gruntled

Thanks. I forgot you told me that when we discussed it a few months ago. If it pulls up, I will go back and add staples. Easy enough to do.

Wayne22

My Feedback: (2)

They look pretty fancy! Hope they work out for you...............................

gruntled

I am getting increasingly frustrated by my inability to land this airplane worth a poop. I seem to keep going long or bouncing it. Today I must have bounced it 6' before going long into the grass where I broke the nose steering cable. The runway is 400x25 which should be plenty long enough. Maybe I should try landing in the grass for a while until I better get the hang of it. We have about 800' of grass. I think the problem today was landing with only takeoff flaps in rather than full flap and crow.

What does a typical approach look like for you guys as far as power settings, flaps, etc. ?

cavandish

With all that room, you do not need the added complication of flap or crow on your mind.
You are comming in far too hot, and or, you are not releasing the elevator.
Get some hight and practice flying slow, this plane will almost stop into a headwind.
Come in SLOW, and fly along the ground, do not try to land the plane, it will land it's self, just concertrate on flying along just off the deck. you can land hot, but you will have to lessen you angle of attack, and grease it in, forcing the tail up as you touch.
So always remember to let go of any up elevator you maybe using during flair, the problem is that your will not feel that you are holding up elevator, the best way to avoid this common problem is to make a concious effort to prod the stick forward as you touch, this worked really well for me when I started flying pylon type planes. After quite a few flights making yourself 'prod' it will happen without you even thinking about it.

TryHarder

This made me smile as I come from a history of tail draggers Extra's etc and 'prodding' the elevator forward on landing is definitly not something I'm used to, so I guess i'll have to overcome this too if I ever get around to finishing it (only the wings and its done).

BaldEagel

Just have a look at any jet landing, lots of drag (on a Boomerang that means Crow) and power on to adjust the touch down and height holding the attitude with elevator, its an old addage in full size: Power adjusts height, Elevator adjusts attitude.

If landing short and slow is your aim, then as much crow as you can get, put it on a switch if you don't want the complication of adjusting it, take off half flap (switch pos 1) on the downwind and full crow on finals (switch pos 2), adjust height with the throttle and as above attitude with the elevator, you can get the aircraft down to a comfortable height for landing a long way prior to the touch down point, just drag the aircraft in on throttle, when you reach the threashold close the throttle and hold attitude with elevator it will already be nose up due to the drag and throttle, but use full crow it makes the whole thing much easier.

My patch is 150ft that,s not a misstype and I land an Elan with a 120SX and a Rookie on it without too much of a problem.

Mike

gruntled

One of the problems (at least in my own mind) is that with the spool time of the super bee, I feel like I am committed to an approach that I would have waived off in an EDF when it looked bad on short final.

BaldEagel

By dragging the airframe in on power you are already in the power band i.e. above tick over maybe as much as one third throttle you then have a much quicker spool up time, if you do have to go around once you put crow away and just have half flap even at the third throttle setting you will start to increase speed and hence lift straight away without the turbine spooling up, so a win win situation.

Mike

Xairflyer

My Feedback: (1)

Yes that is why it is better to come in with full flap and crow so you can be on a high idle or sometimes half throttle depending on the wind, if you are not at idle then spool up time is not really an issue.

As Alan said learn how to fly it slow up high, fly it round the circuit with full flap getting slower and slower, you will learn alot from that.

gruntled

Sigh . . . when I bounced the Nano, I put a crack in the balsa sheeting of one of the booms. The boom seems structurally sound. It does not flex, etc. But the skin was cracked. I cut a bit away to see what was going on inside. There is no internal structure where the cracks were, just thesheeting. Knowing what I know now, I would have been better off not opening it up and just hitting it with thin CA, but I wanted to be sure the plywood box structure inside had not cracked. So . . . what is the best way to repair the balsa skin? Do I just cut a couple pieces of balsa rectangles and glue them in or ???

Steve

Wayne22

My Feedback: (2)

rivit a 3/4" steel fishplate to the outside that will hold it!!!!!!

Gary Hoorn

Steve,
Trim the damaged areas neatly and cut balsa patches that fit precisely. You can add a small backing strip on the inside edges of the boom to hold the patch pieces flush while gluing. Glue preferably with Titebond or a similar wood glue to facilitate sanding. CA will work but will not sand well.
Gary

BaldEagel

Steve

This is what I would do, take a full 3" piece of balsa and lay it diagonally over both holes, with a sharp knife slice into the boom at a 45 deg angle all along the side of the new piece try to undercut into the boom under the new piece, than remove the whole cut piece on the boom, sand the new piece with a 45 deg slant on the long edges and, clean the area to be glued too of all balsa and glue, I suspect you will find triangular reinforcements at the top and bottom to glue onto, these may need to be reparied or at least sanded back to give a flat surface to glue to, when gluing the new piece on I would use a gap filling type of glue, which has been pointed out needs to be sandable.

