It’s about time! I finally completed and flew the Brio that I ordered last July after my Aries mid-air. Four months to arrive and six months to get enough time to put it together.

I put up five flights today. After a tweak here and there to the CG and throws it was doing really well by the time I packed up. I still have some adjustments to make to get the snaps nice and clean, but all in all I’m very impressed!

I set the wing and stab incidence as suggested in the instructions and to my amazement it appears to have no roll or pitch coupling in knife-edge!

It would be safe to say that I’m very happy!

Here are some pictures:

A few more pictures:

Very nice! What prop, battery are you using? What is your AUW?

David

Hi
I've saw you use E-Logger.
Do you measure also pack temperature, or only motor and ESC?
Any reports?

First flights were with the 21x14, Falcon F3A 5s2p batteries (apx 5300-5400 mah).

Yes, I'm using the Eagle Tree Data E-Logger. That thing is really an awesome tool for E-Flight, and not more than a really good IR Temp gun.

Here's a plot of the 5th flight, I've included Amps, Battery Temp and Motor Temp. It's interesting how the motor temp keeps cool until landing, then immediately rises.

Very nice. Looks to be well worth the time spent. Get ready to put all your glow stuff up for sale.

Mike

No mix sounds pretty good, but I notice you didn't mention how many clicks of trim it required.

Hey Keith,

Congrats!! It sounds like it flies as good as it looks.

Joe Dunnaway

Congrat Keith, the plane looks great!

How are you liking the electric?

Very nice looking plane. I really like the home made wing nut on the battery mount. Have you weighed it yet? Also can you show a better picture of what looks to be an arming plug on the side of the fuse?
Thanks
Stuart

Adamg-RCU, clicks... three on rudder, two on ailerons, and about six on elevator after moving CG back further than recommended. It was very windy and turbulent so it was tough to tell exactly. Personally I never have thought clicks of trim on the first flight was too important as long as it wasn't WAY out. My philosophy is set the wings and stab as close as reasonable on the workbench then fly and work it out through test flights. Also, keep in mind that different radios and setups move different amounts per click.

Brett, the electric has some really nice characteristics and I think it’s going to be great. There are clearly some things I need to adjust for the slower speed. A couple of times I caught myself not realizing I was already at full throttle in level flight just before a vertical pull. I’m going to have to pay a lot of attention to throttle management and re-adjust my eye to the slower level flight.

Stuart, the current weight, with the 21x14 prop (lighter that 21x13W and 22x12), is 4993 grams. That’s REALLY close, but there are still two or three ways I can drop a few grams here and there to be able to run the heavier props. What made making weight tough is that the Falcon batteries are about 134g (4.75 oz) heavier than the Thunder Power. However, the technical arguments and the six month warrenty on the [link=http://www.falconbatteries.com/custompage.aspx?page=proseries.htm&selection=custo m]Falcon F3A[/link] batteries won me over. As long as I make legal weight that’s all I care about, I'm not obsessed with seeing how much under 5kg I can be. Remember a glow plane that starts at 9.5 lbs is around 11 lbs when fueled.

Here are some pictures of the arming pin from outside the plane.

Thanks for the pictures. Weight wise that is as close as you would want to get. Hopefully no weights at a contest with a slightly off scale I like the idea of a 6 month warranty as well but I do not think I would have risked buying them with the weight that close. I am waiting until I am pretty much sure of the weight before deciding on which packs.

Thanks for the quick pictures of the arming plug.

Stuart

Keith, I agree completely.

Stuart,

I'd gone over the weights very closely before buying the batteries. The problem is you run into a Catch-22 without the batteries. I couldn't build my battery-mounting tray until I knew where the CG was going to end up, but I wasn't sure how much weight the mounting tray would add. Also, without the batteries I wouldn't be able to get the tray to perfectly fit the batteries. I built cardboard mock-ups of the batteries to give me some ideas, but they were of limited use not being the same weight. I even brain stormed on how to make my mock-ups the same weight, but finally decided just to take the plunge.

These batteries are sandwiched with phenolic plates that protect the batteries. This allows you to clamp down on the plates without putting pressure on the cells. Due to this I wanted to build my mount perfectly to apply pressure to the plates.

As a contingency plan I took into consideration the size of the TP batteries when building the battery tray, glad I won't have to resort to that .

