You're damn right. Real man like it when their engine quits, like to have to fiddle with their engines on a regular basis, love to have to swap all servo-gears periodically.. and a real man's heart really makes a jump of joy when his engine dies on him mid-flight. And yes, a plane should be dripping with oil when you land!

Now those gays.. man.. what gays are they.. they just want to fly undisturbed, want their planes just to work and do whatever you ask of them.. now how gay is that, where's the sport in that?

Live life on the edge, fly glow powered!

I again saw it demonstrated at Sivry in Belgium last week. Out of 41 contestants a small minority flew glow powered, YS to be exact. Out of 41 contestants like 6 flights failed because of engine faillure. All electric flyers made their flights without problems.

Looks like the gays are winning

I'll give the glow powered engine one thing tho.. the YS 170CDI is unbeatably by any electric setup if it comes to raw power on windy days. Hacker C50, plettenberg EVO, Hacker Q80, Axi 5330, 5325, neu inrunners.. all fine electric engines but in really strong winds there's only one capable of maintaining constant speed in every part of a flight, and that's the YS 170CDI.

However.. unfortunatelly that engine really profoundly hates airplanes. If it sees the chance to destroy one, it will do so. Hyde mounts, YS mounts, not mounted, concrete mounts.. it doesn't matter, it'll schred your plane to pieces slowly, spit it full of oil, stall on contest days, and so on.

"oh I have never had problems with my YS engine". Yes.. and I'm Santa Claus :P

Hezik,

Having flown by the YS and the Neu inrunner, I have to respectfully disagree on the power on windy days. My Neu has every bit the power, and even more torque than the YS. I can fly every bit as large and fast as I flew with the YS with my Neu in my Wind S and still not push the packs. The YS has incredible power, but I do not think it has "more" power in any condition.

Arch

I think modern electric systems, just like good ARFs, have moved our hobby another step towards being a pure piloting endeavor. It's getting close to plug, trim and play now and we can devote our time to perfecting the piloting part of the art. That's even more important to us lower-class guys.
I've been learning about glow engines for more than 50 years and it's hard to see what I've learned become irrelevant, but it's sure nice to be able to just fly. I took a deep breath, opened my wallet and made the switch this year and I won't go back.

Scott

If your using the word "gay" in the CORRECT way meaning happy, then of course those who fly undisturbed with the aircraft working and doing whatever its asked without fiddling with an engine will be happy.

In the last WC in Portugal, all YS performed flawlessly, not a single fault on any competitor, and on the European Championsips, the only that failed were electric and all YS performed flawlessly. one of the electrics almost costed The Austrian gerhard myhr the podium.

both electric an YS are equally good as long as both are operated correctly, there are more electric pilots out there with problems than it is actually reported on the forums, which of course it is not fare.

I know both are as good as I fly both, so when I read all the bashing against YS I really do not pay that much attention to it, as I do care about my stuff and have no problems, and when I differ from someone elses ideas I respect them and do no try to correct them, as everyone is entitled to it's own opinion, but it seems to be more consistent when pilots flying electric feel the need to convince or demonstrate electric is the way an glow is dead. I guess it will not be far when an electric pilots with and electric motor hand will start to knock on doors on Sunday trying to get more people to fly electric, pretty much like they feel an obligation to convince everybody else.

Regards

Alejandro P.

Hi Scott,

Out of curiosity, did you convert the Focus II you had last year or did you get a new plane? I missed the contest at Muncie but hope to make it to Grove City in a few weeks.

Teo

Best thing I can see about being gay is the double income no kids situation.

But I don't think I could stand receiving the type of monkey business I get at the petrol pump at home as well [X(]

I'm sure somewhere in the world they still hold chariot races.

Ah no offense. But the statement that YS had no problems in Portugal is incorrect.

Just ask the guy that came first in the world about the problems he was having at the practice site.

YS OS electric they all work and they can all have problems

And yes i was there.

Chris

Teo, I built a new airplane for this year, a Xigris C2.
I believe I've seen a few posts about converting a Focus somewhere but they had some trouble with weight.

Will we see you at Grove City?

Hi Scott,

I am jealous now. I have seen the Xigris at the F3A Unlimited website and they look very nice. I will be at Grove city and it will be my first attempt at the intermediate sequence so I suspect I will be in a tough race for last place.

