Hey guys,

My plane is finally built and cover and I have the engine broken in and it starts without trouble. The question I have is should I disable the ailerons??
The plane is a clipped wing T-craft and I am doing this on my own as there is no local club. I have a nice frozen lake to fly off and a good smooth surface to takeoff and land.
Anything else you can recomend before I hit the skies??

Did you search the internet and ask the AMA about clubs in your area or even ask at the local airport for someone who knows how to fly a model? The reason is - it is best if you could get dual instruction. A lot of stuff will happen very quickly when you throttle up and your plane could get crunched real quick.

If you're going it alone, have you read and studied the principles of flight? The more knowleldge you have the better off you will be. Knowing before hand what the various control surfaces do and the principles of flight (how to keep it level, how to land, how not to stall etc) will help and you'll have no time to try to figure it out once you're airborne. That won't substitute for hands on practice, but knowledge can help.

As for your question about ailerons, I'd leave them intact. I don't believe they will "complicate" things at all and will probably help you keep the plane level.

How to learn without an instructor - gosh I really don't know - I learned with an instructor. Harry Higley has some books "Getting Airborne" where he discussed that. One of the things I did was build a glider and got up on a small hill and tossed it and practiced keeping it straight and level. Could get about a 5-10 second flight at a time and hit the ground a lot, but it at least allowed me to "practice" between instructor lessons.

You might want to consider when you go, to taxi about a little bit and then advance the throttle slowly keeping it straight and cut the throttle as soon as it breaks ground and settle back to earth keeping it level. That way you can get the feel of the control and hopefully not impact the ground hard.

But best of all I recommend an instructor.

Roodester

I learned without an instructor and I would never do it that way again.I went through many airplanes until I finally purchased a aircore .40 trainer,it was the only airplane to survive long enough to learn.If you really cant find an instructor,get yourself a good simulator at least,or find yourself a indestructable type of airplane.I can pretty much guarantee you'll be smashing up that nice new taylorcraft the first time out.I dont want to discourage you,but you'll be more discouraged after crashing.

How to learn without an instructor? Expensively. You'll almost assuredly damage the aircraft... possibly destroy it trying to learn without help.

First make ABSOLUTELY certain no one else int he area is available to assist. (Its hard to find an area where there isn't someone who flies models...) Check the MAAC website: http://www.maac.ca There SHOULD be a club locator.

roodester gave some real basic, and good information.
Before I power up any model, I hand toss it into some nice long, soft grass, to see how it will glide. The clip-wing
T-craft may be too big for you to toss fast enough to "sail" or glide to the ground.
Then try to taxi it around a little, speed up on taxi, untill you know exactly what it will do with advanced throttle.
Tiny "lift-offs" are a real good way to "get the feel of what is happening" with each of the controls.
I hope that Ice is real smooth, or you are going to be doing some covering repairs at least.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-frown.gif[/img]
We are pulling for you[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

Ok thanks guys

There was a club up here but it went somewhere never to be found.

I was an aircadet for quite a few years so I know all about flight basics and I have flown a couple of gliders, real and model.
my basic plan of attack is to do a few small touch and goes to get the feel of landing and flying close to the ground. I am also going to taxi it around for awhile just to get a feel for the rudder.
then once in the air I am going to take up as far as I can and cut back the throttle to see what the stall speed is like and how well it recovers.

We also lack any good flying feilds close by so that is why I am doing this now, the spot I have picked out on the lake is very flat and the snow is pretty soft. I have read and studied everything I can about flying this thing, so hopefully I won't wreak to bad.
If I had the money I would go out and buy a real trainer. The Sturdy Birdy 2 looks real nice and would work with everything I have now. But money is really tight at the moment.
I also have a fairchild ranger that still needs to be built, it was electric but I am going to convert it to glow, I might be able to use it as a trainer, if I can build it light and strong enough.

Anyways thanks for the help, I will be going up sometime this week.:-)

Your air cadet experience won't be much help at first. I flew in military planes for about 20 years - I still needed an instructor. Two of my squadron buddies are in the same club and also needed the help of an instructor.

