Herr Starlite evening flying: Aerobatics with a R/E 3 channel model aircraft

The perfect plane for a calm evening. STARLITE is a well behaved, light, 3 channel model from SIG mfg, HERR. It was a pleasant kit to build. Mine came out at 160g all up weight ready to fly (balanced under the front half of the wing spar). It's fitted with a small brushless motor, 6A ESC, 450mAh 2s LiPo battery, EP5030 prop, and two 8.5g EMAX ES08AII servos. Here's a photo of them in position on my quick build servo mount:

I find these EMAX servos to be really good value for money - smooth, powerful, reliable and cheap. They are firmly at the budget end, and I don't think they centre as accurately as some others (in my tests, some Hitecs were better). But it's a tiny difference and I still like them. The pushrods are carbon rods bound with kevlar to wire at each end. You can't see the carbon rod in the photo above, but you can at the other end:

All designed by Herr to be light weight. And below, another photo of my Ferrari inspired wheels on the STARLITE'S somewhat spindly undercarriage: 

So, with a R/E plane what can you do in terms of aerobatics and manoeuvres? When you think about it, there's actually quite a lot - look under the photo below for a list. 

 

AEROBATICS & MANOEUVRES WITH 3 CHANNEL RC MODEL PLANE

DO-ABLE ON MOST R/E PLANES

1. Circuits: left hand and right hand. 

2. Procedure turns (to change circuit directions)

3. Aerobatic 360º (a wide circle turn in the horizontal plane)

4. Steeply banked turns

5. Chandelle/Wingover

6. Figure of 8 (two 360ºs, crossover point in front of pilot, entry and exit in the same direction)

7. Inside Loop (a big standard loop, canopy on the inside, in the vertical plane)

8. Humpty bump (entry and exit direction the same, no rolls)

9. Hammerhead/stall turn (entry and exit in opposite directions)

10. Lines: Vertical and 45º, up and down

11. Landing approach practice. Dead stick and/or low power. Over long grass or other unsuitable surface, bring the plane to under 6’ height, then power up and climb out.

WITH UNDERCARRIAGE OVER GOOD GROUND SURFACE 

13. Touch and Gos (like landing approach practice above, but touch the wheels on the ground)

14. Taxi practice, ground turns, figures of 8, alignment drills, etc. 

PERHAPS DO-ABLE ON SOME R/E PLANES?

15. Outside Loop (canopy outside) 

16. Spin (1x or 1.5x) 

17. Barrel Roll

18. Tailslide

19. Loop to inverted. Exit with either: a dive (basically, a stretched loop); or a barrel roll out (e.g. a 'Barrelly' Immelmann turn/half Cuban 8 - it may not be easy to distinguish them!)

20. Square Loop

21. Inverted 360º

Are there any more? Today I had a go at 1-9, 11, and 19 (a stretched loop). All went reasonably well except the stall turn, which ended up more like a prop hang. I need more finesse on the airspeed, but I've no doubt STARLITE will do it if given the right instructions. Also, on the Figure 8, I kept doing one turn bigger than the other. I haven't tried spinning, or barrel rolling STARLITE yet. 

Bags of fun. Flying always leaves me with memorable images. A major one today was STARLITE gliding slowly in the orange sunlight on deadstick landing approach practice. 

The only problem with autumn evenings is the dewey damp grass. Wrinkles up the tissue...

 

But it dries out and stretches back fine. 

A Story about Pre-Flight Checks

Had to take a break from building the P-51D - birthdays, family stuff and such. In the meantime, here's a little tale.

When flying radio control, I try to be diligent about pre-flight checks. However, a month or so ago, I came a cropper while flying the STARLITE (see photos).

Picture this: after changing the prop and replacing the battery with a more powerful plant, she was flying beautifully, save for a noisy (definitely broken) rudder servo. I replaced the servo, and while testing on the dining room table, was delighted that the rudder operated as quietly as the elevator. Charged her up and excitedly, went off to the field. Did my checks and launched from a throw. She climbed a bit then - spiral dived to the ground! I checked rudder centre trim setting, it seemed ok, so I launched again.

Painfully, she spiraled in once more, this time losing a leg and a suffering a bit of minor damage to the fuselage.

What to do? I checked alignment of all surfaces. Nothing except an ever so slight warp on the rudder. Surely the spiralling could not be from that? With the plane pointing ahead of me, I waggled the stick.

Then I saw it. The rudder was moving in the wrong sense! I had done my checks the first time with the plane pointing towards me (and without engaging my brain!). It took 5 seconds to reverse the new servo from the TX switch, after which she flew beautifully (although now with one leg - fine practice for holding off on landings!). When I first heard the story of the pilot who chucked his radio control glider off a ridge, only to realise he hadn't turned the receiver on and then watched it fly off into the distance out of sight, I used to wonder "how could that happen?". Now I understand! For me, repairs were cheap and easy but I hope the valuable lessons learned last forever:

- Always take care over pre-flight checks. Do them PROPERLY, especially when excited about the flight.

- Never assume that a replacement servo operates in the same direction as the previous one. Check it!

Starlite 36" Radio Control

Site Changes Frequent visitors will note the slight change of style to this blog and the new title. I wanted to broaden the coverage and more accurately reflect my aeromodelling activities.

Flying the STARLITE After giving up on the 150mAh 9.6V NiMH battery and replacing it with a 400mAh 7.4V LiPo, the performance was transformed. She climbs better and keeps going much longer (25min).

These photos were taken by my 6 year old son. I'm quite proud of him and them. Evocative lighting, dew on the morning grass in the one above. Since the photos, I've added shiny aluminium foil windows to the cabin and day-glow orange stripes under the wing (directly beneath the black top wing stripes). Both are to assist visibility in flight. More pictures later perhaps.

Starlite, by Sig / Herr Engineering

So I've been dabbling with the "dark side" again. Yes, radio control, but at least it is a balsa and tissue model - 36" span and very "free flight like". I won't say any more, just show you some pictures instead. It's a lovely, beautifully laser-cut kit available from Sig/Herr direct. Exceptional value for money, especially wood bag and plan.

Model aircraft building board heals itself!

I started to build a model aeroplane on the building board (see the May 2008 post below). The plane is a 1m electric job. I have to say that this is the best building board I've ever used. It holds the pins with just the right grip and "feel". However, stupid me, for using thick brass thumb tacks (or as we call 'em "drawing pins") to pin the plan down. The next photo below shows what happened to the balsa block underneath:

As you can see, the thumb tacks left significant holes and dents while the proper modelling pins (pink ones in the top photo) left negligible fine holes. However, after a quick wipe with a wet rag, the balsa healed itself "organically" in just a few minutes:

Wow, that's cool! As you can see the drawing pin holes closed up a lot and the dents have gone. completely The modelling pin holes were not an issue anyway, but even they have virtually disappeared. I won't be using drawing pins again - I've found some finer map pins for holding plans down. Proper modelling pins are well worth buying. These are Czech ones, from Flitehook.

Who says wood is dead when it can still heal itself like that?