Official FlightLine RC 1600mm Spitfire Mk. IX Thread

[davegee]

Thanks. The “too small” pilots we printed definitely bugged us, even though the prints and paint jobs came out great. This larger version looks much better now, to us, anyway.

[jetfool]

Awesome, great job you guys are doing.

[davegee]

Danger Dan and I have been working on some resizing of Max Grueter Spitfire pilot figures for our Spitties. The first ones I printed up looked nice, we both did a good job on painting them up realistically, but they just looked too small for this model. Just recently, I increased the size of the original pilots we installed by 15 per cent, and I think we are more in the ballpark now for how they should look. I flew my Spittie today, the one honoring Witold "Lanny" Lanowski who was a Polish pilot who flew with the RAF and later with the USAAF with the 56th Fighter Group. This model is still hanging in there going on 9 years old.

I'll attach a few pics I took today. I decided I wanted to use a different headsculpt and printed a different version of the Grueter figure, wearing an oxygen mask. The plane flew beautifully, especially after I replaced the faulty left aileron servo that was making the aileron flutter. It worked great today.

Cheers

Davegee

[Grossman56]

That makes sense, I now have Flight Modes set up on every plane in the hangar, I tried it on the Corsair and it's great. Big Beautiful Doll got it as well last weekend. I'm a believer now!
I can see how that would be great with the F14 as well. I know one of the guys at the club, who is an excellent flyer, has one and had some difficulty transitioning from normal to swept wing configuration. I don't know whether he was using Flight Modes, but he was following RC Geeks recommendations.

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[Grossman56]

Ah, I see what you're saying. As someone who has never played around with flight modes, I can see the benefits from it. Setting the flap switch to activate flaps and flight modes makes sense.
Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[Hugh Wiedman]

The flap elevator mix is fairly simple if you set your radio up to trim the flaps on the fly. I recently found the video on just how to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAveSSW0rUQ

No more guessing and landing to readjust. Check it out.
The one thing I did find is that my NX 8+ trims the nose up if I push the slider up and down if I push the slider down, opposite to what he has. Check on the ground first to confirm which direction is which.

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

That's one way to do it, however, there is another that is much better and easier to do. I've found virtually all experienced pilots use this method (not saying I'm experienced, but they all taught me it-especially those flying big expensive turbines).

All Spectrum and most other TX's ket you set up Flight Modes (not to be confused with FM's on a Spektrum RX). Go to flight mode setup in the menu and select FM switch. Then select your flap switch. This gives you 3 FM's assuming you use say switch D, your 3 position flap switch (the IX TX's will give you 9 seperate FM's, but that's another story). Now go to Trim Utilities. Leave throttle as common digital, but on elevator change it to FM. Also do aileron to FM, rudder you can also, but not necessary as flaps won't affect rudder. You're Done!

What this does is at each flap position, you can separately trim both elevator and aileron in flight to your preference and it keeps those trims individually at each flap setting and allows you to adjust on each flight if you need to for changing conditions. The elevator compensation you initially set stay where you started, but those are just a guess starting point. Elevator is a must, aileron is suggested as well in case each flap does not deflect the exact same amount, which in my experience is the norm, not the exception.

This, IMO, is the SINGLE most beneficial TX setting for any aircraft with flaps. Forget setting up mixes as the above video suggests, use FM's for flap trimming as TX programmers intended it for, not just elevator but also aileron. Using mixes, how crazy, like using a 500 foot extension cord to plug a lamp in 2 feet from the outlet! Keep It Simple!

All my aircraft with flaps have this set up, one of the first things I do when setting up a new plane.
Takes me 1-2 minutes on a maiden to perfectly trim a new plane with flaps for consistent level flying in every position from then on, no landing, retrim, do it again for ever! And if you decide to alter any flap deflection later on, simple retrimming operation.
My 2 cents for the day.

[Grossman56]

The flap elevator mix is fairly simple if you set your radio up to trim the flaps on the fly. I recently found the video on just how to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAveSSW0rUQ

No more guessing and landing to readjust. Check it out.
The one thing I did find is that my NX 8+ trims the nose up if I push the slider up and down if I push the slider down, opposite to what he has. Check on the ground first to confirm which direction is which.

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[paladin]

the problem you are experiencing is CTE (coefficient of thermal expansion). the steel pushrod changes very little with temp. but the foam fuse expands greatly with temp. so i would bet the last time u flew it it was colder than today.

[Evan D]

Maybe a 1/8"? CG is about on the black pinstripe but it's not critical so +/- 1/4" at least.

[sillypilot]

Mine needs a bit of up too.

How much though? If I look at my elevator after trim, it is really up. Obviously without trim it is perfectly level. It's weird. Where is your CG?

[Evan D]

Mine needs a bit of up too.

[sillypilot]

Hi all - flew my plane 3-4 times and it seems to need a lot of up elevator trim (64 on a Spektrum radio) to get the nose to stay somewhat level. I even tried moving the battery back from the book CG to see if that was the issue, but still get it to want to nose down all the time. Flight surfaces all are level (flaps, ailerons) and everything looks aligned per the book. Any thoughts here?

[davegee]

Presale. me too.

Almost lost mine on the maiden in 2017. When we got it up in the air it would fly ok then suddenly do an uncommanded wingover, or try to. Finally got it on the ground and with another flight decided that something was messed up with the flap servos. Randomly, one flap would go full down, and then back up again, then the other. Totally crazy! I went to MRC about it and they said they had a few other people around the country that had the same thing. The fix was that they sent me two new flap servos, and I haven't had that problem since. They are still in there now.

[RRHandy]

Got mine 1 July 2017... 8 years. $349

Presale. me too.

[Evan D]

Got mine 1 July 2017... 8 years. $349

[davegee]

On real aeroplanes flaps produce lift and little drag for the first 10 to 15 degrees of movement. After that the drag produced increases significantly while any extra lift produced is negligible. At the same time as flaps extend the centre of lift of the wing moves rearward, therefore the nose drops. As mentioned Spitfire flaps are drag flaps, at full extension they have an angle of 89 degrees, if memory serves.

I agree with chabd. I have had my 1600mm Flightline Spit for 8 years now, and set them up from the beginning with scale positioning of flaps up or 85 degrees flaps down for landing. I have found this works very well for my model. And, it looks realistic and cool, too!

[Evan D]

And there was only full extension.

That said I do use them on the model as flaps and have them on a slider.

[chabd]

My experience with other planes is that deploying flaps produces lift , causing the nose to pitch up? Therefore down elevator is required. Does this Spit behave differently?

On real aeroplanes flaps produce lift and little drag for the first 10 to 15 degrees of movement. After that the drag produced increases significantly while any extra lift produced is negligible. At the same time as flaps extend the centre of lift of the wing moves rearward, therefore the nose drops. As mentioned Spitfire flaps are drag flaps, at full extension they have an angle of 89 degrees, if memory serves.

[paladin]

My experience with other planes is that deploying flaps produces lift , causing the nose to pitch up? Therefore down elevator is required. Does this Spit behave differently?

i agree with you 100%! BUT my flaps are all mixed now so i don't have direct visibility to this but my flightlog has in bold letters in the header "requires 16 clicks of up elevator with flaps". all my other planes have the click count in the pro's because they are as expected.

Joe

[Evan D]

The flaps on the real Spitfire are more airbrakes.