Lee.org

I’m about 3/4 finished putting it together. I’ve had two problems…. first, nesail.com sent me 14″ servo extensions when I only needed 4″ extensions. The extra 10″ is a pain to stow away on such a small plane so I went to Kenvil Hobbies and bought 6″ extensions. They fit great. Second thing: I couldn’t figure out how to use the (very pretty) colleted prop adapter. In the process of trying to figure it out, I broke it. So I bought a new Master Airscrew prop adapter at Kenvil Hobbies. It works great except I needed an extra washer as a spacer; 15 minutes of swearing to myself in the nuts and bolts aisle and I found what I was looking for, a single 6mm washer.Most of the decals are on. I wasn’t going to put the decals on because I want to do it de’art for Burning Man, but I realized that they are an important structural element of the plane. They offer protection for the underbelly and most especially, the decal is 3/4 of the hinge for the elevons. Before I cut out the decals, I traced them on a sheet of clear plastic, so I might make another set of decals out of a material and appearance more of my choosing.

I ran the motor. Wooeee, it’s windy! I had trouble holding it in my hand, it pushed so hard! I think it might offer more thrust than the weight of the plane! Woo hoo, hangin’ on the prop is a possibility…. well, except that it’s a pusher plane, but I’m sure you still share my enthusiasm.

While putting the Deans Ultra connectors on the LiPoly battery, I accidentally shorted it for about 2 seconds! Yipe! It didn’t just spark, it fully arced, slightly pitting my Radio Shack holder thingie. Now, all I can think about is how HForo69 (an AIM flying buddy) told me how damaged LiPolys can burn out cars and burn down homes! Before I went to bed, I put the battery on the cement floor of the garage and put a big ceramic jar on top of it. (Thanks for the jar, Melis ;-)

I did some math on http://brantuas.com/ezcalc/dma1.asp and ass-u-ming that my batteries can do 10C… this isn’t for sure, the previous generation could do 6C and the new ones are supposed to do 10C… but I don’t even know for sure that I have a “new” one. It says “6/4/04″ on it which I suppose is the manufacture date, but that could be the assembly date or….
So, assuming the battery can do 10C, this plane will totally rock:

• 3S TP2100 battery
• Mega AC 16/15/4 motor
• 6×4 APC prop

• 20.2 amp draw
• 19,400 RPM prop
• 196 watts in
• 167 watts out
• 85% efficiency
• prop static thrust: 32 oz
• prop pitchspeed 74 mph
• full throttle duration: 6:14 minutes

The plane has a flying weight of about 20 oz :-)

I just bought a Projeti electric flying wing and brushless motor set. It promises to go 3 times as fast as the Zagi, still with amazing acrobatics. I’m taking it to Burning Man in August. It’s going to need a more artistic paint job than what comes out of the box. Too bad I don’t have an artistic girlfriend.

Everything is coming from Northeast Sailplane Products http://www.nesail.com

I’ll probably be lighting the plane with something from one of these companies:

http://www.glowire.com
http://www.rcneon.com

Here is a calculator for LEDs I might need
http://www.rc-cam.com/led_info.htm

What is in the mail to me from Vermont:

• projeti plane
• hitec electron 6 (neg), channel 42
• 2 MX-50 servos (Sal at NESail said they were a little better than HS-55’s and the same price.
• 2 12″ servo extenders
• (brand name?) 35 amp controller
• Mega 16/15/4 motor
• 6×4 prop
• $80 2100 3s mah Thunderpower LiPoly battery
• prop adapter

Sal at NESail tells me that at WOT, the motor/prop draws 26 amps, 24,000rpm, 237 watts

I’m planning on getting a hard-sided archery case to haul it to Burning Man. Maybe this one on the right, from http://www.unlimitedoutdoors.com/accessories.html

Or maybe I’ll just spend $40 on this plain case on eBay

I flew about 7 batteries on Saturday. The first battery is always the worst. It’s like the plane is broken or something. But then it (IE me) gets better.

I’m getting tired of the motor shaft overheating and melting the prop off. I lost 1 prop today. Maybe it was the inverted crash that loosened the prop but I think it was the heat. After flying a few batteries, the motor was “ouch, that’s pretty darn hot” hot.

Weirdly enough, I keep thinking about going brushless… overpowered brushless. It’s all those gas & glow jocks at the field. There I am just inching off the field and they’re pulling verticals right after take-off.

Wee! Check out the videos of these itty bitty Superfly electrics

Charging Zagi KR-1700AU batteries

The Zagi Trick RC manual says, “SANYO RECOMMENDS CHARGING THE KR 1700AE CELL AT A RATE UP TO 1
AMP….SOME MODELERS REGULARLY CHARGE THEM FOR 40 MINUTES AT 2 AMPS.” This is simply not true. Sanyo’s recommendation is a fast charge of 2.6 amps. That is the exact same recommendation they give for their “fast charging” (4 mega-ohm) N-1700SCR battery, and their “high capacity” (16 mega-ohm) KR-1500AUL. The KR-1700AU has 17 mega-ohms of resistance. I now feel completely safe charging at a maximum of 2.5C… 4.2 amps… a 25 minute charge. I’m staying shy of the often recommended 3C charge because of the fairly high internal resistance in the battery. When I don’t need a speedy charge, I’ll keep it at 1C. I’ll do this for a while and then gauge (mostly by heat build-up patterns in the battery) how to modify this strategy.

