Blog
27/03/08
Just treated myself to a dremel, have owned a cheap version for sometime and hardly ever use it, its gutless...the slightest pressure brings it to a halt, so prefer doing almost everything by hand. Now a proper dremel, well that's something else, got loads of torque and I can finally see why everyone raves on about them, will be using it all the time from now on.
Glued a v-tail onto a new hydra fuselage just now, I use a 105 degree V board with the v-tail shucks trimmed to fit around the back of the fuse, this holds the v-tail at exactly 0 degrees. The v board is aligned on my building bench with some pencil marks, so its a simple matter to align the fuse with the wings mounted, on to the table, then alter the height between the front of the fuse and the building table to get the correct decalage on the incidence meter clamped to the wing root. A bag of sand weights everything down nicely until the glue sets, trying zapadapagoo on this one rather than long set epoxy that I usually use, well got to experiment!
Decided that the home page needs to earn its keep, so will put news of recent updates
on there from now on, and will think of other ways I can make it more useful.
18/03/08
Lots of flying and building going on, my Jart is struggling for bench time, but a little progress has been made.
After securing the wing and stab into position with ca, I cut some glass sheet (off cuts from a mold) to form the leading and trailing edges of my fillets. Wetted out 15 or so glass tows and squished them into the wing fuse join as the base of each fillet. Next I cut some bias 6oz glass strips and put 3 layers on top of the tows all round, inside too. Once this lot had cured it was given a good sanding then some epoxy thickened with fillite and a bit of colodial silica was smeared on with a piece of 28mm copper pipe, tidy up the over smear and again leave to cure. Once hard this stuff sands fairly easily to form a nice smooth fillet, there is still a few small holes that will need some body filler in but the basic shape is there. Am now just about at the filling/sanding/priming stage, might have it ready for the Autumn winds!
09/03/08
Have been back to my local, newly found little ds site again, bit less wind this time at around 25mph. It worked great, and a bit more confidence along with a few more hours practice on the sim has given me a big step up. Still have a great deal to learn, but really feel I am on the right path now after having spent around 3hrs almost constantly dsing yesterday. After a few warm up circuits I made my first 10 consecutive circles behind the hill with my Nitro, and managed several more 10`s during the afternoon. Sometimes though I made a mistake and ran out of energy, just managing to limp back over the brow of the hill to the safety of the front side slope lift. This site has given me some good knowledge and targets to aim for, and much the same as Norman found, once on the right slope with the right wind it all seems to come together quite rapidly. I think that having some clearly set out goals is helping me and also keeping me motivated, so will aim to up my consecutive circuit record on each outing, until I can do 50 or so, along the way will hopefully gain some insight into optimizing my flight path and regularly hitting the same spots, seems like a good way to keep it interesting anyway, until I get a speed gun.
03/03/08
Went for a fly on Saturday, took my Burp and Nitro, just the two as it was a
good mile walk from the van to the slope. Wind was good, 30mph gusting 40
and flew the burp for a while, its a little rocket that thing is.
Flew the nitro next, great energy plane for big half pipes and loops,
was carrying plenty of lead which helped. In between flights got to thinking
what that hill on the horizon would be like, kind of looked ds-able, winds
in the right direction, what the hey, lets go for a walk. It was another
1.5-2 miles further on so a bit of a trek, its all good exercise though
right?
Got there in the end, (I am no expert on the subject but have had the
odd attempt over the last two or three years, generally a dive down the back
quickly followed by a walk in the same direction) checked out the back
of the slope, seemed nice and calm, fairly narrow ridge about 20-25ft and
probably 150ft ish drop either side and quite steep/well, steep enough.
Ticks in all the right boxes, how come I haven't tried this hill before?
30mph plus wind though, far stronger than I want for learning.....I will fly
the front slope and see what happens.
Wind was not quite on but managed to gain 100ft or so, walked back a bit
so my head was roughly where I thought the shear layer was, and went for it.
An aggressive dive down the back, turn and back out, was quite high off the
slope as I hit the shear layer, but the plane wagged a bit, shrieked and
visibly accelerated as it flew by me and over the brow of the hill into a
big stall turn on the front, then repeat, over and over. Wow this is fun,
haven't been able to do that before.
Gained a bit of confidence after practicing this for a while, so went
for a turn as soon as I hit the shear, round again and out for a stall turn
on the front, some of the circuits were nice and the first time I got a bit
lower to the hill, 15ft or so, the plane made a loud whump as it went
through the shear, thought I broke it the first time it happened as was used
to the wag and shriek. Managed a few whumps, but it was very hard to get the
plane in just the right place every time, comes with practice I guess. Had
to land out a couple of times when it all got out of shape and lost energy,
but its a tough little plane, just pulled it out of the ground, climbed back
up the hill and tried again. My best was three consecutive circles before
fear/panic/the need to relax for a few seconds .. set in. It started
raining, it rained harder, it was getting darker, hmm better go home then.
The 2.5 or so mile walk back to the van in strong wind and rain passed
quickly, I hardly noticed, and had a smile on the whole way home.
Wow...WOW.. that was a fun afternoon, and so unexpected. Was very determined
to crack it this year, and have spent a good 20hrs or so dsing on the flight
sim, but today, that much wind, never thought it would happen, or the Nitro
would die trying. Totally stoked.
The videos don't come close to the real thing, its just so much better
than you even imagine, the fun has begun.
