Jonny, phone or network wire is aout the same gauge. I also found some tiny shrink tube at radio shack.

Picked up a blue c channel at K mart. Maybe I should pick up the remaining planes and e bay them.[sm=50_50.gif]

Also, I'm sure everyone else has already thought of this, but I went to the dollar store and picked up a set of 3.25 diopter reading glasses for soldering these things.

Check out fly-m.com. instructions for modding out one of his planes. Also, pic of the AA Warthog.

Ferndale, of course! I've got cat5e scrap, solid conductor should work long as it's twisted. I'm bringing the wings closer together too.

I couldn't solder without mine.


Here's another bird story that almost ended in disaster. My son and I went up the road to "Grandpa's" house, 3 acres all mowed. We especially wanted to fly the extended wing mono there. It was a bit breezy from time to time and we could just about hover the planes. At one point mine was about 12' up at almost a hover coming toward me, when a hawk came at it. As it approached, it's wings extended and legs stretched out to grab it, I gave some extra throttle and the hawk veered off. It all happened real fast. The hawks like to go after pigeons there and I guess at the last second he decided the plane wasn't good prey. I thought the AA was a gonner for sure this time. After a week and a half in a pine tree and finally finding it again in my driveway over 150' away, this would have been a terrible end for it.

Update on the jet/bipe. I started with the spars off, it was a bit squirrelly last night but the wind was negligible. I took it out this afternoon in a moderate wind. It was really sqirrelly. I was flying inverted a lot. Ground effect became lift. I put the spars back in to see if that settle the plane down some. It appears to have done so. I think the greater power in the motor is causing the wing to flex more than it does with the standard motor. Also, I'm wondering iff moving the motors a little farther apart would help. You can watch it oscilate(sp?) when you launch it.
Any thoughts welcome, I'm considering making it into a mono with canards. See if that will settle it down. Tim

FERNDALE, try reinforcing the wing with some carbon fiber rod.

Took the jet I made this morning out to the field. Installed the regular
bipe motors to it to test it out. I thought I was flying pretty good, doing
some stall dives and such, until my 12 year old flew it.
He must have a lighter touch or something because he kept it as steady
as could be during turns and drive by's.

Could've installed the RX back further- had to add a gram to the back
and make the stab adjustable. 16.5 grams with bipe motors.
I'm going to try the N20's on it later.

I think this is a good enough flyer to post some plans for it so I'll draw
some up tomorrow.

totally off subject, I am going to make a point of NOT buying the products flashing around on my screen. Roc-it-up lock it up and stand at attention. Moving around annoys me the way my being there annoyed my DIs at MCRD SD. Oh, how I hate the popups.


Anyway, the jet/bipe is spending the night in a tree. Reguardless of wing flex, the motors are too close together. I couldn't get the bloody thing to orient. If it went into a turn it became an ever tighter turn. The tree is over a sympatico neighbors yard. I should have it back monday at the latest. Assuming nature does it's thing.

I just got my aero ace and I'm having a problem. I just charged my plan and it wont run. When I try to run the plan after charging it doesnt work and the green light just keeps blinking. Is there any way I can fix this? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks.

I don't get any popups. Maybe my browser is blocking them. I do see the ads, though; but I don't have a paid subscription to RCU, so I expect them.

Sounds to me like your transmitter might be defective - I'd see if you could swap it for a new one.
Flyer

No pop ups here either, using a Mac mini with Safari with "block pop up windows" checked.

I do see ads and too many on a page definately annoys me.

Ugh. Yes I consider POPUPS to be offensive conduct within the forums! So rude!
I use Camino and under Web Features I have Annoyance Blocking with block web advertising and block pop-up windows checked. I don't get ads here, but it seems like I used to. Camino is Mac-only I think, but if you aren't using it already, you might try Firefox, which I like for most things. http://www.mozilla.org/download.html

I guess this is last unsuccessful pic I will post, no doubt it's become tedious... Got an ok extended power glide from this. Realized I had put the motors on w/ left & right swapped - so I tried it upside down. Went much further, but still, little turn capability, and no altitude gain. About 35' from a 5' launch height. Not a good flying day anyhow, too wet. Good day to begin another plane. 2 ea. 7 1/2" dia. wings probably just too much lift area and drag, or perhaps should have staggered wings.

Finally AOL got on it and the pop ups stopped. Had an adware virus from it too.
I was getting one every 20 seconds on this forum only.

Plans for the jet. Tried to get everything in. Keep thinking I forgot something.

edit: Posting pics here comes out a bit blurry. If you want the full scale plans
so you can cut it from your printer, send me an e-mail or PM.

If the wings are straight with the stab you will get no lift. Angle the TE of the wings
down a bit or bend the tail boom up so the TE of the stab is up. You need to get some
air under those wings. Put the plane in front of a fan. When you lift the nose you'll
see where it starts to take off. Start from that angle.

My first plane flies! [sm=what_smile.gif] Way cool. Can't hardly believe it, nearly tore it down then thought, trim down. Flies flat. Turns like it's on rails, no noticable wing dip. wide turns compared to stock aa, my road is 23' and it just barely makes it around. Slight descent through turns, shallow climb into wind. Got some short flights along my road, which doesn't have much lift potential anyhow, before it started pouring. Trimming out lower wing made all the difference. CG may be slightly too far forward, should be an easy adjust by moving lipo back. Thanks to all for encouragement, I'll weigh it tomorrow when I weigh the other stuff. Looks like I'm gonna have to buy the Thayer guys lunch, I'll need their scale for awhile! Now I'm thinking, I'll look into setting up a home server to show off some ntsc vids of it!! Kind of a cheat with the stock tail, but that won't last long. -John

Fantastic! Looks cool with the bottom cut out.
Are you going to replace the AA tail with a round stab & rudder?

