Where Have I Been

No, London was not involved, nor have there been any royal entanglements. However, I haven't been doing much flying recently. But there are some exciting model aviation based things happening anyway.

Firstly, trying to get the Tiger Moth right before I fly it again has been an issue of concern for me. To that end I purchased an 11.1 volt 1500mAh LiPo, because she needs more power based on her portly weight.

I flew her last Sunday morning with the larger battery. With power she flew well, but I had a pretty hard crash trying to land her off power. Her glide decent rate is just too high, and I made the mistake of letting her glide in rather than diving for airspeed and flaring. Was a big acco, and I did a bit of thinking about how to make her flyable, and have put in quite a bit of sim time practicing landings.

One of the things I knew I needed to do was reduce her weight. The heavier LiPo sat basically above the CoG and so wasn't influencing the weight much. To this end I spent about 1.5 nights this week slowy chiselling away at the battery compartment so that I can slide the battery forwards. The battery is now held more securely, and I have been able to remove about 30 grams of weight from the cowling and still get her to balance well.

The other exciting thing I have been doing is building a new model. I'm in no rush to finish it, but it is a Steven's Aero RV4 (http://www.stevensaero.com/shop/product.php?productid=16491&cat=253&page=1). It's a scale replica of the famous RV4 kit plane, which was I believe the first kit built plane to fly around the world. Although I was holding out for a Steven's Aero G300 (G-Ride) discussions with Paul at Nitrodude convinced me this was probably a better plane. It should be quite aerobatic, but just a modest amount of dihedreyl will make it a little more tolerant of mistakes, and the model is designed to fly very well on low power (flys with authority on 70 watts).

At this stage the plan is to use one of the GWS brushless motor/speedie combinations, a big biting prop. The GWS motor/speedie combo is ridiculously cheap (GWBLM001 around $50) for a brushless setup, but can draw 140 Watts for short bursts and 90 Watts for 5 minutes or more. I'm going to use a 7.4Volt 1250mAh LiPo I bought for the moth as the battery, which will mean I need a pretty aggressive prop to draw even 80Watts. An 8040 will go close appraently with this setup. I don't know if there is anything with a more aggressive pitch than that.

Putting the kit together has been scary but fun, and the SA kits are amazing. I've never built from Balsa, but I can't imagine it gets easier than this. All the parts are laser cut and drop out with the slightest provocation. All of the truss components interlock, and the model is basically self jigging. I've been making pretty slow progress, and almost made a project ending mistake, but I was able to free the parts and put them in the correct position.

Progress to date, the fuselage is almost complete. I'm hoping the wings will come together a little more quickly, but I guess much depends on the confidence and speed I proceed with.

I'll try and update the flight log later - off to fly the tiger moth and electrafun.