Gusty winds

Discus had a nose dive and the canopy cracked. Dam, heart feel pain. Beautiful scale glider now dont look so nice anymore. The winds were very strong n gusty last sunday even with rain coming on and off. After waiting out 2 rounds of rain, took out the discus to give it a go. Flew it only for a few rounds before the storm clouds came in again. The rain came in fast n furious, everyone was rushing to land. I was bringing her to go around for landing when a big gust came n tip her over. She was too low a height to recover, crashed nose in from about a meter height.
Canopy took all the damage, rudder tray dislodged and a few hairline cracks at the back of the fuse. Superficial damage but haiz, just dont feel so nice anymore. I enquired for a new canopy today from soaringusa ,it cost 35USD!, with shipping will prob cost around 50USD. Hmm dun think its worth it. Will just try my best to repair n fly. Cant really see the repair from far, but you guys know, it just dont feel the same. LoL. This is considered nothing to one of the bro's 3.2 meter thermal glider. It nose dived from around 7-8 meters height n went full speed into the ground. No control prob due to battery failure. Man i feel heart pain for him. Well just one of those days...

Turn it on

Season is on. After 3 weeks of cloudy skies, its finally show time for Mr. Sunny and Miss Windy. What a splendid day at the slope, the winds were blasting right on perpendicular to the slope. I could only make it there later, heard from some of the slopers the winds were even better in the early afternoon. The guys were dying to satisfy their sloping urges and brought with them all the planes they could.
Besides the usual easy gliders, flying wings, there were quite a few scale gliders, DG1000s, my Discus 2b, one 4mish one,as well as exotic ones - spyder 2m, 3mish thermal one, also a few of joe-made micro bugs were buzzing around . The lift was awesome . The planes simply ballooned up into the sky with minimal effort. I had 2 good half hour flights on the discus , had removed quite abit of weight, its still abit nose heavy. In between was trying stuns with the elster diving from high up n doing rolls,half -cubans, U-stalls. I could see everyone was having a great time. Some mishaps though, my hammer was needed to rescue a spektrumised wing stuck fairly up in the trees, while 2 gliders were lost in the Bermuda jungles behind,cant be found. Oh well, im sure they will be back next week with new planes! The winds is worth the long wait.

na na-na na-na

The continuous torrent rain over the past few weeks really drowned my mood to do any building. With the skies clearing up, i finally got started on the banana build. The banana by baudis is a 60" F3F slope racer which is fully molded with a full carbon spar and huge full span ailerons.

The ailerons are live hinged as with most moldies .The plans include directions how to install flaps but i chosen to keep in simple n just have full span ailerons. It has the so called 'magical' MG06 airfoil which response very well to camber and allows it to fly in a wide range of conditions. From some of the videos i have seen, its very acrobatic as well. The best one i have seen is this one.

The build techniques are fairly similar to the discus i have done earlier,except for some areas like no cut outs for the wing servos, a V-tail, and narrow fuselage. Using Futaba 3150s for the ailerons, hs 65s for v-tails,cc berg 4 rx and eneloop AAA 800mah as rx pack.

Started with the wings, with some measurements taken from rcgroups, measured n cut out the servo spots. The wings are very thin, 10mm wide at the thickest area and the wing skin even thinner. So i reinforced the area quite abit before gluing in the servos. First epoxy in a piece of FG cloth then cut a few pieces of balsa ribs to bridge the upper and lower skins of the wing at the sides of the servo placement to spread the mounting loads further.

Glue in the servo horns, measure clevis length, glue in servos with epoxy/microballon mix, not using masking tape this time. The 3150s bulge out abit, but should be ok once i put the servo covers up.

Thats all at the moment, the fuselage will be a bit more complicated due to the vtails and tight space. Weekend's here, have wind, will fly.

