Monokote over itself or Ultrakote isn't too bad if the area isn't extremely large (say about 1-2 inches max wide) and you can "roll" it on slowly so the air can escape as you go. Use a low temp iron to start with. Then you can raise the temp for a final seal; just don't let the gasses start building up.

Otherwise you could try the "windex" method which many swear by. I haven't tried that yet so can't say.

Gary,

Thanks for the advice! I was concerned about Monokote over Ultracote because of the different shrink rates. Based on your advice I broke out the Monokote scraps and went at it. It worked fine over the Ultracote. I'll post the final product soon.

JC

Hello all,

Here are a few pics of the completed trim scheme. Next step is radio and engine installation. Should be a snap since I took the time to drill all the holes before covering.

All trim cut from Monokote or Ultracote. I made good use of the scrap box for this scheme. Instead of the three Italian colors, I chose the good 'ole red, white, and blue. This is a kit made in the USA after all!

JC

Sweet looking Kat

Wahoooooo!

The "Kat" is done! Just a little over a month of part-time and pleasant work. The all up weight is 4 lbs. 5 ounces.

Summary:

1. Well designed, engineered, and cut kit.
2. Fun build
3. Only one area of construction confused me - the bottom spars. Bend them, don't cut them!
4. All-up-weight is almost exactly what was claimed on website.
5. Wood selection in kit is excellent, however I came up short on some 1/16" sheeting (no big deal).
6. Well supported by OMP here on this forum.
7. Electronic manual on CD-ROM can be blown up and printed in color if you wish. Instructions were very good.
8. I found that I only needed the bottom hatch in the left wing (opposite the cylinder) where I put the RX and battery. Your choice, but it will save some time to only build one hatch.

Flying? I'll let you know as soon as I get it in the air - don't hold your breath, I live in Michigan.

Looks good. Cant wait to hear the flight reports.

Hello, the KatanaP has flown!

I just had to get my new KatanaP into the air to see how she would perform. I packed it up tonight and headed for the field. We had a nice sunny day here in Michigan but the winds were up. I flew in the calmer evening winds of probably 7-12 mph.

I got to the field and did a range check to make sure that I got the 30 paces with the antenna colapsed that Futaba recommends. It was fine. I bolted on the Zinger 12x4 for the first flight and gassed it up. The reliable .46 FX fired right up with the chicken stick (no spinner). Unfortunately it was running backwards and started backing itself off of the starting table! I shut it down and restarted it with the fan going in the correct direction. A little engine tuning - this engine has only flown once in two years - and she was ready to go.

I dialed in high and low rates and throws as recommended in the manual. I did not use the recommended expo, however. I selected low rates for the first take off just in case. After a litte taxiing around I pointed her into the wind and advanced the throttle. She tracked straight and took to the air with no problems. I was having to hold a little up elevator to keep her level. I had to use about 4-5 beeps of trim to keep her level at cruise speed. No rudder trim was needed, and only one beep of aileron.

I cruised around a little to get used to the ship before I tried anything. After getting comfortable on low rates - which felt sluggish, I went to high rates. This felt better. I goosed the throttle and pointed her straight up. She rocketed upward nearly as fast as my UcanDo .46 with a Saito .91. Excellent power.

I ended up flying two flights of 13-17 minutes. Here are my preliminary reflections:

1. It is nose heavy. I am very close to the conservative CG recommended in the manual - about 3/4" behind main spar.
2. Pop-ups were excellent with the ability to scrub off all momentum almost instantly. Fun stuff! None of my other airplanes do it as well. No wing dropping during the maneuver.
3. Parachutes start very good, but degrade soon after to a wing-drop/spin. This should get better with a more rearward CG.
4. Upright spins and flat spins were excellent! Glad to see that this ship will flat spin. My Giant-Su-Do-Khoi and UcanDo would not flat spin upright.
5. Inverted spins and flat spins were excellent as well.
6. High-alpha/harrier was not achieved but I expect this to get better with CG adjustment.
7. Hover/TR was quite good. I was fighting some wind, but it was quite stable. Very little tendency to TR, but I could not ensure the I was perfectly vertical. I did have to hold up elevator - probably due to CG. Hover was at about 5/8 throttle.
8. Knife edge was very good with a tendency to go to the canopy - probably due to "up" trim.
9. Rolling circles were OK. I did notice that when I applied the "snap combo" (aileron/rudder in same direction with up elevator to round the turn) during this maneuver, it did want to snap-roll around. This accelerates the rolling speed. Aerofly models this quite well, BTW - even though I had never experienced it before!
10. Rolling harriers - I'm not that good!
11. Tried an APC 12.35 x 3.75. I only noticed that the APC was quieter and did not spin up as fast. More testing needed.

