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T28 Carbon Z… Not mine but I got to fly it!

A couple weeks ago I got a call from my flying buddy, Kelly.  It went something like this.

“If I were to buy this T28 Carbon Z… could you store it for me?  Oh, and would you have a battery or two for me to try?  Oh, and could you program my DX-8 to work with this thing?… Not that I’m necessarily going to buy it!”  Right….

Of course I said, “Yes, yes, yes… and bring it over tonight and we’ll get it setup”.  As you can guess, he did and we did!  Here’s what we’ve learned after approximately a dozen flights.

First of all, we took the airplane out with a completely stock setup and tried a few flights with a couple 6S 4000mah battery and while the plane flew nice… it ate batteries at a prodigious rate!  We were lucky to get a 6 minute flight and the batteries were down to dangerously low levels to even get that much.  Horizon recommends 3500-5000mah batteries and claims 8 minutes flight times for a 5000.  We have since found that the 8 minute flight time on a 5000mah is a reasonable estimate however I can’t imagine anyone being happy with a 3500 pack in the airplane so don’t waste time or money on the smaller packs… just go straight to the 5000s… or maybe slightly larger!  Kelly got a few flights today with some new 6S 5300 Glaciers and was much happier with the 7-8 minute flights with 30% or so left on the packs!

The plane flies extremely smoothly with great stability and recent forays into the flaps down/low speed arena kept Kelly smiling all afternoon…  Also, flying at slower speeds helps extend the flight times!  Win/Win!

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So here’s a few quick tweaks we’ve applied to this point.

First, since we always try to set up a throttle safety/kill switch, that became the first order of business.  In order to get things to work correctly, the throttle cut had to be set to a value of 30…  a bit odd but it works great!  If you leave the default value and power up the airplane with the throttle cut enabled you get a surprise when you turn it off.  The prop starts to turn slowly… sort of a nice low idle!  Since plugging in the battery with the throttle kill set to off/run mode sort of misses the whole point, I recommend you set the kill to 30!  Of course this may vary with other models or types of radios.

Next, we needed to reverse the gear channel to get the switch working the directly we wanted on this bird.  That may sound like just a personal choice but I mention it because it may seem a bit confusing if you’ve not been lucky enough to mess with electric retracts before.  Since electric retracts tend to just stop when meeting a heavy resistance, you may not realize which position the switch is in until you take the load off the gear and flip the switch back and forth a couple times.  Not a big deal but take the time to play with the gear a bit… and who could resist that anyway… to see how this works and make sure all is happening the way you expect.

Third, in order to maximize flight time without endangering the batteries, we installed a telemetry module and attached the voltage sensing lead to the speed control connection.  You can do this a couple ways.  There are harnesses available from Horizon you can insert in line between the battery and speed control or you can simply strip back a little insulation on the speed control wires and tack solder them in… just be sure to protect the exposed wiring when you are done so no unexpected sparking and smoke is likely to happen!  The telemetry module runs fine off of the included receiver, which is great.  We set the warning tone to kick in at 20.5V…  Under load this seems to equate to about 30% battery left when it starts to beep.  This gives you very reasonable amount of flight time left over to make that perfect approach.

So, up to now, the T28 Carbon Z seems to be a hit…. as long as you stay with a large pack!  My limited flight testing indicates it flies… well, like a T28!  I prefer the Carbon-Z Cub but the T28 is the best AS3X equipped plane I’ve flown.  I’d love to try it without to compare.  It doesn’t have the power to weight ratio that the Cub does,  but it can climb quickly on the wing and do nice scale maneuvers.  It also looks beautiful in the air.

It certainly seems Horizon may have another great aircraft in the lineup.  It may seem a bit pricey… but you get retracts, a nicely detailed cockpit and a great looking and flying aircraft for the price with no real deficiencies that I’ve found…  right out of the box.  That is what an ARF should be.

 

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Cubs (and other slow flyers) Fly In at MCRCC… and a RC SAR mission at our field.

This last weekend found a group of us visiting  (once again) the guys at the Monroe County RC Club.  We made the hour trek to the MCRCC field arriving at about 9:30 AM.  By 10 we were flying a couple carbon cubs, a 1.20 4 stroke  powered “big yellow cub”, and one quad.  I personally got in 3 good flights on the Carbon Cub before the weather turned wet and very breezy.  Our last flights of the day (just after lunch) were a couple of glider tow flights.  During the last of these, Steve Howard piloting his KA-8 ran into some trouble as the headwinds that preceded the heavy rain showers forced an “off site” landing.  Other than that, we had a good time visiting the guys at Monroe County.  For $10, including lunch (which seemed to consist of hot dogs specially blackened on one side…. I must get the recipe 😉 ) it was a good time and the folks there were welcoming and friendly as always.  We are all looking forward to their fall float fly coming up this fall.

