I cant believe someone would actually pass up on one of those airplanes, especially when it looks like that!!![X(] (my favorite color combo yet) It looks great Chip!! Im sure you will have no problem selling it.

Chris odom

I've got .63 cents and some lint in my pocket. Interested in a payment plan?

Gorgeous airplane Chip. I like the one that you flew in the Argentinian Nats the best, however.

I doubt you'll have much trouble moving that airplane Chip. You guys are doing amazing stuff down there!

Looks like a Natural Born Texican Aircraft to me!

Dick

Thank you guys for all the support. I know many of you have asked me why we don´t charge a deposit fee. The answer is simple. It takes time out of all your guys schedules as well as a nominal fee for the transfer on both ends. Because of this we have been going on people´s word and trying to time everything so we do not have to pay more then nessasary to get the transaction completed. Fortunately up to this point there has not been any issues. Pattratt was the beneficiary of this and now he has a beautiful Visa on the way. Thank you all for the support and understanding about the logistics involved with making these planes and getting them out to the consumer. One bad egg will not spoil it for everyone.


C

Visa Update. Well the temps are finally coming back and the winter is just about over so we went out and did a bunch of flying last weekend. Actually I did mostly watching as I am going to judge next weekend at one of the team selection contests down here. First of all I gotta say all the guys are flying extremely well and I saw several flights that would of scored in the top ten at our nats.

Unfortunately for Marcelo he has been flying unbelievably poor the last few times I have seen him fly. As a matter of fact I was a little embarressed for him at the last contest. He has switched to the Visa that I flew at the Ar Nats and changed back to his JR. He was really making it look bad. Last week he went to practice and was so bummed he came to the paint shop and started asking if we could paint up a new plane for him this week.

I told him he was crazy that the Visa he has was one of the best flying planes I have ever flown. No mix, light, what more could he want. He said NO MIX yeah right it has 10% right ail on knife edge both ways. I laughed and said thats impossible. Anyway we went to fly the next day as I had to see for myself. Oh yeah he had already changed servos, rec. Batt. and transmitter and it made no difference.

I zeroed everything out locked the wings down and took off. Sure enough the plane was pretty much unflyable and to do anything like a circle or rolling loop was out of the question. After a few attempts I started thinking back when I had the prototype Visa. I had test flown it here in Argentina and shipped it to Tony´s place. In doing so I took out the rec. I had borrowed here to fly it and had Futaba send me another one to Tony´s. I arrived before it did and since Tony and I wanted to fly he loaned a JR rec. We spoke with Dave L and figured out the split rudd program and then went to fly.

The first thing Tony said was yeah right zero mix lol. It needed a ton of mix. I was really bummed because I thought we had it close to perfect. I flew for a couple days (Never Happy with it) and then my rec. came. I went to fly and it was like wow ok here we go. Tony was sick and didn´t get to see it and then I crashed it so we never really talked about it anymore.

This brings us to yesterday. We switched rec. at the field borrowed Javiers Futaba TX, I set up a quick program and bang rock solid with no mix. Marcelo is still in shock as am I because I cannot explain why this is different. I moved all the controls with the JR setup and trust me there is no innermixing on the ground. JR has a great radio, but I am thinking that to run the split rudder you have to use so many weird pmixes something is just not happy. With the futaba you do not need PMixs you just tell channel 7 to be on the rudder stick and it is all done automatically.

I don´t know but because of these experiences and the problems Dave L. had trying to fly the passport, we now have to strongly discourage anyone that is using the 12X from trying the split rudder set up. With a one peice rudder the plane feels great.

Marcelos flying came right back and I am sure he will be a threat to win next weekend. I was also able to cancel my order with another company for the plane I was getting him because of how bad he made our stuff look rescently.

Sorry for going on so long but I thought the whole story was important. Again this is in no way a slame to JR. I assure you guys they have great radios. We have just changed a little from the norm with the split rudder and maybe the programming was not made for this purpose.

C

Chip,
  Strange that you are having weird behaviour on the 12X with the split rudder.  I would really like to see how you did it on the 12X.  It was very simple on the new 11X, which has many programming similarities to the 12X, We seem to be having good results on the Passports we have.

Steve

A thought, sorry if it's a "duh": Did you ground check the rudder behavior at various throttle stick positions? Each 12x pmix can be set to be turned on/off based on throttle position; perhaps this functionality got turned on accidentally? Also, if the rudder throw is set up to vary with throttle on purpose, this could complicate matters.

Regards, Dan

Hey Chip, I guess you really did "Feel the Difference"? no harm intended here, just having fun.

I have been looking thru the thread but could not find a picture of the underside of the standard Visa paint scheme. Could somebody post this? I would like to know if it has enough contrast. Here the skies can be blue but more often it is clouded!

Volkert

Chip, is there any mixing in the Futaba equipped airplane? There has to be something missing when setting the same airplane up in a JR system. I'd also be curious if you see the same behavior with Airtronics or Spektrum, or Hitec.

I'm not a PassPort/Visa or Futaba expert, but I'll relay some of my experience that might help some others.

Apparently the base or default mixing types of options are different between the 12X and Futaba. With the 12X, the split rudder function allows both rudders to move together, and both to split outwards for an airbrake effect. The PassPort / Visa use a different type of split rudder function where in "normal" flying mode one rudder stays straight while the other moves (ie, when using right rudder, only the right rudder moves and the left rudder stays centered). I found this to be super smooth for normal flying, and a nice feature, but I was not able to get this mode on my 12X without using Pmixes.