The Taylorcraft might not be the best trainer. Your aircadet training should have told you that you need the ailerons for turning. But, if you want to learn to fly yourself, it's your airplane.....

I think that everyone here can appreciate your enthusiasm - we've all had it and have all been bitten by that bug. BMEFLYER (and everyone else) has given good advice - find an inexpensive flight simulator.

You're starting out right with asking for help here. Try to find that club again. Head up to www.modelaircraft.org. Click on "About AMA", then click on "Chartered Clubs". The "Chartered Club Locator" link is broken but you can search through the appropriate district for info.

If you find that club, perhaps one of the members has a flight sim that he can let you try out before you get your own. Seeing is believing...

Hope that this helps.

Bob

Save yourself a lot of money and find yourself an instructor... I think if you ask around most flyers of all stages of experience will tell you that the sport is a little harder than it looks.. I highly recommend a buddy box where your instructor can take the plane away from your control.. Wingman[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

Thanks again guys:-)

I have found a club here, and I am waiting for a response.
I can get the Sturdy Birdy 2 for about $90.00 can.
If I have to learn on my own would this plane make much differance as compared to my t-craft??
It will take the crashes better:-)

If you do find yourself having to go it alone, you owe it to yourself to check this site out thouroughly. S.P.A.D. Look under the "SPAD Originals" for the "Spadet". you can build that plane for less than 15 dollar using your existing engine and radio equipment (assuming .40 ish sized engine) and it will fly quite well if you're careful to keep warps out of the flying surfaces.
You can literally build this plane in one afternoon using solely the photo instructions on the website and it's all free. It's at least as crash-damage resistant as the Sturdy Birdy and has possibly a little better flying characteristics.
BTW, I've flown a Taylorcraft (in quarter scale) quite a bit. It's stable and a good flyer but generally considered something of an aerobatic plane in the clipped wing configuration. I certainly wouldn't consider it suitable for teaching yourself to fly.

Thnka you VERY much for the link. I am looking for suppies to built the debut and spadet. I only have a .25la right now so the debut would be the better choice, my fater has an assortment of engines including a .40 so I might be ale to talk him into letting me use it:-)
I also d/l the flight sim on that site and it looks great, just too bad I couldn't use my radio with it.

One thing I forgot the mention is that my father flew r/c about thrity years ago and is partly how I became interested in this sport(??). So I have plenty of help on building and setting up my plane(s) correctly, but will need some instruction on flying again.

A guy from the club answered and they are right in my town and have a couple of instructors that would love to help me, so that is a big bonus:-) The club didn't disappear it just moved.

Thanks again for all the help guys.

Good for you,Rob. Keep warm and have a Ball![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

Its great to hear you got in touch with sme local help. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

Just having an experienced modeler take the plane up and trim it out will be a HUGE help. I had one student that really only needed that much assistance. (He destroyed 3 planes before I met him... untrimmed, reversed controls and other peoblems which I EASILLY fixed on his 4th plane.)

BTW guys... people keep pointing him to the AMA site. WRONG... he's in CANADA... MAAC for him.

The news for this guy just keeps getting better and better. Pretty soon someone will leave him their R/C collection and a million dollars just to build and fly!

Yes it does:-) Except I won't be flying until spring. If anyone here is making a Spad don't take it out in the cold. Ths plastic becomes very brittle in the cold. I have to but a new sheet of it casue it broke before I even got it in the house.

Who taught the first fish to swim?
Who taught the first bird to fly?
WHO TAUGHT THE FIRST RADIO CONTROL PILOT TO FLY A PLANE?[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

The first R/C pilots taught themselves... using essentially FF aircraft with rudder control so they could (hopefully, it the radio worked.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-blush.gif[/img] ) guide the darn thing back to close to where they started...

Early radios took 112 to 240 v power for the TX and often had 48 v batteries in the plane. A Kadet Sr with a strong .61 would have trouble lifting some of these early 1 ch systems...

(should I go on? I've got the 1936 to 1942 magazines relating the info...)

