Author Topic: My first electric flight, and the second one too.. (Read 3633 times)

Ty Marcucci · « **on:** February 23, 2012, 10:24:04 AM »

Monday I flew my first electric powered plane. I'm in love. It is/was a kit made by Tom Morris. . The Magnum Plus, a design by Tom Dixon based on the SIG Magnum.
I installed the battery, installed the safety plug, it beeped, I pushed the go button, slowly walked out to the handle, it started like they all do, revved up and I called for release. A nice long take off run of about 80 degrees, nice lift off and LINE TENSION LIKE I COULD NOT BELIEVE. This it turned out was a bad thing for me. 63' eye to eye. .015 lines by Tom Morris, Fancher handle, QUIET, level smooth flight. What the hell, into the reverse wing over and all most into the ground. "Whoa, needs more elevator throw. I'll just pull out sooner". Dumb ass thought. I continued through the pattern, less the horizontal square eight. Went into my worst figure, the vertical eight. That figures and here the flight ended. I have a horrible tendency, nay, bad habit of making the top loop way too big, thus no room for the bottom of the bottom loop. Thus the prop and landing gear hit, ripping off the cowl, breaking the prop, ending the flight. I ran over to the plane and pulled the safety plug, not knowing what may happen. Motor was warm, not hot, battery cool to the touch, so no horror stories of burned down city parks. What a stupid way to learn to not make the same mistake over and over.

I forgot to say the lap times were 5.8 seconds. Too much time to let me think, and that's bad. The 13 x 6 prop was a right hand rotation, thus all the line tension.

Steve Fitton · « **Reply #1 on:** February 23, 2012, 02:00:05 PM »

Whoah, that was an eventful first flight!

Dan Bregar · « **Reply #2 on:** February 23, 2012, 03:45:12 PM »

Ty

Thanks for sharing. Things can only get better !

Bill Little · « **Reply #3 on:** February 23, 2012, 04:06:46 PM »

Chief, we just gotta get you flying that vertical 8 the right way, it is pretty easy!

Glad to hear that the electrifying experience wasn't a total loss.

BIG Bear
RNMM/AMM

bob branch · « **Reply #4 on:** February 23, 2012, 04:32:33 PM »

Ty

You may have run into what I ran into with my electric sv-11... too much line tension. I kept getting bottoms to low and tops too high until I finally figured it out. It was not more throw I needed in the controls, it was less line tension so my wrist could actually achieve the motion I was telling it to do in the time alloted. It finally hit me the plane was flying like a plane does in big wind.... maneuvers opening up. Started dropping line tension and it solved itself. Lots of curious things happen like this in electric. When it is soooo much better than we ever had in something the first thing is to feel the most is better. Not always.

bob branch

bob branch · « **Reply #5 on:** February 24, 2012, 12:59:12 AM »

Amen Ty

bob branch

Steve Fitton · « **Reply #6 on:** February 24, 2012, 09:21:19 AM »

A few more thoughts Ty;

How much did the plane weigh? If you are getting massive amounts of line tension on a Magnum sized plane, maybe 0.015 lines are not what you want to be running. 0.018s might save you some grief both from a broken line standpoint as well as rules compliance depending on its weight.

I might move the cg back as well. I am speculating, based on some of your other planes I have seen, that the cg is a bit on the forward side. The plane should turn crisply even if the line tension is excessive. In fact, I would bet that your line tension is so stout because your cg is too far forward. Even with the leadouts very far forward I bet the nose is yawed out. Thats a receipe for strong line tension even at a 5.8 lap, but also a receipe for a plane that won't help you get out of trouble when you misjudge the top loop of the vertical 8.

Work to trim the plane so it helps you instead of blaming yourself for getting it dinged up

john e. holliday · « **Reply #7 on:** February 25, 2012, 08:48:28 AM »

Yeah, this is what happens when we push the envelope. I too am guilty of pushing new planes and sometimes old planes when things aren't right. But, it sounds as if you may have your engine problems cured by using motors.

Now don't bust me Chief.

I don't see an emoticon that salutes.

Dan Bregar · « **Reply #8 on:** March 03, 2012, 04:25:15 PM »

Way to go Ty !!!

Dennis Adamisin · « **Reply #9 on:** March 03, 2012, 06:28:13 PM »

Sounds like you are close to back-on-plan. KEEP GOING!

Dan Bregar · « **Reply #10 on:** March 18, 2012, 09:25:21 AM »

Way to go TY ! I'm rootin for ya. Take your first trim flights slow. Easy does it. You will be a happy camper.

Dan Bregar · « **Reply #11 on:** March 27, 2012, 04:24:34 PM »

Hey Ty

Have you test flown it yet since the repairs ?