I was getting plenty of run time from the 6-oz tank so I think that I'll keep it.

Summary: Excellent first flight. This is going to be a fun bird. Flight performance was hampered by forward CG so I'll have to move it back.

Follow-up flight testing:

11/11/04 - Moved the battery back to TE of wing. CG is now at 1" behind spar. Designers say that 1.25" is optimal. Unable to test fly due to Michigan weather...brrrrr[:@]

11/14/04 - Finally got a chance to test with the CG moved back. I got four flights in today. I started with the CG at 1" behind the spar and wow! - it is a different airplane!

Got my first taste of stable high-alpha flight with this bird. I pitched it up past the aerodynamic stall point and entered the realm of high-alpha. Cool! Rolling circles were excellent, predictable, and well harmonized - gone was the tendency to snap around when the "snap" combination of controls were applied. Rolling harriers were also excellent with ailerons remaining effective at very low airspeeds. Hover and torque roll were very good and the airplane is very responsive to rudder and elevator when vertical.

I tried Zinger 12x4 and APC 12.25x3.75. APC provided more thrust and better control - despite being a touch slower to spin-up. I will use the APC from now on. The airplane requires very little power to stay in the air. I had a 17 minute flight on the 6-oz tank and landed with 1/4 tank left.

I flew with the CG at 1", 1 1/8", and 1 1/4". My gut feeling is that 1 1/8" was what I liked best, but I need more testing and stick-time. I am running 2-oz less fuel than the designers and this could affect the recommended CG.

I was very impressed and satisfied with the way the airplane performed today.

JC

No one replied to your last post? Horrible people! LOL Glad you got everything sorted out. OMP is mailing mine now and I am really excited about it. That's why I read this thread again to get a better idea of what I'm up against. But seems like i'm not heading into anything except pure fun.

JC,

Congratulations on a job well done. We are all glad to see you finally fly your Katana. I know here in OH our weather is starting to go bad fast so our flying days are numbered. Hopefully you'll have some more opportunities to wring it out more.

Ahh Mike I have a couple of spots at my place for you and Dion for the the time being while you wait for winter to pass. Just pack a couple of ARFs and get to the sunny side of the world. LOL

Spacey,

Yes, sort of an anti-climax, huh? Well, I guess that people just expect great things from an OMP bird. I have also been editing my flight testing post and maybe this does not "bump" the thread?

It was a pleasant project and I noticed and appreciated the engineering effort that went into the kit. For a smaller manufacturer (i.e. not Great Planes, or Top Flite) OMP did a great job. I have purchased from some other small manufacturers and been sorely dissapointed.

jc

Mike,

Thanks!

Last weekend was great here in Michigan - Sunny and calm. I had a blast! Not too many more weekends like that this year.

One of our members is an aerospace engineer. He was spotting me as I flew the KatanaP. He said that "airplanes aren't supposed to do that" after watching me experiment with high-alpha flight.

JC

Yeh, I get that too being in the aerospace R&D side of the Air Force. What we used to consider "departing controlled flight" in the flight test business no longer applies given the stupid amount of power and control authority we have with our models. Now we simply depart "wing flying" in favor of "prop flying" or "vectored thrust" (commonly called 3D flying in our terms) and vice versa at will. Pretty cool huh!

