HobbyZone Super Cub - Tell Me About It

[david212]

Originally Posted by AEAJR

So how much more do you want to pay for a better radio? $30 sound good for a good quality 3 channel radio? Get an Easy Star. That comes with a goo d quality 3 channel radio.

I have smaller grassy spots to fly smaller planes but i heard hte easy star takes larger spaces. the largest spot i can find is about 600 X 600 +/- feet is mostly a parking lot with a soccer field at one end. would the easy star be ok over cement parking lot?

[AEAJR]

600X600 is fine. More is better but that will do. That is about 4 square football fields.

YOu can land it on cement. I might suggest you tape or glue some kind of plastic on the bottom to handle the scuffing, otherwise you will just wear away the foam.

As you get better, you will be able to fly in 1/2 that space, but more space is always better.

[aircruiser]

Sorry AEAJR, I had deleted all my cub videos since they had no sound but here is a vid I put together after the crash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au5FRyPdO2U

[herk_1]

I finally maidened my Super Cub today. What a great plane!! It's a strong, stable flyer with plenty of power, and very easy to fly. And it handled winds of about four gusting to eight just fine; it felt as easy as if I were flying in no wind.

I started out with a rolling takeoff from a parking lot by a soccer field. I was resolved not to touch the pitch control on takeoff unless I really needed to because of an out-of-trim state. I didn't need to. The Cub took off and went into a nice moderate climb all by itself without the need for any control stick inputs at all. The only problem I had was that taking off into the wind also meant taking off practically into the sun, and there was a tense moment there where I couldn't see the plane as I crossed into the area I wanted to fly. That was poor planning on my part; I should have turned 270 degrees to the right to get to the soccer field instead of 90 degrees to the left (and thru the sun)!

This is the first RC plane I've flown that has a conventional rudder control surface (vs. a V-tail), and as a former pilot of real planes, I gotta say I really winced at the visual effect of turning the airplane that way. The rudder input just induces pure yaw on the plane. I guess it gets the job done of turning the plane, eventually, though apparently as a delayed aftereffect of the "yaw trauma"! I experimented a little, and found that it didn't look quite as bad, and seemed to turn a bit quicker, if I fed in a little elevator at about the same time as the rudder. I don't know why that would be though, since on a real airplane with ailerons you wouldn't feed in elevator until after a bank was established.

Approach-to-landings (I did two) were sort of shaky as a result of how lazy I've gotten with my Firebird Commander 2. With the FBC2, you just line her up on final and kill the power, then the airplane glides in and lands itself with only minor course corrections. But with the Super Cub, when trimmed for level flight at about half power, chopping the power to idle on final resulted in it getting alarmingly slow, and/or dropping too quickly. So I started feeding in power and working the elevator. Maybe with this plane you have to jockey the power and pitch control to maintain a good glidepath of an appropriate speed like you do on a real airplane. It wasn't really hard, it's just that I wasn't expecting it because like I say I have gotten lazy with the FBC2.

The best part is...I brought it home in one piece, ready to go out again!

[cbatters]

Congrats!!

Several thoughs:

1. I haven't noticed much difference between conventiinal tail and V-tail. Just two different configurations for controling hte plane.

2. Using rudder instaead of aileron to turn the plaane is accomplished by adding drag, which causes the plane to Yaw which then causes the wing to bank. (At high speed on the Challenger you can stand the plane up on a wing by giving it hard rudder.

3. If your speed is too slow the controls will get muushy - either drop the nose befoer turning or add some power

4. If you tape over the lower ACT sensor, the ACT SW becomes a dul rate control.

[The_Rookie]

Originally Posted by cbatters

Congrats!!

Several thoughs:

1. I haven't noticed much difference between conventiinal tail and V-tail. Just two different configurations for controling hte plane.

2. Using rudder instaead of aileron to turn the plaane is accomplished by adding drag, which causes the plane to Yaw which then causes the wing to bank. (At high speed on the Challenger you can stand the plane up on a wing by giving it hard rudder.

