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.