What did you fly today?

[Wild Man]

You got that right they are quite the Adrenalin rush at 170 mph. after practicing a racing cycle and killing the engine, just head straight up they will climb over 400 Ft using the kinetic energy off the engine. We set the props so they die horizontally every time on landing just after touch down we go to full down elevator and use the muffler for a break. Takes a lot of flying to know how and where to be when judging your landing approach. just ordered a V-900 to have fun practicing and staying proficient with. Talked with Earl Seaholm at the Labor day fun fly in Sheridan Wyo. he is from Billings MT. AJ's Dad. told me to get one and bring it up and see which one of us old farts still has the touch LOL!!!!

[Hoomi]

Headed out to the flying field after working this morning. I would have just waited and flown tomorrow, but the prediction is for rain, and even if I wasn't too worried about flying in the rain, taking off or landing on a muddy runway might prove messy at the least, and problematic at worst. Anyway, two flights on the Simple Scout, flights 16 and 17 on the Stinger 64, and one flight of Air Hooterville, with Arnold getting into the spirit of the season.

On flight 16 of the Stinger, I throttled all the way back while at altitude, just to see how she glides with no power (not too bad, actually), and on flight 17, I finally dared to try something besides standard pattern flying. Took her through an aileron roll, and pulled straight up with a spin at the top. I'm really enjoying this bird.

[Wild Man]

I have a few questions Hoomi about your Dynam YMF-5D Waco. On the one I am just in the process of finishing, right from the start after getting it out of the box. The wings , the tail surfaces the vertical fin, and rudder were all warped. The wing lighting was backwards ( red right and green left. The motor ran backwards had to unhook and match the ESC wiring , matched the colors to fix.On the elevator half's I went to work them back and forth to see how stiff the may be and they broke off the horizontal stab had to install the flat pined hinges in them and the rudder. The wheels were loose and wobbled horribly, due to the axles being much smaller then the hole in the wheels. Had to install a bushing to repair. The tires are out or round replaces them also all in all it was the worse foamy I have ever put together.

[F22trainer]

Flew the Ryan this morning - she is so nice in the air. Packed up, got some lunch at home and then off to KDVT and flew with club member for his Flight Review. My first ride in a Grumman - a real fine flyer.

[Hoomi]

I have a few questions Hoomi about your Dynam YMF-5D Waco. On the one I am just in the process of finishing, right from the start after getting it out of the box. The wings , the tail surfaces the vertical fin, and rudder were all warped. The wing lighting was backwards ( red right and green left. The motor ran backwards had to unhook and match the ESC wiring , matched the colors to fix.On the elevator half's I went to work them back and forth to see how stiff the may be and they broke off the horizontal stab had to install the flat pined hinges in them and the rudder. The wheels were loose and wobbled horribly, due to the axles being much smaller then the hole in the wheels. Had to install a bushing to repair. The tires are out or round replaces them also all in all it was the worse foamy I have ever put together.

I've heard from others who had similar issues. I got lucky, as mine was fine - no warpage or damaged parts. I know some people love the Dynam birds, while others hate them. I guess their QC is a bit slipshod. I did find the wing strut mountings are pretty fragile. I've reinforced a couple of mine with glued-on washers, and in the case of one that broke after a crash, a piece of brass rod.

When I bought mine, I was torn between the Dynam, and the slightly smaller Roc Hobby. Several people told me the Dynam is a much better flying bird than the Roc Hobby, so I went with it. I've been pleased with how it flies, and I put quite a bit of work into making mine look a bit nicer - adding the flying lines, custom decals, Arnold Ziffel pilot figure, painting the radial engine façade, and adding the flashing red beacon right behind the motor cowling. That said, between the shenanigans Dynam pulled on MRC, and too many reports of inconsistent quality, I don't think I'll ever buy another Dynam bird.

It does have a nice presence in the sky, and I do enjoy flying it. I have both the 4S 2200 mAh battery that came with it, and a 4S 3000 mAh battery. I tend to fly most often with the 3000, and she takes off and cruises pretty nicely at around half throttle. A couple of my early mishaps with it came from taking off with full throttle, as it gets a pretty noticeable torque-roll at full throttle, and I wasn't experienced enough to react quick enough to counter it. It takes a bit longer to lift off at half throttle, but it actually looks more scale that way, with a nice roll-out, tail-lift, and then lift-off. I have my Tx timer set to 6 minutes, though I believe I could fly much longer on the 3000 battery.

One of the other guys in the club has the red Dynam Waco, and loves flying it as well. When you get a good one, it's a great plane. If you can get yours patched up beyond all the problems, I think you'll also enjoy flying it.

