F3B Worlds Championship 2011 China

Hello glider fans,

The F3B worlds championship will be held 21-29 Sept in China. Its my privilege to be able to attend, instead of just going as a spectator, i wanted to do more,be involved, learn and kick-start this discipline in SG. Thanks to Roman ,  the contest director, who linked me up with the organizer. i am able to be there as a volunteer. Will share some of my notes here.

F3B is the pinnacle of FAI Sailplane model class, the Formula One of RC Soaring. The models are winch launched and required to compete in 3 demanding tasks:
A: Duration. Ten minutes thermal flight with precision spot landing.
B: Distance. Four minutes distance flight over 150 meter closed circuit (to get as many laps as possible.)
C: Speed. Flight over 4x150 meters, (to get fastest speed as possible)

Links

Official website http://www.f3b2011.com
pod cast with TeamUSA http://glidefast.typepad.com/files/f3b-team-podcast-1.mp3
- website of contest director  http://lomcovak.cz/wp_eng/

Team websites
www.teamusaf3b.com
www.lsfaustralia.org.au/
www.f3bteam.fr/
www.f3b-team-germany-2011.de/
www.f3b.ru/

Heading over to Jinan tomorrow.

2010 Slope season pics

We are a month into the slope season for 2010, today the wind's direction was not too good, so ended up taking photos of the planes static display.

  Jeremy's cappu

Ken's zoom

 

 Ken's Typhoon

Serenity

New owner of Serentiy

Full battle order

  Wind too left

Cobra

4.6m ASH 26

Nexus 900

Flasher 600 ESP build review

This review focus on the Flasher 600 ESP kit from Heliguru.sg. The Flasher 600 ESP kit comes very complete with CF frames , full metal head and tail and torque tube drive. Another Glass Fiber with belt version is also available. The bare bone kit versions are particular suitable for modellers who wish to use their own electronics.

Kit. - The kit comes in a nicely packed box with the components grouped into their respective packaging.

 

Head Assembly - Pretty much the standard stuff, quality of the metal and finishing is reasonably good. The swash uses sealed bearings.

Frame - Frames follow the newer ESP design and at 2mm thick, are slightly thicker than the standard Align ones. Carbon weave was uniform throughout and well cut out. One thing to note, the metal aileron levelers are the old electric version and not the new ESP version which is slighly slanted at an angle. This should not affect the flying in anyway as the geometry of the linkages remains the same.

Metal holder with CF servo frame for tail servo

Torque Tube Drive - Gears fit well together and torque tube is solid.

Tail assembly - Tail comes all metal with the metal tail pitch slider and metal tail rotor holder. Pitch slider slides smoothly on the tail shaft.

Canopy is the standard lighting yellow fiberglass canopy. Material is solid and paint work is ok.

Issues and conclusion.

The assembly of the kit is fairly standard, the only issue i faced during the assembly was the tail rotor hub needs abit of sanding for the tail rotor shaft to go through smoothly. Other than that, everything fitted well together.Quality and finishing is reasonably good. Will review how it flies after i fit the electronics on it. 

Time of the year again

Its time of the year again, looks like its almost there, the winds are coming straight through from northeast, once the rain clears, hopefully the slope season will be here. Dust off those gliders, recharge those batts.

Predator 2 DLG - Build and fly review

Just came back from test flying the Predator 2 DLG. This kit is available from Soaring Composites.

Building

Not so many build pics as I built it stock following the build thread here. Build process was not too hard as the instructions in the build thread was clear. I used HS45hb x4 , 4.8v 300mah rx pack and berg 7 rx. The space in the fuselage was small and it was a tight squeeze to get all the wiring in. I ended up slightly nose heavy and had to add 5 gram lead at the tail to get the CG to 72mm from LE. The boom was cut at 68mm so those using heavy electronics may want to leave a longer boom. AUW was 285g.Flying

I did a few javelin throws to get it trimmed. After adding in few clicks of up elevator, it was gliding like forever. As this was my first DLG, and have not tried DLing before, i had some hesitation discus launching it. Kept doing some more javelin throws till pick up enough guts to just do it. Started with small on the spot discus throws. Slowly got the hang of it and progressed to full discus launches. Was surprised i managed to get quite high launches towards the end as this was my first time doing DLs. Woo hoo it was getting addictive to launch the glider up high. When my TX batt dropped low, i told myself it will be the last launch, but every time i picked up the peg, i just wanted to go at it again!.

Didn't managed to get any good thermals as it was fairly windy and cloudy. The P2 penetrated the wind well and was responsive to any slight draft of wind. It was quite agile in turning and stall characteristics was predictable. It was great first session getting to know the plane, even managed some hand catches towards the end. The only spoiler was that the wing hit a stone on one of the landing. I think it was like the only stone on the field.... duh, some luck.
Overall, its a good value first DLG kit, not to difficult to build, good flying characteristics.

Charging my batts now, looking forward to the next session later...