Topic Ideas For Our Knowledge Blog

[Aros]

I have been writing articles for our Knowledge Blog over the past year and I am always looking for new ideas and topics to cover. If you have any ideas for a topic or article please post it here. The goal is to educate and offer advice and information that folks in the hobby (new or old) can find useful. We love tips and tricks that could help folks. Appreciate any help! If I end up using something specific for an article that you offered up from personal experience I will credit you in the article. Thanks for any help!

[Shirty]

G'day mate. Maybe this might help a bit.

Little set up tips, (such as getting your throws even, preflight checks, how to flight test cg etc) I find are all really helpful for beginners. Probably the biggest thing I notice as a instructor, is the lack of knowledge on how to get a plane set up correctly, and what effect that will have in the air.

I just cut and pasted the below from a few recent posts I made helping a new bloke in the hobby fix and set up his fms mustang, and a couple of others I've done to help newbies. Feel free to grab anything you think is useful and plagerise it. the posts are specific to helping these guys out, but maybe theres some useful info that maybe you can use.

Another good one would be lipo saftey, and looking after your batts. One thing that bugs me a little, is you can go into any hobby store here, buy a plane, and know nothing about the fire risk with lipos, or how to look after them. Most new students for example have no idea they are supposed to store their lipos discharged at a safe Voltage etc. anything that might stop them destroying their batts, or burning their house down, is a good thing. ;)



Posts:

"Ideally, we are looking to get this bird balanced, without using trim and everything aligned as per my previous pics. (And no unnecessary weight, though again, you've not added much weight at any rate). I think you'll notice already with your elevator trim for example, that she's slightly slower to respond to up elevator input than down elevator input. (Down might feel a touch more sensitive at the moment, more on trims later). So...

1. Battery position. As you're nose heavy (even with up elevator), there's still plenty of room to bring your battery back. Try making very small position changes backwards, (say no more than a centimetre or two each time), and test by flying. if you put some Velcro on the tray, you can have that battery hanging quite a bit over the rear of the tray if necessary (it shouldn't, but it's there if you need it), and Velcro will help keep your batt secure. 100% positive you have plenty of room to move the battery back and get it balanced without all the lead on the tail.

2. Ailerons. I understand you are countering the roll from the uneven elevator, but we'll get to that in a sec. I'm not 100% on this one, but it looks like in your pic with the trim you've applied, that's there's more up travel in the left aileron, then down travel in the right aileron. (Again, bit hard to tell from the pic, but it looks like the throws are slightly uneven). This tells me they weren't aligned perfectly to begin with, and I find it's very helpful to get a nice handling plane, to ensure the travel is the same on both wings. Ie: if you hold full left aileron for example, the amount of travel up in the left aileron, should match perfectly the amount of down travel in the right aileron. This can be easily checked with a thin ruler, just slide it in between the aileron and the wingtip. See pic 1.

To adjust, make sure you manually have the ailerons centred and lined up perfectly with the wing, as per my pics above. You can adjust this by removing the clevis from the horn, and screwing it forwards or backwards along the thread, so that both are perfectly even to begin with. Might take a little trial and error and lots of little half turns to get it perfect, but well worth the effort in my opinion. This will ensure you have a constant roll rate in both left and right rolls. With a y channel on ailerons, it's impossible to individually adjust them with your radio, but manually adjusting the clevis will do it (and less trim the better in my book), so I always look to get my surfaces manually adjusted this way, even if I have ailerons on a seperate channel and can fix with my subtrim. Repeat this as necessary for elevator and rudder also. Making sure your throws are equal in both directions will help immensely with flight handling.

2. Rudder looks fine, again, make sure your travel left, matches the travel right. (In both high and low rates, on all surfaces).

3. Elevator - that's way too much warp to get this flying nicely. Can't recommend enough you follow Jeffs advice, and remove the elevator and put it between some big heavy books or similar to get it even. Again, that's way too much difference between the halves, and the handling can be improved immensely by fixing this. (And will get rid of your aileron trim). This will make the WORLD OF DIFFERENCE, to how your bird is performing and handling. If the books don't work, try very GENTLY, to massage the elevator into place with your fingers so the two halves are perfectly even. This is a MUST DO for your plane imho. You'll be amazed at the difference in flight handling if you make this effort, trust me on this one.

