Official FlightLine OV-10 Bronco Discussion Thread

[MeyerVW]

Oh, Sorry to see that.

[Phil34]

Anyone who's interested this is the fatal maiden flight https://youtu.be/pPO-r33tmfg. Enjoy, or don't.

[xviper]

The lucky man!!!!!

He most definitely was. I, on the other hand, have not been so lucky. I've crashed 2 planes picking up the wrong battery, although both were fixable with a lot of work.

[Phil34]

The lucky man!!!!!

[xviper]

It's also not impossible and sometimes very easy to put in a just used or uncharged battery. I've done it a couple of times myself. Grabbing a battery that just came out of another flight. Same thing happened to a flying buddy who's been flying for 15 years. He didn't put his used battery in the usual place and accidentally picked it up. The next flight lasted less than a minute before he managed to dead stick back down.

[Phil34]

Ummmm you have really got me thinking thanks so much for your input most appreciated phil

[Evan D]

The aircraft as wired from the factory can not draw from a single battery. As you had one battery about right after a 1.5 minute run and the other dead I don't know of any way other than that battery not being fully charged (or discharging some way over night). Well, you could of had a MASSIVE current draw from that side but if that happened you would have fire or smoke.

[Phil34]

Hi guys thanks so much for your quick reply ,wow what you have said all makes really good sense however I only own 4x4000 packs and fully balance charged the lot the night before and never had any issues with any of them,as to the calibration only did the one that chimed as previously stated only one battery chimed on the bec side,my in experience. Question if only one esc chiming would that cause all the Amp draw off one battery and what would normally not work with this scenario. Many thanks for all your input phil

[xviper]

What Evan said. Also, it's important, especially on a multi-engine, to do a throttle calibration right after binding.

[Evan D]

Sorry to hear about your crash.


To me it sounds like one battery was not charged? If it was the battery on the BEC side, you would lose all radio signal especially the final drawing of power by lowering the gear. If it was the battery without the BEC then you would have basically an engine out causing severe roll.

[Phil34]

Before and after photos.

[Phil34]

Hi team my name is Phil and I'm from newzealand,I'm somewhat new to rc planes I have a small collection of warbirds all electric,freewing,fms etc i have only been flying about 2 years anyway I purchased the ov10 which is the first twin battery system I have flown anyway I have a conundrum that I would love to get to the bottom of,so her we go from the top.assembled plane ,went very smooth using James very good wiring video,a must see ,upon finishing did all tuning,cg etc and rechecked every thing about 10 times as per usual,very happy.
Maiden,using 2x fully charged 4000s taxied etc ,calm day no wind took off,seemed a little sluggish,managed to trim up as was diving slightly still felt heavy in like the cg was nose heavy ,on the second pass decided to land and recheck everything was still on full throttle,and here is when it all went wrong as soon as I deployed gear the plane went into a superfast uncontrollable spin/dive,I was flying 3 mistakes high and it hit the ground destroying every thing bar the rear stablyser including batterys,motors the works.Sorry this story is so long guys.
The aftermath was interesting her is what I found 1 remembering the flight was short 1.5 minutes 1 battery had 83%and the other 3.5%although this battery was very badly damaged as the plane hit large rocks ,no engines would turn as they were surverly bent.
Here is where I kick myself and have a dilemma, when I assembled the plane and first plugged in the battery's as per the Manual plugged in the lead with out the ubec and there was no chime ,so plugged in the second,ubec side and all chimed OK and bound fine,as previously mentioned everything worked correctly,elevator, rudder,flaps,gear and both motors all OK,, obviously I thought this was how it was suppose to go,as didn't have any issues,so can any one help explane what went wrong,I don't care if you laugh at my obvious novice mistake,I just want to learn before I buy a replacement,thanks for taking the time to read all of this sorry it's very long,many thanks phil

[EAMRC]

Has anyone 3d Printed a "D" model nose yet ?

[ElCid]

Lost my OV-10 today. I had a total of 2 good flights out of 5 attempts, before today’s mishap. After fixing the items in prior posts I thought I had all the gremlins sorted.
Take off was smooth and the plane was flying perfectly. On my 3rd loop around the field (flying from right to left) making a left hand turn towards the runway, the left wing dropped a bit, I corrected thinking it was wind. Then midway down the runway it went off tune, started to visibly yaw left and before I could cut power, correct and get the flaps down it, was in a uncontrollable left hand spin into the wood behind the field.
Upon retrieval of the plane, we found the left nacelle ESC was fried and the aircraft is un salvable.
On the one hand this plane has been a nightmare since day one, but on the other hand, when it was flying well it was a TOTAL JOY.
Now I am torn, do I roll the dice and buy #2 or change it up and go with something else?

[xviper]

Was the stock motor performance with the scimitar props verified with any onboard monitoring/logging equipment?

No. I have no such equipment.
PS, from the time I posted that, I have flown this plane many, many times. In level flight, it is much livelier and faster. Before, it could not do a loop from a full throttle level pass. It would fall out long before it got to the top. After, with scimitar props and new ESCs and motors, it could do loops all day long. climbing at a steep angle became effortless. Take off run, although not bad before, was much, much shorter after (if I so desired). As I said, the stock motors, even with the new ESCs, could not spin those scimitar props from the Eflite EC1500 up to speed.

