RC planes/jets/heli

She looks good in the air!
I've replaced most of the tape "hinges" with proper dubro hinges on most of my planes. Just don't trust them without.

Yeah Radjet is a silly name, but better a silly name and a good flyer than a good name and silly flyer


Unfortunately, after yesterday's visit to Bong field my Radjet needs some Rad-surgery.
Instead of warming up with the big gentle T28 I grabbed the Radjet and started streaking around the sky. Did a couple HUGE loops (probably 300+ feet top to bottom), sweet high altitude tailslide, couple fast, low flybys, then rather stupidly decide to snap off a few rolls while descending at maybe 45degrees, at high speed. I MAY have pulled it out, but JUST as I was about to stop the rolls and level off another RC pilot comes up next to me and suddenly says, quite loud and close "MIND IF I FLY TOO?". It startled me for just a split second, but that was enough to lose orientation and plough into the ground....
Only the nose and battery compartment was crunched. Wings, motor, battery, servos are all fine. I may straighten her out as close as I can with CF and hot glue, or I may cut off the front 1/3 and fab up a brand new fuse out of EPO foam. Could make it look like an X-Wing....
Also thinking about fabbing up a swivelling motor mount for 1-axis thrust vectoring in lieu of rudders. Would allow some wicked moves like the "boomerang" and hammerheads too.

Anyway that crash didn't stop me from taking up the P-51, this time another guy brought his so got some good inflight video.
Worked a bunch on touch-and-goes, and making straight smooth takeoffs and landings (now using flaps for take-offs too). Really a fun, rewarding challenge to make a perfect approach and gently touch down right where you want it. Especially when there's a cross wind (ok I haven't nailed one of these yet....)

Glad you liked the video Bob. It's not my plane, the video my wife tried to take of mine didn't come out that good...

The latest Lithium-Polymer batteries and brushless motors, and also cheap, detailed, lightweight EPO foam airframes were a big breakthrough. Telemetry, sending battery V, MAH, motor temp, altitude/speed/GPS location is also super neat stuff that only recently became available to the masses.
Up until about 10 or 15 years ago I can't think of any really big advances in RC planes, except maybe computer radios.
Short of indestructable, light and cheap airframes haha I hope the next big step will be in FPV, or "First Person Video". This is already available (I posted a video a few pages back of a Eurofighter with moving "pilot"!), but still fairly expensive at $500+.

Exciting stuff, but there's a lot to be said for the simple pleasures (and focus on fundamentals like sound aerodynamics, thoughtful construction and weather effects) you had with the free flight planes.

When FPV comes down to $250 or so (hopefully with HD video-goggles, maybe 3D) I'll jump in. Being able to fly a scale P-38 or a sailplane with a view from the cockpit that moves with your head is just too cool....
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Check out THIS little beast that arrived today! Parkzone ultra micro MiG-15. 16 inch wingspan, 2.75 oz flying weight. I haven't had a chance to fly it yet, we are having a very windy, rainy afternoon here. But I got it bound to my transmitter and all the control throws and expo programmed in. Also did some indoor taxi tests to get the nose wheel aligned nice and straight. So as soon as the weather cooperates, I'm ready!

I must say, I am very impressed with the detailing on a plane so small. Molded panel lines, scale inlet, gear doors, and cannons. They even put some little gauges in the cockpit. There are other thoughtful touches like an actual split rudder, so both halves of the rudder operate. A lot of MiG-15 models just operate the lower half, if they have any rudder at all.

And the sound! This thing sounds way more like a real turbine than any other EDF jet I've heard. I guess it may be due to the tiny 28mm fan turning at such a high speed. Check out the throttle test:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVBHVAJyWA4&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/ame]

View attachment 1574365
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nice!
Guy at our field has one and it looks great in the air. Really quiet, can barely hear it going. The tiny LG are also cool.
I hot-glued the Radjet's nose back on and took her up again this afternoon. Flies as good as new, and now is a bit like my 308: looks great at 25'+ going 50 mph+
Also tried out a 4S battery. Whoa. NOW she has POWER.
Nice to have the choice of 3s for relatively "relaxing" flight or 4S for balls-out speed. She doesn't glide as well with about 10% extra 4S battery and 40A ESC weight, but only takes ~25% throttle to cruise around.

