Everyone,
Flew the E-SC today. The airplane was straight and the line tension was good with 8-4 APC-E prop on 58'x.015". It did not seem exceedingly fast with this combination. I set it to run for 5 minutes and just played around with the maneuvers to see how it would fly. It hung out there fine with a little sag in the motor speed when the nose was pointed up (airplane climbing). I did encounter some stalls on vertical 8 and the square 8s I did. To counter this I may try a little bit of tail weight and also will try to ease into the maneuvers a little more. BTW, the ready to fly weight came in at 32.2 oz with the balance about on the front lead-out.
Now that I have 2 charges on the battery and a run or two on the motor, I have questions.
1. With the Brodak charger and balancer it says that a steady green light on the charger means that the battery is fully charged. The best I can get is a flashing back and forth between the red charging light and green fully charged light. For the charge that I did today, this first flashing occurred at about 1:33 of charging at the 2A setting. Up to this point, the charger was a bit warm. After it was cooler to the touch. I stopped charging at 2:15. The balancer usually starts with light #3 coming on and off after a while of charging. It then cycles through lights #1 and #3 for a while and then finally #1, #2 and #3 cycling on and off together. This usually occurs near the point where the I get the alternate flashing between the red and green on the charger. My question is "What does all of this mean?". The instructions are lacking in this area.
2. Can the time used to get to the "fully charged/alternating light" point be used to determine the amount of charge used in the previous flight? For example, I am charging at 2A for 1.5 hours or putting in 3000mAh back into the battery. If my battery is 4000mAh, I am using about 75% of the charge. This is at the edge of what I would like to drain to according to what I have read here and elsewhere. Fair statement?
3. When the motor spools up to run there is a period of vibration before it takes off and runs. Initially I thought I was spinning the shaft on the prop, but observing the can, I know this is not the case. Is this a normal thing for this type of motor?
4. On the timer when the "blip" occurs to signal the end of flight, the propeller almost comes to a complete stop and then fires up again. At the end of flight the propeller quickly almost comes to a complete stop only slowly rotating a few turns from power off to touch down (with a decent glide). Is this normal? Most of the other E-planes I have seen seem to rotate a bit more. I have checked and the can (as well as I can tell) and prop shaft are clear of obstruction.
Photos before and after to be posted tomorrow. I will need to see if the little woman got any of it in flight.
Mike and Frank,
I do plan on some modifications for timer and switch mounting. It did stay in place well during my test flight though. When I get something clean looking, I will post a picture. Mike-the ESC was not hot on the ground run I did yesterday and it was fine when I checked post flight today.
John