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Posted by: secant0give
03-04-2011, 07:23 PM
Forum: General
- Replies (17)

I started building this a while back but I took photo's with my iphone at various stages so I could look back at it after a while.

The object of the build is to end up with something practical and usable that flies with little vices and is simple compact and above all tough, aesthetics have taken a back seat.

What could be more simple than a flying wing ?

We used to fly these slope combat wings over on the North shore after work when ever the wind was right, some years back. At places like Newport, (which is banned now as it's so close to the road). Long Reef and Doberoid head and some times near Monaveil hospital, and once or twice from the cliffs off west head, in a westerly it produces usable lift but one mistake and that's it.

It's not just my propensity for recycling that made me decide to use this wing but the fact that I remember it flying so very nicely as a slope soarer. It had almost no vices and was very tough, and could be happily ballasted by using masking tape to hold on sizable strips of roofing lead to the upper side of the wing. This one survived many many missions and the covering was rather sad looking so it was stripped back to the foam core. you can see how yellow it is from UV exposure. This is from exposure while flying as it was never stored in the sun. So well worn was the core that the leading edge needed to be trimmed back and replaced with balsa.

Here's a pic of the core having it's leading edge replaced.

   

The pic shows the core being held down with weights some of which are positioned behind the trailing edge, holding the core from moving back and some more weights pressing the new balsa L E against the front of the core. the glue used to bond the new balsa LE to the core is west system's epoxy mixed with micro light filler. You can see it in the mixing tray in the background of the pic. I really like this stuff for gluing foam and balsa you can use it as a glue or a bog just depends on how much filler you put in.

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Posted by: Skidz
01-04-2011, 11:01 AM
Forum: General
- Replies (27)

Thought I might add a build thread for my new heli.

First comment is that there is plenty of video assistance on Helifreak to supplement what appears to be nice big well laid out manual.

Managed to assemble the frame without issue. It will need to be adjusted later so the two halves are by no means permanently assembled. I used the rotor shaft to align the main bearings to ensure everything was perfect.

I took a couple of photos. Couldn't resist putting the tail boom and canopy on the L600 frame to get a first hand impression of size. NiceBiggrin ! Beside the T500, the Logo is very impressive.


       

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Posted by: kizza42
30-03-2011, 11:32 AM
Forum: General
- Replies (19)

Over the next few days I will be making some changes to the way the club website/forum is hosted.

This is a direct result of a security breach at the clubs webhost which resulted in some page code being compromised.

The vast minority of you still crazy enough to be running Internet Explorer in this day and age would have been the only people affected by the issue which has now been temporarily patched by me. In the long term I suggest you check out Firefox or Chrome as a browser or at the very least, Internet Explorer 9.

As well as shoring up security, I will be removing the prefix from our web address. It will just be http://www.rcflyingclub.com for the website and http://forum.rcflyingclub.com for the forum. You will have to update your bookmarks!

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Posted by: Skidz
27-03-2011, 06:49 PM
Forum: General
- Replies (5)

I have been considering my next addition to the fleet. I have now placed on order a Mikado Logo 600.

The Trex500 FBL is flying absolutely fantastic but I have fancied a larger heli for some time. Had my heart set on a Logo. Almost went for the Logo 500 but shifted to the 600 so future aspirations were covered. The L600 is one very nice unit.

Initially I will run it with 6S battery and flybarless set-up (V-bar). I will run at 6S for a while with Scorpion 4025-1100 motor before moving to 10S "powerhouse" set-up.

Can't wait! When it arrives, it will be time to pass around the cigars!! I promise in advance to do a build thread.

Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYOlOcFwDEQ

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Posted by: paulj
26-03-2011, 08:28 PM
Forum: General
- Replies (10)

anyone up for an online session?

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Posted by: Flying fisho
23-03-2011, 09:59 PM
Forum: General
- Replies (12)

A vote of thanks to all who have made me feel so welcome.
A special mention to John Hale who intiiated me into the watching my plane doing a vertical landing. I surprised myself at how calmly I accepted the not so graceful landing, a calm created by friendly words of wisdom from many who gave me an expectation of the inevitable.
Many thanks to Drew for the time you have donated to me in providing valuable information for prop & servo selection. Will try not to overuse the privelege given so far.
I followed the same routine in binding my newly arrived Cessna 182 as I successfully did with the Corsair, but all I get is repetative short beeps from the ESC and accompanying "twitches" of the prop. I even tried using the receiver from the Cessna. My suspicions are a faulty ESC or motor. All suggestions welcomed.