10/02/08
Had a fun afternoon flying with Rob recently. we took a boot full of planes up to one of my local hills to teach ourselves to DS. The hill has good potential and I have managed a few circuits with my Backdraft a couple of years ago at this spot, but don't really get up there enough to get the hang of it. The wind was kind of sinky and we both struggled to gain enough height for a confident dive to the backside, we certainly had some fun with some trees in front of us though, both finding a nice groove with our foamies. Might consider getting one of those collapsible flag poles for future tree line fun, as we both ended up giving a tree a good shake to get our planes back. Must remember to take a dlg next time I go up there, would have had a ball with that.
Finished the Burp, just need some wind for a test fly now, looking like I might have to wait a week or so. It has come out at around 21ozs so it wont be a floater, should be fun though.
28/01/08
Added a new plane, a plank wing called Burp, based on crashed 60" fuselages, well it saves throwing them away. Started it a while ago, so am keeping to my new year resolutions, got quite a few started planes actually, gives me a choice of what to do when I go into the workshop. Have worked mainly on a new 60"er to replace my Dynamite this week though, molds are nearly done, so will soon be making a few parts. Have also added an update on the Nitro page as I have been flying it a lot lately, my most flown plane this winter.
20/01/08
Pushed on with the Jart a bit this week, holes in the fuse for wings and stab so it has been test flown around the front room...with suitable jet noises too of course. Fitted a ballast tube in this one to hold 36ozs of lead, doesn't mean I have to use it all, but now I'll have the option. Its around 45ozs so far so looking like a flying weight of around 60-65ozs when finished. The fuselage was the weak point on my first one, so have improved on its durability this time, getting the hang of wet seams will have helped too. Stab is lighter than my original as I think I over engineered the first one, should be less inertia acting on the fuselage when I have a sudden loss of momentum now. Also the wing has been improved, at least I think it has, the first one was tough but this one has stepped up a notch, 25mm mahogany leading edge from a conservatory sill, 9 oz uni-carbon lay up which is doubled at the root and 6oz glass all over to give me a sanding layer if needed. The wing is lower in the fuselage on this one, because it looks cool, will also give me the space to make some nice big fillets around the wing too. Wing is also 20mm forward to increase the tail moment a bit as my first one had a pronounced wag when going cross wind with an aft cg.
Added a new page on the planes section about my new Nitro-whee, its a work in progress but have decided to finish the Jart first to give me more of an idea on how heavy to make the Whee. Doing a build thread on it here.
12/01/08
New year resolutions, they are a joke but here I go anyway:
-
No new projects until all the existing ones are flying
-
Learn to design better and faster planes, this is gonna mean learning to draw in 3d
-
Make the planes I build look better, so will be blowing the cobwebs off the airbrush and start learning how to use it properly
-
Get better at flying my faster, nicer looking planes
What I really want to do is learn to DS, been messing with it for a couple of years now and am just not improving. Tried getting in touch with some well known DSers to no avail, joined whitesheet last year and went to whumpacrump a few times to watch, but there was never anyone there, so this year am resigned to teaching myself. The planes are coming together, will soon have several planes DS capable if I can just get round to finishing them off. Getting quite good at it on the simulator too, it is quite a lot harder in reality but cant do me any harm. Found loads of places locally with potential, most of them involve trees but its still DSing. Got a mega bungee to launch with, dynema kite line 220kg breaking strain, 10mm bungee elastic, in the school field the planes launch like a rocket, so now have to make and fit tow hooks then get some tree climbing practice going as its sure to come in handy.
22/12/07
Merry Christmas and happy new year. Its that time again, time off work to fly and build stuff, and I certainly have a busy workbench. Lots of new projects being started and nothing getting finished, sounds like a new year resolution forming.
Jart wings and stab have been bagged, also started building a new 60 incher based on the rear part of a shooting star fuselage, have learnt its probably easier to start from scratch. Its coming on ok though, might get the molds done by the end of the year. Building a Nitro derivative also, heavy fuselage lay up and some little thin wings, should be a fun plane with a heavy wing loading to see just what my local slopes will support in a good blow.
03/11/07
Its official, summer time is over as the clocks have gone back. You would not think so though, hot, sunny and very still, its perfect thermalling weather, not the full on slope winds you would expect this time of year. Guess it will blow sometime before Christmas, just have to be patient, get busy in the workshop and build up some spares ready for the big crash season ahead.
Have been a little distracted from slope flying lately. Bought a FSOne flight sim and a couple of boxes of depron in an attempt to learn some 3D stuff. Certainly good fun and the right weather for it, but also has its drawbacks. Needed to upgrade my video card, should of been easy but ended up with 2 months of computer hassle, lots of blue screens and no video playback or editing. Finally sorted it by using another card, better than the original but not as high spec as I first wanted, at least everything is working again and I can edit and post some videos. First one is on the wet seam page, bit of a monster download but it has everything that I wanted after lots of editing.
Currently on the workbench, my latest depron nasty ready for electrics, a rather heavy skua (46ozs) that I have finally got round to covering, the plan is to use it for dsing in strong winds so after repairs from a pylon race incident it got an extra layer of strapping tape and lots of goop, test launch in a too light wind resulted in a striped servo, knew I shouldn't of covered it nice. Lastly, a set of Jart wings spackled up with some hefty wooden leading edges, ready for sanding and bagging.
Archives
This site was last updated 03/26/08