New FMS/Eflite Su-30 coming soon

[Hugh Wiedman]

If I want something that is super acrobatic and can fly straight up I'll fly my havoc! I want something to look cool lmao.

Then this is just the ticket, it most definitely looks outstanding, on the ground and in the air. Get some afterburners as well because this particular EDF shows them off probably better than almost any. I have them in all my EDF's (except the A-10) and since the back end of the inrunner is much closer to the end of the exhaust nozzles, they show up incredibly even in the brightest of sunlight.

[bandetx]

Then this is just the ticket, it most definitely looks outstanding, on the ground and in the air. Get some afterburners as well because this particular EDF shows them off probably better than almost any. I have them in all my EDF's (except the A-10) and since the back end of the inrunner is much closer to the end of the exhaust nozzles, they show up incredibly even in the brightest of sunlight.

I plan on doing it.

I also plan on doing detail work on it to make it look better and weathered (I paint scale models)

[Hugh Wiedman]

I plan on doing it.

I also plan on doing detail work on it to make it look better and weathered (I paint scale models)

Can't wait to see it, please make sure you post plenty of photos when you finish it. What RX are you planning on using? I pulled the AR636 out of mine which it came with and put a discontinued AR7350 AS3X so I could set up flaperons and put the air brake on the 7th channel. Noticed you are planning flaperons and tailerons, great idea as it's roll rate, even on higher than the manuals recommended aileron deflections, is not exactly earth shattering. Gains, if you even use them, can be up in the 70% or greater range even at full throttle without any oscillations. The original AR636 program had rates up to 80% with even some heading hold, something I don't use or like. Not sure it even needs a gyro, but I have it anyway as it certainly is rock solid.

[bandetx]

Can't wait to see it, please make sure you post plenty of photos when you finish it. What RX are you planning on using? I pulled the AR636 out of mine which it came with and put a discontinued AR7350 AS3X so I could set up flaperons and put the air brake on the 7th channel. Noticed you are planning flaperons and tailerons, great idea as it's roll rate, even on higher than the manuals recommended aileron deflections, is not exactly earth shattering. Gains, if you even use them, can be up in the 70% or greater range even at full throttle without any oscillations. The original AR636 program had rates up to 80% with even some heading hold, something I don't use or like. Not sure it even needs a gyro, but I have it anyway as it certainly is rock solid.

I'll use a lemon 10ch, with the as3 super 2 gyro. (I have used these gyros in my Futura and my 52" Slick EXP, so I'm familiar with the programming)

Channel count
1. Throttle (2x on 1 channel)
2. Rudder (2x on 1 channel)
3. Elevator 1
4. Elevator 2
5. Aileron 1
6. Aileron 2
7. Gear
8. Airbrake
9. Nosewheel Steering
10. Gyro Gain

[wolpertinger]

Got one and love it. An F15 setup the same size would be fantastic.....

[bandetx]

Here's a su33 i did

[fredmdbud]

If I want something that is super acrobatic and can fly straight up I'll fly my havoc! I want something to look cool lmao.

The MiG-29 does both, just sayin'
But it's your $$$, no need to explain your purchase to anyone

[bandetx]

The MiG-29 does both, just sayin'
But it's your $$$, no need to explain your purchase to anyone

A mig-29 will not be anywhere near what I consider "acrobatic". I don't know what definition you are using..

And apparently they keep randomly crashing, so there's that.

[Hugh Wiedman]

Almost every EDF/Prop plane out there has something for someone and clearly each has it's fans and foes. I personally like the SU-30 and the Mig 29 (you can enjoy flying each, sometimes for entirely different reasons), but then I've never owed an aircraft I didn't like for some reason or another. Sometimes the ones that are the most difficult and offer more challenges keep my interest longer trying to conquer it. The SU-30 IMO has some pros as well as cons (although most of the cons are because I fly off of grass which this EDF is not well suited for-a HH rep even told me that at one of our events and he was not necessarily mistaken).

