Lee.org

I just received this (wonderful) announcement. Put the PTDR on your calendar!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, please brace yourselves for the following
double-barreled announcement.

You Said It Would Not Happen!
You Said It Was Better Last Year!
You Said There Was No Way You Would Stand In Those Concession Lines Again

BUT IT DID. AND IT WASN’T. AND YOU WILL.

Assorted parties are PROUD to present

The One And Only

POWER TOOL DRAG RACES

TWO WEEKENDS. . eekends. . . eekends. . .eekends

At The Maker Faire. . .aire. . .aire. . aire

Maker Faire Bay Area
May 3rd and 4th 2008
http://makerfaire.com/

And then AGAIN at ACE! International Speedway. . .eedway. . .eedway. .
.eedway. . . (more…)

I ordered parts from Atlanta Hobby Friday afternoon. I’m sitting on my hands ’til they arrive.

A few weeks ago an acquaintance I met… I think her name is Ruth, while walking in Glen Canyon Park told me that I might find people flying RC airplanes at Fort Funston. Not only are there model airplanes but there is steady wind and a cliff, making for a perfect hang gliding spot. The sky was full of hang gliders. And littered around under bushes out of the wind were slope soaring planes. Once the hang gliders landed, two guys put their planes up, a gentle soarer and a tiny little hotliner that was more hot than tiny! It’s very hard to gauge how was it was…. 120MPH? Both planes had their charms, that’s for sure. When Brandon, Larry and myself got to talking about flying, they said how there were better places to fly just to the south. Brandon pointed toward Pacifica and mentioned at least 3 good places to fly: near the public dump, on top of the mountain (but you need to be able to land in about a 10′x10′ area!) and down near the water.

So after taking in the incredibly break taking views at Fort Funston, watching the hang gliding and and RC soaring, and playing a little football catch with the guys, I went down to Pacifica.

I went down near the dump and quickly found them. It’s funny, when you’re looking for soaring planes, you have to scan the horizon and look for flying objects. Once you’ve found one, you have to watch it closely to determine what it is. If it moves relative to the ground, it’s not a kite. Then it might be a plane or might be a bird. It often takes me several seconds to figure out which it is. I love that. I love that we are flying artificial birds. With motorized planes, it’s easy to tell because birds flap their wings while (of course) planes don’t. But with soaring… at a distance, it can be quite hard to tell the difference!

I found about 6 guys flying flying wings on an incredibly beautiful hill. The flowers at my feet, the crevices of the hill, the gentle but constant wind, the sound of the surf a few hundred feet below, the 180 degree panorama of the coast and of the town nestled just inland, the setting sun partially obscured by roughly defined clouds, the glistening of the light off the water… I could go on, really I could.

They were having some playful combat and doing some soaring. Sometimes two planes would collide and as they were falling out of the sky there’d be hooting and laughter. Sometimes the pilots would recover and sometimes they’d have to climb down the hill a ways to fetch their plane, only to briefly examine it and toss it silently into the air again.

A mere smiley face does not suffice!

And I should’a brought a camera.

Rancho San Antonio County Park is 10 minutes from my office in Cupertino and it’s a great electric model aviation field. And since it’s not someone’s official field, I don’t need no stinking AMA membership.

The guy at Zeppelin Hobbies told me why they don’t allow Li-Poly batteries at model car races. They don’t just burn, they throw burning chunks several feet. Cool. Imagine one battery blowing up and lighting all the neighboring cars on fire. Rinse and repeat. How’s that for adding an element of danger to models? Cool.

I took her out today. It’s really a blast. My favorite from today was taking off at 3/4 throttle, taking a moment to verify stability and then giving her full throttle. She pulled out at an 80 degree angle until I told her to stop… about 400 feet. I’d have her go higher but I can’t see her any further away!I lost my 10 cell NiMH :-( I was practicing hammerheads (and getting moderately good, I might add!) when the battery fell out. I foolishly watched the big yellow plane fall all the way to the ground instead of following the tiny little battery. I looked for about 30 minutes but no luck. Well, I guess I’ll be getting a new matched set of NiMHs.