3. If your speed is too slow the controls will get muushy - either drop the nose befoer turning or add some power

4. If you tape over the lower ACT sensor, the ACT SW becomes a dul rate control.

Could you please explain in greater detail what the following means?

"4. If you tape over the lower ACT sensor, the ACT SW becomes a dul rate control."

Thanks!

[aircruiser]

Originally Posted by herk_1

I finally maidened my Super Cub today. What a great plane!! It's a strong, stable flyer with plenty of power, and very easy to fly. And it handled winds of about four gusting to eight just fine; it felt as easy as if I were flying in no wind.

I started out with a rolling takeoff from a parking lot by a soccer field. I was resolved not to touch the pitch control on takeoff unless I really needed to because of an out-of-trim state. I didn't need to. The Cub took off and went into a nice moderate climb all by itself without the need for any control stick inputs at all. The only problem I had was that taking off into the wind also meant taking off practically into the sun, and there was a tense moment there where I couldn't see the plane as I crossed into the area I wanted to fly. That was poor planning on my part; I should have turned 270 degrees to the right to get to the soccer field instead of 90 degrees to the left (and thru the sun)!

This is the first RC plane I've flown that has a conventional rudder control surface (vs. a V-tail), and as a former pilot of real planes, I gotta say I really winced at the visual effect of turning the airplane that way. The rudder input just induces pure yaw on the plane. I guess it gets the job done of turning the plane, eventually, though apparently as a delayed aftereffect of the "yaw trauma"! I experimented a little, and found that it didn't look quite as bad, and seemed to turn a bit quicker, if I fed in a little elevator at about the same time as the rudder. I don't know why that would be though, since on a real airplane with ailerons you wouldn't feed in elevator until after a bank was established.

Approach-to-landings (I did two) were sort of shaky as a result of how lazy I've gotten with my Firebird Commander 2. With the FBC2, you just line her up on final and kill the power, then the airplane glides in and lands itself with only minor course corrections. But with the Super Cub, when trimmed for level flight at about half power, chopping the power to idle on final resulted in it getting alarmingly slow, and/or dropping too quickly. So I started feeding in power and working the elevator. Maybe with this plane you have to jockey the power and pitch control to maintain a good glidepath of an appropriate speed like you do on a real airplane. It wasn't really hard, it's just that I wasn't expecting it because like I say I have gotten lazy with the FBC2.

The best part is...I brought it home in one piece, ready to go out again!

Glad to hear you had a succesful maiden!

I myself got about 8 batteries through my cub today. About 3 7 cells and 7 6 cells and no crashes either.

After having this plane for about 2 months I have gotten use to the controls and knowing how the plane will re-act. I know what you mean by going from the commander 2 to the cub because I did the same thing. I thought the thing was a speed demon when I first flew it. After having it for awhile, and having some time flying a stryker, the cub feels like a lazy flyer once again. It is a great plane to fly and I flew only once with the ACT on. And today I dropped a parachute guy for the first time out of it. It is a great plane. About two weeks ago my dad flew right through the cub on accident and it ended up like this.




And today I maidened it with the new fusalage, wing, and tail. I'm gonna post up a thread in general electrics to show how the build went and I will also have a how-to guide for putting in the battery.

Good luck all!



Oh, and I will have another video too!

[cbatters]

Originally Posted by The_Rookie

Could you please explain in greater detail what the following means?

"4. If you tape over the lower ACT sensor, the ACT SW becomes a dul rate control."

Thanks!

If you tape over the bottom sensor, it disables ACT even if the transmitter switch is in ACT mode. The the ACT switch then only controls whether you are getting full or reduced throws.


Clint

[herk_1]

Clint - I didn't know that the Cub's ACT included lower-rate control throws in addition to the anti-crash protection...I didn't read anything about that in the manual. I plugged the battery into my Cub to test it out, and sure enough, you are right, the control throws are less with ACT on. It is a very small difference though. For example, I measured the elevator maximum deflection at 1.2cm without ACT, 1.05cm with. Personally I'm going to just leave the ACT switch off; I flew that way yesterday and I'm comfortable with it.