[Wild Man]

Was your motor rotating the correct direction. How about the wing strobes were they in the correct position, Red Left wing, Green right ? My brother and I bought 4 of these off ebay and they were all the same condition as stated in my earlier post on this red one after all the work I put into this one she should fly fine. The receiver I used in this one is the Admiral 6 channel with stability ( 3 axes gyro ) I programmed and set to turn the gyro off and on. I love the looks of a Waco. I have the blue and white UMX E-Flite Waco I have flown the crap out of even in 20 mph winds. PS love your Pilot figure. I bet Arnold is a great Pilot LOL !!!!

[Hoomi]

On mine, the wing lights are correct - green on the right wing, red on the left. I keep considering pulling the covers off the front lights on the lower wing, and replacing the red LEDs with white. There is a flashing output of the light control module, and I connected that to a single red LED I added just behind the engine cowl on the bottom of the plane, to match a flashing beacon on the real Waco.

I don't recall now if the motor turned the correct direction when I first assembled it, or if I needed to swap a pair of the motor leads. It's one of those things I routinely check as part of the assembly process anyway.

I bought the RTF model, as when I ordered mine, the PNP model was out of stock, and the cost difference between the PNP and the RTF was about the same as buying the battery and PNP model separately. Since I use a Tactic radio system, I disconnected the stock Rx (which includes gyro) and plugged in a Tactic 6 channel Rx (the 6 channel are cheaper than the 4 channel). I haven't flown it with the gyro at all, though with some of my early mishaps, maybe I should have! Now that I'm progressing as a pilot, though, it's a sweet bird to fly.

Arnold and the Air Hooterville scheme came out of a lunchtime conversation with a coworker before I ordered the plane. I was mulling over ideas for a pilot figure, since the Dynam model doesn't come with one. I thought about a Snoopy figure, but leaned away from that, since Snoopy really needs a Sopwith Camel. Muttley, from the old Dick Dastardly cartoons crossed my mind, but I wasn't sure if I could find an appropriate sized figurine of him. Then, we started joking around about "when pigs fly," and that led to joking about Arnold Ziffel from "Green Acres." It's kind of an age test, as the pop culture reference becomes more obscure as the years go by (it's getting close to 50 years since GA ended as a series). Callie did the "Air Hooterville" and custom number, while my wife cut the flying pig decals on her Cricut.

[Hoomi]

The video from yesterday's Stinger 64 Flight 17, with season and mood-appropriate music:

[Aros]

Flew my slightly abused F/A-18C Blue Angel yesterday and today. Top of the tails are mucked up, canopy and nose cone mucked up (from a nose over thanks to a brutal cross wind on landing), nose gear is a comedy of epoxy and the faux missile rails have been glued together from wing tip salsas many times over (reminder: Alpha, PLEASE get FW to sell those as separate pieces!!) but after replacing the elevator servos a few times, they finally seem to be good ones, and no more gremlins!

[F106DeltaDart]

Had a long day of flying yesterday. Brought out my LX F-117, 90mm F-16, Durafly Skyraider, HobbyKing Navy Cub, and the Little Bird and flew all day. The F-117 flew great with some newly upgraded struts and the Freewing 12 blade fan, until I tried to fly a 2nd time. The grub screws in the struts started working their way out, and I couldn’t get it to takeoff without more parts progressively falling off of the gear. The F-16 flew great, but I was surprised by an abnormally short rollout after landing. The nose wheel rubbed up against the collet and actually melted into the hub, completely freezing the wheel. Then, I ran into interference with the Cub flying FPV and nearly lost it several times. Thankfully got it back on the ground. Then, I was teaching one of my friends to fly helis, and he was at the the sticks of the Little Bird. He was doing great, and then suddenly the aircraft lost power at about 10 ft. He did not know how to autorotate, and the heli was smashed up pretty good. It will fly again, but it will be a while.

Tried something a bit different today, and brought out a Vietnam PBR on the water. It was great fun, and free of difficulties. Hoping to get a 450 Huey in Seawolves livery soon to keep it some company!

[Oxotnik]

I haven't posted in this Thread in quite a while. Since January, I've been assembling a 91" Phoenix Model A-26. It has stock pneumatic gear, which was the bane of this plane, and I fought them (the Mains) for about eight months. I'd finally given up and called Tower CS, who gave me a discounted price on replacement retracts. I replaced the Left Main (which I thought was the main problem). On the Maiden Day (about 3 weeks ago), the pneumatics were acting up a bit, but I thought that I'd fixed them well enough to fly. Bad choice. The pneumatics bled down during flight and the Left Main didn't lock down, collapsing on touchdown. Only a little damage to the right wing root, which was easily fixed with some CA and some 2oz FG cloth/epoxy inside the wing structure. I gave up on the pneumatic mains and ordered a set of large-scale servoless retracts from Hobby King, which took the stock 10mm oleo struts and fit easily into the existing retract wells (with a couple new screw holes drilled).

