Lee.org

The Sussex Air Show

I flew about 7 batteries on Saturday. The first battery is always the worst. It’s like the plane is broken or something. But then it (IE me) gets better.

I’m getting tired of the motor shaft overheating and melting the prop off. I lost 1 prop today. Maybe it was the inverted crash that loosened the prop but I think it was the heat. After flying a few batteries, the motor was “ouch, that’s pretty darn hot” hot.

Weirdly enough, I keep thinking about going brushless… overpowered brushless. It’s all those gas & glow jocks at the field. There I am just inching off the field and they’re pulling verticals right after take-off.

I flew, I flew!

It’s been forever. I flew for just 2 minutes when Stevie was here a few weeks ago. But on Saturday I got to fly almost a whole battery out. (I was a little short for time). It’s so funny… The first time up, I thought the plane had some issue since I couldn’t control it well. I brought it down and, yes, the prop was on backwards. A second time up and it still wasn’t flying right. I looked and looked but the plane looked fine. So up a third time and…. well, it just took me a few minutes to get my wings back. I’m still not at 100%, but give me another 10 minutes in the air and I’ll be doing flips in no time!

Wee! Check out the videos of these itty bitty Superfly electrics

Went flying with my neighbor, John E. and his grandson. He flew great for a 6 year-old!

Charging Zagi KR-1700AU batteries

The Zagi Trick RC manual says, “SANYO RECOMMENDS CHARGING THE KR 1700AE CELL AT A RATE UP TO 1
AMP….SOME MODELERS REGULARLY CHARGE THEM FOR 40 MINUTES AT 2 AMPS.” This is simply not true. Sanyo’s recommendation is a fast charge of 2.6 amps. That is the exact same recommendation they give for their “fast charging” (4 mega-ohm) N-1700SCR battery, and their “high capacity” (16 mega-ohm) KR-1500AUL. The KR-1700AU has 17 mega-ohms of resistance. I now feel completely safe charging at a maximum of 2.5C… 4.2 amps… a 25 minute charge. I’m staying shy of the often recommended 3C charge because of the fairly high internal resistance in the battery. When I don’t need a speedy charge, I’ll keep it at 1C. I’ll do this for a while and then gauge (mostly by heat build-up patterns in the battery) how to modify this strategy.

See Sanyo.com or my flying homepage for references.

Silicon didn’t help, new motor did

I went out flying today with the spinner held on tightly with silicon glue. It didn’t work. I went through one battery, brought it in, tossed it with a second battery and it only went 50 feet before it started making the spinner’s-gonna-fall-off-any-second noise. FYI: the prop gets quieter and the motor spins faster, making a very quiet high pitched whir as it starts to slip. That’s the sign for you to prepare for a landing and start watching for the prop because then there’s this almost imperceptible clicky-poppy noise when the prop pops off. Now your electric wing is now a glider.

So I took the motor off and tried the Promaxx 7.2 volt motor. I bought this a while ago but never got to try it out. Actually, I’m glad I waited because swapping motors with my new motor mount was a snap… or rather a ‘zip’, pulling the velcro stays off and resoldering (with my snazzy-and-quick soldering gun). The new motor has a bit less power but it flew a LOT longer than the old motor, maybe 20 minutes per battery WOT the whole time! That’s pretty much in keeping with my style so I’m very happy with the new motor. I checked the temperature of the motor after 2 batteries and it was quite a bit cooler than the old motor. My temperature measurement is very scientific: After flying one battery on the old motor, the top of the motor (nearest the prop) was “Ow! I burned myself! [insert finger in mouth]” hot. After flying two batteries on the new motor, the top of the new motor was “Eww. I wouldn’t want to leave my finger on there too long!” hot. Using my handy-dandy temper-lee conversion calculator, those temperatures are 400 and 250 Fahrenheit, respectfully.

Now I have a motor I can rip apart for mad experimentation!

Being eaten alive!

I find myself going out between 5 and 7pm most of the time. The mosquitoes can me AWFUL at this time of the day! Today, I tried dousing myself in DEET bug repellent. Even with the repellent, I had to keep constantly walking around or I’d be chewed on by the bugs! I’ve got marks all over from where those little buggers got me!

A nice day

Julian gave this to me. It’s from several few weeks ago. I suppose I’m a tall fellow by some standards, yes?