Neurotex;
On our Depron jets we build, we get a good no power glide since it has to be able to fly if the power shutdow activates. Next, I adjust the motor thrust angle & elevators for a flat 1/3 - 1/2 throttle flying. Yes, the elevator trimming up does cause drag, but being the farthest point from the CG it takes less to get the same effect. If you changed the AOA of the wing, the 2mm Depron , face on, may have the resistance of 4mm's. See where I'm going?
I like the dihedral in the jet wing. That will be a big help when turning. It won't want to "roll out" or dip the nose as bad in turns. Looks good!
I'd put 15gm of clay on it and get the best test glide. Thats what I do to know what to expect once they gear is installed.

jonny,
The air moving in a longer path across the top on the wing actually slows that air down and induces some turbulence. The air moving fast under the bottom now is actually more dense, pushing the wing up into the less dense air. Thus, creating lift due to the differences in speed and densities of the air above and below the wing.
Thank you for the comment on me being a solid resource. Very much appreciated. I try to treat people the way I would want to be treated.
The cat5 wire will work but will break quicker. If you have an old computer mouse, strip the outer cover and you'll find many small stranded wires inside that work well.
Congrats on the plane. Nice design. Cheating? Because of the AA tail????? Not so.....still YOUR design. You can always design a new tail to match the style of you plane. You will probably have to adjust the CG........no biggie though.

Ferndale,
I'm not sure I understand the question on the canard being made of balsa. Usually, the term under wing is relative to the position of the main wing to the fuselage. I've seen the canard placed above and below the fuselage. Generally, the more weight that is below the fuselage is a more stable flyer since it induces more of a pendulum effect.
Toys R Us has the Picco Z in stock. They are holding one for me to pick up Monday when I go to the Dr. . Radio Shack has them on their site, but not in stores yet.

Vermontflyer;
You wont find individual parts for less than the cost of a complete AA. Plantraco has Rx's, but they cost more than the whole AA does. I'm sure they are higher quality though. Its much easier to buy another AA just for a "donor".


I measured everything on the 06 Bipe & jet props. I cannot find any difference. I even looked to see if they changed the rotation of the motors left/right on the wings. Nope.
I have put the wrong prop on the wrong motor before. It has thrust, not much, but it vibrated and was making a weird noise. That was from spinning the props airfoil backwards.

Google has a free popup blocker that works well with IE, Netscape or FireFox. It adds a google toolbar, but I can live with it.

Later,

Tony
ARS Software & Innovative Solutions
http://www.falcon1.net/~ars/rcmodels.html

Thanks for pointing out that trimming is time well spent! Look how crude it is but it still flys, what up with that! Honestly I can't bear to think of taking it apart right now so I'm thinking I'll pull apart another bipe and *very* carefully make another one, record dimensions and use a CF rod & the smallest stab possible, after trying to move the lipo etc on the prototype. I got no software to make drawings like you guys. Coolest would be to eliminate the stab, rod & rudder altogether. Mind is reeling now, thinking NC-1701, childhood dream of flying the starship enterprise!!! Imagine that, props on the engine nacelles, WHOOH! WHOOH! More of a challenge than I'm ready for now but maybe someday... I think now I need to sort of reverse-engineer where I'm at with this model, I will spend a couple of days doing the math to prove it out. I'm really encouraged though, I was thinking that a round wing might not be so succeptable to changing wind in turns etc., and this tends to suggest that. I did some research and I found no successful full size aircraft that have round wings, the Sack AS-6 was a failure and the only others I found were like flying saucers or some such and that's rather loopy.

Ferndale,Welcome to Mono/Jet world. I will say that it will take some time to get it dialed in right.I found that leaving trim in harmony and adjusting the tail from there to get it to turn the same both ways. Did you get to try moving the motors out yet. I asked the same question a few days ago but didn't get a reply I think we are only 2 people with jet powered AA's.I was also wondering about making the tail boom longer. Mine flies great and fast it is a little squirrelly when the wind gets a hold of it but at least it doesn't do the death dive when it turns. I made a new rear tail fin and had horrible results. After further investigation I found that the new tail weighted about .6 grams less than the original. The plain would just nose dive so I put more tape on the old tail for now. Total weight of my mono/jet w/landing gear+lights is 19.8 grams.

Here are a few pics of my mono w/jet guts

I just thought of a cool mod(if it works) I was wondering if anyone has tried taking a stock bipe, moving the motors to the top of the bottom wings, and taking the top wing off. Any thoughts on the physics of this? I was thinking it might fly more like the jet because the weight is even with the wing rather than below it.

I found that I somehow turned off the ad blocker in norton. My bad.

Googled, Someone did this. Maybe Mcneil. Seems like he said it worked, but the props would hit the ground on crashing, I mean landing.

Replaced the treed AA yesterday, and found a new problem. The battery doesn't want to take a charge. It is in the old packaging, and the battery seems to be charging better each charge cycle. Is there a fresh battery time frame?

Megabyte here are pics of the canard mod.

Great site 4 U 3 view freaks!
[link=http://richard.ferriere.free.fr/3vues/3vues.html]3 views up the wazoo![/link]