Mike I was also analising these comments commonly made my non 3D pilots in my head a couple of nights back when I got into a firey argument with one of them over the term "Planes are not supposed to do that" commonly coming out of their mouths. But something that occured to me though and correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't the airforce been displaying high alpha flight for ages already? All the jets the public know about have been in service since what before the 90's? We see planes there with vectored thrust like the Harrier and some other jets. We commonly see delta wing jets doing slow high alpha passes at airshows to amaze the crowds with their power to weight ratios. But still it is high alpha flight! 3D!? The harrier is an aeroplane and well called a VTOL but still it has wings and it can hover? We all know that full scale aerobatic pilots are catching up with us modelers with regards to 3D flight. I've seen a guy with an Edge 540 do an inverted harrier in a video. We know about the guy hovering hes Edge, not for long but he's doing it! So why are we so attacked with "It's not supposed to do that!" when it's been done for ages now. It's just harder for the full scale pilot to do the stunt because he's sitting inside the plane and doesn't have that much to work with while trying to hover a plane. He can't see the thing is getting out of shape because he barely can see the ground to refference to. Are we really doing things that are not scale?

Yes, many jets can perform high alpha flying and have been for a long time. It's all a matter of education to those who can't keep up with technology. Our sport and hobby is making leaps and bounds in terms of flying abilities. Believe it or not we now have reversible pitch props on aerobats and just wait til this hits the mainstream. There's going to be a whole new style of flying coming our way.

Mike,

I think that maybe you saw the "Foster 'Copter" indoors down in Columbus, huh?

With regards to full scale 3D, I wish somebody would rebuild Wayne Handley's Turbo Raven. It was the biggest leap in Airshow Technology since Jimmy(?) Franklin strapped that turbo-jet to the bottom of his Waco!

JC

LOL Can you imagine having prop pitch control on a .40 sized profile? [sm=eek.gif][sm=bananahead.gif]

Hello,

I have managed a few more flights on the OMP KatanaP and it is getting better all the time. I managed to dodge a bullet two weeks ago, though. I flew one excellent flight and and landed. I gassed it up for some more flying and switched the radio on. The elevator servo was dead and the throttle servo was going berserk!

Once back at home I debugged the system. The RX checked out fine and so did the throttle servo. The culprit was the elevator servo. I disassembled the servo and found an intermittent solder bridge between the power and signal lines right at the PCB board. Pushing on the wires caused a fault. I reflowed the solder joint on the signal wire and everything is fine. Gosh am I lucky! Had the fault occured a couple of minutes earlier, the airplane would have went straight in with no elevator control.

The servo had been used successfully in a GP CAP for several years. The reason for the fault manifesting in the KatanaP is because of the relatively tight bend as the wire snakes from one side of the fuse to the other through the servo mounting hole. The "stress" from the bend put some pressure on the solder bridge and it started making contact.

The servo is a Tower Hobbies TS-69 ball-bearing standard servo. I have never had a servo fail before. It is interesting to note that the plastic bottom part of the servo says "S148" on it - as in Futaba S148, but maybe they just use the same plastic.

Weather is now freezing here in Michigan so it will probably be small electrics indoors and out until Spring.

See my next post for a cheap hop-up!

JC

Here is the cheap hop-up that I mentioned:

I purchased a Tower Hobbies .46 muffler for $14.99.

It is a very high-quality unit and quite inexpensive compared to a Macs or Ultrathrust product. The volume is much greater than the stock OS muffler and there is no weight penalty.

This muffler really makes my .46 FX howl! I expected a better top-end hit, but the power has increased throughout the powerband. Hover/TR is now at an honest half throttle or maybe less. Throttle response is also better. The top-end hit is amazing - the KatanaP rockets upward like a homesick angel.

I emphatically recommend this hop-up for your .46 FX!

JC

Hello,

I just wanted to post a little mod that I made to the KatanaP that is making for some fun experimentation. I put tip plates on my Funtana 40 and it greatly improved the high-alpha wing rock by cutting down the amplitude of the oscillations by at least 50%. A stunning result on the Funtana was that the tip plates greatly improved the knife-edge flight which is lacking on the design. I thought that I would try the same on the KatanaP to see what would happen.

My KatanaP has a better upright high-alpha (HA) than the Funtana, but can still do a little wing rocking depending on AOA. It is a cheap and easy mod so I went for it. I used 1/32" aircraft plywood and covered it with matching Ultracote. I then screwed them to the tips.

The plate design is basically 1cm greater than the tips with max thickness carried to the trailing edge.

I only have three flights since the mod in not-so-great conditions. The HA seems to be improved. In addition, the knife-edge is a little better as well - and it was world class to begin with. More testing is needed.

JC