Official Freewing F/A-18C Hornet 90mm EDF Thread

[InTheTubeDeep]

Oh, well... that happened again.

OHHHHhHH F**K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...... ;((. Bloody Hell that sucks J looked like one of crashes! Damage looked same as my ocean dump on fusi exactly, easy fix for you brotha!

[Airguardian]

Yep, TP batteries are lowest tier stuff.

Get some quality batts! ^^

Check the link to the battery comparison thread that others have already kindly provided.
If you can get SMC, no need to look further.

AG, just watched all the footage. My condolences, Sir. I presume you will rebuild her, I would. Best to you and yours, LB

Thanks Elbee, I plan on repairing her. It will give me some work though! ;)

[xviper]

Do what Evan says. It would seem to me that you have tried to set this plane up for "tailerons", since if the elevators are Y'd together (via the control box), BOTH should respond in the same direction. I would also suggest that you have not declared the proper wing type in your TX or in the gyro. Furthermore, the HobbyEagle A3 can't work for tailerons. The fact that speed is involved tells me something is not right with the gain settings. You need to figure out how the A3 works, what it can and can't do and why it does what it does and how to test it before trying to fly the plane. Take out the gyro and wire everything back up the "stock" way and operate it as a 6-channel plane just to make sure everything works as it should. You don't have to fly it, just to test it. You need to declare it as "1 AIL, 1 flap, normal tail". If it works that way, that should tell you lots about the way you tried to make it work.

[Evan D]

My suggestion is remove the gyro first and see if it goes away.

[fach1971]

Actually, i´ve never fly it, i got it 3 years ago, got cancer and together with the pandemic.... no chance of flying it till now. To answer your questions:

• Yes y have Gyro install A3-LV2 Hobbyeagle
• no mix between elevator and rudder
• Tx and RX (TY ai 10b) are Turnigy
• If i correct right elevator go down, i even detected some movement on the ailerons too.

I am thinking on unpluging everything and start from scratch, first try without the gyro and then with it.

I welcome any comments

[Elbee]

Oh, well... that happened again. ]

AG, just watched all the footage. My condolences, Sir. I presume you will rebuild her, I would. Best to you and yours, LB

[xviper]

My friends, after 3 years.... at last i was able to try my F-18 on the runway, and even thought all the preflight check are OK, once i start rolling down the runways i get a mix between rudder and elevetor that i have not program.... and it only acts when the plane has speed. What i have seen it´s that it is directly proportional to the speed.To my it makes no sence.... Any ideas?
Thanks

You're going to need to give more details if anyone is going to have a chance at guessing what might be going on here. First, have you been flying this plane the past 3 years but not on a runway? What kind of surface have you been flying it on, if you've flown it at all? Are you saying you built this plane and then just left it alone for 3 years? Tell us a little about how you set it up? What kind of TX and RX are you using? Any gyros?
"A mix between rudder and elevator" ......................... What does this mean? UP or DOWN elevator? Left or right rudder? What does the plane do? How much speed are you talking about? Is the plane still on the ground or has it just lifted off? Aileron is perfectly level? So many things can make your plane do what it does, if we even understand what it does.

[fach1971]

My friends, after 3 years.... at last i was able to try my F-18 on the runway, and even thought all the preflight check are OK, once i start rolling down the runways i get a mix between rudder and elevetor that i have not program.... and it only acts when the plane has speed. What i have seen it´s that it is directly proportional to the speed.To my it makes no sence.... Any ideas?
Thanks

[xviper]

Check out this thread Battery Load Test Comparisons about 6sLiPos. Read especially the first page as that is where it is all broken down and regularly kept up.

You'll never go back to TP or no name batteries. I use SMC and like them a lot.

Thunder Power and Hyperion. They may have been the so called premiere LiPos 10 years ago. Today, they don't even bother to test them or they fail in tests. In fact, they started to perform miserably over 5 years ago. So called "no name" brands of LiPos have become better and better, far better than TP.
TP = toilet paper.

[Evan D]

Bad comparison between the older F/A-18E and newer F/A-18C. That started out as a very light 3500mAh aerobat. The newer plane is far from that and a speedy, smooth, swoopy type plane, but heavier and with more power. The new one really is a great package and you have probably forgotten all the issued with the older V1 and V2, weak retracts, weak retract mounting, poor front retract door set up, poor steering setup. Foam, while it breaks cleanly, was easy to break. No rudders but yaw TV. The V1 had really bad horizontal stab mounting (most and 70mm jets now have much better ball links, linkage rods, pivot rods and mounting), the V2 was better but still not very good. The V1 wings glued on, V2 wing mounts were not very strong. The red pinstripes came pre peeled off out of the box...

Oh, and yes batteries. If you are going to be doing a set up where you are pulling 120A+ even if only using full throttle sparsely you better have good ones.

[nuts-n-volts]

Check out this thread Battery Load Test Comparisons about 6sLiPos. Read especially the first page as that is where it is all broken down and regularly kept up.

You'll never go back to TP or no name batteries. I use SMC and like them a lot.

[dbirds2]

That doesn't sound right.

Of course a jet like this is not meant to be a speed demon, but the F-18 is pretty fast, and it doesn't like to land slow, so your review has me confused.