See Sanyo.com or my flying homepage for references.

Silicon didn’t help, new motor did

I went out flying today with the spinner held on tightly with silicon glue. It didn’t work. I went through one battery, brought it in, tossed it with a second battery and it only went 50 feet before it started making the spinner’s-gonna-fall-off-any-second noise. FYI: the prop gets quieter and the motor spins faster, making a very quiet high pitched whir as it starts to slip. That’s the sign for you to prepare for a landing and start watching for the prop because then there’s this almost imperceptible clicky-poppy noise when the prop pops off. Now your electric wing is now a glider.

So I took the motor off and tried the Promaxx 7.2 volt motor. I bought this a while ago but never got to try it out. Actually, I’m glad I waited because swapping motors with my new motor mount was a snap… or rather a ‘zip’, pulling the velcro stays off and resoldering (with my snazzy-and-quick soldering gun). The new motor has a bit less power but it flew a LOT longer than the old motor, maybe 20 minutes per battery WOT the whole time! That’s pretty much in keeping with my style so I’m very happy with the new motor. I checked the temperature of the motor after 2 batteries and it was quite a bit cooler than the old motor. My temperature measurement is very scientific: After flying one battery on the old motor, the top of the motor (nearest the prop) was “Ow! I burned myself! [insert finger in mouth]” hot. After flying two batteries on the new motor, the top of the new motor was “Eww. I wouldn’t want to leave my finger on there too long!” hot. Using my handy-dandy temper-lee conversion calculator, those temperatures are 400 and 250 Fahrenheit, respectfully.

Now I have a motor I can rip apart for mad experimentation!

Being eaten alive!

I find myself going out between 5 and 7pm most of the time. The mosquitoes can me AWFUL at this time of the day! Today, I tried dousing myself in DEET bug repellent. Even with the repellent, I had to keep constantly walking around or I’d be chewed on by the bugs! I’ve got marks all over from where those little buggers got me!

A nice day

Julian gave this to me. It’s from several few weeks ago. I suppose I’m a tall fellow by some standards, yes?

Went flying at Great Meadows today. It was pretty crazy… I was trying to get inverted and… well, the battery was a little far forward, which gives better penetration and stability but decreased vertical turning performance… So I flew out away from me, did an inside 1/2 turn back toward me… and then realized that I couldn’t pull up. I went right into the roof of the little stand that holds the radio pins. It skidded up and off the peak of the roof and flopped down onto the ground. I’m very happy that no one was over there at the time, but it made me very uncomfortable. I keep telling myself that there never really was any danger in the first place; Heck, I’ve hit myself in the head with the plane while trying to catch it and neither the plane or my head were damaged in the slightest.The motor had fallen out of it’s home-made mount, the prop had gone missing, and an elevon had broken AGAIN. After calming down and getting around to laughing at the incident, I glued her back together and gave her a toss! She was aerodynamically sound but the motor didn’t have nearly as much umph as before. I was worried that the motor was internally damaged. I flew out the battery as Jason, his girlfriend, father and another flyer (sorry I forget your name!) left. I stuck another battery in and the plane was totally fine, with plenty of power. Apparently (and strangely) the battery I had been using (#3) was near empty after only 4 minutes and 1 crash of flying time. Weird.

Hey Jason, if you’re reading this…. (and even if you’re not, nya) the plane is -totally- fine! The motor wasn’t damaged as I thought. Wee!

My last flight of the night ROCKED. I’m sad that everyone else missed it! It was full of zooping and zipping, cartwheeling turns, powerful leaps, graceful slooping, connectedness, and a gorgeous sunset! I love to fly!

Oh and one last thing… It was a bit windy today. I flew 1 battery at the Allamuchy field and was having a pretty sucky time. The wind was rolling off the trees and tossing the plane around a bit. I could hold on without too much trouble but it wasn’t very fun. At Great Meadows, the distant trees smoothed out the wind and flying in the 10mph winds was fun. What a difference!

Going to the Sussex model air show tomorrow. Yip!

Battery uses estimate

I have to fly battery #2 13 times more than #1 before I can charge #1 and #2 together. Ugh.

Hey, I’ve flown over 10 hours! 64 flights * approx 10 minutes per flight = 10.6 hours!

I fixed the motor mount and flew on Saturday :-)I created an EPP foam motor mount. You can’t see in the image but where the front of the motor touches the foam (in the photo, very close to where the blue wire is soldered to the motor) I buried a quarter in the foam to distribute the force of the motor sliding forward during a sudden stop.

I found a coroplast sign on the street that no one was using [grin]… (one of those awful “Lose 50 lbs in 10 days, Guaranteed!!!” signs). I cut a long rectangle of it and put it on the bottom of the plane as a reinforcing plate. I then sliced holes down through the wing to insert “GB Grip Strip” velcro strapping from Home Depot. This strapping now holds the motor in place! As well, I put strapping in front because, cool as it looks, I want to stop the battery from it’s habit of flying loose and cutting into the ground like a throwing dagger tossed high in the air during my inverted stints.

