Scale is sexy!

Finally found some time to start working on my gliders. Lets see, i shall start with the discus, then the banana, if season permits, will go on to the salto, else keep it for next season. The planes came with real limited instructions. 1 tiny piece of paper for each plane! As they say, if you need instructions, you are not ready for this kind of planes. I've been reading alot of building threads on RCGroups to get ideas and just got myself the F3 building clinic DVD. Watched a few chapters of it last night, i must say its quite good for first time mouldies owners. Learnt a few tricks n tips.

On to the discus 2b, took out some servos to trial fit in the wings. The wings are really thin! Had to squeeze the HS65 in, and a little part of the servo still bulge out. Will try to scrap the servo casing abit and use servo covers to cover it up, hopefully it will turn out well. I couldn't resist putting the discus together for a trail fit. Wow, scale is some sexy stuff. Looks really really good. The planes come with really little hardware like control horns n stuff. The discus only comes with the T-tail screw. Now have to visit LHS to get the stuff to start building. I cant wait.

Flying jamboree

Was at the heli jamboree at bukit batok flying club today. It was a whole day event with heli obstacle course competition, funflys, pylon racing and whole lots of demos. Could only make it in the afternoon for the pylon race. Took part in the pylon racing with my speed glider. I knew it wasnt going to win, was for the fun of it. The race was won by Joe yap with his self made Skat 2. His plane beat other high end mouldies like VIP, stinger. Amazing workmanship and skills to fly it of course.

Early Santa presents arrived.

Reached home today and saw a small Singpost note on the door. Hohoho, gliders are here! So made my way down to Singpost at Eunos to collect them. What a huge box. Couldnt wait, opened it up once i reach home. Everything was quite well packed and in order except that the banana came in wrong colour. I specifically requested for red strips on the bottom and they sent me one with blue strips instead. Oh well at least they arrived with no damage, im more than happy. Tired now , tomorrow still got funfly, just some teaser pics, more to come.

JR or Mulitplex???

Problem : I have 3x CC bergs 4 channel RXs and want to use them on my gliders that have dual ailerons servos. I need them to be on separate channels so that i can use them as spoilers as well. My futaba 9CHP only allows Right aileron on channel 1 and Left aileron on channel 5/6/7.

I played around with the mixes on the 9C to try to get it to work with 4channel rx. Since channel 3 for throttle is not used for the slope gliders, i need to some how mix the Left aileron channel to the throttle channel. First i set up a program mix to cancel out any throttle inputs, set master as Thro, set slave as Thro as well. Set both up and down rates as -100%. This way the throttle channel cancels out itself no matter which way the throttle stick is at. Tested at the SERVO mode to see the effects, works. Then i set another mix, aileron to throttle, to try get Left aileron channel to be replicated in Channel 3. Set up the correct direction of the rates, ok works. Left aileron servo movement is now replicated in channel 3. Set up dual rates for aileron , works in the replication. I need differentials in the wings, after playing around, i m able to get differentials by setting the rates in the the aileron to throttle mix.

I need spoilers. Tried all sorts of ways, links on, links off,flaps to throttle mix....etc. Dam cant get it to work. Spoilers when activated cause both ailerons to go up. Cant seem to able to mix the spoiler for Left aileron to Channel 3. It seems that the airbrake function is activated after the mixing thats why. I cant risk flying without the spoilers as sometimes the winds can get so strong that landings with out them is very hard. Also i wanted the flaps function as well to change the wings' camber for different needs. Cant do that as well. So i need a new transmitter. LOL.

Did some research, narrowed down to the multiplex evo 9 and the JR 9x2. Multiplex evo allows flexible assignment of channels and the JR 9x2 uses channel 1 and 2 for dual ailerons for sailplane mode. The ergomatics of evo is really good, the tx feels so right in your hands. I m almost about to go for the evo when i found 2 short comings, 1- only one expo rate per model. 2- 1sec transition time between flight phase.

