maanantai 27. syyskuuta 2010

Night flying!


Some personal RC history was written yesterday as I installed a Multiplex Multilight LED lighting system into my old electric Prima glider. And then went on to fly it in darkness. The system has 5 lights, and I added one more into a total of 6 LEDs: red and white beacon, green and red navigation lights, and 2 white lights. The flight went well, but I later moved some white lights from the nose to the tail, as the model is nicer to fly when seeing the elevator. In this picture the green navigation light can be seen as a weak dot under the starboard wing. The red covering changes the colour, so its placed in the bottom side. You mostly see the model from underneath.

Night flying is like the airplane suddenly took a swim in a deep ocean, truly different and challenging. Should You try it, do it with a model You´ve flown a lot before.  Not the new and shiny one.  Having flown jets and also pylon stuff, which are both demanding and exiting, I can say that so is night flying!
The next 6 months will be very dark here in Finland, but I think I´ll manage now...

If You have an old electric glider that works, never sell it although moved into faster models.  Mine has served as a flying camera platform, as a soarer of course,  and a teaching model. Now its also has night flying rating!

lauantai 18. syyskuuta 2010

Mig-stuff...

Here´s the first installed servo! Its a Nexus, a Korean creation with just about the performance I want-and a decent price tag. The elevators host one of these each and the vertical fin has two in the two-piece rudder.


                            
The elevators are made to exact scale of 1/5 and look really small. Most kits have enlarged elevators to make the model easier to fly.

An exotic guest!

I had a possibility to examine a Hawk 100R turbine (on the right). It is a turbine made in Sweden, and a significally less fuel consuming one. Its tolerance to fuel line air bubbles is also good as there are no small fuel injectors at all, like in every other make´s turbines. But, it is a bit longer and heavier-and more expensive. Side by side with the Jetcat P80 SE, the size difference is notable. Thrust is almost the same, maybe the Hawk delivers 10N more. Anybody willing to buy a Jetcat?

perjantai 17. syyskuuta 2010

A new Twinstar-video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97-dcbcVI9g


Some fun with the Twinstar!

Slash broke down!

My Slash 4x4 just jammed. After I took it apart I noticed that the spur bearing was totally stuck with rust. So no driving in wet conditions with this car!


I really should have looked into this before, as the car is really easy to break apart...and even assemble again!


The front and rear ends on the table...



This what the car looks like without them...a boat?
I found a set of 4 bearings from LHS and they weren´t even expensive. Not always the Traxxas labeled parts are needed. The car took maybe 10 minutes to be assembled back into business. There will be a big indoor RC car driving arena opened almost next door in a month or so!



On to other projects then...the monster from the basement! This old Twinstar II did never develop into the FPV/ photography model I intended, so in the name of freeing some space, I put it into the basement. 3 years of moist conditions did nothing to the elapor, but some cleaning was needed as the TS grew something!

As brushed motor controllers are rare nowadays, I took a Tamiya car controller...yes it has reverse too! 


A classic...speed 400 motor! Yes, it won´t really go anywhere with a pair of these, but I´ve flown two Twinstars before for dozens of flights with these-and had a great time. 
The nose is heavily modified for camera use. 


keskiviikko 8. syyskuuta 2010

Some videos here!

I made two new inflight videos, the first is made with the Boomerang Elan and the second with an Avionik D05 model with a "hotliner" power setup.


The jet video

The Electric video


Enjoy!

TP.

maanantai 6. syyskuuta 2010

On to the MIG wing then...


Here is the MIG-15 wing. The wheel wells are in fact a bit larger than the Intairco undercarriage would need. But the wood blocks seem to be in about correct angle, so I decided just to add some new wood in there. I glued 5mm plywood vertical bits on both sides, and plan to glue the mounting blocks into them.


Here are the plywood bits  on both sides...the wing skin is sandwiched obechi with glass on both sides. 

Here you can see the size difference. It looks a bit scary, but yes, both the wing and the undercarriage are 1/5 scale. I went to local hobby shop in search for some hardwood blocks, but no luck. Then I discovered some nice pine strip on the floor of local lumber yard...and they charged me nothing for it. They have plenty of it around, it keeps the lumber separated from each other and is usually just thrown away...next I fit the pine blocks in. 

keskiviikko 1. syyskuuta 2010

Jet stuff...

We went to fly jets very early yesterday morning.  I had my Elan with me, and my friend Joni was maidening his Sprint. The weather was cloudy but almost calm, so I quickly flew 3 flights and had really good time with the Elan. Joni had some brake problems, but decided to go anyway, having checked the runway end vegetation. SO there it went, pushed by a Wren Super Sport! Having flown 80 flights with the Boomerang Intro, that was the predecessor of the Sprint, I knew what to expect. Joni, however has flown 1/8 F-16:s and was used to much more difficult behaving models. After the first flight we added some lead into the nose, and the Sprint behaved even more nicely-Joni said that a GWS Mustang is probably more difficult to fly!


I took some inflight video from the Elan and will publish it later on Youtube.  On my 4th flight I got engine problems in takeoff and had to glide down. A nice coupé landing, and the turbine is now sent to service.

Now I see that the stripes differ in colour in my pictures...sorry! As my Elan has fluorecent orange I kinda felt strange when processing these images. I forgot the Sprint has yellow colour and wondered why it looks so yellow instead of orange... Anyway, the landing picture is more like the original!

Sold my Demon F5D model today..

Farewell old friend! I decided to sell one model of several alike, the Demon. The red "possessed" model was a blast to fly and also very durable. Anyway, as they say, if someone wants to buy a model airplane from You that You´ve flown already for some time, why not sell it! Only problem was a stuck Graupner spinner. I needed to remove the Kontronik ESC, so the motor needed to be removed also. Well, the small hex setscrew was not going to give up, and after some struggling I took the Einhell dremel tool and cut the spinner in two. Funny, I´ve had to do his already twice recently-what´s with these setscrews now?




So this guy I did not know beforehand, came with his new black Volvo car and took the Demon and the Neu motor away along with my instructions of how to fly it. I wish al the best flying time for him with the new fast model!