Well after a month or two of building,
then the first flight on December 22 2001.

Then at Jets over Deland January 28, 2002
was the first hands off hover flight.

On March 04, 2002 at Fl Jets it was flown forward
at low speed with a vertical landing.

On March 16, 2002 it was time to fly it forward like
a reg plane.

Also on March 16, 2002 it crashed... NO MO RIG

The turbine quit at ~40 mph and ~300 feet, it
should have glided better but at 35 lbs and 4 x 10 inch
fans, it glided like a set of car keys.

http://www.corpcomp.com/weeks1/movies/rigcrash.WMV

What was lost .. ? .. The plane is a wreck. As you can see
the airframe is a total loss. But that is it. All the tail rotors
are fine, batteries, gyros, speed controllers ect all OK.

The first rig airframe cost me a few hundred dollars.
The new one should not be very expensive as it will
have a Phil Nuza, molded nomex honey comb nose.

Molded fuel tanks (5-6 min instead of 3min), and heading
hold gyros.

The new plane should be lighter and able to carry more fuel.
(I hope)

Many people have said it may have a transition problem
going from zero airspeed to fast forward flight. On the last
flight this was some what tested, and I can say, this is not
a problem. Some of the hovering was done in 15-20 mph wind
and it worked fine.

As soon as I sell these 4 Isobar kits at Miss afterburner I will
get off my a&& and build R2.

Anybody want to help.. ? Baton Rouge LA,, any time.. ??

Eddie Weeks

Man, that really sucks!! Too bad it was so zoomed out, hard to see, but at least there sounds to be hope for another!

Didnt hurt the engine at all?

WOW.

So sorry to hear about the loss. Great video, by the way. You've done a great job of documenting your efforts.
Do us all a favor...keep the airframe bits, toss them in a trashbag for someday.
You have made a historically significant model, and someday somebody will zap it all back together and I'm sure they will find a place in the AMA Museum for it.
Good luck with the new one, too.

Eddie.

Sorry to hear that you crashed the Rig. I was looking forward to seeing it at Mississippi.

Eddie,

Bring the parts to Mississippi, the Gang has plenty of Zap glue thanks to Uncle Frank, we can rebuild it! We can have it flying by noon on Friday.

See ya next week bro.


David Reid

Eddie,
What is the wing area of your plane?

The Rig has Isobar wings with about 1400 in^2.
This should have been enough to at least
pull the nose up, but I am starting to
think, the wings were too far back on the Rig
This made the Rig nose heavy, aerodynamically
and even with a 2 lbs of down push of the
tail rotor along with the large elevator
deflected at 50 deg, the nose did not come up.

I remember clearly, after the turbine quit,
the Rig nosed over, I heard off in the distance
the wing tip tail rotors spooling up. Even
at that distance I know I heard an RPM change.
If so it just produced a lot of drag, that's all.

Bob Parks is going to help me with wing placement.
(your never too good to ask for help).

Other than that, the new Rig (R2) will be much
the same, just lighter. (I hope)

Eddie Weeks

"Glided like a set of car keys..."
Good one!
Actually, from looking at the video, it did not seem to glide at all. More like just fell, with a slight forward inertia left over from flying. That thing just dropped!

Bob's the man, he'll help you out...
I'm serious about saving the wreckage...toss it in a bag and hang it on the wall. I have a whole row o' bulging black bags on my shop wall...

So you around 57 oz wing loading, if my math is right. At that hight you would think you could pull out, you may be right about it being nose heavy.

sorry to hear that.

i wish you more luck for future projects.

great project.

mec

Eddie,

My condolences. I guess the rotor area is not enogh to autorotate

With a wing loading of 57.6 oz/ft*2 and cruising at around 40mph, by your estimate, you didn't have much of a chance of recovering from that low altitude. Here is a graph that I got out of "Basics of R/C Model Design" by Andy Lennon. The original graph did not include wing loadings as high as yours, so I projected the lines further out to the right (blue lines). Your wing loading is the red line. I don't suppose you know the lift coefficient of the Isobar wing's airfoil? If you do not know the lift coefficient of your airfoil Andy Lennon mentions that most airfoils have lift coefficieents of around 1.0. Assuming that your lift coefficient is 1.0 your stall speed projects out to 37 mph.

Tom Hunt's "Vertigo" (looks and functions much like your Rig) was able to get good hovering pitch and roll control with thrust vectoring vanes behind his tilting, ducted prop, power source. With vanes directing the thrust of your turbine for pitch and roll control you would be able to loose three of your four attitude control rotors (and thier associated batteries) for big weight savings and forward flight drag reduction.

The short moment arm of the vanes did not provide very good hovering yaw control though, so you might want to keep your yaw rotor. But then again, don't you always want to hover into the wind especially if there is a strong wind? So, maybe the limited yaw control provided by the vanes is all that you will need. Of course, redesigning your attitude control systems is a pain, but if you can't get the weight down and/or improve glide performance by any other means, you might not have much of a choice. Anyway, I have the plans for the Vertigo if you need more info about vane setup. Good luck with your Rig II. I have really enjoyed watching your progress with the first one :thumbup:

One thing I noticed in the video, unless it was edited out, you didnt even cuss when it went down!!! Thats control!

cant wait to see what else is up your sleeve!

Everyone else said everything except.......


"If you're gonna fly you're gonna crash".........BUMMER!!!!

Wow, that hurts.
Glad to see that you are not abandoning the idea and plugging forward.
Its all part of the game, especially in R&D.

Best of luck.

