do almost anything I can throw at it with a Super Tiger GS .40. We hand launch all the time, and she just takes right off out of our hands. Good Luck finding a solution!

Doug