Wow, Cheapbatterypacks.com can build me a 10 cell generic 1050 mah pack with Dean connectors for $20/pack. That’s like 1/2 the price of my local hobby shop, with -exactly- what I’m looking for instead of whatever happens to be in stock.

I’ll wait to put together the Trick 1000 and see how it flies with the LiPoly pack. Then I’ll probably get a double set of batteries.

EL Wire

(eeearly morning edition)

Hmm. I need a lot of electroluminescent wire for the plane! I’m starting the measurements and it looks like it’s going to take 11″ per loop/feather. I’m planning on 48 loops on the bottom of the plane, plus some outlining…. that’s at least 44 feet of wire just for the bottom! Hmm. What does 44 feet of wire weigh???

I have a sample coolneon kit with about 77 inches of the stuff. It weighs 1 oz +- 5%. So that’s 7 oz of wire for the underside… another 4 for the topside, 1.4 oz for a 9v battery. Hmmm 13 oz of payload on a 28 oz plane. Maybe not. I’ll work it out.

PPG gave me the really good idea to look for Egyptian figurines as a model. (yes, I saw her. I think our friendship will survive) I found Ma’at, the Egyptian goddess and embodiment of truth. You’ll likely be seeing an aerial Ma’at over the skies of Black Rock City in a month!

That’s Ma’at on the left and Isis on the right in the picture.

EL Wire redux

I took the Zagi out to do some sample flying

Zagi 400, 26 oz (including motor & battery but not payload) 292 sq in wing surface, Mega 16/15/4 motor, 6×4 prop, Zagi 8 cell 1700 Mah battery, + 10.5 oz of my grampa’s old tools

It flies just great… It flies a little erratic (probably because the weight is on the top of the wing, pushing the center of gravity up) and it’s a little harder to turn (likely inertia) but the big thing I was worried about was that it would sink like a rock and that isn’t an issue, and I needed to lay hard on the throttle (mostly due to me flying in 20mph slightly gusty winds just before a storm (I want to make this project happen NOW!)), and I had to jump a fence to fetch the plane once (When I took off, I lost a 1 oz weight that I had placed mid-wing, that started a leftward spiral that, in order to save from a really hard crash, I ended up hitting a fence and the Zagi tumbled over the fence… hence the climbing. I’m confident that I can put a 13 oz. lighting payload on a plane

Static thrust motor output: NiMH1: 16 oz, Nicad1: 16oz, LiPoly: 23 oz!

That’s a 36oz plane with 16-23 oz of thrust… very respectable for an electric. I had previously gotten used to getting 9oz of static thrust out of brushed speed 400s. Represented as fractions:

After crunching the numbers, I am resolved: just do it.

First flight was with the help of a new friend, Dan, who lives just down the street from me. I guess I’ve been having some bad days and it’s surfaced…. My car’s battery is dead. It’s a bit stressful that I can’t drive where and when I want. So I went to the field in my dad’s car. When I was getting ready to fly, I realized I had left the LiPoly at home. Bummer. Then I reached over to the transmitter and turned it off. But wait, shouldn’t I have turned it ON?! Grrr! I left it on for 2 days: dead transmitter battery! Dan was kind enough to give me a hand seating my NiMH pack and he lent me his transmitter, very nice.If flies fast and high! It likes to go up! It’s got –almost– full vertical performance… With a little speed, I can run straight up for like 75 feet, which is PLENTY. It’ll go up at a 45 degree angle until it’s out of sight. It goes about 90-100 MPH in level flight!

The entire first flight, I flew it as gently as I could, trying to get used to it and reminding myself that this wasn’t a crashproof plane! things got a little hairy with the sun getting in my eyes.