If you really get stuck, RC First Flight puts out a great video on learning to fly. I have seen it advertised in the back of RC Magazines. If you have to, it would give you at least a fighting chance. Learning to fly without an instructor is tough!! I had enough trouble with an instructor and a buddy box. The older you get, the tougher it is!

FHHerber, As one who built and learned to fly in the "old" days, The Kadet senior would have most likely been flown with a "29-30" displacement engine and it would have had a home built radio with three miniature vacumn tubes, a sigma 4F relay, and two pen cells for a filament battery, a 45 volt "B" battery and two more pen cells for the escapement. It would have been hand launched with a run and a heave and gently steered around as it climbed overhead to an altitude where some aerobatics could be done. Loops, snap rolls, wingovers, stalls and spins were all possible with the rudder only escapement control. Since there was no throttle, the flight continued until the engine ran out of fuel then a dead stick landing was made hopefully somewhere near the point of departure. It was not unusual to lose radio control and a cross country chase followed to recover the errant machine.

I have no nostalgia for those days and really appreciate the modern equipment, but if a first plane is a slow, underpowered, aircraft (the 1/2A powered "Butterfly" comes to mind) I believe someone could learn without an instructor as well as we did in those days, and progressing to faster more demanding craft could be done in stages. By all means get an instructor if one can be found, but if you have to go it alone, it can be done if you don't start with a typical 40 powered trainer but something slower and more forgiving.

LOUW: Club members, Club instructors, and even Hobby Shop owners will tell you that usually the Newbee wants the hot, fast, 4 channel+ plane to learn to fly, when he or she should be starting with 2 or 3 channels in a slow trainer. Things happen fast enough in a trainer! If the Newbee is at least a private pilot, "HE KNOWS HOW TO FLY," and 1 or 2 planes later he realized he knows how to fly when he's sitting in it, but not when he's standing on the ground looking up at it. I started on 2 channel electric 2 years ago, and am taking my time. I have gone up to 3 channels. I have built 2 4-channel planes but have no intentions to fly them untill I'm comfortable with 3 channels. I listen to other pilots, take to heart their evaluation, compliments, and critiques, and keep learning from mistakes and accomplishments. It is my time, my money, my nerves, and I'll learn to fly My Plane. You are right! I'll keep asking questions, and taking criticism seriously, and learn from it.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

Heres another update,

I went down to the hobby shop I deal with quite abit and started talking about park flyers and stuff, apperantly they are very hot right now, but anyways we started talking about some very cheap trainers he is getting in, and I asked about the sturdy birdy. Turns out he has two of them at home. One is built and the other one is partaily built. I asked if was willing to sell one and how much, $40. can. So looks like I will have my trainer end of next week when he brings it in.:-) My dad is trying to talk him out of his other one.
It's amazing just how much you can do and find out if you only ask.!!

And about the club, There is two clubs that use the same field, One club is located here in town and the other on is a little north of here. I am trying to decide which one to join. It would be eaiser to join the local one to get to the meetings, but the other one has a newbe night only. On tuesday nights the instructors come out and leave thier planes at home so they can concentrate on teaching. And it is $25.00 more than the local club. I am going to attend both upcomming club meetings and see which one I might fit in better. Other than that I really don't know which to join.

I just want to thank you guys again, if it wasen't for this forum I would be out trying to fly my t-craft and probably wreaking it.

Lou... the Kadet wasn't designed until about 20 years AFTER the type models I described.

FHHuber, I realize that the Kadet is a relatively new design. What I meant was "if the Kadet had existed in those days, it would have been powered by a 29-30 size engine". In the fifties, I had an airplane called a "Buzzer-D" that was of similar size and characteristics to the Kadet. It had a home built WAG three tube single channel reciever that worked a rubber band powered escapement to actuate the rudder, and was powered with a Forrester 29. The transmitter was a large ground based unit with a nine foot antenna and the control was a pushbutton switch on the end of a chord. A push of the button would swing the rudder full deflection and it alternated with each push. As primative as it sounds now, we thought it was wonderful. If the minature equipment with the full range of proportional control available to us today, that we take for granted, had been available in those days, it would have probably have been a closely guarded military secret and would have cost thousands of dollars.