 

nathandarby67,

I went into a hobby store today to find the UM Mig-17 but came out with a micro quadcopter

Took me 2 battery cycles but I think I finally have the hang of this thing now! Apparently with the onboard 3-axis gyros it should handle wind decently so I'll give that a go tomorrow perhaps it will be my new lunch toy at work

In other news I finally found a MASSIVE lake that hardly anyone seems to know about as it was empty on a perfect day!

Sun was in my face though made flying tricky.

Oh and holding a DSLR, trying to take photos whilst flying a quadcopter is harder than I imagined!
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I love those quad copters. They look so cool. One of those is definitely on my short list, as is the Icon A5. How did it handle being flown off of the water? Was the handling good on takeoff and landing?

 

Mainly practiced touch and goes, you really need to come in at the right angle other wise it will be too quick and bounce as it doesn't really like gliding in.

Like a tail dragger it's a good idea to apply some back pressure and keep the nose above from wanting to dip into the water which can flip it.

landed on the sand great too, little challenging considering there are no outboard floats just like the real thing.

 

Nice...I need to get me an Icon.

MiG-15 flight report:

Friggin great! It's amazing how solid and controllable such a small ducted fan is. Plenty of control authority for a jet, you just have to keep in mind that like all ducted fans, your control authority is directly tied to your airspeed since you have no prop wash. It gets a wee bit mushy at just above stall speed, but the gyro system really helps dampen things out. If you keep slowing, eventually it will drop a wing, but nothing too sharp or evil. But overall, it is better at slow speeds than other jets I've flown. Some lose a huge amount of elevator and aileron authority at anything close to stall speed.

Aside from lack of prop wash, the biggest difference in feel compared to prop planes is lack of "torque", for lack of a better term. If find yourself in need of instant thrust to get yourself out of a bad situation, it's not instantaneous like it is in the typical overpowered prop warbird or sport plane. It takes a second for the fan to spool up, and also the thrust builds as airspeed builds, so if you are low and slow and need a burst of power to get yourself over an obstacle or out of a stall, it may not be there in time. You have to stay a bit further ahead of the plane mentally and keep your momentum up. But if you keep the speed up this thing will bank and loop with authority. Roll rate is very fast at higher airspeeds. Feels very locked in and responses are sharp. I used 20% expo on the controls and that felt about right. So in summary, it behaves just like a jet should relative to a typical prop plane. I was getting about 4-5 minutes per battery pack at a mixture of mid and high throttle, with a few full throttle passes.

Landings were very nice and scale like. The gyro really keeps it stable. You want to have the throttle at about 10-15% to keep a little airspeed, and just let it follow its glide path. Try hard to flare correctly and grease the landing in, because of the short main gear the tail just under the exhaust nozzle will hit the ground if you are at too high an angle of attack, or if you plop it down too hard. I'd recommend putting a layer of clear tape or a bit of white plastic here to protect it.

I'm now on the hunt for a few other small EDF jets. Banana Hobby has a 18 inch or so wingspan F-22, and Hobby Lobby has a micro F-86 about the size of the MiG.

 

I couldn't help it

Ordered the HobbyKing Vampire jet along with a 10 blade EDF unit which sounds amazing!

This is what it will sound like! :O

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJIvEfg0-PM


Also the Mig-15 sounds fantastic, although I totally am out of space now

 

Wow! That thing sounds fantastic. I've been putting off ordering a vampire, but I think that just sealed the deal. Where do you get the 10 blade fan unit? Is it a direct replacement, and can you use the rest of the stock electronics? Any performance benefit?