Steve took a walk in the corn to retrieve his glider and as you can see it came out unharmed… though Steve was a bit damper for the experience.

Hmmm….  He’s in here somewhere….

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Well at least the plane is coming out!

 

 

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Ah, it brought Steve out too… excellent!

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Martin Hooks did a couple flights with his camera equipped quad and provided this video overflight.  It’s an interesting perspective to watch the flights this way and see an aerial vantage point passing over the runway and surrounding areas.

Of special interest to those of us who might have had the experience of walking through the woods/cornfield/etc… looking for a down plane, take a look in the video at the views of the corn fields… you can see all the way to the ground between the stalks for quite some distance.  This works over beans, corn, trees, etc… to varying degrees and requires much less damage to the crops and far less trudging about!!

Earlier the same week we went out to our field and retrieved a Sport Cub (40″ +/- wingspan) from the bean field.  I had searched for an hour or so by standing on top of my explorer looking out over the beans… and even deploying field glasses but couldn’t get enough height to get food visibility.  With Martin’s quad, he was up for 30 seconds or less before we located the aircraft which was only 6 steps off the airfield!  I had been standing 20′ from it on top of my truck and it wasn’t visible!  Hint to airplane guys… make friends with the camera equipped quad guys… they can really rescue you!!  I know George, the owner of the plane, was very happy to get his aircraft back!!

Here’s a quick snapshot of Martin and his quad with the recovered cub.

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Club Fly In – Too much fun!

Saturday we had a little fly in at the field and while I don’t imagine we made much money for the club it was a lot of fun.  I don’t know what kept folks away.  Just a busy weekend I suppose, but I highly recommend this sort of laid back… just come out eat, fly and enjoy… type of event!

We had the good fortune to have some guys come down and visit with us from the Viehe RC Flyers in Lebanon, IN.  One of the gentleman, David Gulliver, brought along his big beautiful B25 “Lady Lil” built from Ziroli plans.  It spans 101″, weighes in around 34 lbs and is powered by a pair of Zenoah 26s as well as sporting electric powered retracts by Down and Locked.  David uses a Spektrum DX-18 for control.  Here’s some shots of this sweet bird.

Here’s a shot of the cockpit and nose art…

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And here is the crew getting it ready to go…

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And up she goes!

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She makes a pass… up close and personal!

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Banking in for a strafing run??

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A photo pass for the crowd…

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We all enjoyed the visit from David and his buddies from the Lebanon area.

Though I don’t think we had any aircraft to match this big beautiful bird… we had lots of fun as well.  At a couple times during the day we got out the Limbo poles and the stick and cup to try our hands at some Fun Fly events…

Here’s Steve with a nice stick break… as you an see his earlier limbo pass was not quite as successful!

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(photo courtesy of Steve Kessler)

Here’s my stick break, a limbo and my spot landing (using the stick holder as a target) with what has quickly become my go to airplane… The Carbon Z Cub… without AS3X of course!

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(photo courtesy of Steve Kessler)

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(photo courtesy of Steve Kessler)

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(photo courtesy of Steve Kessler)

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(photo courtesy of Steve Kessler)

Still our “new guy” at the field… Gary Miller took up his Corsair.  This may be his most successful landing with it do date!  (… that’s nothing I wouldn’t say to his face…)

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Of course he is already plotting the repair and return to the sky!

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There were lots of other airplanes up during the day… this P-51 had an on board sound system that mimics engine startup and level flight as well as machine gun sounds!

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Dusty the crop duster was spotted over the field!!

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This cool toolbox made an appearance…  Yes, the owner had a P-40 but it didn’t make it to the field this trip!

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Vern gets a visitor up no the buddy box for a no stress first flight.

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I don’t think much of the trainer’s chances if the Mustang on his six decides to take him out!!

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As I hope you’ve gathered by now… be had a great time and the weather couldn’t be much better for early August in Indiana!  A light breeze, 85 degress and sunny with just a bit of humidity.