So, you are running the stock "high performance" 6S 1900kv EDF, correct?
It should be running a 9 blade EDF, not a 12 blade one so check that out, did you make a mistake or are you running the wrong rotor?

What timing have you set up on the ESC?

Define 'top tier battery' (brand and model, number of cycles and battery age).

Also, what altitude are you flying at?

What sort of runway do you operate from?
By any chance, has your rotor been damaged by from ingesting gravel or grass?

Are you sure you are talking about the Freewing F-18?
If so, I don't see what do you mean by 'flaps centering' since the flaps can only deflect down, so there is not much tuning to be done with them.

And unrelated, but I think speed is the least interesting parameter by which to judge a foam EDF.
Personally, I think hunting for speed is kinda pointless and boring, but to each their own... if that's what you enjoy, then, nothing to say!

( :

Havent flown jet since last post. I installed a jet fan 90mm edf with het 700 68 2100kv motor, using thunder power 6s 5000mah rampage batteries 10 cycles and imho the best battery made for rc air. THis jet just sucks bottom line. Never had a jet so lethargic and booring. I just put it up for sale on craigslist. I had the original freeewing 90mm f18 v2 with thrust vectoring and that jet just smoked this one in every which way. I dont see what people see in this jet.

[Airguardian]

Thanks Dave!


Hope so!
I'll try and get her on the workbench ASAP!

[davegee]

Oh, well... that happened again.

You'll come back, even better and stronger, Airguardian!! Really enjoy your videos, and your superior airmanship with the F-18. Best of luck in the future. Sometimes that sun gets in the way, it's happened to me!

Cheers

davegee

[Airguardian]

Oh, well... that happened again.

[xviper]

Hugh Wiedman Perhaps there are slight differences in the default settings for each ESC in different planes.

[Hugh Wiedman]

xviper as a quick follow-up, I took your suggestion and tried the HiV pack at a slightly lower voltage than the 4.35 per cell in the 3 EDF's that didn't work. The F-16 with the Castle ESC won't work correctly at anything other that 4.2-4.25 volts per cell, otherwise it assumes 7S and has a too high LV cutoff (so need to reprogram that one). The F-4 with the FW 130 amp ESC is the same, only giving 2 beeps and another long one so not sure what that's all about. Oddly, the other identical power system F-4 works fine at 4.35 volts per cell.
The F-18, which has a slightly newer 130 Amp ESC (now about 1 1/2 yr old) actually works at a maximum 4.31 volts per cell (or 25.86 volts), but at 25.9 volts it doesn't work. Strange that the other identical F-18 works fine at 26.1 volts.

[Hugh Wiedman]

Hugh Wiedman Your suspicions and fears from several months ago appears to have come true for some planes. So far, I've been very fortunate in that any of the planes I put the HV batteries into have responded correctly. As far as my newest F/A-18 is concerned, it's built for 8s and I'm not going to use any of the HV batteries in it.
Have you tried charging the HV to "not quite" 4.35V/cell? Say, maybe 4.3 just for those obstinate planes?

Not yet, first I'm going to see if my computer genius flying buddy RudyD54 can figure out how to reprogram the problem ESC's. He thinks he can get it done so that's plan A. I'm just surprised that of the 2 FW jets that don't work, each has an identical "sister" ship that works. Just my luck and I knew the Castle wouldn't work without reprogramming that.

[xviper]

Hugh Wiedman Your suspicions and fears from several months ago appears to have come true for some planes. So far, I've been very fortunate in that any of the planes I put the HV batteries into have responded correctly. As far as my newest F/A-18 is concerned, it's built for 8s and I'm not going to use any of the HV batteries in it.
Have you tried charging the HV to "not quite" 4.35V/cell? Say, maybe 4.3 just for those obstinate planes?

[Hugh Wiedman]

Just a heads up on the new SMC HiV batteries. At 4.35 volts per cell, most of my Freewing ESC's read them as 6 cells, so no issues. However, of the 2 identical 90mm set-ups in my F-18 Canadian/F-18 Tiger Meet and my F-4 Phantom and F-4 Blue Angel, one of the F-18's and one of the F-4's ESC's read it wrong, only giving 2 beeps instead of the normal 6. Seems it is reading it as a 7 S, which means the normal cut-off voltage at 3.15 volts then comes to play at 22.05 volts thinking it's 7S instead of the 18.9 Volts of a normal 6S. Did some simulated bench test flights and after about 3 minutes of various throttle levels, at full throttle the motor/ESC begins erratically behaving. Thankfully I didn't test them out in actual flight! Oddly enough, this only happened with 2 FW 130 amp ESC's, while 3 other identical ones read it as 6S. Guess I need to somehow reprogram those 2 ESC's if I want to use a HiV battery in them. Could drop the cutoff to low at 2.85 Volts for 7S, which would come out to 19.95 volts (fine for 6S), but the initial beeps would still be off! The Castle ESC I have in my F-16 actually reads it as a 7S with 7 beeps and cuts off early as well, but I expected that one.

So just a word of caution with HiV, check it out first before flying! Worked fine on my Avanti, Stinger 90, A-10, one of the F-4's & F-18's, the Mig 29 and the E-Flight SU-30. Haven't tried them in the 90mm Corsair, Spitfire or other prop planes as I'm only planning on using HiV bats in some of the EDF's.