Siloam Springs RC Modelers

Another beautiful Wednesday and another afternoon where Bob could not be found at his desk With temperatures in the 50s, light winds, and cloud-free skies, I had to get out and do some more trimming on the Black Magic.
I got to the field about 1:15, and Kevin Sisco and Dennis Keigley were already out there. Dennis had his Alpha Trainer and his T-26 foamie electric, and he had already gotten a full day’s flying. Dennis flew his Alpha once while I was there, and he had a battery failure and crashed at the south end of the field. Bummer. Dennis said that he’d charged the batter 3-4 hours this morning with a wall-wart, but that was probably not enough for the 4 flights he put on it. Overnight charging is generally best before a flight session.
Kevin had his 50-sized Raptor helicopter, and I got to see him fly once. He is really getting good with that bird. I was doing loops and rolls and lots of inverted flight.
Mark Labadie, Bill Bergen, Max Freeman, Dan Stelljes, and Dave Husher all came out about 1:30. It has been a very long time since Dan has been out, and we were all happy to see him. He didn’t have a plane, but we were still glad to see him
Mark had his 40-sized Ultra Stick, and I think he flew twice. Bill may have had a plane, but it didn’t come out of the truck. Max, too, didn’t ever get anything out of the truck. The weather was nice, and we had a lot of people at the field, so Bill and Max kept busy visiting with the rest of us Dave had his electric Edge 540, and I saw him fly once.
Oh, I had my Black Magic out, and I’d done a bit of work on it since its maiden flight on Sunday: the fuel tank mounts had come loose, so I beefed those up. When I maidened it, it took 3-4 clicks of right aileron, which seemed weird, and I tracked that down to uneven incidence in the left stab and left wing (compared with the right stab and right wing). I evened all that up and removed reset the trim. I had also found that the plane require absolutely no elevator on inverted flight, which told me it was a bit tail-heavy. I used a different double prop nut that weighed 0.3oz more, which moved the CG forward slightly. I flew it the first time today, and the aileron trim was no longer necessary as I had hoped. The plane required a bit of elevator in inverted flight, which was much better also. I did notice that it now had a noticeable wobble in rolls (vertical and horizontal) and that it was not pulling to the canopy at all on downlines. That meant too much wing incidence to me, so after the first flight I took out half a turn of incidence on both wings. Since those are driven by 4-40 screws, that’s just 1/40 of an inch, which is not a heck of a lot I started right at 0.5 degrees positive, and I suspect I’m at 4.75 degrees positive now. That change made a world of difference, though: the rolls are axial now, and there’s a slight pull to the canopy on downlines. Yay! It flew very well, but I’m still long on my landings, because it floats more than I’m used to. I’ll get that worked out quickly, I hope. I also had problems with the Abbra on Sunday: it was running very lean, which prevented me from taking advantage of a really nice flying day. Mike and I checked it over really well and didn’t find anything other than the check valve on the fuel injector was a bit loose. It turns out that check valve is a press-fit over the injector and being loose it was allowing an air leak into the fuel stream. I found a post by Troy Newman on RCU saying that you could fly without the check valve, so I tried that Monday afternoon, and the engine ran great. I ordered a couple of new check valves, and the Abbra will be back in business this weekend. Whew! I was worried about needing to send it back to YS service. I’m glad it was a simple problem that was easy to fix.
Let’s see… Grover Parent and Ed Jordan both came out about 2pm. Grover had a new electric Reactor that he was ready to maiden. Dan went over it carefully and worked with Grover and Kevin to reduce the throws to more manageable levels Dan agreed to help Grover with the maiden, and that seemed to go very smoothly. Grover got into a bit of trouble once way south of the field and in a weird attitude. Luckily, Dan was able to pick up on what the plane was doing, and he got it back. Whew!
Ed had his spacewalker, and he was setting it up to fly as I was leaving at 3:30. I had a 4:00 meeting, but I wish I could have gotten in a couple more flights.
This weekend is looking pretty good. Get your stuff cleaned off and charged up, and come out. The time change is coming up in a little more than a week, which means more flying time in the afternoon! I’m ready for a bit of after-work practice, although it’s going to have to get warmer, too