The Pros:

• It is a stunning looking EDF on both the ground and in the air (a top 2 reason I get any aircraft), especially with afterburners since the LED's are very near the end of the exhaust nozzles.
• It flies, IMO, OK once in the air, although it is no where near as nibble as the Mig. But then we still haven't figured out the cause of some of these crashes yet, so that's something that is always on the mind when getting the Mig in the air!

Some of the Cons: (Many of these are associated with grass Ops though)

• It's definitely underpowered compared to the Mig (or any other large EDF I have) but frankly that problem affects taking off of grass primarily.
• Flight times are shorter than the Mig since it only has 1 battery powering 2 70mm inrunners vs 2 powering 2 80 mm inrunners.
• It is about 10 inches shorter than the Mig and 8 inches less in wingspan, but I feel the weight of the SU-30 is just about at the limit for these 70 mm fans. The Mig seems sized perfectly for 2 batteries and the 80 mm fans, giving it plenty of power for getting off of grass and flying at 50% throttle. The SU-30 needs a bit more throttle. I've tried many different capacity and C rating batteries in the SU-30 and a 6000 mah is about the biggest it will take at a weight of 824 g. Tried an 8000 mah 100C battery weighing 890 g and it barely was able to get off and had no vertical, so IMO a 825 g battery is this jets maximum.
• I've spent a lot of time modifying the nose gear to help getting it off of grass. The nose gear spring is too soft, which allows it to be compressed while just sitting on the runway to almost 50% if I use a RT 5500 or HRB 6000. So I modified the spring and put a 5 mm collar under the spring so it now sits fully upright with no compression. This affects the take-off AOA and leaving it stock it would go down the grass field (even with full up elevators) with a nose down attitude, making it almost impossible to gain enough take-off speed. I also changed the 1 7/8" nose wheel to a 2 1/4" nose wheel to keep that nose up and help it on the grass. Additionally, I put a 1/16' spacer under the nose strut to get as much height out of the gear.
• The battery compartment has no structural support so if you use a heavy battery, it puts a lot of stress on the nose section. I did notice some cracking of the foam after about 40 flights and have since reinforced that section with carbon fiber tubes and marine plywood.
• Changed the AR636 to the discontinued Spektrum 7 channel AS3X so I could program in flaperons and leave the airbrake on a separate channel. Again, the flaps help in taking off of grass but also help in landing as this thing carries a lot of momentum into the landing and definitely does not "float" in like the Mig. It's like a heat seeking missile heading for the ground and you need to be at just the right speed to land with the nose up, but just under that it drops like the space shuttle.

With that said, keep in mind I still love to fly it. I listed some of the cons only to give anyone else out there flying on grass a few things to think about in helping getting it off.

[bandetx]

I fly off pavement, because I am spoiled.

I will look into structural reinforcement of the nose. I'm not going to bother with any mods or detail weathering work on it until I have it flying good because I don't want to spend all the time and then crash it on maiden. (Not that I expect to crash on maiden, I fly turbine jets and all that, but something might fail, or my setup might have failed and I didn't catch, who knows) Maiden is tomorrow.

The maiden on my Havoc XE was actually super bad because I had the aileron channel reversed but I caught it in time and got it real high and reversed it in TX. Not the most pleasant!

[bandetx]

Almost every EDF/Prop plane out there has something for someone and clearly each has it's fans and foes. I personally like the SU-30 and the Mig 29 (you can enjoy flying each, sometimes for entirely different reasons), but then I've never owed an aircraft I didn't like for some reason or another. Sometimes the ones that are the most difficult and offer more challenges keep my interest longer trying to conquer it. The SU-30 IMO has some pros as well as cons (although most of the cons are because I fly off of grass which this EDF is not well suited for-a HH rep even told me that at one of our events and he was not necessarily mistaken).

The Pros:

• It is a stunning looking EDF on both the ground and in the air (a top 2 reason I get any aircraft), especially with afterburners since the LED's are very near the end of the exhaust nozzles.
• It flies, IMO, OK once in the air, although it is no where near as nibble as the Mig. But then we still haven't figured out the cause of some of these crashes yet, so that's something that is always on the mind when getting the Mig in the air!

