Official Freewing Twin 80mm/90mm A-10 Thunderbolt II Thread

[ColtPilot]

https://youtu.be/W9DcN3ZItE0

Night opps with formation lights from Jeremy Solt.

[PaulZ]

All, getting ready for maiden tomorrow. What is the final CG and battery placement you all recommend?

Thinking of going with CG at 85mm and putting both batteries in the lower deck to accomplish that. With one battery higher and above the nose gear it is hard to close the canopy and the best I can do is book CG at 78mm. Thoughts? Aros do you have any recommendations?

[crxmanpat]

You will be good at 85mm. I feel the book CG of 78mm is too far forward and it's harder to keep the nose up on approach.

[Aros]

PaulZ I concur with Pat...The book CG is too far forward which has in part been one of the primary reasons for the dreaded "Bucking Bronco" effect some of us have encountered when landing this model. 85mm will work for you. Good luck!

[crxmanpat]

Took the A-10 out today after replacing the nose gear (cracked housing from a bad landing that was my fault). Had a greaser landing today!

[Aros]

Nothing like a nice greaser!

[Gringotuerto]

I was trying knife-edges today, without much success. It seems for some reason I needed a bit of down elevator along with rudder in order to go straight. I never got it very stable and nice looking. But it seems like it should be able to knife edge well, with those big rudders and long fuse. Maybe next time.

[Johnnyrabuse]

Remaidened my A10 today after adding the compression struts

Flew with 4000s first CG was perfect first landing was no flaps ....80 ft rollout it floated and dropped from about three feet

no bounce !!!!!

Next 4 flights I had the flaps dialed in

Perfect no bounce

Upped the battery's to 5000s four more flights perfect CG with them pushed back to board

3.5 minutes battery's down at 14 percent

The weight worked out well very happy

I had a few 6000s didn't bother since I feel 5000s were it's sweet spot why mess with it got in seven flights with my F22

Seven great landings

4 minute flights

So it was a great day I'm happy

I think this birds best on 5000s and I flew mid rate elevator and lowered the rudder to 70 percent

[Aros]

Congrats!

[Splat]

Well I got my wings finished and the bird is pretty much done except for the ordnance and since I was an ordnanceman I've gotta do those right lol. Pictures to come.

So anyway question, something is FUBAR though. Plugged everything in and the ailerons and flaps are screwed up, might be miss-wired from the factory. When I give it aileron commands on the transmitter the left wing aileron moves correctly but on the right wing the outboard flap is moving instead of the right wing aileron. When flaps are commanded on the transmitter the left wing flaps (inboard/outboard) and the right wing inboard flap correctly raise and lower but the right wing aileron is also trying to move with the flap command. So am I correct in thinking that the servos in the right wing are misplugged on the inside of the wing? Ugh its going to suck to have to rip into a completed wing to fix something that was screwed up at the factory. 🤨😡

[DCORSAIR]

Well I got my wings finished and the bird is pretty much done except for the ordnance and since I was an ordnanceman I've gotta do those right lol. Pictures to come.

So anyway question, something is FUBAR though. Plugged everything in and the ailerons and flaps are screwed up, might be miss-wired from the factory. When I give it aileron commands on the transmitter the left wing aileron moves correctly but on the right wing the outboard flap is moving instead of the right wing aileron. When flaps are commanded on the transmitter the left wing flaps (inboard/outboard) and the right wing inboard flap correctly raise and lower but the right wing aileron is also trying to move with the flap command. So am I correct in thinking that the servos in the right wing are misplugged on the inside of the wing? Ugh its going to suck to have to rip into a completed wing to fix something that was screwed up at the factory. 🤨😡

Just take out the two screws on the main wing circuit board at the root of the wing, you might have to swap a couple of wires around is all?

[PaulZ]

So today was a wonderful maiden! This model flies amazingly and has fantastic presence in the air. I put in Nerf whistles in the engine nacelles and that sounded awesome. Now some observations:

- The CG is perfect at around 185mm. Tho model rotates well at takeoff and flies inverted with no effort.
- I did have a few bounces at during landing and had to throttle out of them. I have the upgraded landing gear and I think the mains need softer springs to reduce some of the bounce. I'll use springs from other landing gear and retest.
- The nose gear steering setup is too loose - she was all over the place and hard to keep straight on take-off roll-out. Will look into taking some of that slop out but not sure how yet. If you guys have any ideas that would be great.

Overall after about six flights I have her dialed-in and she is a keeper. I'll fly off grass next time and see how she behaves.

[Splat]

Congrats on the maiden Paulz! I'm right behind you, shooting for a FCF mid-week.

