I had another great flight with the Extra today. I managed loops, rolls and inverted flight. I even tried a knife-edge but this didn’t work so well because I haven’t increased the rudder motion after reducing it in an attempt to make the aircraft controllable on the ground.

I did have one heart stopping moment when, after turning too sharply onto finals and with the speed too low, the aircraft simply fell out of the sky and in between the trees. By some miracle it missed all of them (the spaces between them were not more than 3m big), leveled the wings and pointed its nose at the sky. Seeing this, I decided to apply full throttle and to my absolute amazement it climbed easily back into the sky and out from between the trees.

A lucky escape from a classic mistake!

My extra has finally taken to the skies, albeit using a slightly unorthodox launch technique for this type of aircraft. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I simply could not keep in going in a straight line on the ground for long enough to get it into the air.

So, after three attempts, one propeller and one set of repairs, I tried hand launching it…

which, after one heart stopping moment of involving a close encounter with a bush, worked very well. The aircraft required some fairly substantial trimming and it flies really fast.

After the first flight, I trimmed the center positions of all the controls and the second flight was a significant improvement. Unfortunately the landings still need work and I broke the propeller on my second landing but there was no other damage.  During the second flight I also tried some loops and rolls which worked although the roll rate is quite slow. I think that this model will be good fun and that the performance will be good once I learn to fly it properly.

Janita did a great job as the photographer.

I just found an app on Flickr called John’s Background Switcher. This is exactly what I have always wanted. Move over WebShots because this is so much better that you can’t hold a candle to it!

John's Background Switcher

I also had a good laugh at the credits at the bottom of the page:

“This site is powered by WordPress and bbPress with hosting from Joyent.
Design by John Conners, who is powered mostly by coffee.“

Well, at least in terms of blogging that is.

I am studying for more insane hours than I ever though possible. 16-20 hours a week (in addition to working full time). I decided to take a break this week but unfortunately conference deadlines don’t move, so I have already spent almost three hours fixing up my presentation for TAUSC at the end of the month. I’m dead, I’m finished, but unfortunately I’m still not FINISHED!

On the up side though, I have finally installed the power system, servos and receiver into my model Extra 230 which I built in while I was living in res at Wits. I will post a picture sometime soon (before I fly it). The electronics for model aircraft are really expensive, especially if they are electrically powered so the model has had to wait about 7 years to be completed. I intend to make the maiden flight on Saturday, weather permitting. I still need to take it around to Frasers for them to measure the power system performance and I need to put in a lot of practice in the simulator. I’m terrified of flying the plane and crashing it! The engine really pulls: at full throttle, you can almost let it go and expect it to jump out of your hand and fly away. My new radio is awesome: the design of the plane means that the control rods are bent into “s” shapes at both ends. This makes it very difficult to achieve precise center positions, however the radio allows me to remove any offset and centre the control precisely. The radio also allows me to precisely adjust the amount of travel that the control surfaces have.

The Gripen progresses slowly. I have completed installation of the canard controls and I have set up the rudder control although the push rod has not yet been glued. I have also installed the elevon servos and so now I need to attach the control horns and make up the push rods.

Canard servo installation

Its 12:01 and I’ve just finished studying for tonight. I have already put in 6 hours this week. My results are looking good though, so maybe its worth it.

Lift Distribution

The fact that the blue squares and the orange circles are close together prove that the aerodynamic model works. The fact that the pink dots are higher on the right and lower on the left proves that the flexible camber implementation works.

The devil is in the details!

The F-16 is fun to fly although very difficult to land without bouncing down the runway like a kangaroo. It has retractable landing gear and leading edge slats which operate using the flap lever.

F-16

Flying on water is also fun and the effects are very realistic, especially when you crash.

Float biplane

This funny electric float plane is very twitchy when given both pitch and roll inputs at the same time but otherwise is nice to fly. It has retractable landing gear so it can operate both on water or on land, or, land on the water, extend its gear and then drive up on to the land.

Electric float plane

And finally, this next aircraft could almost be the aircraft I learned to fly on. I guess trainers are pretty much the same everywhere.

High wing trainer

A Beautiful Day

It is a beautiful day and it certainly sucks to be sitting here studying!
This photo was posted by eljoh1 on flickr.

Two weeks ago, after completing the hardware setup of the new computer, I took a trip to the model shop (Frasers) and bought a set of equipment that I have wanted for a very long time. When I crashed my last aircraft in 2004 I attributed it to radio failure and I swore that one day I would buy myself a brand new state of the art radio. Here it is:

JR PROPO DSX7

Its mine and wow is it awesome! What is more, it’s a 2.4 GHz set so I should never have frequency problems. Also, the technology is as new as possible, DSMJ not DSM2. It’s so new, Frasers doesn’t even have stock of receivers yet. This DSMJ technology apparently hops frequencies, instead of reserving two frequencies like DSM2 does. This has something to do with the fact that the Japanese are not allowed to reserve frequencies in the 2.4 GHz band and I have been  assured that the technology is stable.

Also as a result of my last crash and due to a few dodgy moments with the Sky Hawk, I decided that improperly charged batteries were no excuse for a crash. It a bit like flying a real aircraft with insufficient fuel, ie. you’re asking for trouble. So I bought a fancy balance charger and so far have successfully managed to restore my old Sky Hawk battery to health. The setup wouldn’t have been complete without a case for the transmitter (no more broken control sticks because its been shoved in a backpack) and of course, the Phoenix flight simulator to practice on.

Other goodies

And I will leave you with a crappy screen shot from the simulator (I need to work out how to take good ones but its difficult to take your hand off the controls to press print screen when the aircraft is in the perfect position). The simulator is awesome by the way!

Phoenix screenshot

This year I planned to upgrade Janita’s computer so that Photoshop would run faster and I could use it for my simulations. On Friday 4 September we went to buy the new parts and spent a little bit more than planned (quite a bit more actually). I spent a few hours on Saturday morning assembling it and here are some snaps I took along the way:

The empty case

I quite liked this sign that came with the GeForce 9800 GT graphics card…

Do not disturb

And the finished result looked like this on the inside:

Finished result

Needless to say that it didn’t start first time but after re-seating the memory and power cables it worked fine. I don’t know why it is but every time I build a new pc (and I’ve built quite a few) they never fail NOT to start first time!

It is awesome to have a new PC. Last time I upgraded this one was in 2004 (I think). It runs fast and the graphics are awesome. Photoshop no longer behaves as though it is coal fired and running out of steam and my simulations run much faster than on my laptop. I haven’t had much time to test the graphics except that I have a new flight simulator which looks pretty good with all the settings at maximum. More about that next time.

Canards and servos

The canards have been positioned but not glued. The servo tray has also been positioned but not glued. I want to set up the rudder push rod before glueing anything.

Tail, wing fillets and missile rails

I have also made the vertical tail and rudder but they need to be sanded before I can do anything else with them. The wing fillets are glued in place and so are the missile rails. Hopefully the missile rails will prevent any further damage to the wing tips.