Daily Archives: August 26, 2011
8 posts
Here are some pics taken by the Editor. Sorry for the blurry ones. Need to work on my camera skills.
So now I turn on the transmitter. Then the reciever. And………….
IT”S ALIVE!
the little LED lights blink the correct codes! Hallahluyah! I am actually pretty excited.
I am not a failure, I did everything right. Its’ just that Scorpion Commander ESC’s are not suited for
multicopter use. For airplane use, they are excellent .
But, they just don’t speak Italian and there ya go.
So the tricopter is armed and sitting there in the grass ready to go, LED’s blinking and everything.
Because multicopters are,as a group,by definition, a multiple bladed blender, capable of 3-D carnage ,
I put on safety glasses! Because multicopters are
by definition, kinda scary what with the whirling blades TMES the number of motors, there is a safety routine
you must follow prior to arming the vehicle.
1: turn on the transmitter. Set throttle to low, trim 0.
2: plug in tricopter battery.
3. Pull throttle stick full aft and maximum right for 3 seconds.
The tricopter comes to life!
It just sits there with the motors at idle speed, LED’s bliking, awaiting your commands.
So, I take the sticks and give it 1/4 throttle to get it to lift off. Wrong answer!
This thing takes off like a rocket!. I cut the throttle and bring it back to the
backyard and “settle” it into the grass.
So between 1/8 and 1/4 throttle this thing goes from idle to suborbital !
Yeah baby! Thats what I’m talk’n about. Too much power!
Well I crashed it ( gently) and all’s I have to say is: WOW.
( easy fix.less than 2 bux 4 parts)
Next fix is throttle respnse.
( a generous dose of throttle expo and it should be good to go.)
The critera set forth in the first installment for easy reparibility was tested.
Two bent aluminum tube arms.
total: $ 2.15 .
If I was not writing this installment, I would flying. So now I am going to
sign off and get some flying in!
Next month:
Flight Trimming.
Rocket “Bob” Kreutzer
Bob Anson led the charge to altitude showing everyone where the elevator was, and in the first round all the pilots except Tom Erikson had flights over 7 minutes. Tom must have missed the elevator, which was fitting, because out of character, he missed the target on landing netting a low time, and zero landing points. Everyone else was hitting the target with deadly accuracy, Fred & Bob @ 30, Terry @ 20 landing points. Bob had to dive to the field, and ‘haul butt’ home to be under time, but he nailed it with a 9:55 time. AWESOME.
Round 2 was even better. Longer flights by the group, good landings, EVERYONE except Tom got 30 landing points! Tom was so close with 20.
Round 3 again netted long run times, and Bob racing down to beat the clock at 9:39, but he missed the target for zero landing points, giving the rest of the pack some room to catch up.
Round 4 someone flipped a switch. The lift was GONE. 5:53 was the longest flight (Bob came last last early) and landing points were hard to come by. Bob was the only one to get landing points (20) so that made up for his loss in round 3.
Results From : Radian 4th place w/171 Fred Daugherty, 3rd w/177 Tom Erickson, 2nd w/182. Terry Thomann, and the winner was Bob Anson w/293.
In Summary, we reaffirmed that Electroglide is not hampered by a 20 second motor run, and that we can have an Electroglide and IMAC events co-exist on the same day without impact. Electroglide is getting done in about 45 minutes from start to end, and that has a very low impact on other flight operations. Leaving the target in its current westward location, keeps the electrogliders at one end of the field so IMAC pilots can show up, and set up down on the east end. That seems to work very nicely versus having the target at the runway ‘show center’ like it was before the field was moved east. I would like to remind everyone to stay current on the website at https://www.sefsd.org as well as the club Facebook Page to know the calendar. Don’t let weather fool you here in San Diego. We have a real nice lift generator, just to the west, that big, black parking lot. with our prevailing wind from the west, that column of warm air is blowing our way nearly all the time. August was proof that weather that looks like crud, can have flights that take the clock to the end.
August Electroglide results are on the Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Silent-Electric-Fliers-of-San-Diego/133163896756394
I encourage all of you to ‘friend’ the facebook page. You will get
notices of the events in a more pro-active method.
Sportsman R< L Ray Fulks 1 st,Steve Neu 2 nd, Saad Attie 3 rd
Intermediate Mike Eberle 1 st
Advanced Steve Dente 1st
I haven’t enjoyed a pulsjet up close since I flew control line, when three of us went home burned one day. That was at 15 years old, then came motorcycles, women, spearfishing and finally clean electric airplanes. Watching them, with their nitro dragster like sound, from behind the fence was worth while though.
Yours, Carl
Here’s a video of my big Eindecker (plus Picture attached) and Snoopy’s Dog House.