Hello folks, I have a few questions I know you guys can answer,

This one one is for folks that fly in the Phoenix area. Does the 110+ degree weather effect the engines, do they overheat? Are you guys limited in flight times? Or is this the time of year us desert folk build?
Second, Ive been getting some stick time on a sim (fms) what I have noticed if I apply a little rudder in any direction the nose drops a bit. Is this common in real flight?
Lastly, I bought an Airtronics VGR4 new with all thats normally included about 3-4 years ago. Ive maybe fully charged it one or twice without ever discharging it in that time period. Are my batteries still considered new or have they lost their ability to hold a charge?

Thx in advance for your answers

mj147

It is common for the nose to drop with rudder on many, but not all planes.

The batteries should be fine, but if you can find someone local to you who has a cycler you can verify their actual status. Or take the "better safe than sorry" approach and replace the batteries. After all, a new set of batteries is a lot less expensive than a new airplane that crashed because of bad batteries.

On the battery question. They have a shelf life. The only way to be sure of there condition is to cycle them.

If you have a battery charger/cycler charge them fully about 18-20hrs for (600mah at 50-60mah rate average wall charger included with radio). When they are fully discharged the cycler will tell how much capacity in mah were in the packs. do this 3 or 4 times and average the capacity. if the packs are below 75% of rated capacity I personally would replace them.

Cycle them once a month when not in use for extended periods

Note This advice is for NiCad not NiMah batteries

i fly real airplanes and everyone i have ever flown (Super Decathlon, Super Cub, Warrior III, Archer II, 182 Seaplane) you can give them all full rudder and the nose will not drop, but my R/C (Duraplane) giving it full rudder yields a dive :stupid:

this is due to adverse yaw or dutch roll(i dont remember which), as the rudder moves the nose left or right, we will say left, the right wing moves through the air faster than the left, producing more lift which drops the left wing, and after a while the horizontal component of lift overtakes the effect of the vertical component and the airplane drops.

wow that was long

What field you flyin at mj147?

First of RC aircraft are 'real' airplanes subject to all the same laws of physics. The only difference is we don,t ride in them and that presents even more of a challenge than it does 'full scale'.

OK your duraplane if it is the version without ailerons then it is not subject to adverse yaw which is a phenomenon which is caused by the outboard downward moving aileron producing more drag than the upward moving inboard one and this produces the yaw opposite direction of the desired turn. No ailerons no adverse yaw. If your duraplane has aileron disregard this.

An aileronless airplane is controllable by what is called roll coupling which is designed into the aircraft, namely dihedral. this works by appplication of rudder which will cause just a yaw which moves the dihedraled wing forward in the relative wind and effectively increases the angle of attack of that wing and this effectively causes the roll so we can complete the turn an airplane with a totally flat mid wing cannot be controlled this way and there are many degrees of coupling that can be acheived by design consideration depending on dihedral wing position etc. Some types of RC craft are designed to have coupling and positive stability on all axis (trainers sport aircraft) and some to have as close to totally neautral stabilty and zero couples as possible (this is rare in full scale) such as Pattern aerobatic types, some scale aerobatic types and pylon racers.

All aircraft, this includes full scale unless they have totally neautral stability and zero couples (a difficult state to acheive) will couple into a bank if a yaw imput is made eventually. But the speed of that couple is predicated by design. Your Duraplane even when ailerons are used is designed to have a fast reacting couple. In fact most RC trainers with ailerons are quite capable of being flown and even aerobatics performed without ever touching the ailerons.

mj147
To answer your question about temperature Yes, an RC aircrafts total performance is affected just as full scale by density altitude and all the varables of DA, temperature, altitude and moisture. I am attending a pylon race at Speedworld in PHX in the morning and being around 2500 feet lower we always experiance better performance there than at home which makes prop selection difficult at times. But of course the worst of it is the wilting pilot in the heat. You will find in arizona that morning is when the activity is. A few days ago it was 122 in lake Havasu. Oh and the question about over heating you soon learn to adjust needle valves appropriately.


John

thanks.
mine does have ailerons. thanks for clearing up my explanation. i had the correct idea anyway.

Wow folks thx for all the replies.
Hehe I have to get the ol RC/plane dictionary as some of these "adverse yaw" lingo are a bit foreign to me at the moment.
Ive currently been hit with the plane bug (again) but this time I plan on following thru with an instructor so as of yet I'm still looking for a field nearby so I can go and at least check em out.
I'm gonna dig my superstar from storage and clean up some hanger rash so I'm hoping to be airborne soon. If any of u fly in the Phoenix area lemme know when/where u guys fly so I can check it out while I get my equip up to par.


thx again

mj147