Giles Flight 2
New system for retracts. Flight 2 = Incident 2. Happily completed a number of circuits with a few minor trim changes. Felt smooth, responsive and went where I pointed it. Came down the strip for a medium low pass, opened up the throttle to about 1/2 to 2/3 going vertical, engine dies.
I had plenty of height but wasn't sure how this thing would glide. I should have washed off a lot more height before coming in down the strip. I remember thinking how cool it sounded whistling past me at the pilots area moments before touching down 5 to 10 metres before the end of the strip.
Unfortunately I still had a lot of speed when I hit the long grass and out came the landing gear. It was a clean break and I could've been up and running with the application of some 5 minutes Epoxy except the brittle covering had opened up on the top wing panels. Time for some more clear cover!
Giles maiden flight
Well I finally got around to the maiden flight of the Giles! I think I might hold the record for the slowest ARF build ever!
As you can see from the photo, it wasn't a complete success but then again it wasn't a complete failure as the plane is still largely in one piece.
I started the day running some fuel through the new OS 70 four-stroke. It's had a couple of tanks through it but I wanted to check the idle setting. Here was the first problem, engine wouldn't start. Checked the glow, got glow. Checked the fuel flow after having to remove the prop and cowl. Fuel flow ok. Reset the mixture needle to manufacture reccomended. This fixed it. I should have tried the simple fix first!
Radio range check - all good.
Control surfaces - moving the right way and as per reccomnded (will have to double check this).
C of G - check.
Time to give it a go!
Fired her up and out to the field. I had the idle a bit high evident by the way it wouldn't stop rolling on the grass runway. Performed some slow speed passes down the runway with no major dramas. It tracked well with very little rudder input.
Set up into wind at the end of the runway and went to about half throttle. Now I must say I was worried about the throws and whether thay were adequate which were confirmed when I was at speed, and almost at full elevator. At the last second I considered aborting but I decided at was past the point of no return.
The Giles didn't quite leap into the air, rather more like my dog Missy who lumbers out of bed each morning looking at me saying 'really, do I have to get up, I was so comfortable where I was' the Giles took the same attitude. There was plenty of power but I was using almost full up elevator and not getting a great response. I quickly flipped to dual rate on the elevator (or so I thought) but still didn't get a good response. Time to bring it back in.
I did one lurching circuit where I was far from happy with the elevator response and the model seemed well out on the aileron trim. Lining up to land I remembered the fast idle setting. It came in hot and lurching to one side. The Giles ended up in the rough at the far end of the field in largely one piece. It wasn't till I collected it I could see what went wrong.
A club member mentioned he saw the covering just as I was taking off but thought it might be a streamer. So it appears the covering failed pretty early in the piece. That accounted for the lurching to one side but what about the elevator? I still need to check my actual throws are what the manufacturer reccomends but if they are, I would be using the high rate at a minimum next time.
As for the covering, the model was sold heavily discounted as damaged stock due to holes in the covering. I re-covered the wings with clear cover and inspected the fuse wihich looked ok. Obviously it wasn't. So I'd like to make it clear I don't think this incident is representative of the quality of this model, rather my poor inspection skills.
So what to do.
1. Fix the covering - I was thinking to stick with the funky colour scheme, a transparent blue on the lower half of the fuse to expose the inner workings.
2. Check the elevator throw. As I said, if my throws are as per spec (which I thought they were), then I'll use high rate as minimum, and double that for high rate.
Boomerang Climb ‘n Glide
Round two of the Boomerang comp down at LDMFA. Round 1 was a balloon burst which unfortunately I didn't make it to. For those not familiar with the Boomerang comp, the idea is to take a stock standard trainer and engine (Boomerang & OS46) and run a series of comps once a month that anyone with their bronze wings can compete in.
Today's event was a climb and glide. You get to climb for 20 seconds, then kill your engine and glide for as long as possible. The record holder and overall winner for the day, Ewan, scored a whopping 2 minutes 51 seconds.
There were a few ordinary landings due to the pressure of trying to stay aloft for as long as possible. On his last flight, the winner had a hard landing and ripped the OS46 clean off the fuse!
Overall, a very successful day.
Addiction build
I got to spend a few hours on the build before I went away for the weekend. Got up to mounting the horizontal and vertical stab. Left off at putting the tailwheel in.
Lessons learned:
1) Take notice of the manual when it says be delicate with mounting the servo aileron. The mount is strong enough for the purpose but when the incorrect force is applied (ie me with a screwdriver) it can break. I cracked one end of the mount. It was only a small crack so a bit of CA and she's good as new. I'll have to keep an eye on it though.
2) Don't cross thread your bolts! I messed up one of the landing gear pre-installed blind nuts when I went a bit cross threaded. To make it worse, I'd pushed the nut out of the mount and couldn't get the bolt back out. Ended up cutting the bolt in half, retrieving the blind nut, finding a new bolt that fits, run it through the nut to establish the thread properly again and back on the landing gear goes.
3) No need to use more string on the aileron pushrod than supplied otherwise the heatshrink won't fit over it.
Besides those minor hiccups, everything else has gone quite smoothly.
aileron servos
I need to shorten the rods and put some heatshrink on the extension leads and the aileron servos will be done.
Giles 202
Getting there. Installing the aileron servos and adjusting the rudder pull-pull wires.
You know what they say…. big rudder ….
big servo arms.
The white servo arm is for the push / pull elevator.
The blue one is the pull / pull rudder.
I think after I trim half the elevator servo arm the rudder wires should just clear it.
tail gear goes on
in this picture the elevator has been glued in place.
rudder has been test fitted but not glued.
control horns mounted on both elevator halves and on both sides of the rudder for a pull - pull setup. uh huh huh - pull.