Tech One Swift

Tech One Swift
Tech One Swift

Monday, September 20, 2010

Flying High and Large


Well we finally had good weather this weekend for a change. No wind and upper 80's made flying a joy. Only down side was fighting off the mosquitoes at dusk. Been a while since so many people showed up for flying.

Jonnie brought out and maiden his giant SR-71. It has a 36" wingspan and is 60" nose to tail. The only casualty after several successful flights was a puffed up battery. He was pulling too many amps for the 2200mah 4S Nano-Tech battery. With an 8X6 prop he was pulling close to 1,000 watts at WOT. Several changes are in the works to get the full 1500 watts that the motor is capable of handling.

Hopefully the dark days are just about over for me. I have been without a good transmitter for over 3 weeks. My Spektrum DX6I is due back this week so I can launch my MegaJet F-22 with Jonnie's Giant SR-71. Should be fun seeing these two monster foamies this up coming weekend.

Speaking of dark days there are not too many days left for flying after 6 pm without lights. Everyone is or needs to be ramping up with leds to extend our night flying.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Everyone was up!

Finally had some good flying weather this weekend except for the mosquitoes. We are trying to figure out a way to mount a receiver on one of them to see how well they fly. We will need 6 channels receiver to have functioning blood sucker and retractable landing gear.

Everyone was flying Sunday night. Jonnie launched his new improved SR-71. This monster is approximately 60" in length with a 38" wingspan. He completed several successful flights with no problems other than a puffed 4S nano-tech lipo battery. It needs a higher capacity battery to handle extended high speed runs. Should have video soon.

I crumpled a couple of older foamies this week using the cheap radio that came with an EDF jet. Can't wait for my DX6I to arrive back this week from the repair shop. You can fly with those cheap radios but you can't get too attached to the planes your flying on them. The receivers seem to have a problem with emf off the motors. Had to be careful when coming off throttle because elevons would jump then reset. Not a problem when at 50 feet but deadly

Friday, September 3, 2010

Slow and Painful week

Weather has not been good for flying the last couple of weeks. Wind and rain has limited my flying time. Then I went and dropped my DX6I radio this week and put it out of commission.

Still doing a limited amount of flying using a 2.4 GHz radio that came with a EDF jet purchased recently. Limited in the fact that this radio seems to have a mind of its own every now and then. It was responsible for the demise of the JeTiger and has tried to eliminate my scratch built foamies a couple of times. They were better handling so I was able to save them before hitting the ground. I'll take a prop pusher over an EDF jet everytime when it comes to using thrust to overcome gravity.

On a more positive note, I have completed all the changes to the MegaJet II. When I get my DX6I repaired I will take it out. I was able to put a 9X6 prop on it and still have over a 1 to 1 thrust ratio. It also dropped the watts down to around 450 which is good. Motor sounds like it is producing higher rpms so I should be able to get a little more speed. Hope the airframe can handle it since I used a limited amount of carbon fiber on the wings.