I'm pretty sure if you follow this advice, we can get your plane handling soooo much better than it is now. I'm positive your plane flies a bit squirrelly at the moment, and doesn't track nicely at all. And with the current uneven throws, that much trim input and the warped elevator, I'd bet money that it's a bit of a handful for a beginner.

Step 1: Once you have the elevator straight, I'd suggest removing the tail weight, resetting all your trims to zero and starting with everything perfectly aligned, move your battery back about 3-4cm, and try re-maidening. When you do this, have someone next to you on hand to help you adjust trim if necessary so you can concentrate on flying the plane.

Step 2: Go high. Get your wings nice and level and the bird travelling parallel to the ground. At about 65-70% throttle, take your hands off the sticks. If it noses down, it's a bit nose heavy, if it noses up, it's a bit tail heavy. Ideally, we want to do the same inverted, but if you're not comfortable wth inverted flight yet, don't stress, we can get it pretty close (and a lot better than it is now), just doing this test upright.

(Just a quick side note: with these retracts, the weight shifts ever so slightly forward when the gear is extended. This is a good thing. So if we balance in the air, gear up, by following the below method, when you extend your gear for landing she'll be just a touch nose heavy. This is great (especially for beginners), as it will give you a nice steady decent rate for landing, which you can easily manage with a little elevator input and throttle. If it was too neutral. (Or tail heavy), landing becomes more difficult as the plane will balloon easily or just glide till it runs out of airspeed. So don't worry about balancing this plane with the weight shift with gear down. It's absolutely not necessary, and as I said, it's a very minor cg shift and it's beneficial to balance this mustang gear up. (See attached vid for a demonstration of the cg shift I'm talking about). Back to flight testing... )

But if you are comfortable with inverted flight, enter the required trim first, to get it flying straight level and upright no hands on sticks.

Step 3: Then come around for another run (again, up high, parallel to the ground), and roll inverted. In inverted flight, if it climbs it's definitely tail heavy. If it noses down (which it should a little due to dihedral), but if it needs more than just a little down elevator to hold it straight, it's still nose heavy. Note this plane will not fly hands off sticks (perfectly neutral), both upright and inverted. You'll need a little down elevator inverted as it doesn't have a symmetrical wing foil like a 3D plane. A traditional wing, (like this one), has a lot more curve to the top surface, and the bottom is fairly flat. This is what provides lift. So inverted, you'll get a slight downward push due to the wing shape and the dihedral (upright angle of the wing).

Inverted it should gently nose over towards the ground hands off sticks, over some distance. If it pitches sharply down and needs a lot of elevator to hold it straight, then again it's nose heavy. Again, don't stress if you aren't comfortable with it inverted yet. As I said, we'll get very close just doing this upright.

Step 4: Land. (In your case we are battling nose heavy, so I'm going to assume it's still a little nose heavy and you needed to enter some up elevator to get it to fly upright and straight, hands off sticks. So, reset the trims to zero, move the battery back again a centimetre or two, and repeat the test. Keep doing this till you can get the bird flying straight upright, hands off sticks, with little (or preferably none), trim needed in the elevator. If it was tail heavy, again, reset the trims to zero, move the batt forward and then repeat the flight test"




"Some notes on cg and trim: trim is not a bad thing by any means, and indeed, at its best, it can save you from driving your new prized plane into the ground. But at its worst, it can really make your plane handle poorly.

Just note mate, that these 3 rates and expo settings are just a starting point for a 3D plane with big throws. (Though you could set up 3 rates on your mustang if you wanted to, but the throws are pretty small to begin with). For most ppl, just low and high rates will be ample for one of these. The big thing I encourage ppl to do (especially my students), - is experiment. So many people just do what the manual says, and lets face it, the manual is not always correct, and a lot can happen to a plane (especially foamies), in transit, warping, build, different weight batteries, even how much glue or epoxy is used etc - to totally negate what the manual recommends.