More fun than humans should be allowed to have.  Did I mention the burgers, dogs, baked beans, chips, pop… etc…  I hope we will continue to have events like these and we can find a way to make a bit of money from it in the future.  This is what an RC club should be about.

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Very odd failure of a Spektrum RC AR9000

My flying buddy Kelly has one of the Top Flite P-40 Giant Scale ARFs.  It’s a beautiful plane and if you are interested in this size and type of aircraft (50cc giant scale warbirds) I encourage you to check it out.  It is a well built and good flying aircraft that shows that the designer has learned from the earlier models in the line and made some important upgrades that make this airplane fly nicely but also hold up well to a few “imperfect” landings and hang together.

Last year, he came to the field and while assembling the plane as usual noticed something disconcerting.  After powering up the radio system with the plane fully assembled and ready for flight the flaps began jumping around in a random manor!!  After dis-assembly, some testing and no flight whatsoever that day… (sometimes you have to wonder why we do it) we determined that the flap channel (6) was always affected, regardless of which servo we plugged into it.  Off the receiver went to Spektrum for repair.  They did whatever it is they do and pronounced it good to go with no problem found.  They also “tossed” in at no charge a “software” upgrade while they had the receiver which was nice.

When we reinstalled, we did not see the issue again until… you guessed it, another day at the field and another day with no flying!!  Now, I don’t blame Spektrum for missing the issue with this receiver as they did not have one key bit of information.  What we discovered this time is that channel 6 only has an issue when channel 5 (landing gear) is at a particular extreme.  In this case, down.  I have further determined that it is the receiver and not the radio at fault as we removed the receiver and bound it to my DX-8 and saw the same issue.  Here it is with just the receiver under test, a 2S A123 as a power source and my DX-8.  I also show a meter to display the voltage to the receiver so there’s no question that the power supply is out of range.

Check out the video here: AR9000 Video

Apologies for the focus issues, but you’ll see that the servo attached to AUX1 remains perfectly still until I flip the gear channel and then the “twitching” begins.  I show this not to pick on Spektrum but to simply display a very strange failure mode I have never seen before and spark some thought processes that might save an airplane or two.  I

When you do your ground check, do you check with the various channels at full throw? With the gear up and down?  etc…  You may want to occasionally go through a “full throw” check if you can.  This may require someone holding the airplane or a stand if your setup involves retracts.  I think I am going to start doing an occasional control surface check with other surfaces at extremes.

I’m convinced that this would have meant a crashed P-40 if the problem had only shown up with gear up… i.e.  Nothing at all would have been wrong until the plane was airborne and he hit that switch to raise the gear.  Having the flaps randomly jumping back and forth in mid flight and with no clue as to why the plane started wildly pitching up and down would have likely been catastrophic.  It may be a very rare occurrence but you can be sure I am going to do the most thorough surface movement checks I can devise on all my aircraft in the near future.

I’ll add commentary to this post or perhaps do a “part 2” when I get this back to Spektrum and get their feedback.  For now the P-40 is ready to fly again with a different Spektrum receiver.

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What does Geotex runway have to do with a float fly??

So normally a Geo textile runway has little to do with a trip to attend the twice-annual float fly at Lake Lemon, just North of Bloomington, IN.  But in this case, the outing was dual purpose.  Let me explain.

There has been an ongoing discussion at my “home” RC club about the possibility of putting down a Geotex runway at our field.  As usual with any group of humans, opinions vary widely on the topic from complacent acceptance of whatever is under the wheels… to those who think laying down some fabric on a small portion of the runway is going to destroy civilization as we know it… to those who think it would be a great addition to the field and are anxiously awaiting the installation!  I will admit to being a proponent of giving it a try but I’m not predicting it will be the ultimate solution for everyone that some seem to be hoping for.

“So how does this relate to a float fly?” you are probably asking yourself at this point.  The answer is that the folks that are running the float fly are members of the Monroe County RC Club and they have had a Geotex runway for 2 years now.  Since I was definitely planning on attending the float fly anyway and wanted to get a first person look at the surface I sent out an email to the MCRCC officers and explained that I intended to come down to the float fly and wondered if they would mind if I and a few buddies stopped by the MCRCC club field and did a little examination and flying from their runway.  I quickly got a couple of very welcoming emails giving permission for our visit so I gathered up some interested fellow RCers and planned our trip.

Surprisingly 2 of the party of 5 didn’t even plan on flying at the float fly!  They just wanted to see the runway and I guess figured watching us crazy people flying RC planes off of water was just a bonus!

