ekdenton

Been flying a 22" micro sloflyer and had a couple motors that were too small for it so I have been working on a Cap 232 that I scaled down to 18", but enlarged control surfaces on main wing and tail wing. I slightly lengthened the main wing(i hope not too much, I thought since it will be flying off the prop larger wing surfaces would help). I am not sure if or how it will fly but I ordered servos and some batteries for it. Flight ready it should be close to 2.82 oz.
I used 8mm EPP foam for the fusilage & rudder, 4mm for the wings. 1.5mm carbon spars. 17gram suppo motor, 5 gram tower pro servos and 300ma 2cell 20c lipos. With a 7x3.5 prop I should have about 25% more power than the 200watts per pound rule for 3D flying. I should be getting parts in early next week to try it out

ekdenton

little progress, parts due today so I should be able to try it out this weekend. Got my motor mount on and shortining the servo wires a little. I had to borrow a 6100 off a different plane to try it out. If all goes well I will just get another reciever for it.

Didn't get the parts today maybe tommorow I hope.

GreenAce92

Wow 25% more power than 200w/lb? awesome!!! how much flight times you think you'll get from those 300mah 3c lipos you got? im interested in your setup its awesome! nice job very patriotic lol

ekdenton

Not going to have quite as much power as I had planned, it is going to be around 12-13 grams heavier than I had planned.

Flight ready, I will be at 39watts and weight will be 3.5oz. That is closer to 180watts per pound if I am doing the math correct.

GreenAce92

Hmmm well that still sounds nice, im sure you can cut out a few circles/holes on the wings, fuse and lose some weight that way. or go with a 2cell and a bigger prop(slower kv but stronger swings bigger prop more thrust)

oooo nice you got the techy tx/rx nicely done lol tiny little antennae compared to 42in lol

ekdenton

Down side is the rx are $49 each. I have been looking for a cheaper source but I think that is about as low as they can be had for. The DX6i manual says it's compatible with JR brand rx but I haven't checked to see if maybe there are some JR brand 4channel that would be cheaper. The cost of the receivers is making me want to by a cheaper set up for my foamies.

GreenAce92

Ahh i see 72mhz man lol its what i fly on 20dollar receivers not bad.

ekdenton

I had a couple 5min flights with it this morning, and it went very well. It fly's very good. The only thing that I have changed on the drawing is to enlarge the elevator even more so that it will chase its tail.

I have the drawings in .dxf if anyone is interested. I will have to email since I can't upload that format here.

GreenAce92

Looks hot! nice plans!

ekdenton

mucho more fun now with larger elevator


yesterday I was flying it outside over some grass. I was in close and low and it went past me over a asphalt road and the change caused me to loose control and I nosed it into the asphalt hard. Figured I would be doing some epoxy work last night but all it did was break the prop and just a small crack behind the motor mount. Man the EPP foam sure is more forgiving than the stiffer type foams. If it had been a balsa or depron I would have been bagging it up.

GreenAce92

Huh, wait so why exactly did you crash? were you hovering? what do you mean by exchange? like switching from a soft surface to harder?

glad its not too bad of a damage.

ekdenton

Probably was all me but the grass was wet and cool and the asphalt was 90+ degrees. I don't think it is the hardness but rather the sudden temp change flying so close to the ground. When it acted up I overcorrected. It's my First time flying such a small airplane, and only my fourth flight with it. I have to get used to how touchy this plane is, especially with the oversized control surfaces and dual rates on.

I like flying the foamies because you can get real aggressive, and if you have an oops, its easy to fix.

GreenAce92

Thats true man i love foamies myself. Although some foam material i hate building with(like the FFF pink stuff) the blue is ok but so far i dont like the pink at all

ekdenton

I haven't tried the stiffer type foam yet, I am still looking for a cheap source. I can't get it locally. A couple of us here are wanting to make some combat wings, and were looking for the foam now. If I ever get the plans or a jpeg of the wing I will post it.

GreenAce92

Well you can try FFF foam and see if you like it, available in Home Depot and lowes, other supply stores too, also you can use Elmers Foam Board or Dollar Tree foam board.

ekdenton

Got some landing gear made from some very small pushrod and 3/4" buttons drilled out to save weight. This plane is awesome. haha I love it. Wish I had a video camera to take some video of it.

GreenAce92

buttons for landing gear? haha thats pretty sweet.

ekdenton

I wound up having some issues with the 4mm epp foam wings and ailerons. It was just too flexible. I tried adding carbon spars on the trailing edge but that didn't fix the problem. After a hard snap the ailerons were not recovering from the twist and it caused it to become unstable. I thought earlier it was from temp changes flying low from grass to asphalt but it seems to do it every time after a hard snap roll and it acts exactly the same each time. Very unstable like ground effect only worse, then I wind up overcorrecting. Alsot the 18" wingspan is hard for me to see it is so small and it is pretty touchy on the controls. I am ditching the 18" and upsizing it to 23", and again increasing wing and control surfaces. I am trying it first with some bluecore. If I wind up liking it I will make it out of epp. Here is a link where I am cutting it out of the bluecore with my cnc router.
http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s...ombluecore.flv

I think this one is going to be alot better.

Fishjunky

That's a sweet setup you have with the cnc machine... Hope the new wing size works out for you.

ekdenton

I got it ready to fly for the weekend. Man it's pretty ugly though. I just sprayed one side red and left the underside the bluecore color so I will be able to tell which side is which when flying. If it does well I will make one from epp and color it up nice.

ekdenton

I flew it yesterday afternoon and I had used the same tower pro servos that I had on the 18" plane. I found out what was happening with the small plane. My aileron servo was glitching. I set my ailerons in a neutral position and moved the transmitter stick to the right or left and let go and the ailerons were sticking 3/4" in a left roll position. Flip the stick a few times and it would go back to neutral. Flip the lever again and it was off 3/4" again. I changed the servo to an E-sky servo and now it is doing very good. I rolls so fast I have a hard time seeing which side of the plane is which. It does nice tight loops with the larger elevator surface. I weighed it and it weighs .4oz more than my EPP Micro 22 Slofly, but it has 2" wider wing span. I am using a rimfire 22M with a thunderbird 9 ESC and a 640ma lipo. I flew it for 8 min and brought it in and it still had some battery left. I am guessing it should go for 10 min with that battery. I have a 9 x 4.7 prop on it now but it should work good with an 8" with about the same pitch since that is what I am running on the slofly 22".

Hoping to get some flight time with it today and tommorow