Flight testing is the ONLY sure way to set up a plane correctly. Cg is a good example. To many people, if the cg is listed at "x" amount of mm, they stick to this like it's set in stone, regardless of how much trim they need to dial in to make it fly straight. One bloke at my club flies incredibly nose heavy with tons of up trim on elevator, because "that's what the manual says" ...). And he won't budge, no matter how much good advice he's given. I'm sure most people know of someone at your field that takes off, and immediately starts clicking trim like their life depends on it. Click click click click click click click click... You get the idea lol.

Basically they add so much up elevator via trim, that if it was a car it would have a big NASCAR type spoiler on the back. What do you think this does to your flight envelope and aerodynamics, drag etc? If it's a heap of up to get it flying straight, what do you think it will do when the planes inverted? These mustangs are a good example. The elevator only moves about 20mm each direction, dial in a heap of up trim for example, and you'll end up with a plane with 10mm up travel, and 30mm down travel. (As the end points of the servos doesn't change). This will handle like a pig in the air. It'll feel very non responsive with up elevator, and super responsive with down elevator.

For me, I try to get my birds balanced with zero trim if possible. This gives you the best flight envelope for your servos and model. You can really make a plane handle extremely poorly if you rely on trim alone just to get it flying straight, or stick to the manual recommendations like they are set in stone.

The above rates and expo post just makes it easy to check and set up the plane to your liking, as you get 3 different "flight modes", at the flick of a switch. It usually takes me at least 5-10 flights to dial in a plane to where I like it, based on my personal preferences.

Expo simply stops the sticks having a linear throw. (Think of it as simply softening the sensitivity of the sticks at the middle point). Graph pic below from my radio highlights it better than I can explain. You'll see is not a linear straight line, as it would be if no expo. (Note I use futaba, so expo is expressed as a negative. If you use spektrum, adding expo will be a positive. (Don't dial in negative expo on a spektrum radio basically, different brand radios do it different ways).

So my advice is learn to experiment pilots! Eg: you might go to max rates and find with the bigger throws, your stick feels very sensitive, especially around the middle. So land, dial up another 10 points in expo and try again. As above, you might find roll rate a little quick. Land, dial the throw down a touch and try again. Same for all surfaces. Learn to start flight testing and experimenting to see what YOU like, is the only way I know to get the most out of a model.

(I should get around to writing a "shirtys guide to setting up a new model" and post on my blog one day, would save the repeated typing lol).Anyway, hope it helps, feel free to ask any questions. There's no such thing as a stupid question when learning to fly. :)"

https://youtu.be/867TPcrXf6I

[Shirty]

Some other ones I dug up. Again, I've just cut and pasted so it's specific to the thread I posted in, but again hopefully some good info you can use a bit of for those new to the hobby. This is a beginner thread I help out on, with some tips for take offs, landings and taxiing of warbirds.



"Hey mate, Happy to try n help. My experience has always been that I have much greater control (and grease it more often), if I land under power and use the throttle to control my decent rate, not the elevator. See the 3.35 mark on this vid as one example. I don't believe dead sticking is a good idea, I see too many people run out of airspeed and lift, then stall and drop for a bouncy landing, (sometimes incurring some considerable damage), though you can do it if you judge it correctly. I find it MUCH easier to use throttle. I fly off both grass and bitumen runways.

Take offs the key is to add throttle slowly, don't slam it open. This gives you time to make any rudder adjustments, and ensure you have a pretty straight line. (And helps you roll out and look a bit more scale). Long roll outs are also the reason I don't use flaps on take off, and I only ever use half flaps on landing, and though these planes don't really need flaps for landing, (especially if it's windy), it does help with your throttle authority regards decent rate and control.

