Tried to fly on Saturday but couldn't get the engine to start. Just as well, as soon as I got everything put in the car the wind kicked up something fierce. SUnday though was a different story. First made sure to charge glow driver (doh!!!) then hoped the nice weather would hold until after church. It did.
Went a couple of clicks richer for first flight (third flight on the airplane) but it is still flying a little fatser than the old Skyray. Also, the engine is surging in flight. The airplane seems to hunt a little in flight too, but this might be because of the wind.
On the next flight, went a couple more clicks rich. This seemed to finally start to slow the plane down into my comfort zone. Since I could now concentrate on something besides not getting dizzy I started to notice other things... like a weird vibration - so bad that the up line had a sine wave visible in flight. Something else to sort out. Engine run is very consistant throughout flight, when fuel is done it burps once or twice and quits. Decided to find and fix the vibration problem before flying again. I _think_ I balanced the prop... I'm still amazed at how well this thing glides and how easy it is to land compared to my first Skyray.
Monday, January 8, 2007
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
New Years Day
Yesterday was beautiful - no wind, sunny, 45° - a perfect day to test fly my new Skyray. I had made some modifications outlined here and I was anxious to see if they were improvements over the stock design.
Checked elevator nuetral and control movement and everything looked good. Took some pictures "just in case" (not that I was worried about CRASHING) and launched for first flight. Airplane took off fine but was WAY oversensitive on the controls and flying much too fast for my reflexes, so I held on for dear life (the airplane's life, not mine) until the engine quit, then greased it in for a perfect landing. I made some adjustments to the engine and elevator throw, and the second flight was much more managable. It still needs work though, so I decided to call it a day. Even with only two flights I learned some valuable lessons.
First of all I made 2 very serious mistakes and I'm lucky that one of them didn't cost me the airplane. One, I forgot to check the balance. Two, I forgot to check the position of the adjustable leadouts and ensure they were tight. EITHER of these issues could have easily resulted in a crash, and neither even occured to me until I was cleaning the airplane.
As for the elevator movement, I put the pushrod in the middle hole, the same place I had it on my stock Skyray. It didn't occure to me that the larger elevator might require less throw. Since I wasn't planning on any stunting on the first flights any way, I should have started on the outer most hole, adjusting inward as needed.
Finally, I should have spent some time experimenting with the needle setting. I had changed the muffler and prop, which of course (duh!!!) changes the way the engine runs. Since it sounded "OK" when it started, I didn't even mess with it, just launched - at way too high RPM's. On the second flight I went back to my original prop and richened the needle about half a turn, which helped considerably.
In spite of my miss-steps, the airplane flies well. I think with some tweaking, it will be a beautifly flying airplane to learn stunt with.
Cheers,
Ken
Checked elevator nuetral and control movement and everything looked good. Took some pictures "just in case" (not that I was worried about CRASHING) and launched for first flight. Airplane took off fine but was WAY oversensitive on the controls and flying much too fast for my reflexes, so I held on for dear life (the airplane's life, not mine) until the engine quit, then greased it in for a perfect landing. I made some adjustments to the engine and elevator throw, and the second flight was much more managable. It still needs work though, so I decided to call it a day. Even with only two flights I learned some valuable lessons.
First of all I made 2 very serious mistakes and I'm lucky that one of them didn't cost me the airplane. One, I forgot to check the balance. Two, I forgot to check the position of the adjustable leadouts and ensure they were tight. EITHER of these issues could have easily resulted in a crash, and neither even occured to me until I was cleaning the airplane.
As for the elevator movement, I put the pushrod in the middle hole, the same place I had it on my stock Skyray. It didn't occure to me that the larger elevator might require less throw. Since I wasn't planning on any stunting on the first flights any way, I should have started on the outer most hole, adjusting inward as needed.
Finally, I should have spent some time experimenting with the needle setting. I had changed the muffler and prop, which of course (duh!!!) changes the way the engine runs. Since it sounded "OK" when it started, I didn't even mess with it, just launched - at way too high RPM's. On the second flight I went back to my original prop and richened the needle about half a turn, which helped considerably.
In spite of my miss-steps, the airplane flies well. I think with some tweaking, it will be a beautifly flying airplane to learn stunt with.
Cheers,
Ken
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