Some of the Cons: (Many of these are associated with grass Ops though)

• It's definitely underpowered compared to the Mig (or any other large EDF I have) but frankly that problem affects taking off of grass primarily.
• Flight times are shorter than the Mig since it only has 1 battery powering 2 70mm inrunners vs 2 powering 2 80 mm inrunners.
• It is about 10 inches shorter than the Mig and 8 inches less in wingspan, but I feel the weight of the SU-30 is just about at the limit for these 70 mm fans. The Mig seems sized perfectly for 2 batteries and the 80 mm fans, giving it plenty of power for getting off of grass and flying at 50% throttle. The SU-30 needs a bit more throttle. I've tried many different capacity and C rating batteries in the SU-30 and a 6000 mah is about the biggest it will take at a weight of 824 g. Tried an 8000 mah 100C battery weighing 890 g and it barely was able to get off and had no vertical, so IMO a 825 g battery is this jets maximum.
• I've spent a lot of time modifying the nose gear to help getting it off of grass. The nose gear spring is too soft, which allows it to be compressed while just sitting on the runway to almost 50% if I use a RT 5500 or HRB 6000. So I modified the spring and put a 5 mm collar under the spring so it now sits fully upright with no compression. This affects the take-off AOA and leaving it stock it would go down the grass field (even with full up elevators) with a nose down attitude, making it almost impossible to gain enough take-off speed. I also changed the 1 7/8" nose wheel to a 2 1/4" nose wheel to keep that nose up and help it on the grass. Additionally, I put a 1/16' spacer under the nose strut to get as much height out of the gear.
• The battery compartment has no structural support so if you use a heavy battery, it puts a lot of stress on the nose section. I did notice some cracking of the foam after about 40 flights and have since reinforced that section with carbon fiber tubes and marine plywood.
• Changed the AR636 to the discontinued Spektrum 7 channel AS3X so I could program in flaperons and leave the airbrake on a separate channel. Again, the flaps help in taking off of grass but also help in landing as this thing carries a lot of momentum into the landing and definitely does not "float" in like the Mig. It's like a heat seeking missile heading for the ground and you need to be at just the right speed to land with the nose up, but just under that it drops like the space shuttle.

With that said, keep in mind I still love to fly it. I listed some of the cons only to give anyone else out there flying on grass a few things to think about in helping getting it off.

Any CG Tips? I have a HRB 6000 battery all the way back and it's balancing at like 135 or 140ish, I don't remember, The manual was like 115-150 or something.

[Hugh Wiedman]

Any CG Tips? I have a HRB 6000 battery all the way back and it's balancing at like 135 or 140ish, I don't remember, The manual was like 115-150 or something.

Since you're flying off of pavement, I doubt you'll have any problem with the stock nose gear taking off so that shouldn't be an issue. I have flown the first 50 or so flights on the HRB 6000 as well, with the battery as far aft as possible and it CG'd at around 130 mm (I have some extra weight in the nose with the reinforced battery bay area and a separate 450 mah battery for the afterburners). It flew well at that CG but sometimes on wet grass or grass that hasn't been mowed in a couple of days (this is Florida where grass grows an inch in 2-3 days) it required long take-off runs. Landing at that CG is acceptable, although it is sometimes difficult to get the nose up on landing unless I'm at the perfect slow speed before it looses wing lift. 3 point landings are more common (maybe 40% of the time :triumph: ) than other EDF's I have (for me anyway) at that CG as I'm still overly guarding against a stall as this jet is unwilling to glide at a very low throttle setting. I just added 2 1/2 ounces of lead in the tail and am going to use the RT 5500 (weight 790 g) instead of the HRB 6000 (weight 829 g) to see how it flies at a CG of 140-145 mm in hopes of being able to get shorter take-off runs and being able to get more consistent 2 point HA landings. We've got horrible weather here for the last week and a hurricane on the way so won't be able to give it a try for at least another week.