Andrew Borgogna · « **Reply #12 on:** April 05, 2012, 06:22:20 PM »

OK Ty I want you to write on the black board 100 times:

Red is for +voltage.
Black/Brown is for ground.
White is for signal.

Oh, and for what it worth you are NOT the first to make that mistake. I already spent my time at the black board.
Andy

Mike Keville · « **Reply #13 on:** April 05, 2012, 07:12:58 PM »

Quote from: Andrew Borgogna on April 05, 2012, 06:22:20 PM

OK Ty I want you to write on the black board 100 times:

Red is for +voltage.
Black/Brown is for ground.
White is for signal.

...and "911" is for calling the Fire Department.

John Cralley · « **Reply #14 on:** April 05, 2012, 09:00:51 PM »

Ty,

As you found out, plug it in backwards and no harm done -- except the frustration trying to figure out what happened. However, plug it in so that it is only using two pins (hot wire on the center signal pin and signal output connected to the ground pin) and you get to buy a new timer.

Don't bother to ask how I know about this!!

Dennis Adamisin · « **Reply #15 on:** April 06, 2012, 07:36:08 AM »

Hooked up the timer backwards??? WHO, MEEEEEE?

?

John Rist · « **Reply #16 on:** April 06, 2012, 07:49:30 AM »

We have it made today. All brands use the same 3 wire setup. Back in the good old days Airtronics had the power and ground lead backwards from the rest of the world. If you plugged Airtronics and Futaba gear together you got smoke. Now of course all brands have the +5 V power lead in the middle. So reversing the connector doesn't work but it doesn't destroy anything. Almost idiot proof. However as John Carlley pointed out - offset a connector by one pin and bad things happen. What I have done on some of my connectors is paint a red stripe on the two haves (red dope) so that when plugging up I have an added visual aid to get it correct the first time.

John Rist · « **Reply #17 on:** April 10, 2012, 07:52:36 AM »

Quote from: Ty Marcucci on April 09, 2012, 07:52:42 PM

Finally, today, Monday, I made two more full pattern flights on my e-beast. Wow, still amazed at how quiet and the nice line tension. BUT on the third flight, heard a very strange and loud noise. NOT good, then pow, the motor pulled out of the nose and flew over my head and landed about 50 feet away. The plane pulled up into a stall, but I managed to run back enough to save it. A rather stairstep landing, no harm to the plane.
It seems that in making the nose shorter to move the CG back. I didn't leave any "meat" for the epoxy, etc. The torque and the sudden climbs and dives obviously caused the whirling motor to crack the wood, thin as it was, and pull out. The wires were a pretty straight in line connection, so they "uncoupled" easily. Now to do it better.
This was a simple lack of attention to a simple building procedure that could have happened to an IC set up as well, with worse consequences I'm sure.

The one day I didn't come out and watch. I missed all of the excitement!!!

Another advantage of electric - if you loose the motor you still have the battery pack to maintain CG and you can land. Also the wood is not fuel soaked and is easy to repair.

Dennis Adamisin · « **Reply #18 on:** April 10, 2012, 08:20:48 AM »

Actually I cannot get to judgmental here - nearly had the same thing happen to me last year. Too thin firewall started to fail on the ground, alert pit crew shut it down before launching. Not one of my prouder days... In my case the perifery of the firewall and its joint ot the fuselage is still intact, the center failed.

Robertc · « **Reply #19 on:** April 10, 2012, 09:58:38 AM »

On my second electric, I decided to front mount the motor instead of using the rear mount that I did in the first electric. Got done, decided to check the rotation before going out for first flights
and motor shoots out right after I turned it on. Fix the front end over a week, check it and is good. First flight, after inside squares, motor pulls out again and lands in a chair right next to a friend
watching the flight. Last time he came and watched.... Fixed it by going back to a rear mount.

John Hammonds · « **Reply #20 on:** April 10, 2012, 04:14:13 PM »

Hi Ty,
Glad you are enjoying yourself, no going back now. I find that final flight of the day while everyone else is cleaning there models very satisfying. Then just chuck it in the car and still 1st out of the gate.

Your reference to how quiet electric models are was bought home to me a few weekends ago, apart from a few half hearted efforts by others I'm still the only person in the UK actually entering competitions with electric models and had never actually "seen" one of my planes fly. This was rectified the other week when I let a club member have a go and I was truly amazed at just how quiet it actually was from outside the circle. The post flight debriefing was most favourable (But of course they will never catch on)....

(This from someone who is currently nursing a fractured thumb and several stitches courtesy of an errant OS40). Time to wake up and smell the electrons I think..

TTFN
John.