After I had flown my PassPort a bit, and talked to Chip about the mixing I needed (that he wasn't finding a need for), a couple things were figured out -
- the dihedral angle on the PassPort was not ideal on the earlier models, and it was corrected on later models and on the Visa. I doubt my plane would have needed any rud>ail mix with the updated dihedral angle.

- Chip had a small amount of rud>ele mixing on his PassPort (which I think has been eliminated to zero on the Visa), and mine needed a lot more. The differences came down to a couple things -
1. Chip was using a curve mix, and I was using a linear mix. With the curve mix, Chip had 1-2% mix starting just off stick center and it stayed at 1-2% mix all the way to full throw. Using a linear mix (like I did initially), I needed more than 10%, and in some places it was not enough, and in others it was too much.
2. I prefer to have the plane setup such that it will spin with rudder/elevator only....no aileron....and this meant I had to move the CG further aft than where Chip was flying (which is where he had "tuned" the design for minimal mix).

I flew my PassPort with split rudder, and with the rudders moving in unison. The mix required in each mode was slightly different, and to recall, Chip was/is using the same mix for both modes. I couldn't see any reason why the mix in each mode should have been different on my plane, but it was. I did get to the point at which my PassPort had <5% mix in all modes, and exhibited no strange rudder coupling in the air, but it took a lot of work with fine tuning of mixes. My rudder Pmixes were not linked to the throttle in any way, and were not tied to any stick conditions. It is important to keep subtrim and trim to a minimum to avoid any undesired interactions when using multiple mixes (which are needed to get the desired split rudder mode with the 12X).

Regards,

One thing I noticed is that when you use the Futaba pre-canned Rud-Elev and Rud-Ail mix with the split rudder (and normal mode rudder for that matter) it seems to be better than if you use the programmable mix and manually set up the Rudder to Elev and Rudder to Ail. I don't know why, but it just seems a little different. I was having a couple issues and noticed that when I used a setup which made use of the Rud-Elev and Rud-Ail mix then my issues went away. I use the spline mix and have about 1% Rud-Elev mix just off stick center. Maybe I am imagining it, but it seems to me that once I made this change then I started having much more consistent flights. The other thing I did was to change my Throttle to Elevator mix so it was only engaged by throttle stick position at a minimum (down elev). I noticed a big interplay between my throttle curve and my elevator mix. That was giving the impression that it was hunting during level flight. It was just a mix issue that I never squared away. Now this thing is really locking in.

By the way, I don't know about other folks' flight experience with the Visa but I took Chip's advice (also the same thing TonyF told me when I was flying my Passport) and really worked on throttle management. I had a habit of entering maneuvers too hot and/or adding too much power on certain maneuver segments. The plane felt like it wasn't staying in a groove. But, I have to say that the Visa really tracks nice when you slow it down and apply power only when you really need it. The plane wants to fly fast, but when you slow it down and get the right throttle curve it gets in a real nice groove. I am still working on it for different wind conditions but I was really impressed by how well it did in the light wind this evening with a nice slow pace. Those were probably some of the prettiest flights I've had all year. I have had good luck in windy conditions and now I'm really happy with calm/mild air performance. Throttle setup and management are really key. The Neu motor is very powerful and it is easy to get lulled into advancing the throttle too far.

Just my $.02 worth.

Heres a bottom pic. Sorry it took me a bit to find one. We kept the same bottom scheme for this model as the passport because of the good contrast and how straight it makes the plane look going up.

Chip

Sorry to ask this, I'm sure the answer is somewhere in the thread, but I can't find it. Where is a good CG starting point for the Visa?


George

George, you can start at the front of the tube, then go from there

Thanks, Todd, will do!

George

Guess I need to start saving my pennies.. I want one!

I'm about 1/8th to 1/4" behind the front of the tube

I have it pretty locked in at that CG setting. One thing I tried today which, in my opinion, made a huge difference was to do the same thing I did on my passport rudder. I stuck a couple 6mm Depron spacers between the split rudders on one side. This let's me keep a wider rudder TE without blowback. The wider TE which allows airflow seems to be very stable. My Passport responded well to this and it had a big impact on the Visa. I found it much more solid in all flight attitudes. It was also a little slower in downlines. The downside was that this was like throwing on the brakes and it took a bit more power for the same flight speed I was used to (I think I used at least 100mah more per flight). I'm going to keep it this way and do more flights. I am really happy with the way it is flying right now.

Doug -

Definitely save your pennies and pick one up, you'll love it. I just took mine out for a spin yesterday. I doubled my flights since the nats in just one day......I flew 5 flights :-)

Having laid off a while since the nats to work on my golf game and take care of business at the office gave me the opportunity to remember why I converted to the Visa the day that I maidened it back in late May or early June.......it's just better than anything else I have ever flown. I picked it up and went through a P and F pattern and was comfortable enough to go right into working on some unknowns just for the fun of it. As Chip and Dave Lockhart know, I generally wait until the day before the finals to work on unknowns, so I thought I would get a little head start :-)

Chip and the guys at CA Models really hit a homerun with the Visa.

Mike

I agree.

My Passport has been sitting on the bench since I started flying the Visa. That says a lot because the Passport was really flying well. I had a few CG and "fancy" mixing issues at first with the Visa but I've got it all sorted out now. I especially like the way it flies F compared to the Passport.

My new Visa pics for Columbia

I love the gold you added and the lines on the Cowl. What does TABA mean?

Wow! we're going to have some cool planes and great pilots here next week!!!!!!



Chip! what plane is Marcelo going to bring to Colombia?

see you soon!

Marcelo

Chip -

That is one good looking Visa! Good luck in Colombia.