Crap weather... again

Just saw this at the NEA website, prolonged monsoon rain. WTF! The weather is F-uped. At this time of the year,its suppose to be clear blue skies already, now we have rain rain and more rain again. Haiz guess another weekend wasted again.

JR-ed

Finally completed the switch of my fleet over to JR 9xII. Been using the Castle Creation berg 4 Rxs for awhile, and i found them to work great - small, light, with dsp filtering and full range. So i ordered the CC berg 7 Rxs to replace the electron 6s and new sets of crystals to switch over to new frequency. The size of CC berg 7 Rx is smaller than the electron 6 and the xtal fits into the case completely not protruding out like electron 6. A few dislikes are that the rx does not sit itself firmly in the case, it will wobble abit. Open up the case and abit blue tack fix that. Another thing is the antenna, it is quite stiff and does not take on new shape well. The end of it is curly, no matter how i tried to straighten it, it still remains curly. Besides that, its a good Rx and have some extra features that can be programmed using the CC USB link like servo sampling rate, programmable output channel, fail safe.

Switching from the 9c to 9xII was relatively ok since both use templated programming styles. I just have to get used to the new switch assignments. Comparing the two, 9C is simple, very easy to program, while the 9xII gives more details and uses the concept of flight modes. Individual settings (like trims, rates, mixes) are possible in each flight modes. For heli mode, the 9xII uses channel 7 for remote gyro gain instead of channel 5 as in the futaba. It can still be done on channel 5 if you have a 6channel rx through the use of ATVs or endpoints. To fully use the gyro gain menu needs a 7channel rx on JR.

There is also this feature that the 9xII have which is the CCPM exponential on the swash. It is suppose to remove the non-linear movement of the swashplate to reduce CCPM interactions. Not sure if this works, but my trex blades tracked the first time i switched over the settings to the 9xII. For the 7-points pitch/throttle curves, instead of just graphic curves, 9xII also shows the exact throttle stick position in digits. There is also an exponential function to smoothen out the curves. Nice feature.

Recap 2006, wish list 2007

06 had been a great year of RC for me, just a recap of things here. Started the year with the sloping season, flew the Elster, Weasel, Multiplex easyglider, Windrider easypro. Then sold the easyglider. Got into GWS foamies, warbird corsair, formosa. Formosa was great trainer that i used to practice the acro stuff, must have been one of the longest serving electric plane. Bought the align speed glider for some speed thrills, even entered in the BBAFC pylon race with it just for fun. Next was the filton mini extra 330,3D was fun, lots of things to learn and perform, maybe thats why im not bored of it yet. The only flyable electric plane i have left as of now.

Started into helis with Trex that opened up a new area of fun, different from planes. Its definitely more difficult to master and that kept me hooked. Think i did ok, after 6mths ,i went from hovering to forward flight, FFF to now nose-in hovering.i feel its important to get the basics right, before going to the fancy 3D stuff. Got myself a mini lama too for fun at home. After awhile got bored of it lol.

Lots of buying and selling,thats part of this hobby, there is always something new to look forward to, so got to recycle that cash. Have sold away mpx easyglider, windrider easypro, gws corsair, formosa, speed glider, mini lama. Hanger looks different now. Finally ended the year with a scale glider, baudis discus 2b. Its like coming to a full circle. I was attracted to this hobby one Christmas day 2 years ago when i saw them gliding at bedok reservoir slope. Now i finally get to fly one. Great feeling. And of coz, not forgetting the numerous friends i made in this hobby. The funflys, crashes, plane rescues, shopping trips to LHS will be meaningless without them.

Looking forward to this year 07, wish list - get a nitro heli, prob raptor 50. Polish up on the helis, planes skills, A hotliner waiting to be fix, hmm scale planes looks nice, jets maybe. A DLG perhaps for the itches after the slope season. Let's see how it goes... Great year ahead and many happy landings.

What's in the hanger now.(Superzoom and TT ehawk belongs to my friend who rented some hanger space. lol)