Just the way I would do it, I would also while having the side off inspect the top and bottom sheet for cracking, there was obviously some tension and compression going on in the surfaces, if you find any glass over them for at least 2" either side and try to taper the reinforcement so not to introduce a weak point at the ends.

Mike

gruntled

Thank you Mike and Gary. Both sound like reasonable approaches.

Turbinac

Go into the boom from the bottom surface (underside).
Just cut a small (say 3" to 4")section of the underside balsa away using your blade horizontal across the full width (so you are cutting both sides at the same time with your blade running right across side to side) so you can replace the cut out part exactly back where it came from. The grain runs across the boom top and bottom surfaces.
That will give you full access to the inside of the boom.
Clean up the shape of the missing or broken out pieces of the side balsa. Insert some hard 1/16" sheet in through the bottom to bridge across the creased or cracked side sections of the boom sides. The grain should run fore & aft, same way as the original sides.
Use any good glue but ensure the boom is held dead straight as it sets. Personally I use CA with the boom laid flat on its side on the bench. Then make good the missing balsa sheeting from outside. Refix the bottom sheet you cut out to start with.
Sand it all smooth and re-cover with the Profilm. I've done this repair a few times over the years. No problem. Takes half an hour start to finish and ends up really strong.

gruntled

Thanks Alan. I have to give that a bit of thought, but I think I can picture what you are describing.

The only part I am not sure I followed was:

Just cut a small (say 3" to 4")section of the underside balsa away using your blade horizontal across the full width (so you are cutting both sides at the same time with your blade running right across side to side) so you can replace the cut out part exactly back where it came from

I am not sure If I know what you meant about "cutting both sides at once".

Steve


EDIT: Disregard. I get it now. It just took a bit to sink in. I am not sure if a #11 will cut the whole way across, but if not a razor blade will.

Thanks Alan.

gruntled

When I tried to clean up the holes as Alan directed, the balsa skin kept cracking more, so I ended up just cutting it clean out. I had to replace the little balsa "rail" on the bottom. If I make two more balsa "rails" - oneforeach side, and glue them to the plywood, I should be able to put a new piece of skin right on top.

Alan, et al:

Any problems with this approach?

.

BaldEagel

Engineering wise a straight joint is not the best solution as it will rely on the shortest possible glue joint, a diagonal joint would have been a much better solution, unfortuanatly now the optimum solution is no longer available across the two bulheads.

What I would do now is put some hard balsa doublers onto the bulkheads with Hysol and glue the skin also with Hysol onto that so you have a fully framed hole to skin over, I would probably put a couple of longitudinal spars connecting the skins outside the bulkheads to the new skin as well.

Mike

gruntled

Mike:

I take your point about the straight joint. Unfortunately the stuff wasn't cooperating with me, despite using a brand new blade.

The Hysol should be stronger than the balsa so I guess that won't be the failure point. Should I skin it with 1/8 ply instead of balsa? Would that make it stronger?

BaldEagel

No 1/8 ply would introduce a weak point on either side of the ply, use 1/8 balsa and sand it down to profile, I think Alan said it was originally 1/16 balsa, 1/8 gives you that little bit of lee way to resess the skin a bit and get a better glue joint onto the two bulkheads, I am afraid the Structural Engineer in me has not left even after many years of not doing any design work. LOL it means my solutions tend to be a bit OTT though.

Mike

BaldEagel

Just one other thing, if those balsa rails are butt ended to the bulkheads, they will need a triagular reinforcing piece either end onto the bulkheads to give a larger gluing area, see what I mean about OTT.

Mike

Turbinac

Sorry to be a pain, but..........wow, you've turned a simple repair into a weakness. The creases, cracking or missing holes in the balsa sides were not important, as you were going to add an inside doubler to the sheet. You could then have just filled the holes, no matter how odd shaped they were.
But it's easily fixed.
Just add a piece of 3/8" balsa triangle or 1/4" square section vertically to the exposed formers, 1/16" back from the side surface to allow for the sheet thickness, so that when you fit the new side sheet pieces across from former to former the strength of the side is restored. You can leave the stringers top and bottom (don't cut them out.) and simply double them up. No problem there.
Please, if you have any more problem with this, PM me your phone number and I'll talk you through it. It'll save you having to buy a new boom!

What did I just say???????? I must have had a weak moment!

gruntled

Thank you Alan. As I am sure is quite obvious by now, I am no builder by any stretch. There is a reason I buy ARFs. I did not intend to make the problem worse, but it did not seem to be going like it should.

TryHarder

gruntled

If you have the opportunity to have Ali trim it out for you, I would jump on it!

Good luck.