Both radios are really good for sailplanes, but im flying acro planes and helis as well, where i feel multiple expo rates are very important. For those 3D stuff, you need max throws and lots of expo so that the area near the neutrals are not so sensitive, for precision flying will need lesser expo so that it wont feel numb around the neutrals. Hence im leaning towards JR. Now the problem is i cant use my the other 2 -ve shift electron 6s RXs if i switch to JR. Dam which means spending more money. Why cant they all use the same protocols?!!

BR funfly and slope 18 Nov 06

Was at the BR funfly today, a few of the guys were practicing their pylon racers for next week's competition at the BBAFC jamboree. Joe's scratch built Skat2 flew as fast if not faster than some of the other moulded pylons. I m really amazed at his building skills, he can build any plane he wish to fly. man that saves alot of money! check out the pics of his 2m duo discus as well, superb finishing. Eraptor flew very stable n well. Big is better! Some nice moves from Ammo's EP8. He did a real low invert hover n touch the ground. nice.

Went to the slope in the afternoon. The winds was good , but the direction abit off, coming from the sides and not hitting the slope perpendicularly enough to create good lift. The winds shifted on and off and i managed to have my first real slope flight this season. The weasel did good, elster was better, managed some 10-15mins flight reaching fairly high attitude. Today's winds was just a teaser, need to wait 2 to 3 weeks more then the real fun begins.

Gliders on the way

Its almost some kind of unsaid rule that slopers start the slope season every year with a new plane, of course unless you have so many gliders already that you just have to recycle them. My wish is to fly a big plane this year >1.5m as big planes look so majestic in the air. Being the perfectionist, i m drawn as well to the crisp handling of a high performance moudie, those F3F type planes.

Been doing research for the past few weeks, i have must visited most of the websites in US and europe that sells gliders to check out the planes and the prices. A good list can be found here. Anyone looking for one can ask me where to get the best price. LOL. I even made a excel sheet to compare their prices and narrow down.

After i watch the videos at thommys here, i m sold on the discus 2b. A few PMs to some of the flyers on rcgroups who owned the ship confirmed that its a good all rounder, flies well even in light lift and slermal conditions. So i looked around for the best prices on the net, i found that shipping from US was way much higher than from europe. However websites from europe are often in foreign langauges. Google translator was my best friend. Emails were sent to different webshops requesting for prices/shipping cost. Only a few replied back, i guess not all understood english.
In the end i ordered from www.lenger.de . Their reply was fairly fast and they seem reliable. A few other gliders caught my eyes and i was thinking if i order them together i will save on shipping. Dam I shld not have think LOL cos i ended up ordering 3, discus 2b, salto and banana. Some really nice videos of the banana from here.
Felt abit guilty afterwards, but what the hack, money already transferred, maybe i build one per year, that way i have new planes for the next 3 seasons. I hope they arrive safely. Now i just need a evo 9 to compliment them...

Feeling the adrenaline rush

I'm sure many of you have gotten the 'high' feeling when flying your planes or helis. Its when your heart goes pumping very fast, stomach goes weak and fingers/legs start shaking. Having flown both types of aircrafts for awhile, more often than not, i get my adrenaline rush from flying my heli. I stumbled across a website that has quite good articles on helis, www.littlerotors.com ,which says "It seems with RC helis, you're enjoying yourself the most when you're shaking with fear and sweating. When you're doing this you know you're learning new things! The best days are always when you bring your helicopters home in one piece, but the next best days are when you come home from the field having accomplished something new." How very true! I am sure this is one of the many reasons why rc helis are so addictive.

Flying fix wings do gives that high sometimes, especially those high speeds pylon racers. It boils down to the margin of error. With planes, if anything goes wrong, one can always cut the throttle and attempt to glide it down, but with helis, the margin of error is much lesser, one misjudement will often result in a crash. Having got over my first 'wall' and being able to do forward flights now, i m getting lesser of those adrenaline rushes. LOL. I feel a need to fly at the edge of my comfort zone and try out new things which have never been done before. This of course has to be done in gradual steps or else i will have to bare the pain of many crashes! Now go out there and feel the rush...