The visual effect of the rudder that I saw on the Cub was dramatically different from the V-tail inputs I see on my Slo-V and FBC2. On the Cub, a rudder-control input makes the plane appear to rotate solely about an imaginary vertical rod placed thru the center of the plane (i.e. the yaw axis). On the Slo-V and FBC2, turn inputs cause movement mostly around the roll axis not the yaw axis, more like the effect of an aileron input on a "real" plane. I believe that a rudder causes a sideways "lift" effect similar to the plane's wings, only it acts on a vertical surface instead of a horizontal one. So with a left rudder input, you are causing the air to travel faster over the right side of the vertical stab and rudder, and the Bernoulli effect "sucks" the stab/rudder to the right, which rotates the airplane about its yaw axis.

aircruiser - Hey, do I understand you correctly that you are flying the Cub using the 6-cell batteries that are the stock battery in the Firebird Commander 2? What kind of flight times do you get, and does it marginalize power or anything? That would be great if I could use the 6-cells, because I have five of them, but I haven't bought any extra 7 or 8 cell batteries yet.

The_Rookie - Speaking as one newbie to another, I have to tell you that I found the Cub much easier to fly than the Slo-V. The Slo-V is so grossly underpowered that I almost always find it a chore to manage. It is routinely in a narrow envelope between having enough airspeed to fly, and being in a high angle-of-attack attitude near a stall. Keeping it safely in that narrow envelope, in addition to flying it where you want it to, is more work than fun (for me anyway). I have had the Slo-V for about three months now, and between the wind restrictions and the underpowered frustrations, I can count the number of times I have had fun with it on one hand, and have fingers left over. I took my Slo-V out yesterday morning before the winds kicked up, just to test the new fuselage that I had to install because I cracked the old one badly from so many nose-hits. Interestingly, I am still on the original prop, even though I have two spares. The nose hits didn't break that! (it was bent once, but I just bent it back) As far as I can tell, the original prop shaft and gearbox are just fine too. The carbon fuselage is the weak link in the system for the Slo-V (many other people online have mentioned that too). It was only eleven bucks for a new fuse, but it was a lot of work to replace it -- basically a complete tear-down/rebuild of the whole plane!

[cbatters]

FBC2 only apples up ruddervator to turn which is a cmobination or rudder and up elevator.

Challenger in expert mode applies up ruddervator and down ruddervator on the other ruddervator to apply "rudder" input without changing elevator. Full left/right control on the Challenger will cause it to roll over. Full left rudder plau up elevator will cause an abrupt snap turn.

All planes without ailerons turn by inducing L/R force in the tail, which results in yaw which changes lift in the wing causing the wings to bank/turn. Size of control surface, wing design and amount of dihedral all play a roll in how much the plane will bank.

Confident the V tail Challenger can turn sharper than the Super Cub just based on the design of the wing. But the Challenger can also turn as flat as the cub if you feed in enough up elevator during the turn.




Clint

[aircruiser]

Originally Posted by herk_1

aircruiser - Hey, do I understand you correctly that you are flying the Cub using the 6-cell batteries that are the stock battery in the Firebird Commander 2? What kind of flight times do you get, and does it marginalize power or anything? That would be great if I could use the 6-cells, because I have five of them, but I haven't bought any extra 7 or 8 cell batteries yet.

They run fullspeed at about 3/4 throttle of what a 7 cell would be. But they do give out enough power to get her in the air and make an enjoyable flight. Run times vary on how you fly. Yesterday I just cruised in circles and came down about 15 minutes later and then I had to put the light module on as the sunset and I was running full throttle and I landed about 9 minutes after take-off. We too have about 7 6 cells due to having 2 commanders and a challenger between me, my dad and my brother. My dad has also flown a stryker F27B on a 6 cell and it too is at fullthrottle where as a 7 cell would be at about 3/4 throttle. But you can easily fly a 7 cell plane on a 6 cell, as ong as you don't want top end performance.


Good Luck

-aircruiser

[herk_1]

Took up the Cub up again today and had another nice flight, in pretty strong winds, about 10 mph and steady. I even did a couple of loops! But when coming in for the landing I misjudged my glidepath and didn't quite clear the edge of a soccer field (which was higher elevation than the parking lot I was trying to land on) and hit the edge of the field with power on (I had pushed up the power to try to clear the edge), which broke the prop.