A couple times now, the battery has come loose! Just this weekend it happened too… before we put the battery strapping on. Julian and I had finished putting the motor mount on, and I wanted to FLY immediately. So I gave it a toss. I was showing off my new inverted skills over the strip when…. the engine cut out suddenly, the battery flipped 200 feet with a thud (Julian was looking away at the time but he tells me that he felt the thud!) and the plane wafted down like a giant sheet of construction paper let go from a building-top. Yea, time for better velcro on the battery!

Die Hard Fliers

I am now officially a die-hard. It drizzled on us a couple times when we were out flying. We kept watching the sky, wondering when we’d get the brunt of it. I went up and was having a blast when… It felt almost like I was getting tunnel vision. I was losing my peripheral vision due to a sinister darkness that was sneaking up on me from behind! The air suddenly smelled different. The leaves on the trees flipped over. It was time! The rain hadn’t started but I called out, “That’s it! Here comes the rain!” As I was landing and packing up, the rain started…. and then in earnest! It poured! Four of us hid in the RAMAC shack. Julian luckily had the combination to the lock, there was also a Russian man named Gen and …. oh dear, I forget the last guy’s name. We sat around talking about Gen’s diesel powered control line plane. He last flied a control line when he was 15… an old diesel :-). His new plane had a new engine on it… but it was the exact same model engine :-). Diesel engines are more efficient but they can be a REAL pain to start. While it rained, he worked on getting it started for an hour or so. The smell of the fuel was wild! It’s 1/3 ether, 1/3 kerosene, 1/3 mineral oil. The ether gives it this cool, fruity, clean smell… maybe like a doctor’s office… After a few minutes in the shack with him starting the engine, (the door and windows were open, but still…) we were all permeated with the smell. I didn’t mind.

The rain finally stopped after 1 1/2 hrs or so. We went out and Gen really wanted to get his control line flying. I wanted to see it. I only have 1 vague memory of ever seeing CL and my dad talks a lot about how he flew CL when he was a kid. He finally got it started, I held it, he gave the signal and I let it fly! It went up. And it went down. Smoosh. 5 seconds in the air. The damage wasn’t too too bad… the wing was crushed from the “Art” decal outward. :-(.

After we all moped about the smooshed plane, I whipped out the Zagi to cheer everyone up. I have Gen the controls… he asked if we were ready for a low flyby; he almost hit the shack! It was a gas! I landed on my own once in the parking lot (RE: the mud on the plane in the pix) and Julian caught it once.

On the way out, Julian’s brother finally showed up (only like 3 hrs late) with Angelina, a friend. We had a very nice time talking there.

I’m reminded of Cliff Whitney’s email .sig. “When flying upside-down, down is up and up is expensive.” Well in my case, up just got me to improve my super-gluing skills. I was working on my rolls and tried doing fun stuff in the roll. I found that the following combination puts the plane into this wacky roll where (if done right) you barely lose any altitude and the plane looks…  I don’t know… cool…:- Dive, then pull up to gain a little speed and an upward angle
- Hard turn right
- When the wing passes vertical, push the stick far-right and far-forward
- When the wing passes vertical again, push the stick far-right and far-back
- Flatten out and smile.

The plane doesn’t roll nearly as fast as just a hard turn. While it’s inverted, it gains a little altitude and it looks like the right wing (which is now on the left side) is being pulled up while the left wing is just sitting there. It looks pretty cool.

I was also working on getting really comfortable with inverted flight. I’m almost there! The Zagi keeps trying to right itself (which is a good safety release) so you have to fight it while upside-down and turning. I was trying to recover from a botched krazy roll; I tried to pull out inverted and…. well… I got my controls confused and drove straight into the ground at full throttle. The motor mount was smashed. I repaired it with superglue and that superglue quick-drying stuff.

Also, it was pretty cool when I dislodged my battery at about 100 feet. That happens when you’re inverted and wiggling a lot. Duh. The battery flew out like a throwing knife and stuck in the ground about 3″ deep. Cool. Happily, the controls were locked in a position where the plane wafted down like a piece of paper… back and forth… back and forth. Ploop.

Wow, I burned through 5 batteries today.

I wussed out and bought another battery pack from Kenvil Hobbies instead of building my own out of snazzy 1700mah Sanyo HR-4/5AUP Ni-MH batteries. I just didn’t feel comfortable spending $80 in batteries ($4.50 apiece + shipping), another $30 for battery bars, shrink wrap, wire, soldering gun, & connectors… and THEN have to put ‘em together in my lair. All that work would get me packs that are only marginally better than what I could get from Kenvil Hobbies for $35 apiece… for something like $55 apiece.

So I was picking up misc. items at Kenvil Hobbies and I just bought a battery pack. It’s the same type I got last time. So I’m going to use the new battery 19 times (occasionally abusing the charging times… just like I did on the first battery) and then I’ll start charging them in series together. That’ll be nice… more air time, less charging time.