Craig: I like the idea of thrust vectoring
because its simple and light but I think the
distance from the reaction control to the
center of mass is too short. It may work
but it would be hard to test.

I want to thank everyone for there support.
It is much easier to get motivated to
build a new one knowing there is that
kind of interest out there.

Thanks again

Eddie Weeks

Hey Eddie,

I'm sure someone has suggested this one before...

You should talk to the guys at AMT and see if they can give you a motor to test Rig#2 with a case pressure vent line. Puffer jets would set that thing off!

Harnessing case pressure to feed jets should only consume a few % of the engine's total mass flow and could change the combustion pattern a bit, depending on how its done. A few pounds of impulse at the wing tip, tail, or nose should be possible with a larger engine and no more tail rotors / batteries! Just a thought...

Please rebuild it, Sorry to say I never got to see the first one...

Good Luck,
Kelly

Eddie,
Are you familiar with the Vertigo? I would think that the Vertigo's vane setup would translate very well to your Rig. In the construction article, the only short moment problem was with yaw. In pitch and roll you also have gravity "helping". If the moment of the vanes was say 6" below the C.G., Consider a 30 degree right roll vane input. This would would cause the thrust vector to intersect the horizontal C.G. "plane" of your Rig 3" to the left of centerline. To get an idea of how fast a roll rate that is, put your Rig on a balancer that is 3" left of center and let the right wing drop. This will be pretty fast. Of course gravity will help the most when the Rig is horizontal (0 degree bank). If you tried to correct from a 90 degree bank (you'd be falling almost straight down if this happened, you'd also be at full power and accelerating horizontally) gravity would not help much, but aero dynamic forces would. The same will be true for pitch. With yaw, the assymetrical thrust will not have gravity to help, so yaw will be completely limited by the short moment arm.

The vanes don't add much weight, so they could be used in conjuction with your rotor system. Tests could be made at altitude by turning the rotors off in mid air. If the vane setup seems promising to you at that point, You could tweak the vane's authority while still having the rotors to "fall" back on. The risk of testing should be minimal while the possible benifits are many. It would look more like a jet without all those twirly bits on it too

Kelly: I like your idea about the bleed air
in fact I like it so much I tested it years ago.
I used 45 psi of shop air, pvc pipe, a gyro and
servo connected to home made valves at the end
of the 5 foot pipe. What I found is 45 psi only
makes a few oz of thrust even with a large
volume of air. Han (AMT engine designer) told
me if you take 1 lb of bleed air you will loose
3 lbs of thrust. The AMT 450 can produce %30
bleed air but at 0.95 lbs/sec mass flow I just
don't think there is enough air to make the 2 lbs
of thrust on each axis, that I think is required
for true control.

Graig: I am very familiar with the Vertigo and
have talked a guy that has flown his many times.
I think the thrust vectoring idea just might work
but I am not going to try it. Putting fins in
a 900 mph air stream, just does not seem like
it would have enough control. I could be wrong
but I like to build things that are over built
and would rather have too much control than not
enough. And I don't care what my plane looks like
as long as it flies right.

Rig #1 biggest problem was controlling the control
(if that makes since) setting the gyro gain, took
a lot of testing.

Eddie Weeks
(one of my favorite pic)

Eddie,
Do you have any idea why your turbine quit?? Knowing why it didn't glide is good for conversation, and possible refinement of design, but it seems to me the first and most important question to answer is why did the turbine "just quit." I saw no puffs of smoke, did you? That would preclude the old air bubble cause. What's your best guess?
Lee ---

Its a long story but I will try to be brief.
The RPM sensor moved down and was eaten
by the compressor. It did not hurt the compressor
or even through it out of balance. This has
happens to me far more than any one else I know.
It was a slight problem with the AT280s but it seems
worse with the AT450.

As an AMT rep, its not my place to show fault
with the product I use. My job is to show
as many people as possible how well they work.
I was reluctant to tell everyone why the Rig crashed
but when I go to Miss next week, everyone is going
to ask where is the RIG ? So I have no choice.

Eddie Weeks

Eddie,

Thanks for being straight forward with your answer as to why you think, your turbine quit. Now that you have that knowledge there must be a way to fix the problem once and for all!!! How can you be sure the RPM sensor is what caused the flame out?? You seem very sure as to why, could the damage you found have been done as a result of the crash?
I am only familiar with the Jet Cat system, but if the ECU is not damaged I can read the E-prom chip and it will help find the reason for shutdown, example, R/C shutdown, low RPM, High temp, etc. etc. Doesn't the AMT have similar capabilities??
I am again sorry to see "the Rig" destroyed----- try to find a way for it not to happen again if you can, I for one want to see you succeed with your VTOL project!!
Good Luck

Lee H. DeMary
"The Real Range Checker"

Ya shoulda bought a Ramcat.

Yes... With any AMT you can download the last
30 min of ECU time and graph the RPM, temp ect.
The plane was beeping an error code of Low RPM
witch could mean a lot of things. But after seeing
the condition of the RPM sensor I was quit sure
that was the problem.

Once I get started, it will only take a month to build
a new Rig. I am not worry about it at all. That
loud a&& plane should have crashed long time
ago, with what we were trying to do with it.

I was test hovering it 2 months before Deland
and almost crashed it because I was giving the wrong
input, sometimes.

Phil flew it without a gyro one time and it was all over
the place.

It does not surprise me one bit that its gone. $50 of
balsa wood. $20 foam, $100 fiberglass and I will
have a new one. Its just not that big a deal. Thanks
again for all the support.

Eddie Weeks

I wish I could just throw around money in planes like that... Was the turbine destroyed? -Steve