Can any of you Cub owners help me change this prop? I pulled off the spinner and I think that was already a mistake...it looks like some white rubber that was inside the spinner was held on by the prop nut, and that tore (but how else could you get the spinner off besides just pulling it?). Plus, that prop is on there really tight. I'm going to break or strip something else at this rate.

Edit: managed to get the prop off...sheesh! But what's with that spinner?

My 2nd Aerial Photo attempt with the FBC2 was better. But my Aiptek Pencam SD doesn't seem to want to take more than about 2 minutes 10 seconds of video; it should get more than that with a 128 meg SD card. At any rate, here's a still capture from the video, looking back at me (sorry, the camera needs focused).

[herk_1]

Hmmm...regarding that white rubbery material that apparently held the spinner on, is that some kind of glue? If so, what kind? (sorry, clueless newbie here!)

[The_Rookie]

Herk: thanks for the comments - and I love you flying area - mine (when I get my Super Cub) will be either rough fields, or a big yard

Based on all I have read over the last few weeks, looks like it is the super Cub for me.

I find it surprising that less folks spoke out for the T bird - I wonder why , older plane = boring I guess???

[aircruiser]

Originally Posted by herk_1

Hmmm...regarding that white rubbery material that apparently held the spinner on, is that some kind of glue? If so, what kind? (sorry, clueless newbie here!)

That white stuff is lock-tite also known as thread lock. It is most commonly found on R/C cars and trucks for holding the wheels on. A good investment would be to put more on before you go up again, just as a life-line. Happy flying!

Today my dad lost all power after dropping his parachute guy and he went in hard. Ripped the landing gear and battery compartment away from the plane. A little foam safe CA fixed her right up!

These are great planes!

[herk_1]

The Cub props seem to be made out of a harder, more brittle plastic than the Slo-V props, because like I said my Slo-V one bent but didn't break.

aircruiser - Thanks, Locktite goes on my list for the next LHS visit (I already got the foam-safe CA last time, and fortunately haven't had to use it yet)>

[aircruiser]

No problem!

It isn't a neccasity, more or less a backup plan.

Happy Flying!

[sgomes]

Hi guys, new here as well as to rc flying. Just broke the tail section of the fuselage completely off - only things holding it together were the control rods (my bad - flying that is, lol.). Anyway, I tried foam-safe CA (medium) to reattach the tail section. It seemed like the foam just sucked up the glue, and it did nothing at all to adhere the two sections of the fuselage together?? Then, was successful using 5-minute epoxy.

What did I did do wrong using the CA, since you all seem to be very successful using that?? Certainly a lot handier than epoxy - and I want to be prepared for my next mishap (which, if you knew me, you would agree is a certainty!!).

Also, I am having trouble gettin the packing tape to stick to the foam. Is there a particular brand - I'm using 3M?? Maybe my tape is old.

Actually, in reading this post I have come to believe that I may have the only Super Cub in existence that resistes adhesion!!

Anyway, looking forward to any help anyone has. Oops - sun is coming up! Time for flight #3. Will keep you posted.

Really enjoying this thread.

Steve

[Grasshopper]

Hi sgomes,

My neighbor told me he had the exact problem with CA. For what ever reason, it wouldn't adhear to his either. He switched to epoxy and all is well.

Kind of weird.

[sgomes]

Thanks, Grasshopper - I guess your neighbor has the other glue-resistant SC.

Well, Flight#3 was pretty eventful. Broke tail section, both wing struts, two props, and damaged fuse. around batt. comp. Actually, was able to stay aloft for probably around 2 mins. (seemed like much longer - not breathing!!). On the good side - all very fixable. Man, do I get nervous!!

Anyway, thanks to everyone here for emboldening me. Without those great pics. of battle-hardened, but repaired and still-flyable SC's, I don't think I would have had the courage to continue (yeah, I know, a little dramatic, but true).

Still one hour til the hobby store opens. Will keep you all posted.