See you in a few weeks,

Teo

You were ready to move up when you flew in our contest last year, Teo. It's a big jump and there's a lot to learn but you'll do fine. You know that the guys will always help you out if you ask.
Scott

I'll continue to fly glow.  At my local fields, that's about all anyone flies.  IF I have an issue, I have experts who can help me.  However, at a contest, I ran into a small issue (same Muncie contest in D4 that Atwood was talking about) and while many minds were willing to help, they no longer had the support equipment since all but 4 flew electric.

I did get in 7 practice flights last evening in about 3 hours time.  I just love the gas and go turnaround time with glow.

I bet I could match you flight for flight with my electric aircraft.

I charge all my stuff (3 packs for 3 flights) before I go flying, and it's just a plug and go set up. Not unlike mixing fuel before you (for those that roll their own)

My rough numbers reckon 5 packs, 4 chargers and a generator and you'll be good to go all day with QUALITY airtime, but you won't beat glow for QUANTITY airtime.

That being said, when I tried to get my Aries to 5kg with smaller li-po/regulator setups, after 2 flights I was stuck with litres of mixed fuel but no spark to ignite it or power to the RX [&o]

.
I've got my electric setup so that half way thru my flight I hear one of the PL8's beeping DONE. I don't even taxi in my airplane, just yank out the batts, swap them to the charger that is now DONE, hit charge, and off I go. Four sets of batts; one in plane, two on chargers, and one on tailgate of truck resting. I can fly as long and as continuously as my generator has gasoline. The current limitation to my setup is that I run out of Tx batteries (I have three), but I'm working on that one, also. . .
.

I guess it's fine to fly back to back to back if it suits you, but I don't seem to get much good out of that kind of practice. Those charging breaks help me let it all sink in.

Scott,

I agree with you. I have found that over 4-5 flights in a session soon become counter productive. When I ran a UAV school in TX this became obvious for students. They would continually improve on the first 4 10 minute flights of the day, but on flights after that you would see some mistakes creeping in. What we would do, is 4 flights in the morning, and 4 in the afternoon. The brain simply needed a break. I have found it is very easy to get more than 4-5 flights in while practicing with electric, but I've noticed that anything about 5 I will make some stupid mistakes and I can tell I'm getting tired. If you take good breaks between flights, this doesn't apply as much. I think the brain needs time to digest what it just saw.

Just from my personal experience, but everyone is different. Even if I'm practicing alone some evenings, I will stop and walk around the field for a few minutes and such.

Arch

Yeah, I like the engine to cool for a bit, plus being courteous to other fliers at the field etc, not really back to back.  I guess my biggest point was that my support system (other guys at my fields that I fly with) are all gas or glow fliers.  E setups are great, and I see the benefits, but I can't wait for contest weekends for help  Well, that and the 10 gallons of fuel still in my basement......

I like to take about 1/2 hour between flights, given the 6 sets of batteries I have and charging at 10 amps I can fly all day. Packs take about 30 minutes to charge.

When trimming I might fly a few laps, land, change something and go back up with the same pack.

The most important flight of the day is the first one, big contest you get one flight a day or maybe 2, but hours apart.

Make the first one count.

Tim

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Just because you CAN fly continuously, doesn't mean you HAVE to. . . . .
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The only time I fly continuously is if I have the field to myself, but if other guys are there I'm usually BS-ing between flights.  Sometimes I don't even take my charger to the field, just 4 sets of batts.  That way I have to focus on what I came out to work on. 
.

Ayup.

Let me get this straight...
when you go electric you put batteries in the plane and fuel your generator. Now how much does your field box weigh (including the generator... )
Seriously, I still can't see the downside to electrics and I LOVE my glow engines (been running 'em since I was 9, a mere 45 years ago[X(])

I wish I could recall the source... but I seem to recall (from like 20 years ago) the russians figured out that most people can really concentrate for about 8 to 10 minutes at a time with a daily total of 30 to 45 minutes....

and I think they even played around with introducing a sleep period between practice sessions... to get the daily totals higher....

No question in my mind about a few electric set-ups. Dave L's for one...great power output and tork galore. However not everyone's electric set-up is as good as Dave's.