wow! that looks good! man keep it up

Thanks. I took this the other day with the boss' camera while he's
away on vacation. (heh-heh...) Finally figured how to download
the pics.
Even with the battery shoved all the way up the nose I'm still a little
tail heavy. Should have some pics of the finished plane soon.
Provided the boss stays in Florida.

great idea. what is the wing span.
you have to get some finished pic's.

dude nice!!! what is the size on the plane??

Nose to tail is 11". Wingspan 17" After glopping the motors on
with Automotive Goop it's about 22.5 grams. A little heavier
than I was hoping for plus it's a tad tail heavy. Well, it is a
flying boat after all-
Should have some pics of it completed soon.

Finished and ready for test flights. Well almost.



I've now ran into a charging problem maybe some here have ran into.
The battery only cahrges for a 1 min- 10 seconds before the charging
light goes off. This leaves with with about a minute of possible flight time.
I tried a second charger- same thing. Both chargers charge my other
AA to the full charging time so it's not the charger or Double A batteries.

I was thinking of trying to charge the lipo directly from 6 Double A's from
just a battery box I made. I believe the lipo is 3.5 volts. Would the charge
of the 9 volt battery box fry it? Also I would have to keep close time on the
charge but if I could get the plane to run at least 5 minutes I'd be satisfied.

The only other thing I can think of is the lipo's going dead on me.
And that means a tear down for the new battery.

this might be a little hard but, you could replace the battery with a new one.
you said it was tail heavy right? get a bigger battery, that might help balance the plane out.

That's an idea! Should get over 10 minutes of flight easy.
Sure would like to know exactly what's up before I start rip'n.
I'm going to at least trim it first- maybe this is best for now
since it won't get very far on a minute of juice.

That is one AWESOME PLANE! GREAT job!

Tom

That is one good looking plane. Great job. Well, having yoked the electronics out of my first AA for transplant into various bodies that strike my fancy, I picked up my second AA the other day. This one I intend to leave stock for the most part...maybe moving the battery forward again and possibly bending the tail boom to correct the up climb it has stock.

I had removed the lower wings on my first AA and it does fly well that way but faster, and thus wasn't able to fly it in the barn where four or five of us fly our AAs. So, don't do this if you currently are flying in a smaller indoor area. Wouldn't matter in a larger place like a gym, of course. The penny in the nose trick also works great for outdoor flight to cut through a little wind and/or stop the up/down syndrome. Again, however, this won't work in the barn as it makes the plane a bit too fast even with the bottom wing on.

A question for you guys who have heated the boom to correct the tail climb...Does this speed up the plane? Don't want to do this mod if it will hurt my barn performance by increasing the speed.

For those asking about using rechargable batteries...I've been using Energizer 2500 (2700?) ma AAs from Walmart (about $10 to $17 for an eight pack). Make sure they are at least 2500 (2700?) ma on the label as I've seen them sell lower capacity ones by Energizer for the same price. I charge them on my Pirahna Digital Peak Charger at about .3 amps (slow charges are the best for AAs like these) overnight when needed. Also drain them down good and dead every fourth or fith time in a flashlight before a charge. These batteries are a great value and last a good two to three times longer than regular batteries in devices I've used them in. In my JR Sport 600sx computer TX I get about five to six times longer run times than the stock JR TX battery that came with it. In the AA I don't notice any longer charge times or lack of range. In fact, I think my charge times are less than regular batteries. This goes along with the trend of these things lasting longer, performing better, in such devices as my Digital Camcorder than regular non-rechargable batteries. Pick them up and you won't regret it.

pretty sharp looking, Neurotex. i think thats the first full stick and tissue job i've seen so far (others i've seen were profile versions). she should fly pretty nicely with all that wing area.

another way you may be able to get your CG right is to put the motors on the LE of the wing, rather than the TE. all you have to do is take the props off, flip them over, and put them on the opposite motor, and it'll go from pusher to puller. takes less than 3 minutes to do and would probably lift some of that weight off the tail.

the lipo should last a long time, i'm still using one from the first planes i bought back almost a year ago. but from your description, it sure does sound like the lipo. the stock one is a 130mah cell, so anything bigger than that would work as a replacement. the TX charges at a certain mA, and the RX will only allow that mA rate to charge the cell in the plane (due to a diode on the RX), so the battery box might not even charge the plane. plus, someone just reported their plane going up in smoke cause they used the wrong type of charger. they burnt up their laptop, carpet, floor, lots of smoke, not to mention the plane was entirely destroyed...lipos need their own type of charger, so i'd stick with the stock TX charger (unless you start using differant cells, then you can put your own plugs on the cells, and use your own charger to charge them and not waste TX batteries).

again, nice job on the plane. hope the maiden goes well, try to get some pics! [8D]

nick

Neurotex, Was that a kit? or just a custom plane?