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Here’s the visitors…. from L to R.  Martin Hooks, George Horning, Corey Lucas, Steve Woods and I was behind the camera.

So here is a quick rundown of the runway…

The installed fabric sits at a level just slightly below the grass which resulted in a very smooth roll from the grass to and from the material.  The Geotex runway at MCRCC is about 29′ x 150′ which was very adequate for small electrics and glow up to 40-60 size based on our trial flights.  We flew the micro T28 from ParkZone, it’s bigger (42″) brother, the FlyZone Beaver of a similar size, a glow powered Revolver and finally did taxi only tests with my 50cc powered Wildhare Slick.  It was not ready for flight that day but taxi tests from just rolling to tail off the ground running on the mains was sufficient for what we had in mind.  The observations of the group were mostly positive.  The runway seemed to be a bit bumpy for the smaller aircraft (we were later told it had not been rolled yet this year but can be, and probably will be soon).  My feeling is that I could wish for something a bit longer and maybe a bit wider to allow for “cheating” into the wind when it is inevitably not aligned with the runway… but it was adequate as is.  Otherwise, other than getting used to taxiing on a “smooth” surface, it was especially nice for the smaller aircraft.  Aircraft like the micro T28s that just can’t take off from our grass runway at all, and the larger T28 that with stock gear is more likely to flip over than roll out on landing at our field, were certainly in their element on this surface.

The most informative part of the visit though was when we moved onto the float fly site and met and discussed the runway material with several MCRCC members.  I have been a bit skeptical that we might need to do some grading to lay down our own Geo textile runway but they did little or no such work at MCRCC.  With only roundup and “scalp” level mowing they have had no issues with laying the material down over what they had and have had no issue with it coming up, erosion, wind or whatever.  Apparently even when overrun with flood waters a couple feet deep the material stayed put with just the standard staples holding it in place!  They also related that they had been through a very contentious process and that the vote to lay down the material had passed by a mere two votes!  One gentleman was kind enough to relate that he had been a very vocal opponent of the project but was now a convert and was very happy that he had stood up at a later meeting to say that he was wrong and that he now enjoys the Geotext runway as much as anyone.  We have some very strongly opposed folks at our club as well but after visiting with these folks and bringing up all of the objections I had heard from our own members, I was left with the feeling that none of those concerns are really valid based on the experience of these folks.

According to the folks present, the runway is now a big hit with almost every member with some of the (previously) most adamantly opposed now enjoying the benefits.  The visit helped allay my own fears that we might be wasting money on something that would need a lot of maintenance or might not work well over our (perhaps rougher) surface.  It is certainly not a done deal that we will move forward with the project, but I feel pretty good that the cost to do it this way is low and even a failure will just result in a need to roll it all up and reseed… If we are successful, it seems like we might even attract more of the small electrics/park flyer crowd and open up some new options for our members including more retractable gear aircraft.  There was a lot more conversation about things like how to repair damage, rolling, re-inserting staples that push up… etc… but the general tone was that they had found that most of these issues are easily handled.

Moving on to the float fly, it was fairly breezy with some swirling air making the flying a little more “bouncy” but really not bad.  I suspect the wind direction (quartering from behind us as we stood looking out at the lake) worked to our advantage since the large hill behind us did much to block the wind.  I flew the Carbon Cub through 4 batteries with nothing untoward occurring and did some prop hanging and aerobatics to the applause of some nearby “party barge” occupants that were hanging about a hundred yards or so off shore.  Landing with the wind gusting and waves to play with was really fun.  With the reliability of the electric power plant and the nimbleness of my AS3Xless Carbon Cub allowing for some sweet splash and goes, spot landings and long wave-top hopping skims it was hard to wipe the grin off my face during and after each flight.  I also flew the Flyzone Tidewater which handled the waves and taxi duties great but was a handful in the air with a continuing tendency to dive as throttle is applied.  I later figured out the engine pod was leaning forward with increased throttle and did some repairs to help reinforce it.  I have since flown it a bit more off grass and it greatly improved and so I am looking forward to a future float fly to give it some more air time.

Corey flew his Beaver on at least 2 occasions and Steve was able to get a good flight in on his cub after some early issues were resolved.  Martin flew his Quad a bit and captured this image showing my Carbon Cub on a landing approach.