And thank you Corsair, got the issue resolved. I didn't even think of just pulling the board out at the wing root and swapping the connections...but that is what it took, swapped the aileron and flap 2 lead and fixed it. So everything is functioning as it should, just have to adjust the pushrods to get neutral on the control surfaces and then trim as needed. She looks great though!

[Splat]

Well I think she's finished except for the ordnance...

[Elbee]

Beautiful, simply beautiful. Bravo Zulu, Sir. Best, LB

[DCORSAIR]

Well I think she's finished except for the ordnance...

Looks great splat, if you decide to go to a more scale front wheel, a main wheel from the Freewing 90mm F-16 looks great, you will need to shim the sides as it is a little thinner in width, but if your flying off grass you might want to keep the over size front wheel.

[Johnnyrabuse]

So today was a wonderful maiden! This model flies amazingly and has fantastic presence in the air. I put in Nerf whistles in the engine nacelles and that sounded awesome. Now some observations:

- The CG is perfect at around 185mm. Tho model rotates well at takeoff and flies inverted with no effort.
- I did have a few bounces at during landing and had to throttle out of them. I have the upgraded landing gear and I think the mains need softer springs to reduce some of the bounce. I'll use springs from other landing gear and retest.
- The nose gear steering setup is too loose - she was all over the place and hard to keep straight on take-off roll-out. Will look into taking some of that slop out but not sure how yet. If you guys have any ideas that would be great.

Overall after about six flights I have her dialed-in and she is a keeper. I'll fly off grass next time and see how she behaves.

I avoid anything over 5000s on this bird my cg is perfect with two 5000s all the way back with 5000s I think six thousands will make it nose heavy and it will come in hot and drop like a stone on the sloppy front end issue I found it wasn’t the nose gear it was the rudders and turned them down quite a bit because I noticed on mine on taxi and takeoff it was fine but the moment the front wheel came ever so slightly up it started fishtailing so some expo and 70 percent rudder high rates 60 low did the trick and believe me on mine 60 to 70 rudder is more than enough since there are two fat ones I also fly on 80 percent elevator and aero lines because they are fat too and believe me it’s agile good luck hope this helps

[Splat]

Looks great splat, if you decide to go to a more scale front wheel, a main wheel from the Freewing 90mm F-16 looks great, you will need to shim the sides as it is a little thinner in width, but if your flying off grass you might want to keep the over size front wheel.

Thanks Corsair and I will be flying off grass mainly so I'll keep the landing gear as is for right now.

A question on batteries while I'm thinking about it. I'm planning on using a couple of Admiral 6000 6S 50C's and I was charging them this weekend, it took like 1.5 hours to charge a single battery...about 3 hours for the two. Not very field friendly if I wanna fly/charge/fly you know lol. I was charging at 2.0A and I'm thinking those batts can take a faster charge at like 5.0A to cut down on that time? Am I correct on this thinking?

[ColtPilot]

https://youtu.be/BX0ps168WPY

It's go time 4th season and still turning and burning. Jet Boondoggle Baldwin Airport Michigan.

[ColtPilot]

Thanks Corsair and I will be flying off grass mainly so I'll keep the landing gear as is for right now.

A question on batteries while I'm thinking about it. I'm planning on using a couple of Admiral 6000 6S 50C's and I was charging them this weekend, it took like 1.5 hours to charge a single battery...about 3 hours for the two. Not very field friendly if I wanna fly/charge/fly you know lol. I was charging at 2.0A and I'm thinking those batts can take a faster charge at like 5.0A to cut down on that time? Am I correct on this thinking?

Charge mine 5amps. Used the Spectrum 30c 6s 5000 and at 3.5 minutes I still had 54% battery left. That was first time I used those packs. That video is in the Squak taken Saturday. Two batteries at a time to charge 45 minutes.

[Gringotuerto]

I'm thinking those batts can take a faster charge at like 5.0A to cut down on that time? Am I correct on this thinking?

Sure, I've never seen a battery that couldn't charge at at least 1C. I use 1C as the default rate for all mine, and if I'm in a hurry then I figure 1.1C or 1.2C is probably not too much of a stretch either. Some of my batteries say they can charge at 2C, but I usually don't go that high.

Another issue is that you need to make sure your charger and power supply can handle it. 25v x 5A x 2 batteries = 250 Watts, which is well beyond the capability of most AC chargers.

I also try to operate pretty well away from the advertized capacity of my power supply and charger. If you want to do something nominally 250Watts, I would look for a setup advertized to supply at least around 350Watts. Otherwise, you tend to get errors, shutdowns, overheat, undervoltage, etc. I would guess this varies by manufacturer, but my equipment is a little "overbilled" versus what it can actually do reliably. (My wife would laugh at that last statement....and agree).