Cheers,

Wayne

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Posted by: dingy
21-03-2011, 09:19 AM
Forum: General
- Replies (14)

Hi Guys,

With the weather the way it is I finally finished her - the Twinstarr ll.

Hoping it shall fly as good as it looks.

Something completly different - Mupltiplex model.

Ingo

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Posted by: chrism
19-03-2011, 09:07 AM
Forum: General
- Replies (13)

When building my planes I always have a bit of struggle with deciding which servo to use, so I thought I would start this thread so that we could all share our thoughts and knowledge on the issue.

With my current project an E-flite AT6 Texan, I stuggled even more than usual as this is my first model that I have built which has flaps and retracts, plus an unusal dual setup using 2 servos for the elevator.

To add to my dilema we had a couple of aircraft recently meet with disaster at the flying field as a result of servo issues and this was playing on my mind. One was stripped plastic gears resulting in the loss elevator control and another was cut servo wires. Both resulting in a total loss of the aircraft, this served as a big reminder how important these little items are.

With the Texan having 9 servos, ailerons 2, flaps 2, retracts 2, elevator 2 & rudder 1 this necessitaed the use of a separate UBEC as I have learnt from my researching that an ESC with an internal BEC may have a stated BEC current rating of 2.5A or 3A but this is not to be trusted.

As a rule of thumb an aircraft using 4 or more full size servos should have a separate UBEC. If you are using a micro or minature servos, these draw less current therefore the above rule needs to adjusted accordingly. Another thing to remember is that digitals use more current than analogue for a servo of the same size.

Given the number of servos I need and the all up flying weight of my plane in mind I didn't want to go for the overkill when selecting the appropriate servos. My retracts are H/King electrics so that decision was taken care of. The build manual called for a minature servo of 17g in weight, a torque of 2.5kg-cm and a speed of 0.17sec/60deg @ 6V. I was torn between using metal gear and plastic gear with the events at the field recently, metal maybe reliable but are not as smooth as plastic and the backlash is greater with metal. Also a metal servo with the required torque and speed are much heavier than the plastic geared servos. In the end I compromised: ailerons, flaps & rudder using plastic (Hitec HS-81 analogue) and elevator using metal (Corona/HK DS-929MG digital), both are within the weight spec but the metals have a lower torque at 2.2kg-cm but I felt this was OK as there are two servos on the elevator instead of the usual one.

Now that the servos were selected I had one more thing to sort out - the 2 servos controlling the elevator (one for the port side and the other for the starboard) requires one of them to rotate in the reverse direction. This requires either rewiring the servo internally (see the YouTube clip below) or the purchasing of a servo reversing lead, both of these options are not so straight forward as the rewiring of a small servo requires some skill and the reversing lead is not readily available from the LHS. I intend on attempting to rewire the servo with some help from a person experienced at soldering small components as the servo cost $6 and a reversing lead costs $26 if available plus it adds weight. I am assuming that rewiring a digital servo can be done similar to the analogue ones only time will tell.

Some usefull web sites I found are below:

General servo specs 7 info
http://www.servodatabase.com/
http://fatlion.com/sailplanes/servos.html

Reversing of servos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK_FdRTenl0

Happy Flying
Chris M

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Posted by: Skidz
17-03-2011, 06:21 PM
Forum: General
- Replies (46)

Thought I would post some video of FAI F3C flying. I think there is a view that advanced heli pilots thrash their machines around like mosquitos sprayed with poison. Not so. There is more to flying helis ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZcuGUy2IOc

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Posted by: kizza42
16-03-2011, 12:15 PM
Forum: General
- Replies (30)

It's about to get very interesting!

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/forum...16610&PN=1


Long story short:
As part of Hobbyking's expansion we will be opening our first retail store in Sydney, Australia within the next 60 days.
This store will be stocking both locally aquired R/C gear and HobbyKing products, it will also act as a HobbyKing service center.
This is a pilot program and once the bugs have been ironed out, replicated in other regions.

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