A for running out of space, the MiG is a micro! You can always find room for one more of those. At least, that's the mental excuse I use every time I see another one I can't resist. Horizon has a spitfire micro due out soon that looks great. I'm sure I will "have to" have that one as well!

 

Haha don't encourage me!

The fan unit is also sold by HK I'm planning on swapping the one that comes stock, In the future I'll probably change the ESC too but I don't see it pulling to many amps although it's true that more blades = more amps.

The trick to a good sounding EDF is both more fans + balancing the EDF unit which I've never done before but I'll give it a shot too.

As for the performance I don't recall the thrust it puts out I'm just in it for the sound

 

Love the Vampire, been close to pulling the trigger on that a few times (also this twin 35mm ducted fan micro F-15), but decided I have enough planes (3) right now and still have a P-38 to (re)build... will try to hold off on another plane until I can put together an FPV set-up for <$300 or so.

2 weekends ago had a great day out at Bong field.
Day started out fairly calm with <10mph from the south (so had to use the N-S runway for the first time, which necessitates an approach over water and coming just over, or around a big bush that I'm going to cut down next visit), but got windier as the day went on.
Worked on straight take-offs and gentle landings, some of which were successful

Had one oops with the Mustang, taking off right next to me got the ailerons mixed up in my head and cartwheeled in from about 3 feet. A bit of wing-tip rash, and the vert and horiz stabs were a bit wobbly, but luckily no other damage (motor shaft, gear, servos etc). Whew.
Once back home I took off the tail and will reinforce with some carbon and probably permanently mount with gorilla glue.

Also had a blast ripping around with the Radjet (now with a 2200kv 2826 motor and 3 or 4S - which is pushing the motor's A rating.... Insanely fast on either) and T-28.
Tried a new BF-109 3-bladed prop on the T-28. NICE!!! Now more than 1:1 T/W, and my thumbs are getting better at hanging her from the prop. Managed to hover her once for well over 5 seconds.

Building a good stock of head-cam and plane-cam footage for a compilation come wintertime.
Really liking the Zippy Compact 4S 2700mAH batteries in the P-51. Good compromise between flight time and weight. Easily goes 7 minutes with APC 14x10 2-blader.

There were also two older guys from the "Bong Eagles" free flight club there launching rubber-band powered home builts into the air, tracking them with binoculars then hiking the 1000s of feet to retrieve them with radio signal trackers. Some were "old-timer" designs with hand-cut balse frames, "Jap paper" or silk covers, and either friction or fuse timers set to dump the elevator and bring them down after 5 minutes or so. Cool!

They told me the story of how Bong RC air field came to be: model plane fliers had been using Bong Rec Park since the 60's, when it was nothing but gravel and concrete left over from the aborted air-base project. Then at some time in the 80's one of their members was out flying when the Governor of WI happened to be visiting the park. He found the guy and his hobby interesting, and asked what he would ask for to improve the park for model plane hobbyists. Guy thought about it for a bit, and said "it'd be nice to have a paved runway". He got the guy's contact info, had a planner talk with him, and within a month or two graders and pavers sent by the governer was laying asphalt for RC landing strips.

These days the motorcross riders get more money and attention from the DNR; they recently put $300,000 into the tracks you can see in the satellite pic behind the RC airfield to improve drainage (which still doesn't prevent the course from flooding after heavy rains), and RC pilots frequently cut the grass, trim bushes around the airfield, or re-seal the runway every couple years themselves, but it's still a great place to fly.
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I take back my comment regarding the amps, stock 45 amp ESC will NOT be enough for the 10 blade CS unit 70 amp to be on the safe side!

Nurburgringer, great story about your field! The estate lake I fly my seaplane from has aviation named streets surrounding it and I found it curious but last week a neighbor saw us and gave us a history lesson, turns out that area was my citys first aerodrome! There's also a street named Catalina Cove just around the corner and during WWII there were over 100 Catalinas stationed on the river.