Lately, I’ve been burning up a lot of props. The black plastic press-on spinner has gone loose a couple times. Each time, I have to get out a new Gunther prop-spinner combination. I think what’s happening is that my home-made EPP motor mount and motor strap are trapping extra heat in the motor. This heat goes down the axel and melts the spinner. I think this is the case because I noticed a couple spinners where the black plastic looked like it has been deformed by heat. To fix the problem, I’m changing how the strapping sits on the motor to increase airflow a bit and following a recommendation by Kenvil Hobbies and using clear silicon sealant to glue the spinner on. I also scraped up the axel with tin snips to improve it’s bite and adhesion. The silicon takes 24 hours to dry so I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs while it dries. Maybe I’ll also scrape out some ridges on the motor mount so more air gets to it.

Jaybyrds can’t fly

I took the plane down to my cousin Jason’s house and we flew a little on Tuesday. Before the spinner (held in place with CA) melted off, I let him try the controls. Ha. Jaybyrds are a flightless species! But that’s ok, we had fun.

Went flying at Great Meadows today. It was pretty crazy… I was trying to get inverted and… well, the battery was a little far forward, which gives better penetration and stability but decreased vertical turning performance… So I flew out away from me, did an inside 1/2 turn back toward me… and then realized that I couldn’t pull up. I went right into the roof of the little stand that holds the radio pins. It skidded up and off the peak of the roof and flopped down onto the ground. I’m very happy that no one was over there at the time, but it made me very uncomfortable. I keep telling myself that there never really was any danger in the first place; Heck, I’ve hit myself in the head with the plane while trying to catch it and neither the plane or my head were damaged in the slightest.The motor had fallen out of it’s home-made mount, the prop had gone missing, and an elevon had broken AGAIN. After calming down and getting around to laughing at the incident, I glued her back together and gave her a toss! She was aerodynamically sound but the motor didn’t have nearly as much umph as before. I was worried that the motor was internally damaged. I flew out the battery as Jason, his girlfriend, father and another flyer (sorry I forget your name!) left. I stuck another battery in and the plane was totally fine, with plenty of power. Apparently (and strangely) the battery I had been using (#3) was near empty after only 4 minutes and 1 crash of flying time. Weird.

Hey Jason, if you’re reading this…. (and even if you’re not, nya) the plane is -totally- fine! The motor wasn’t damaged as I thought. Wee!

My last flight of the night ROCKED. I’m sad that everyone else missed it! It was full of zooping and zipping, cartwheeling turns, powerful leaps, graceful slooping, connectedness, and a gorgeous sunset! I love to fly!

Oh and one last thing… It was a bit windy today. I flew 1 battery at the Allamuchy field and was having a pretty sucky time. The wind was rolling off the trees and tossing the plane around a bit. I could hold on without too much trouble but it wasn’t very fun. At Great Meadows, the distant trees smoothed out the wind and flying in the 10mph winds was fun. What a difference!

from The Sussex Air ShowSimba F5B electric hotliner. This thing is so frigging fast! And maneuverable too! 10 2400 mah zapped cells power a brushless motor. The motor draws around 100 amps, leaving the batteries too hot to touch for several minutes. The pilot says he only gets around 50 flights on a battery pack before they’re toast.

To launch: Hold upright. Turn motor on. Let go…. straight up as high as you like. It went about 100-120 after a dive on the flats and loops like…. It’s hard to describe… It goes into the loops so fast and barely loses any speed even though the motor is off when in the loop.

SIModels biplane. There were larger planes out there but this one had the most stability and commanded the most attention of any plane in the air. That thing is at home in the air like a Lazy-Boy! The engine purred wonderfully. The plane costs what you think it does, in the $5,000 range. Powerful, smooth, commanding, beautiful.

This Lazy Ace is for sale by Chuck Howarth (I’ve saved his phone number). I’m very tempted! I think it was $750 complete minus receiver and transmitter.

Going to the Sussex model air show tomorrow. Yip!

Battery uses estimate

	1	2	3
previous totals	19	0	19
7-22	1	2	1
7-23	1	2	1
7-24	1	1	1
7-28	1	3	2
7-29	1	2	2
8-12	1	1	1
8-24	1	2	1
total	26	13	28

I have to fly battery #2 13 times more than #1 before I can charge #1 and #2 together. Ugh.

Hey, I’ve flown over 10 hours! 64 flights * approx 10 minutes per flight = 10.6 hours!