HSD 105mm F-16 EDF Jet

[Aros]

Imagine had I actually maidened with that battery. Ugh. SO glad it happened without incident. Now I wait for new batts to maiden with. Tick...Tock...

[Lcacing]

Wow!!! Good thing you cough it before it went.

[PaulZ]

Well talk about serendipitous. I took my Freewing 90mm F-16 out for a ride and at the end as I am putting her back in the car I smelled this really sweet smell. I looked down and the RT 5500 70C sort of blew a cell. So now it's time to give her the ol' salt water soak and call it a day. Imagine had I tried to maiden with this!!

Wow! There is your answer ;-)

[PaulZ]

Those pilots are bad ass and always wanted one but price has always been the deciding factor. The HUD light is a nice touch.

Off topic, the New HSD T-33 EDF is arriving today and will need pilots, trying to find a cheap solution. 🤞

We need to setup a HSD T-33 thread here. Mine is ready for maiden. It has been raining all weekend so it will be either tomorrow afternoon or Monday!

[Aros]

Well talk about serendipitous. I took my Freewing 90mm F-16 out for a ride and at the end as I am putting her back in the car I smelled this really sweet smell. I looked down and the RT 5500 70C sort of blew a cell. So now it's time to give her the ol' salt water soak and call it a day. Imagine had I tried to maiden with this!!

[Aros]

Question...I posed this on the RCG thread as well...

Getting antsy to maiden mine. I need some advice. I have my two old RT 5500 70Cs that I bought back in 2018. I have approximately near 100 cycles in them both or so. Just a guess. I have always charged them at 1C while balancing. Fully charged the cells show 4.19 on average. I still get plenty of pep from them when flying my Freewing 90mm jets. Granted, a 44.4V system is a different beast. What is the general opinion...Do you think it's okay to maiden with these batteries? Would you?

[Aros]

That new HSD T-33 looks sweet! Good luck with her...

[Lcacing]

Those pilots are bad ass and always wanted one but price has always been the deciding factor. The HUD light is a nice touch.

Off topic, the New HSD T-33 EDF is arriving today and will need pilots, trying to find a cheap solution. 🤞

[Aros]

Thanks Lcacing ! I appreciate that! She's coming together but looks a little too pristine so weathering is on the horizon for sure. Good to know on the pilot, thanks! I usually get the warbirdpilots.com jet pilot (photo below) but I always feel bad chopping it in half AND the price tag is pretty steep at $110! I do plan on adding a green LED for the HUD (Put it in my last one and liked the effect, see second photo) and doing some detail work to the cockpit but I should really maiden before I keep investing more time and money in the detail work, lol....

[Lcacing]

Aros your bird looks amazing!!!! By the way if you need a pilot, the FW T-45 Pilot fits nicely. Weathering would make it even better.

If you recall I fly the F-16 with tailerons only, 40mm for both pitch and roll. No ailerons.

[Aros]

Beautiful landing Lcacing ! Now that's how it's done! I envy your low approach...I wish I had a low approach for this bird. The high approach over a tree line forces me to chop the throttle to lose altitude drastically and then I have to get back on the power so she doesn't stall or pancake. Every other landing was not great and I was getting frustrated which is why I sold both my first two. I'm hoping this new power system will help ease the burden and stress I was feeling with the old stock power system (thrust/weight was way off).

I was going to maiden at 170mm... 20% sounds like a good number for expo. Which control surface is 40mm travel? I can't recall if you called out your travel settings earlier in the thread.

Just added the step lines to the model. I'm being talked into weathering her too (see photo of the Tamiya version). I should probably maiden her and get her dialed in before I keep investing more detail work, lol.

[Lcacing]

Limit expo on the elevator and ailerons to 15% max. Expo over 15-20 on the elev on 15-16lb plus jets makes them over flare on the landing causing a stall...
.

I remember seeing that statement, Not sure if All that accurate, I typically run 20 -25% expo on all my planes regardless of weight. Then again they are recommending CG at @ 155mm and for sure that CG is nose heavy. 🤷♂️

Im now flying at 175mm CG with 40mm travel and 20% expo.
landings are cherry 😎 this one was from last weekend.

https://youtu.be/ECIpwDBl7yI

[Aros]

Measured my throws:

AIL: Low > 10mm High > 13mm (15% expo)

ELEV: Low > 23mm High > 30mm (15% expo)

Man that seems really low travel for the ailerons but that's how I had my last one. Always curious where others have theirs.