Anyway, jump forward to this past Saturday. I got her into the air for her second flight. The takeoff, flight, and landing were fantastic! At 17.25 lbs, she's very heavily wing loaded and has to have her speed kept up. I almost got into trouble while making a slow-speed photo-op pass, and she started showing early signs that she was nearing her stall speed (there was virtually no wind). Here're the stats on my A-26:

Flight Weight: 17 lbs
Wing Area: 6.6ft^2
Wing Loading: 41.2 oz/ft^2
Wing Cube Loading: 16 (this is really high, even for a scale warbird)
Power Train: Aerodrive SK3 5055-430kv Props: MAS 14x8x3, FMS 80A ESC (BEC disconnected), pair of HRB 50C 6S-5AH batteries
Power: 1100 W (each engine), for 129 W/lb (this power/weight is a nice fit for this plane), pulling 48A (each engine)
RX: Spekky AR 9030 with 2S-2200mah flight battery (no BEC)
Servos: Hitec 5565MWs and D645MH (I may be quoting the MW and MH backwards), high-voltage and high-torque

Here're a couple videos - preflight and flight.

And for my last flight of the day, I was flying my 1.2m EFlite P-47 on an old Admiral 4s-3200 battery. I'm 95% sure that the battery failed so badly during flight that the Rx (stock AR636) reset. I heard the motor stop (saying, "I guess I'll be landing now"), but before she stopped accepting TX inputs and rolled into a death spiral. I think that the fuse and wings and repairable, but haven't yet looked at the electronics. I'd suspected that that battery was going bad, and made a poor choice to fly with it (hindsight being 20/20).

Finally for a warts-and-all video, here's a compilation of just the take offs and landings ('cause that's all that any of us watch anyway...LOL). I'm really embarrassed that I stalled my Flightline Spit, just before touchdown. I'd forgotten that there was no wind and I let her get too slow. I think that I may have subconsciously been trying to 3-point her, too, but Spits really prefer a 2-wheel landing. And the Freewing Me-262 had an unusually bad takeoff. I have no idea why but I suspect that the right wheel hit a substantial bump on the grass runway). I probably should have cut power but with her at takeoff speed, that probably wasn't a viable option. Luckily, I got her into the air without further incident, and the remainder of her flight and landing were fine. .Anyway, you guys can laugh with me. Not every flight (especially the takeoffs and landings) is perfect.

[Oxotnik]

Hmmm, I’d also tried to add a couple stills, for scale, but they didn’t want to load. So, I’m trying again in a separate post. I chose to model the A-26 that is on display in the Evergreen Air and Space Museum in McMinnville, OR.

[Oxotnik]

Sorry for the multiple posts on the same topic. For some reason, the Board won't accept edits to posts. in my first post, I'd inadvertently posted the maiden flight. I've tried to updated that post with this past Saturday's flight, but it won't update. Very frustrating. Anyway, here's this past Saturday's A-26 flgiht.

[Hoomi]

Yeah, I was noticing that flight video in the earlier post looked mighty familiar.

[Turbinefancy]

Turning and burning with a friend’s Tomcat. Wish I was flying FPV in one as well. My Top Gun dream would be complete...

[Valkpilot]

Turning and burning with a friend’s Tomcat. Wish I was flying FPV in one as well. My Top Gun dream would be complete...

If it wasn't for the exhausts on the cowling, one would think you might be recreating this scene:

[Turbinefancy]

Yep! I was hopelessly underpowered liked the Zero’s. Full power for the whole flight and flew as smoothly as I could and still barely able to keep pace with the Tomcat at half power. But man she is a beauty in the air!

[Valkpilot]

Yep! I was hopelessly underpowered liked the Zero’s. Full power for the whole flight and flew as smoothly as I could and still barely able to keep pace with the Tomcat at half power. But man she is a beauty in the air!

If I remember correctly, when they were filming the scene, the Texans were firewalled and the Tomcats were near stall. As a matter of fact, where the F-14 appears to be diving on the Zero and the Zero takes a shot at it, the Tomcat actually stalled and almost ended up in the drink.

[Turbinefancy]

Can’t believe the F-14 pilot did the barrel roll at such low energy state. Scary...

[Alpha]

These aerial chase plane views never get old. It's harder than it looks! I miss those SoCal mountains...