At NATS they usually have a courtesy weigh in day where you can weigh with their scale. If I’m over weight I can always remove my RX power switch and just plug the leads in directly, this will buy me a few grams to make me legal. I don’t think my scale should be off more than 10 grams.

Keith B

What voltage are these packs holding at 60amps?

Keith.
You seem to be peaking pretty consistently at 60A during flight.
Just for interest, did you measure your static amp. on the ground?
Magne

Rm,

Unfortunately the way I have the data logger hooked up it’s only showing the voltage of one of the two battery packs, therefore the following number should be doubled (assuming consistency between packs).

At takeoff 60 amps drew the voltage down to 17.55v.

3.8 mins into the flight during a 4 second burst at 61.5 amps the voltage ranged between 17.1v to 16.86v.

6.8 mins into flight during a 2 second burst at 61 amps the voltage was 16.6v.

Keith B

Magne,

Here is a chart of the initial ground run. Numbers are pretty much the same. Again, the voltage is 1/2 the total voltage due to the way I had the data logger connected.

Keith B

Looks great Keith, congratulations!!!

Not sure how viewable this pic will be...

Just for reference on the packs, these are my 70 ish cycle (nearly 1 year old) TP 5300's with about 55-60A peaks in flight. Start of the flight it drops to about 35V, minimum in flight (usually the end) is 33.5V

The heating trend on landing is a common one...I have been experimenting with pack spacing and have found that going from a 1/4" pack spacing to a 1/2" pack spacing is dramatic in the temperature rise after flight. My pack temp is recorded between the two sets of pack...so worst case.

Chad,

It’s interesting to see how spiky your chart is too. After viewing mine I was astounded how I seemed to be either high throttle or idle, and not much in the middle. It’s really got me thinking I need to work on better throttle management, but I guess it's partly the nature of our patterns.

Your voltage drops seem to be right in line with my packs. That’s very encouraging after 70 cycles.

Ya I thought I would see more of the throttling but I guess not. Next thing is to setup the mag pickup to record rpm...might be a little more enlightening than the current I may try one day to correlate the spikes with each manuver and see exactly what is going on in each one

Whats also interesting is you can see the break consuming current from the batteries (or at least I think its the break doing it)...Schulze controller with proportional breaking. After I throttle back you can see a fairly steady increase in current as the controller is breaking harder with increasing speed (to about 4A or so)...then a rapid drop off back to zero as I throttle up and switch from breaking to power and then the current spikes up when the motor spools back up.

Packs, so far they seem to be holding up well....if I remember right the wattmeter numbers fresh off the charger gave similar voltages at similar loads when the packs were new. I have a couple of new packs coming soon so I can gather some in flight numbers of new vs. old and that should be a good indication how well they are holding up.

Hi Chad

You mean:

1- left picture = 1/2" pack spacing and right picture = 1/4" pack spacing?
2- The packs are side by side and the spacing you mean is between the packs, right?
3- Were do you have the temperature sensor? In between packs, glue with a sticker on the inside part of one pack?
4- Don't you measure the motor temp?

Ahh, I thought the file names would come through. Yes the left picture is with the packs spaced 1/2" apart, side by side, held together with velcro and either 1/4" or 1/2" balsa sticks between them. Temperature sensor is placed in between the two packs, in what I am assuming to be the area with the least amount of airflow. The next step would be to measure the "core" cells...but that would require opening up the pack....I dont really want to do that

As I use an outrunner getting motor temp while flying is not very simple....check after the flight with my thermometer show the motor to be running about 50-55C so in flight is likely cooler. I may try to stick the thermocouple inside the core of the motor, but I will need to pull the motor out to do that and maybe open up some new holes in the firewall.

For batteries 60C is my limit, and I was getting close to that after a flight so that is why I started investigating what I can do to cool them. Unfortunately cooling them enough so that the increase in temperature after a flight is as small as possible also means that they dont run as hot during the flight.....and as we all know lipos perform best around about 40C.

Thank You Chad,
I've ordered an E-Logger too.
I'm waiting for it and then i'll apply on my setup.

Lazulite-e - 4750 g - CG 190 mm from leading edge
Hacker C50-14XL- 6,7:1
APC21x13W
TP5300 2x(5S4P) in serial
ESC Hacker/Jeti Master 90