Best tip I can give for taxiing is I always use full up elevator to help prevent nose-overs, and again a little throttle authority and big rudder throws for tight turns. Hope it helps. :) "



"Torque roll is a good point to bring up, especially with regards to take-off. A bloke at my club got a new mustang and also reported it as "unflyable" because of it's "vicious torque roll" characteristics. After a couple of weeks of him loudly complaining to anyone who would listen about his "faulty mustang", I could stand it no longer and I approached him about it. Long story short, he was adamant that the model was at fault, even after I tried to explain it was his technique that was causing the issues he was having, and he got quite angry about it all. (I got lots of "I've been flying for 20 years, I know how to fly!!! - it's the models fault" sort of stuff). So finally I offered to fly it for him to prove my point. (I had to offer to replace the model if I crashed it, even though he had crashed it numerous times on trying take-off).

So, long slow application of the throttle, bit of rudder and it was straight down the runway and took off beautifully. Did a couple of circuits with a few rolls and loops - and I brought it in for a fairly decent landing. He couldn't believe it. At first, he thought it was because I was doing one of my "fancy 3d tricks". I explained for the hundredth time that every model is different, and you need to adjust your technique accordingly. A warbird is not going to fly like a high wing model. So finally he agrees to try what I've shown him, and low and behold, he's flying after just 3 attempts.

The moral of the story is a lot of people (even if they have plenty of experience), don't always understand the inherent flight characteristics that are different to each model, or the type of flying. (Trainers versus warbirds versus 3d planes etc). His issue was he would simply slam the throttle full open (and doesn't use his rudder), as his method of taking off. This might work fine with some planes, but with warbirds you are asking for trouble. I'll occasionally slam the throttle open on take-off with a 3d plane if I want to go straight into a low hover from take-off or something, but a gradual application of the throttle and rudder control is the key to nice warbird take-offs and will negate any "vicious torque roll" characteristics. :)"

[Aros]

Awesome Shirty thank you! I am sure I can data-mine through this and turn it into an article that can be helpful to folks. :Cool:

[Shirty]

Totally off topic, but a rcg mate posted this on one of my turbine threads, and I know you'll love it. ;)

[Aros]

Oh momma! Big Boy Toys!!

[Shirty]

Here's another post that I was referring to in one of the posts above. I'll see if I can find anymore I think might help.

Dunno if this will be any use to you, but I know you guys sell some little 3D planes. I was asked how to set up rates on a new 3D bird. The big throws can be a bit challenging for someone new to 3D, so here's how I do it, the idea (as said above), is to be able to flick quickly through a few options on initial flight testing and see what works best for you, and the plane. Obviously you need a radio with a 3 position switch, but good for 3D pilots.



"Hey mate. Here's a simple easy formula I follow for setting up rates on a new bird. I never follow the manual as I been flying long enough, I know what I like. And I don't know any pro 3D pilot who doesn't go for as much travel as they can get.. lol. I'll fine tune these as I feel necessary after flight testing.

1. Get as much throw as you can possibly get on all surfaces without binding your servos. Set this as position 3, this will be your MAX rates setting. (Note: especially important you ensure throws are equal in each direction for all surfaces).

2. Halve this rate. This is your low rates.

3. Set the high rate as half the distance between low, and max rates.

It's a easy starting formula, which allows you to fine tune to your personal preferences without much mucking around. Hope it helps mate. :)

For expo, well expo is a personal preference but generally speaking, the bigger the throw the more expo. On average, I'll be around 15-25 on low, 35-45 on high, and depending on the plane, as much as 65-70% on max rates. Again, expo is purely a personal preference thing, there's no right or wrong. Some people like a sensitive stick, others don't. But some expo will help your control with the bigger throws.

Note cg is also critical. Ideally, you're looking for hands off sticks straight n level flight both upright and inverted, with as little trim as possible to achieve this.

Ps: for me, I pretty much just go to max rates, I can't remember the last time I used high or low rates - on any plane for that matter, I'm the same with my warbirds and jets as you know. But I'm used to big throws, I learnt to fly doing 3D. The only thing I'll generally do is tone down the roll rate a little on max rates, as on some of my birds I can hardly keep up, they roll so fast. (They're called rifle rolls for a reason lol). I always set my rudder as far as it can go, (usually till it hits the elevator), and same with elevator as you'll need a big throw for things like ke spins. The pics below are my max rates on elevator on a couple of birds.