 

That's cool - if I had (or can find, there's probably lots within a short drive of me) easy access to a calm body of water I'd love a PBY.
Could you find any old pics of all those Catalinas parked?

Well the EDF bug finally caught me.... Decided against the tiny, twin fan F-15 or big, beautiful Vampire in favor of a Stinger Sport Jet. $84 to my door, has a rudder (really miss this on the Radjet, "bank and yank" is nice and simple but a little too much...) and uses the same 3S 2200mah batteries I have a bunch of for the T-28. By all accounts this is a very sweet flying jet, and I really like the shape and Ferrari-red livery
There's $10 optional, fixed gear but right now everyone's out of stock so will start out as a hand-launch/belly lander. Maybe try to fit micro-retracts over the winter but the extra weight would probably need $40 worth of more powerful motor and bigger ESC for 4S.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nok6gTZrGU&feature=related[/ame]

On A 4s battery set-up she'll do 160mph, for less than $150 :O
And be able to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=U47AISii5lI&NR=1

 

Cool! The Stinger looks like a real hot rod. From the video it looks like it has a very wide performance envelope, handles well whether fast or slow. I'd definitely have to fit some sort of gear. For me, landings are probably my favorite part of flying.

 

Same here - last outing with the Mustang I barely did any aerobatics, almost exclusively worked on touch-and-goes and straight landings. Great feeling to to grease one in exactly where you wanted to.
How are you doing landing the micro-MIG?

Really looking forward to the jet. Without any prop to "activate" the control surfaces it should be a very pure flying experience.

 

The MiG is actually one of the easiest planes to land I have. It is a very smooth, stable flyer in general. The gyro keeps the attitude very stable, landing speed is relatively slow, and it maintains good control authority even at approach and landing speeds. Also, the design of the main gear makes them relatively soft and springy, and they do a wonderful job of acting as shock absorbers on touchdown.

 

Finally had some bad luck! somehow managed to get some water inside my Icon A5 and it shorted out the rudder servo, have taken the servo apart and will give it till tomorrow to dry up.

Also decided to remove the prop and now the shaft won't go back on, time to order some parts!

In other news my friend bought a new plane, CL-415 no idea who produces it.

Flys AMAZING considering the conditions were gusty and very windy, it just floated around in the sky on about 25% throttle just on stall.

With some careful throttle usage I would expect 15+ mins flying time, only thing I don't like is the foam is very brittle not EPO/EPP.


Oh and the micro quadcopter flies great in wind! The gyros do their thing and it flies as easily like indoors.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5f7H7rEaU[/ame]
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now that's a sweet seaplane! Can he scoop up water and drop it on little fires?

Great day out at Bong field today.
Bit hot at almost 90F, but we'll be freezing our tits off soon enough!
Neatest plane was crappy 4-channel foamie, fitted with a camera sending live video to googles. He let me try them on while he flew (with another pilot wired into his transmitter in case of emergency). Really neat! $300 for the "Fatshark" system is still a bit too rich for my blood, but I'm now convinced this is the next great leap in RC flying.
I had taken apart the P-51's gear a few days ago to tighten up some of the slop - built up the edges where the trunion meets the worm-gear "yoke", and added a little o-ring between the trunion and an axle collar on the gear strut. So they were nice and tight, until after my first landing (a good one - yay!) I go to retract the flaps, and hit the gear switch instead! doh!!!!
The right (and tail) gear retracted, but the left one jammed so I took it out, set the worm drive back to full up, and cycled a few times. Worked fine so took her up again, but then the same one wouldn't go up! Cycled a few times and she finally retracts, but then wouldn't go down! Prepare myself for a first belly landing while cycling a few times, then finally she drops and I land, but now I don't trust it. Off to Hobbypartz for a new one.... shame because I was really feeling in tune with the Mustang, but didn't want to push it more than 2 flights with suspect gear.

Got some cool video of another 1400mm P-51 with the keychain cam mounted on my Radjet.