I'm sure your maiden will be successful. One suggestion (although I bet you already know this), well before landing do a couple of slow passes at a high enough altitude to give you an idea of the landing speed needed to get into a nose up configuration before it starts to lose altitude quickly. Also, on the HRB 6000, I generally get about 3:40 of flight time (finishing with about 25-30% capacity) but set my timer at 3:20 in case I need a go around. But keep in mind I'm probably at full throttle during take-off longer than you will be on asphalt.

Looking forward to a good report!

[nuts-n-volts]

I agree with all you have said. My setup. Rather than mixing flaperons into the wing, on mine I simply set the wing as flaps only and ran tailerons to the tail. Other than needing more power, it works great!

[bandetx]

My maiden was... scary. BUT ITS OKAY.

Okay, so first off, it didn't really need any trim and it didn't seem to balloon with flaps, which was neat...

But, later into the flight, it had a violent unasked for roll while turning, I corrected, and then set gyro gain to 0, and kept flying, no other problems, then the motors started not working, and stuttering and I lost power and cut throttle and was mentally bracing for the worst. or rather, I THOUGHT I lost power but, after reapplying power I found it still worked, so I landed it safely.

Landed a bit hotter than probably required I need to get used to coming in at more of a high alpha on it, but everything was ok, and I land on pavement so it's fine to be a bit fast!

I thought the violent roll was because the battery leads which go past the gyro bounced into it on flight causing the gyro to do that (I mean, obviously the gyro isn't reversed, the plane wouldn't have gotten far), so I put some clips and secured the leads so they wouldn't bounce into the gyro. I had no clue what was wrong with the motors, but I found the afterburners stopped working! So, I was like hm, and found the y connector to the throttle and afterburner controller was weak so I figured that would be the problem, or something with the afterburner, So I removed the controller and put throttle directly to RX. Spooled up on ground a lot and noticed power was fine so I was like "well, try again".

Second flight the throttle thing happened again, and the gyro roll happened again once, but I noticed the throttle quickly and backed power to 90 and noticed it seemed to run fine when it wasn't full power. (I later realized this is probably some issue with esc frequency or timing or endpoint adjustment I need to look into... ) I did do the normal full throttle on powerup then lower to calibrate an esc, but I'll need to look into it more. I don't know what caused the gyro roll still.

So, basically, something is screwy with my escs and gyro, and almost crashed my poor plane twice... The hunt is on.

[Hugh Wiedman]

My maiden was... scary. BUT ITS OKAY.

Okay, so first off, it didn't really need any trim and it didn't seem to balloon with flaps, which was neat...

But, later into the flight, it had a violent unasked for roll while turning, I corrected, and then set gyro gain to 0, and kept flying, no other problems, then the motors started not working, and stuttering and I lost power and cut throttle and was mentally bracing for the worst. or rather, I THOUGHT I lost power but, after reapplying power I found it still worked, so I landed it safely.

Landed a bit hotter than probably required I need to get used to coming in at more of a high alpha on it, but everything was ok, and I land on pavement so it's fine to be a bit fast!

I thought the violent roll was because the battery leads which go past the gyro bounced into it on flight causing the gyro to do that (I mean, obviously the gyro isn't reversed, the plane wouldn't have gotten far), so I put some clips and secured the leads so they wouldn't bounce into the gyro. I had no clue what was wrong with the motors, but I found the afterburners stopped working! So, I was like hm, and found the y connector to the throttle and afterburner controller was weak so I figured that would be the problem, or something with the afterburner, So I removed the controller and put throttle directly to RX. Spooled up on ground a lot and noticed power was fine so I was like "well, try again".

Second flight the throttle thing happened again, and the gyro roll happened again once, but I noticed the throttle quickly and backed power to 90 and noticed it seemed to run fine when it wasn't full power. (I later realized this is probably some issue with esc frequency or timing or endpoint adjustment I need to look into... ) I did do the normal full throttle on powerup then lower to calibrate an esc, but I'll need to look into it more. I don't know what caused the gyro roll still.

So, basically, something is screwy with my escs and gyro, and almost crashed my poor plane twice... The hunt is on.