Steve

[cbatters]

Originally Posted by sgomes

Thanks, Grasshopper - I guess your neighbor has the other glue-resistant SC.

Well, Flight#3 was pretty eventful. Broke tail section, both wing struts, two props, and damaged fuse. around batt. comp. Actually, was able to stay aloft for probably around 2 mins. (seemed like much longer - not breathing!!). On the good side - all very fixable. Man, do I get nervous!!

Anyway, thanks to everyone here for emboldening me. Without those great pics. of battle-hardened, but repaired and still-flyable SC's, I don't think I would have had the courage to continue (yeah, I know, a little dramatic, but true).

Still one hour til the hobby store opens. Will keep you all posted.

Steve

Few questions / suggestions :

1. How large is the field and what sort of hazards are surrounding the field? (trees / wires etc)

2. How much wind? (Even 5 MPH of wind makes flying much more challenging.)

3. How high were you flying? (Tendancy is to turn and keep the model too close/low which means even 1 small mistake puts you in the dirt.) Much better to climb to ~100' so you have time to recover from a small mistake.

If the field is on the small side, you can continue climbing while turning gently by pulling back on the stick while turning.



Clint

[sgomes]

Yeah, thanks Clint. The field IS small - about the size of a large high school baseball field, with trees surrounding it. unfortunately, I don't have many other options. I have been steadily trying to get the plane up higher, still scary - even though I totally get it that altitude is our friend. One thing that has helped a lot is the "stick to the low wing" advice for when the plane is coming toward me.

Also, I have removed the landing gear and the tube-thingy that attaches to the batt. comp. door, this for easy belly landings. I think this will save the fuse. around the batt. comp., until I get good enough to try landings with the gear in place.

Any other tips you have will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Steve

[Leo L]

Herk,

Nice to hear of your good flights with the SuperCub. I don't have one but several beginners at my field are flying them and their experiences have been great. Regarding your Slow-V, get the 7 cell battery that is made for the J3Cub/SuperDecathlon. To compensate for the extra weight set the wing all the way forward. Make sure that your transmitter is set to the high rate. Then wait till you have a calm day and try flying it. With the 7-cell battery the plane will almost go vertical.

I know a number of flyers, including me, that have had little or no success using CA on the foam planes. My latest attempt was to repair the fuselage of my Typhoon. No good with the CA; used the 5 min. epoxy with great results, as usual. My only complaint about the epoxy is that after a while, it gets discolored, which makes the repair that much more obvious. On the other hand, I know flyers who use CA all the time. Yesterday, two fliers at my field had a major mid-air collision. One was a Tiger Moth, the other a Stryker. The Tiger Moth's prop became imbedded in the Stryker's body. Results: Tiger Moth is a write off. A little CA and the Stryker was back in the air.

[Grasshopper]

You can also use Elemer's white of Carpenter's wood glue. Gorilla glue works good too. All of these will need to sit over night to cure properly but form a strong bond. It's best to tape or clamp the pieces to hold them till the glue cures.

[cbatters]

Originally Posted by sgomes

Yeah, thanks Clint. The field IS small - about the size of a large high school baseball field, with trees surrounding it. unfortunately, I don't have many other options. I have been steadily trying to get the plane up higher, still scary - even though I totally get it that altitude is our friend. One thing that has helped a lot is the "stick to the low wing" advice for when the plane is coming toward me.

Also, I have removed the landing gear and the tube-thingy that attaches to the batt. comp. door, this for easy belly landings. I think this will save the fuse. around the batt. comp., until I get good enough to try landings with the gear in place.

Any other tips you have will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Steve

In order to be successful flying in a small area surrounded by trees you need to get comfortable turning while climbing until you are at least 2x higher than the trees. If you are still losing altitude while turning, try adding in more up elevator in the turns. (On my Challenger, full up elevator - full left rudder does a very tight upward spiral.)

The advantage of fllying at least 2x higher than the trees is that 1) you won't hit the trees and 2) you will be able to see the model better. (Hard to see the model when it is flying in front of background clutter of trees.)

WIND
How much wind were you trying to fly in?



Clint