The second flight didn’t go so good. I launched it, it flew about 30 feet and then….  well… large pieces started flying off it! I cut the power and it fell to the ground. It seems that the spinner had gotten loose and the prop vibration tore at the plane. The motor tore out of it’s mount, a not-so-important piece of the tail was chopped off by the prop and a crack in the EPS formed almost all the way across the fuselage about 4 inches back from the nose. :-(

Break out the crazy glue and tape! After a little while, I was ready to go again but Dan had to go (taking his transmitter with him. Jason showed up as Dan was leaving. He wanted to see it fly. I remembered that I had a home-made quick-charger plug for the battery and plugged it in. Surprisingly, I got a near-full peak charge after only 10 minutes on 1.5 Amps (the transmitter batteries are 600Mah AA batteries). I stuck the NiMH’s on and was ready to go in 20 minutes with a 75% charge. I prepped her for flight and let her fly! She went along straight as an arrow out of my hand, I pulled back on the stick and she dove into the ground like a lawn dart! AACK!

I had forgotten that Dan fiddled with my receiver, reversing a wire! I should have done a better flight test! I recall a quote from Cliff Whitney, “When flying inverted, down is up and up is expensive”. The motor mount had held up but the foam holding the motor mount, about 1 inch into the plane gave way, tearing about as large a chunk as possible from the top rear of the plane. When the tail came loose, it chopped through part of rear of the wing, leaving a gash.

Well, after about 30 minutes of gluing and taping, she was ready to go back in the air. I had tried to collect all of the yellow foam from the crash site but I was missing a couple bits. The gash in the wing remains even still. I got her up and she was great. Smooth and fast flying. She rolls like… she rolls quick. I was getting ready to try inverted flight but as it unsteadily came out of the 1/2 flip and nosed toward the ground a bit more than expected, I recalled that I needed more experience with the plane before doing to much with it. Suffice to say, she flies very well.

I don’t think it’s appropriate for the task I was going to put it to at Burning Man. She’s too small, too fast, too unstable. I need something big that can cruise around showing itself off. The Zagi is just about big enough but not stable enough. I’ve got my work cut out for me here!

I’d have taken pictures of all this but my aunt borrowed my camera. I’ll have it back soon.

Here is the Kavan web site (the maker of Projeti)

I’ve been talking about lighting the Projeti for Burning Man in my regular journal. I found a bunch of sources for wire. Well, I found the source I’m going to use: http://www.coolneon.com. This from the Coolneon gallery:

It’s together. :-) Last night, I reved it up to full power, pointing the nose up toward the ceiling. I could feel it pushing up against my hand. If I had let go, it would have shot straight through the ceiling. Well, not really… it would have hit the ceiling and then shattered into maybe five or ten pieces… but you get the idea; vertical performance :-)And now the bad news: I was getting ready for my outing today and the prop wouldn’t turn. When I gave it throttle, the prop would do this unhappy buzzing thing. The prop doesn’t turn, it just vibrates! Waah! But today was the day! Wahhh!

I called NESail at 5pm and Carolyn said I’ll get a call back by the end of their work day… which is at 6pm…  in 5 minutes. :-( I don’t think I’m going to get that call. :-(

Maybe I changed an important setting on the ESC when I tried to program it. It’s a Phoenix 25 brushless ESC. It took me a while to figure out an important aspect of programming: go slow. If you try to program it too fast, it drops out of programming mode unexpectedly. I’ll go try to program it AGAIN…

——————-

NESail called me back at about 6:05 6 :-) The guy at NESail, Sal talked me though some diagnostics but couldn’t help. He thought it was most likely a busted ESC, though such problems are rare. He motioned me toward Castle Creations. He says that if it’s busted, I could exchange it though either NESail or Castle Creations. Of course I’m unhappy that I’m having trouble with it but NESail has been pretty sand-up-ish. I left a message at Castle Creations after hours. Hopefully they’ll call me back shortly!