Did the lowest inverted pass I've ever done with Petie, and also the absolute lowest flyby period I'll ever do, with any plane. Wind was gusting so she went from ~6' to ~6" in a heartbeat (this is at ~50mph+, almost full throttle), could hear the prop snapping blades of grass. Pic below is a frame-grab from my hat cam.

Also tried mounting smoke bombs on the wingtips of my Radjet pusher. Looked cool for the few seconds before the smoke powder ran out at least!
tally ho!
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I've been looking up micro water pumps, found a 50g one thinking 2 channel system one for the pump and one to release it.

If it can carry 150 grams all up for the system + water I'm willing to order one and find out...

The weak point would be the wings, a carbon spar would do the trick not sure if 150grams is too heavy for a water takeoff I know on the Parkzone Icon 150 grams can be doable but there's just no space!

Shame to hear about the retracts, just one of those hobbies where everything needs to be kept in check and always breaking!

 

New addition to the hanger: Stinger Sportjet 64mm EDF.
Really nicely made plane, especially for $85. Hinged control surfaces, big, smooth running ducted fan, nice tight foam, carbon spars in the wings, sharp paintwork and sweet overall shape.
Cut a little hatch behind the canopy to mount the RX's Satellite. 2.2A 3S battery fits nicely, bringing the cg dead nuts on the desired 70mm back from the forward wing root.
Landing gear were out of stock up until last week, now have a set on the way but won't arrive until after this weekend when she'll maiden. Going to put some clear tape on the leading edges and pray for gentle belly landings in tall grass.

Couldn't resist stickering her up a bit
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The Sport Jet looks fantastic, what sort of flight times are you looking at? I'm still waiting for the Vampire, I'm never using Singpost EMS again I have a feeling they put it on a ship...

 

She should burn ~250mAh/minute at mid-to-high throttle, so comfortably 6 minutes with a 2200mAh 3S pack. Will try bringing her down after 4 mins on her maiden to give me margin for a couple go arounds.

Even with the cheapest shipping option packages from HK's China warehouse are regularly reaching a US port 5-10 days after order, but can take another 5-10 days to clear customs and get to me in the upper midwest US.
Wonder what kind of plane they fly over on.

 

Not too bad, haven't flown a jet yet and I'm getting 10-15min flight times on my T-28s just lazily cruising around on 3S 3000MAH although the wind is sure helping.

Usually with China so close to me I'd get express orders in 4-5 days, but this time they clamped down hard on the fact I mixed LIPO orders with an airframe.'

Really enjoying flying in this crazy wind we've been having but it's going into summer now so it will calm right down.

 

Good flight today by the river

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDt2f6O4rOM&hd=1[/ame]
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super cool flying field you have there! Dusk/sun down is the calmest part of the day around here, getting earlier and earlier now

Very successful maiden of the Ferrari Funjet yesterday!
Moved the throttle to WO with my mouth, right hand on the control stick, and gave her a very awkward toss with my left hand... she accelerated straight away with no fuss. Not as torquey or fast as the pusher-propped Radjet but she's better at impressive, roaring flybys and can snap roll with the best of em. Lands in the grass almost like a trainer, can't wait to put wheels on her.

Taped the keychain cam to her tail for inflight vids, even got to fly in semi-formation with a pair of big cranes for a bit. Kept a respectful distance, they probably didn't like the sound too much.

The left gear on the Mustang that jammed last time out totally gave up the ghost, folding on an admittedly bumpy landing. This week the larger retracts and sprung struts should arrive from Hobbyking, should be the last time I ever need to touch her LG.

Another guy at the field brought a 40-year old balsa Waco that started out life as a control-line gas plane. It spent decades hanging from the ceiling of a hobby shop until he bought it, added rudder, ailerons and flaps, recovered it and converted to electric. Yesterday was going be her maiden but his TX blew a fuse and he forgot to bring extras... nice looking bird hope to see her flying next time, ideally with a wooden prop!
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