What Goes Up...

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3/24/02 Several new planes.
I moved some of the videos here.
sorry about the missing stuff...no time right now..
Frst off, I managed to find a 15 year old plane in my folks attic. It's a Airtronics Q-Tee. My pal Dave and I tried to fly it 15 years ago, several times. All crashes. Our inteneion was to fly it around the local schoolyard. I'm not sure if the old .049 engine had enough poop to lift the standard size radio gear and battery. It said "SUBURBAN TERROR" on the side and had all kinds of punk stuff on it, plus a tiny balsa machine gun. I've re-covered it, put in a new .09 engine, and micro radio gear. It also has a AAA Nimh battery in it from Superbatterypacks.com. The receiver is a Cirrus MRX-4, which you can order through Hobby People for $20. I am suprised at the range on the tiny receiver. The model has been on the edge of my sight and still under control. Here's a DivX movie of it's first flight in 15 years - after a little mishap, of course. You'll need the DivX codec to look at the .avi. 4 MB
It is out of production as an Airtronics kit. Dream Catcher has the new kit, with laser cut parts. SR batteries has released the kit as the electric "Cutie".




The Lazy Bee! The Bee is a blast to fly and I am usually laughing while I do. It kind of resembles a moth in flight. I highly reccomend getting one - if you've mastered a trainer. The engine is a .30 Magnum 4-stroke, with the vibration mount built as per the plans. Here's a quick 3M DivX movie of the Lazy Bee!

I've put the Gyro-Bee conversion kit on there as well! You can get the kit from Autogyro Company of Arizona. It is a pleasure doing business with Steve. I flew the gyro for the first time today and it is amazing. I crashed it 3 times first! The problem is the rotor is not in full auto-rotation before takeoff. The advancing blade (right side of fuse) has more lift than the retreating blade (left side). If you don't hold any down elevator (up stick) it tips over. Of course I brought my video camera along for the maiden flight. 9MB DivX.




I've also been flying around in a Hobbico Superstar 60. It's a great flying plane. It flys very, very slowly if you want it to and hovers in a gentle breeze. If you are looking to learn how to fly a .60 size trainer is the way to go. The 60 size trainers fly so much better than the 40 size counterparts. My aircraft has a Magnum .91 4-stroke for power. More about this plane on the Camera page.






Building the Hog-Bipe

My Sig Four Star 40!

This was my choice for a first airplane. Tons of fun to build, and an excellent performer. Not too hard to fly but not a trainer as well. Due to the fact that I have lighting fast reactions (from all those video games) and some flight experence (the Cobra) I thought I could handle it. I also purchaced Dave Brown's R/C Flight Simulator for some practice. I found a Barbie at Wal*Mart for 4 bucks (compared to 15 at the hobby shop, she diddn't even have real hair, clothes, or legs!) I got absoloutely no enjoyment from cutting Barbie in half :') Her dress even matched my color scheme. The engine is a MDS .58, much larger than the recomended size, but I am at 5000 feet. More power was also required for blistering 3 ft altitude inverted flybys. If you choose a larger engine don't follow the plans, go ahead and glue the canopy on. The plan recomends to use 1/4 inch striping tape for attachment. It won't hold, and you will *NEVER* find it again. I actually liked it without the canopy and it will stay that way in the future as her hair looks real cool blowing in the propwash. After flying it around for a while I was feeling a little confident and had a rather hard landing. More on that later...
My Sig Four Star 40.
Barbie ready for takeoff, protected by a canopy.


Barbie's hair blowin in the wind.







My GMP Cobra!

This is actually a combination of a GMP Cobra PRO .45 and a GMP Competitor .60. I haven't flown in several years, and I dug these up and combined the least worn or broken parts to form this Frankenstein heli. Actually it's pretty cool as it is using the .45 engine, blades, and tail boom, but it had the competitor ball bearing upgrade for the pitch, roll, and collective. The rotor head has all the metal/ball bearing assembly, the Cobra had a nylon unit. It is ready to go, but I need the starter extention for the heli cone to start it up. I am praying for no crashes, as these models have been out of production for over 10 years, and replacement parts may be hard to come by. I have found a source for blades, tail boom, main shaft, but aside from that I'm out of luck. I'm worried about the main gear(driving, not landing), as even a tip over can strip it, it's nylon.
My GMP Cobra Pro
The improved rotor head of the Cobra.












3/14/99 I flew the Cobra today! I just set up in the yard to see how off the controls were and to test run the engine in a little. I have just rebuilt the engine, its a O.S. FSR-H .45. The big problem there was that the FSR is out of production, and there are no parts left. I found some gaskets from a Royal engine that almost fit and modified those. The gaskets were in the hobby shop's "clearance" basket for 50 cents. The engine ran fine, I set it a little rich just to be safe. Boy it can burn up some gas set rich. I mean 4 oz in a matter of 2 minutes at half throttle. I found that the radio (which just came back from Radio South has a little problem. I can see how they overlooked it. When the trim for the left/right cyclic is centered moving it just a little bit jerks the l/r servo all over the palce. A little off center and it works fine. I'm gonna open it up and have a look. The tail rotor is extremely twitchy, and it required a lot more pitch than I expected to compensate for the mains. I was able to get it under control somewhat by lowering the pitch on the mains, and reducing the torque transmitted to the fuselage. It still seems like it's biting a little too much. I may have cut the blades too short. The blades were from a Schlüter set, I don't know for what size heli, but it looked like a .60 set to me. I just cut them down to the stock GMP legnth. The airfoil is definetly not the same. The things are molded plastic which worries me as the Cobra's tail holders are nylon, they will snap like twigs if I nip the ground with the tail. I can either get some wooden blades, or machine a set of aluminum blade holders. I am going to have to machine a set anyways because there is no way I am going to get my hands on a new set if those break (they will). The hobby shop here has a "back room" filled to the hilt with obsolete heli parts, so if anyone out there needs some old stuff drop me a line and I will give you their number. No GMP parts though. The Heli did not trim out O.K. The swashplate is canted to the right (is my C.G. off?). Again the tail was way twitchy, I think I may have to mess with the gyroscope a bit. I am using an old Futaba gyro, the one where by drilling into the case you can get to the pots that give you the features of the more expensive gyro for free. There is a heli club meeting here on the 24th I think, and I am going to show up. Anyways, with everything out of tune, and the rotor speed at a raging whirr, I was able to make a few controlled hops around the yard. I am now enjoying a cold beer and relaxing because everything is right with the world. My makeshift heli actually flew!

Must Come Down...

Welp, I was having some with the Four Star the other day and I either:
A. Totally screwed up.
B. Managed to get the FS into some unrecoverable spin.
C. Hit the dual rate on the rudder.
D. All of the above :-)
The D.R. was flipped, but I don't know if I hit it after the "landing". Anyways I actually had to dig to get all the parts, as it was WFO straight down. Very cool, there was a huge puff of dirt, about 6-8 feet when it hit. I stopped at the hobby shop and bought another kit on the way home :( Barbie is not damaged, and she will be in the air soon enough.


























3/11/99 The forces in a crash like this are hard to imagine. You can see here that a servo arm has been sheared off. Not shown is my muffler, which is cracked. I went out and got a Macs tuned pipe. It says it's ready for smoke, so I might try that in the future.





Here's the receiver, it did not survive the crash. I only bought it last month! Grrrr.. Every other channel is broken,1,3,5,7. Twisting the board seems to fix it. I have resoldered some joints to no avail. I am not willing to risk another model over a 75 dollar part that I may or may not be able to get working properly. I have ordered a new one.