Not sure what caused the roll, but the loss of power at 100% throttle when flying (but not on the bench) suggests to me a signal loss from high RF interference. What receiver are you using and where are the antennae placed, especially the active end? I was concerned when I first got this jet that the antennae might be in a position to be affected by RF interference, especially at high throttle. I replaced the AR636 it came with and put in a 7 channel AR7350 AS3X (discontinued of course) to use flaperons and the airbrake. That receiver also has a remote satellite which I placed all the way up in the nose about 4" in front of the battery. My AB controller is forward of the main receiver antennae and aft of the satellite. I also put RF chokes on all wires (including the battery cables) coming out of the ESC's right at the ESC. With this set-up, I've had no issues with signal loss.

I'm curious to learn what happened so please keep us posted on your progress. BTW, 2 scary flights and yet she made it back with no structural repairs needed is a big win in my book, and maybe more a testament to your abilities!

[Hugh Wiedman]

bandetx the more I think about your problem, the more I believe that both issues were caused by a loss of signal. I don't think the throttle issue is calibrating the ESC's or their timing. If it was, than the issue would occur on your bench test when you went to full throttle several times, it wouldn't make a difference if it was in flight or on the bench. Loss of signal would not occur on the bench as your TX is too close to loose signal, but in the air, that's another story.

I also think that your gyro roll was caused by a loss of signal. You said you were in a turn the first time it happened. With some gyro's, they need to initialize in level orientation when you first power up. If you lost signal in flight during a roll, lost signal and then got it back, the aircraft would have then initialized in a non-level position, causing the rolled over orientation to then be the "level" position. If you have the AR636 that comes with the PNP version, it also has some "heading hold" gain programmed into it along with the "normal" rate gain. I assume you know the difference in the 2 types of gains Spektrum receivers can have but heading hold will forever try and correct attitude until you input something different into that particular surface. I almost never use heading hold for that reason. Rate gain only temporarily tries to level the orientation. You will see the difference if you roll the plane to one side and the ailerons stay in a position to correct that (that's heading hold). With only rate gain, the aileron flutters in the direction to correct but returns to level when the aircraft stops rolling but the aircraft may then be at that rolled over position.

Anyway, just my random incoherent thoughts.

[xviper]

He hasn’t indicated what RX he’s using. If it’s the stock one, it’s pretty good and signal loss is rare so long as the antennas were placed to optimize reception. Also, the provided receiver is generally well attached and even if something like a cable were to bump against it, it’s not likely to have any ill effects. He kept saying “gyro” like it was a separate entity. The stock BNF receiver, I don’t usually refer to as a “gyro”.
However, if he got the PNP (as opposed to the BNF), then it might have some bearing on what that RX is and whether or not a satellite was used and how these were placed. If that’s the case, then is there an external gyro involved? Details?

[bandetx]

To be clear, I never lost power. The motors started stuttering and I thought I lost power, but I didn't. After backing off the throttle it worked fine which indicated a calibration issue to me.

I did consider the signal from the receiver. Using an admiral 10ch with remote sat.

[xviper]

OK, so what kind of gyro are you using? Settings? How is it attached? Also, Admiral 10-ch RXs have been, on the most part, good, but there have been reports of the occasional one having glitches. Are you using the matching diversity satellite or some other type of satellite? It also depends on how you've places the RX and its satellite. A momentary motor stutter can also be an indication of momentary loss of signal, where the throttle tries to go to zero.

[Hugh Wiedman]

To be clear, I never lost power. The motors started stuttering and I thought I lost power, but I didn't. After backing off the throttle it worked fine which indicated a calibration issue to me.

I did consider the signal from the receiver. Using an admiral 10ch with remote sat.

You may be right, but if it is a calibration issue, it should also happen on the bench when you go to full throttle. The RF interference is highest from the ESC's at full throttle, but on the bench your TX and RX are too close for a signal loss. In the air is where that loss would be more noticeable. I suggest you test the throttle extensively on the bench before concluding it is a calibration issue.