PPS: for you, I'd recommend you start at low rates and get used to the bird. Then when your comfortable, go high and test your other rates. Good luck mate, hope you love it as much as I do. Always happy to help, pm me as you need to buddy. ;)"

[Shirty]

G'day mate, thought I'd just clarify a bit, just jotting it down you'll need to word it properly. (I'm not writing it for you lol) there a few subjects below, some of which you could easily stretch over a fair few weekly posts ;)

Can you post a link? I've never seen it, wouldn't mind having a look. Cheers.

Anyway, here you go:


Lipos and lipo safety - Looking after batts, lvc, balancing, charging, storage, etc. You may want to explain IR and the benefits for electric flyers of having a battery checker, watt meter and IR meter. (3 bits of kit I absolutely recommend if you fly electric).

Sims and brain training so that basic inputs are automatic without thinking about it, like driving a car. Staying a little in front of the plane, not reacting to it etc.

Preflights - I basically go over the plane starting at the nose down to the tail. Spinner is tight. Props and engine mount tight /no movement, check wing screws/connections , receiver and wiring connections, physically check servos, (inc servo mount screws, servo arms), physically check all control surface connections, (clevis, fuel pipe), screws, horns, mounts, retract mounts etc). Arming and powering up safely, THROTTLE LOCK (so many people have no idea what a spinning prop can do to them, I see dudes carry planes, transmitter around their neck and bump the throttle, or even in the pits they bump the throttle and leap to catch or avoid the plane. Throttle lock is a good one). Once armed and safe, checking rates, throws, surfaces all reacting properly, retracts etc. Another good bit of kit is a plane holder. (Pic below of just a cheap hk one I take to the field just for this reason, preflights)

Plane set up and testing: pretty much covered above....

basic aerobatics: perhaps explain how to do a roll, loop, figure 8, inverted flight, Cuban etc. just the basics. If you download the basic iMac routine and post, it might help to explain the aerobatics with little pics. You're a computer whiz so I'm sure you'll figure it out. Pic attached of the basic entry iMac routine I use when training students for gold wings tests. An Aussie thing, maaa (your AMA), require you to pass a "bronze wings" test, before you can fly solo at a club. It's mainly safety, ie you are not a danger to yourselves or others. There's a small multiple choice written test, and then you do a basic flight test with a maaa instructor like myself. It's very simple. You can take off, land, do a procedure turn at each end of the runway, a outward and inward figure 8 and a deadstick. (Deadstick is done up high, you don't need to actually land, just so we see you have control with no power). That's it. Do those and get your little bronze wings badge (you get a little maaa badge which is sort of cool, students really feel a sense of accomplishment - pic attached), and can fly solo. Then later as your skills progress, you can do silver wings, and then gold wings. (Gold is the minimum standard for flying in public displays etc). Then you can go on an train to be a instructor etc. Anyway, point being, basic aerobatics teach good control of the aircraft, so maybe a few of these. Later on if you're stuck for new subjects you could go on to explain some more advanced aerobatic manouvers.

Basic take off and landing techniques, how different models behave differently, taxiing techniques (up elevator for tail draggers etc). Stalls, or loss of power - how to recover and land safely....

Maybe a bit on good tools or bits of kit like described above (ir checker, plane holders etc), especially good if you stock those items. ;) Now you guys are selling the bigger stuff, wing bags etc since a lot seem to be looking at them for the first time and a lot of interest in the a10 thread.


If i think of anymore, I'll post it here. But that should keep you busy for a while I think. No need to thank me, no worries mate. More than happy to pile you up with heaps more work... bahahaha :)

[Shirty]

Forgot the pics... duh. Ps: I'm sure you know this, but pics and diagrams hold people's attention from a training perspective, same concept you guys use in your sales and marketing. So pics of your subjects like battery checkers and so on. (Sorry, don't mean to come across as telling you how to do your job, just trying to help. Apart from running my own companies, I also teach business owners how to run a business and sales marketing stuff.. sorry if I come across a little bossy lol ). :-S

[Aros]

Nope, appreciate all the input Shirty! Thanks again!