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The Carbon Cub on a nice smooth approach for landing at Lake Lemon…

I’m pretty sure everyone enjoyed the day immensely and I for one am looking forward to (fingers crossed) a successful Geo Textile runway install AND another visit to the fall edition of the MCRCC float fly event at Lake Lemon.  Thanks so much to the officers and members of Monroe County RC Club who allowed us to visit their field and participate in their event.

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Packs, Chargers, Power Supplies and more – Generators

After realizing that my budget generator would not run my new power supplies, I did some checking and found that this was a common issue with generators that did not include an inverter.  Without this feature, the generator does not create a proper sine wave AC output and some devices will not tolerate the “dirty” power thus created.  Of course Inverter generators are MUCH more expensive but also typically come with some very advantageous features as well… At least most do.

The things I thought were most important to consider aside from the clean power output included weight, noise limiting, some additional power (wattage), quality and of course price!  I quickly decided I wanted something in the 1500+ watt range, under 50 pounds if possible, and as good quality as I could get at the best price.

This quickly got me to a short list including Honda, Yamaha, Champion and a few others including a unit by Westinghouse.  The Honda and Yamaha seemed to be the real leaders among those who use these a lot but they are pricey as well.  If the extra money was the only way to get there, I’m willing but I won’t go there without good reason so I did some further comparison.  It also helped that one of the local club members has a Honda that I was able to borrow and use for a couple weeks.  In the end I took a chance on the Westinghouse for the following reasons.

While the Honda worked wonderfully, was quiet and is reportedly very reliable… I didn’t see enough positive difference to negate the $430 price delta between this and my eventual choice.  Similarly, the Yamaha was eliminated for the same reason.  The Champion, when I saw it at a local store, was a bit larger and heavier than I wanted and there were some reports, including some videos available on the web that claimed it was a significantly noisier than the Honda or Yamaha.  I’ve been around enough generators that I can attest to the fact that the power available from your generator can make you very popular at the field… but the noise level it creates can even more quickly make you a social pariah… relegated to the far reaches of the field.  I added a last minute addition to the possibilities when I saw that the local Harbor Freight offered a unit half the price of the Honda but quickly eliminated it when I saw it was listed as 20lbs heavier as well.  I can’t fly my airplanes from my bed with a thrown-out back and I don’t want to waste a bunch more space on a cart or other method to make it easier to move about.

In the end I chose the Westinghouse.  At 60% of the price but almost exactly the same weight and with reportedly similar sound levels it checked all the boxes.  1800W continuous/ 2200W peak power output, ~40lb, economy mode, low oil protection, etc…  I also appreciate the fact that while I realize that the Westinghouse name on the front is not indicative of the company that I recall from my youth… the engineering team behind this unit is located in Wisconsin and there are few opportunities in this hobby to support “locally” designed if not built products.  So here’s my experience with the Westinghouse WH2000iXLT.

First and foremost it does exactly what I purchased it to do.  My power supplies run with no issue behind the Westinghouse.  Further, it has started within 2 pulls or less every time so far.  In a side by side test, the difference in sound between the Westinghouse and my friend’s Honda is not discernible.  Some claimed the Westinghouse was louder and others said they could not tell a difference.  With the econo mode off on both units so that they ran at full RPM, I thought the Westinghouse was louder as well, though it was slight.  The only drawbacks I’ve seen so far are that both the oil and gas fill seems to be a bit more difficult than they need to be.  The oil fill is hidden under a hatch and pretty much requires a small extension spigot that comes with the generator.  The gas cap is smallish and the opening underneath even smaller so that it seemed difficult on first fill to get gas into the unit without slopping it all over the case but with the long run time between gas fills, I don’t expect to do it frequently.  Still it would be nice if it were easier.  Both these “complaints” are a bit nit picky as they aren’t going to be every day issues for me but I wanted to mention them for those who might consider this unit.

Overall I am very happy with the Westinghouse so far.  I’ve used it on 4 or 5 trips to the field so far and it is performing better than I expected and pretty much as advertised.  It’s light enough for me to move around easily, quiet and easily cranks out the power I need with quite a bit to spare… or share!  Barring problems, I am very please with the Westinghouse unit and even happier to have the extra $400 still in my wallet that I would have otherwise spent on the more expensive units.  I’m not normally very price conscious when it comes to my hobby gear as I enjoy a really good quality product and would rather pay extra for high quality than risk being disappointed but I have to say, so far, this is one bargain that seems to have come with no real drawbacks.  A win-win if ever I’ve seen one.

Here is a link to the Westinghouse on Amazon.  Check it out for yourself.

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