[Gizmo6023]

Just finished installing Eflite P25's into the OV-10 so they can drive the 5-blade scimitar props. As previously noted, I've already installed 60A ESCs. The stock motors can't quite spin those props us to speed, so I'm hoping these motors will make them sing and give the OV the kick in the pants I'm looking for. The new motors are a bit longer overall than the stock ones and there's quite a gap between the cowl and the prop base plate, but I care more about the performance than the looks. The picture of the prop is with the stock motor. Test flight will be in a couple of days.

Was the stock motor performance with the scimitar props verified with any onboard monitoring/logging equipment? I'm curious to know how far out of the motor specifications the setup would be with a more scale style of flying. I have already upgraded my ESCs and have installed 11x8 APC props, but would like to run the 5 balded props on the stock motors if the only performance issue is during acro maneuvers. The gap between spinner and nacelle could be addressed with a 3D printed backing plate for those that the gap bothers.

[ElCid]

[So the only thing I can think of is its a BEC issue or an issue with the ESC its connected to.

[

Sorry I misstated that; I meant the BEC that shares the same connection with the ESC to the battery. In the end, as suspected, it was the BEC was bad. It was not producing sufficient voltage. I have replaced it with a Jeti SBEC set to 5.5v and created a harness so both ESCs connect to both Batteries in parallel. She flies like a champ with zero issue now.

[xviper]

The "yaw" thing is a known characteristic of this and some other twin boom model airplanes. It's not an issue as such. It's just a thing with these sorts of planes. In the real airplane world, particularly in airliners, they use a computerized "yaw damper". For us, we would use a gyro with the rudder gain set a bit higher than usual. That would take care of it.
You should also check to make sure that your ESCs LVC (low voltage cutoff) hasn't been set too high and also check how it deals with it when it below the set cutoff. Also check that BOTH ESCs LVC are the same. Any plane when under load will draw the battery down to a very low point and come back up to more normal if you back off the throttle a bit. The older the battery or the lower the brand quality, the more the voltage will sag under load. You may have simply replaced 2 good ESCs that has the wrong settings.
As Evan just said, your RX low voltage has nothing to do with the ESCs in this case. It's something to do with the BEC. Look at that, maybe replace it.

[Evan D]

The ESCs have nothing to do with the voltage your receiver gets, it's all from the separate BEC. As long as the LiPo has more than 5.5-6V in it the BEC should be producing it's full voltage and amperage. That would mean you have 1.5V per cell on a 4S LiPo and no way would that happen since you'll hit LVC way before then.

IF, and a big IF you really had low voltage to your receiver, I have to think you have something drawing down the power output from your BEC or you have a bad BEC. If it was me I would rmove the wing panels and separate the center panel from the pods and fuselage and check every single connection throughout. Then hook up a voltmeter (or use the reading on your TX and move every servo, apply a little physical resistance even, cycle gear multiple times etc...

You said "once I put the gear up, the plane became very unresponsive". To me it sounds like one or more of the retracts may be drawing too much and over loading the BEC...

None of the things you just posted doing address a receiver power issue.

[ElCid]

My OV-10 has not been known for BEC issues.
More info ................................ So you've only had a couple of flights? Brand new airplane? What kind of telemetry is giving you this warning? Is the telemetry reading both batteries or just one? Type and age of batteries? What do you mean by unflyable until you throttle down? It almost seems to me that one motor is powering down while the other is still working OK. This would induce a severe yaw effect until you power down so you also reduce the power of the "good" engine. Is this a good description?
Control surface settings from someone else may not necessarily help your plane. Do you fly with any reduced rates expo? Have you tried to increase expo to see if this helps. (Probably not since you mention "default" settings.) "Default" settings is sort of a misnomer. It's just what it is before you dial in rates and expo. Flying almost any plane without some rates and expo can seem twitchy. Which control surface seems "twitchy"?
For what it's worth, Although I have 3 different rates and expo dialed in for AIL and ELE, I typically use something like 70% rate with 30% expo and a little higher rate for rudder, mostly for ground handling.

So it’s a new plane, I have had 3 flights, all very eventful.
The first flight was a simple take off and land affair to address some trim issues.

The second flight was a bit more adventurous, but the plane felt very soft with 30% expo on the “recommended” low rates. It also had a yaw issue that I thought I could attribute to the ESC being not synchronized. After the flight I put it on the bench and re calibrated the ESC after resetting them to factory defaults. I checked all throws and the flaps / elevator mix and all seemed spot on.

The third flight the take off was smooth as silk but once I put the gear up, the plane became very unresponsive, and still had a yaw issue, also my radio was squawking a low receiver voltage alert. The batteries were fully charged.
Only after I throttled down did the low voltage warning clear, but the plane still felt like it was on a delay to react. I managed to get it turned around and landed but lost the nose gear in the process. On the ground, both packs which are new, were at 4.01 volts after I landed (in the air for about 2.5 horrific mins). All surfaces seemed to work without issue, and I ranged checked it and all was fine.

So the only thing I can think of is its a BEC issue or an issue with the ESC its connected to.

This weekend I want to give it another try. So, I have done the following:

• Repaired the damage from flight 3
• Replaced the ESC with a new Jeti ESC
• Two new batteries
• Y harness for the batteries and ESC's

Fingers crossed, i so want to enjoy this plane and feel like its a good easy flyer