-Cobalt Saber

Thanks for the info micro builder. I'll scrap the battery box idea and
hunt for another lipo.
I did plan at first to mount the motors on the LE to get as scale as
possible to the original but played it safe staying with the AA set up.
It would've solved my CG problem too since I tried laying the motors
up front before gluing them, and the CG was right on. No doubt the
designers of the PBY had it right with the engines on the LE.
I ended up gluing a 1.5 gram weight to the nose and got it balanced.

Before leaving for work this morning I couldn't help but use a few spare
minutes to test fly it in the back yard. With hardly any room I managed
to launch a nice flight, watching it make a steady circle and landing it
on it's belly just missing the flower box. All it needs is a little
rudder tweaking. I never had a plane fly this well right off the board
before.

Cobalt Saber. There is no kit and the plans I drew were mostly cut up
as templets to cut the balsa. What I did was scan the 3 views of the
PBY2 from a Squadron/signal publication #62 book and then enlarged
them. After printing them out I layed the sticks down on that and went
from there. Most of the fuselage was guess work trying to determine
the design from the pics in the book. If you've built a kit before you should
have no trouble applying the same build up to any 3 view specs.

wow, nice. Custom built planes are the best!!
Great work dude!!

-Cobalt Saber

I just finished gluing my motor back on my AA.
I bought a rubber band powerd balsa wood plane, I typed the wing on my AA, it glides very well.
It has been way to windy to try it out. It should be better weather this week so I will tell you guys how it works

-Cobalt Saber

here is my Aero Ace!!
The red circles are my where my LG's are


Tell me what you think.

-Cobalt Saber

Neurotex, I had the same problem with my AA's battery. It got to the point that the charger would cut off quickly and I would get just a minute or two of flight time. I tried increasing the power to the Tx by switching from from Ni-Mh to alkaline batts and then from 6 to 8 (Ni-MH) cells. Both attempts seemed to work for about one charge cycle, but then back to the same problem. I think the Lipo just wore out and would no longer accept a charge.

The charge rate seems to be well over the usual 1C recommended current for charging Lipos, so it is not surprising that they wear out eventually. I had flown the guts out of mine, so can't complain. I think putting in a new cell would solve your problem. Too bad it happened after building it into your model.

next entry

CHECK OUT THIS GEAR IT IS OFF OF A WATTAGE MICRO FLYER.

Thanks Barry2, from your experience and the advise from
others I'm convinced it's the battery. I've seen the replacement
battery on a site for about 9 bucks- beats buying another plane.

the Kokam 140mah cell would be a perfect replacement. its just a shade heavier than the stock 130, but they're cheap ($6.50). you can get them, and pretty much anything else related to micro RC, from this place: http://www.bsdmicrorc.com/products.cfm?catID=10001 they're good people to work with, very fast too.

thats cool that you built the plane with just 3 views. working with balsa is a good art to learn, it'll teach you patience if nothin else

this is one plane i've been wanting to do, pretty unique looking. i havent been able to track down any 3 views yet, but i havent been looking that hard. i'm sure there's one somewhere though.

nick

bad news..
The balsa wing is too heavy on my AA, so it dosent even fly
oh well

Thanks micro builder, can I use my current charger on the Kokam?
That plane would be an interesting challenge using a 3 veiw. I was
looking thru a book called "The Worlds Strangest Aircraft" last night
and the Burnelli UB-14B caught my eye.

[link=http://www.eu.aircrash.org/burnelli/chronol.htm]burnelli[/link]

Can't find any 3 views on this one either and very view pics. It should
be a great flyer considering the fuselage is an airfoil. Almost a flying wing.


Colbalt Saber, I used a built up wing on my first AA. It's about 6 grams
and it was scaled down to 16" from the plans of a Guillow's Arrow kit.

Just a quick note to the newbies on the stock AA. Do yourself a favor and put a dab of glue around where the boom and the tail hardware join each other. The tail likes to get loose and rotate in the boom. Not only that but the boom will start to crach around it's end where the tail goes into it. We've had this happen on three different AAs after several nose in hard crashes. Make sure the tail is level with the wing (isn't turned left or right in the boom) before putting the glue on. Use as little as you can get by with so you don't make the plane any tail heavier than it already is. I just pulled the tail out of the boom and put one drop of glue on it, then stuck it back in and rotated it back and fourth a bit to spread the glue over the inside of the boom surface. Also don't use too much because you don't want to get any on the antenna wire which will make yanking the guts harder in the future. While your at it put a dab of glue around the boom where it enters the plane body as it can become loose and rotate in the plane as well.

I read a reference to somebody using a drinking straw to replace the plastic boom and make the plane less tail heavy. They simply cut off the boom right where it exits the body and then stuck the straw over the stub of the boom sticking out, then stuck the tail piece into the straw at the other end. Has anybody tried this mod and how did it perform?

Neurotex,
That is a VERY nice plane you have there.
hmmm

-Cobalt Saber