[Aros]

I have mine on a spring loaded switch, I keep hearing that the end points work but I have yet to see it. Same with the A/B, you can’t change its operation, every time people post about changing it, they talk about the old version. Since summer is here the lights don’t do much. I assigned the Nav lights to a switch so I can turn them off, the only way to turn the A/B off is through the MFC menu, they are either on flashing or on brighter flashing. Lol

I like the idea Lcacing of assigning the NAV lights to a switch. I rarely fly this bird in dawn or dusk conditions anyways. I guess there's no harm keeping them on but there's not much visual effect during daylight ops. PaulZ I have trimmed my throttle to the lowest possible setting and recalibrated my ESC but the A/B still comes on as soon as I plug in with the throttle off.

Today I am measuring my throws to see where I'm at. (I bound this one by using my last HSD F-16's model settings). I have low and high rates. Ailerons are very minimal throw as I recall I really needed to reduce them to feel in more control with this big bird. I also reduced my expo to 15% for aileron and elevator as I believe Chris from HSDJUSA made a good point about minimizing expo:

Limit expo on the elevator and ailerons to 15% max. Expo over 15-20 on the elev on 15-16lb plus jets makes them over flare on the landing causing a stall...

That's a really good point as that was one of my primary struggles with the model was some of my landings I would come in and either pancake the model underestimating its sink rate or over flare causing a stall and some really ugly landings. Thinking back on it, my expo was in the 40% range...I wasn't getting the immediate response I needed on the sticks at the most critical moments with that higher expo.

[PaulZ]

Thanks PaulZ. Interesting you have your A/B working without using the R-06 port. I will check my throttle channel's travel as well, thanks. I do have the afterburner light turned to ON on the MFC. I did note it came that way from the factory. The A/B is strange. For as great of a model as this is, you would think they could at least have it work in conjunction with the throttle inputs not always ON. I'd rather have a centerburner in it any ways. Never been a fan of the ringed LED effect. Seems like old tech.

I agree that this a/b is very old style and not well designed. You can get it to go off with the throttle channel if you trim it to the lowest setting on your TX with the trim adjustment. You then need to recalibrate the ESC to make sure it knows what is your low and high throttle range. This really not thought out well.

[Aros]

Thanks PaulZ. Interesting you have your A/B working without using the R-06 port. I will check my throttle channel's travel as well, thanks. I do have the afterburner light turned to ON on the MFC. I did note it came that way from the factory. The A/B is strange. For as great of a model as this is, you would think they could at least have it work in conjunction with the throttle inputs not always ON. I'd rather have a centerburner in it any ways. Never been a fan of the ringed LED effect. Seems like old tech.

[PaulZ]

Ok Aros looks like you got the help you needed from Lcacing . One comment, I have my throttle channel connected to R-12 and the a/b works fine without splitting it to R-06. I would check if your TX throttle channel is also correctly going from -100% to 100%. Also double check in the MFC if you have the "Afterburner Light" turned ON. This is item 12 off the main menu.

[Lcacing]

I have mine on a spring loaded switch, I keep hearing that the end points work but I have yet to see it.
Same with the A/B, you can’t change its operation, every time people post about changing it, they talk about the old version.

Since summer is here the lights don’t do much. I assigned the Nav lights to a switch so I can turn them off, the only way to turn the A/B off is through the MFC menu, they are either on flashing or on brighter flashing. Lol

[Aros]

Yikes, man I sure wouldn't want to mess with the brakes like cutting them (see: I don't trust myself, lol)...Looks good though in the video, nice and smooth. Since my brakes are on the trainer button I can always "pump" them instead of a hard, long press at touchdown speeds. Andy from HSDJ also mentioned reducing the endpoints a bit but sounds like that didn't work for you?

One last thing...Not a fan of the A/B always "on" as soon as I turn on the MFC. I thought I read somewhere someone mentioning how to get it to activate only at half throttle and up?

[Lcacing]

Check out my video testing the modded brake plates, nice and smooth.

https://youtu.be/B6V2j4inykU