payneib

Evening All, I am a reasonably competent flyer (B Cert in the bag for the last couple of years, and aiming for my examiner cert this year), and I've been trying to teach my eldest. He's 10, 11 in a couple of months, and I'm struggling. We started off using my Junior 60 as it was all we had that was suitable, and he got as far as a few aggressive take offs, and some general flying around. Last year we bought him a second hand, thoroughly expendable, Bixler with the aim of me taking my hands off the buddy-box more and really letting him do his thing. We also have an Acrowot Fomie, in a similar condition - second hand, thoroughly expendable, for use as soon as the Bixler is killed to death. Some days, I am stood there like a spare tyre, holding the buddy-box whilst he fly's round, with the occasional piece of advice, and potentially flicking switch and taking over if he says he's lost orientation. Other days, he starts the session by saying, "I can't do it, I can't see it properly, I don't know what to do." There's usually lots of mumbling, some tears, and he gives up. On these days, I feel like I need to get my hands on his controller, put my thumbs over his and show him what to do - but I can't do that whilst I'm on the lead controller and actively flying. Does anyone have any advice for coaching youngsters? I'm desperately trying to stay away from being the overbearing parent that makes him do something he's not interested in, but I'm running out of ideas beyond, "I know you can do this!" We have trainee aircraft in the club, but I don't think we have any actual instructors.

I started off with FlySky, and still have two for buddy boxing with my kids. The only problem I've ever had with them, is the AA batteries - do not take off if it's showing half on the "battery-o-meter" on the main screen. I was lucky the one time I got caught out, and I was flying a free flight/RC conversion that happily landed itself not too far away. Range is fantastic, reception is fantastic, the voltage sensors for your electric planes are brilliant. If it does everything you need it to, you've definitely got nothing to worry about. 👍

That's mental that they just stopped you flying - the FlySky stuff is CE marked (I had to look it up to be allowed to fly at Shuttleworth on a model weekend).

I've just been fiddling around with a kit built Acrowot I used to practice some of the techniques that went in to this Hurricane - it weighs in at a thoroughly hefty 4.1kgs/9lbs dry, hauled around by an Evolution 15cc - which on the back of a similar fag packet, comes out at 35 Oz/sqft. I know that definitely flys! And I know it's best landings were long, fast greasers using all the runway. I also know what happens when I tried to slow it down for a cross wind landing from my least favourite direction (which is why it's been waiting for the build table to clear up since November). Comparing those numbers, I'm happy with the Hurricane, I just need the right weather and a properly dry runway.

Very quiet up the field today. One member on site when my lad and I arrived, another one came whilst we were there. It was cold and blustery, but pretty much straight down the main the runway. I've started prophanging the winter hack Acrowot XL, the little VMC Balsa Basics Hurricane had its first couple of flights after the radio upgrade, and the big Hurricane had more engine run time, and some more taxiing. Unfortunately the boy was having an off day, so burnt off three batteries in his Bixler to save faffing with discharging. It'll really shift with the gyro on and throttle through the stops. 😂

@Martin Harris - Moderator how are your U/C doors mounted? I've just taken mine off whilst fiddling with the forward rake. And I'm wondering if I could do it better/easier than I've what got.

Good news: both Rxs used the same code from T9, and are now bound and unlocked. I can carry on with winter maintenance now. Although I still think that at £50 a pop, Rxs should just "work" when you open the packet. PXL_20240426_183932256_TS.mp4

With the exception of the pilot, the only things I could take out at this point are forward of the CoG, so they'd just get replaced with lead anyway.

I wish. The only way I could make it work in the space available was with multiple linear actuators and a control board. Unfortunately the budget wasn't as big as the ideas.

Tip top, I'll get them emailed off to T9 and hopefully get this resolved shortly.

So there's good news and weird news: I flashed the Uni firmware on to all three Rxs and all three bound fine. The good news is, that the (old) mounted Rx started working immediately, which I assume means it's one I bought from T9 and was already unlocked for Uni firmware. The two new Rxs, both bound and I ran the setup script. The weird bit is, I got the same unlock code for both. Is that normal? Or should it be separate codes?

Evening All, I've just spent another fruitless evening trying to get £150 worth of Rxs to work with my X9D 2019. I had two RX8R Pros working fine, until I had to update my internal module firmware to ISRM v2.1.10 in order to register/bind a new ACCESS SR10 Pro. This caused the two ACCST RX8s to unbind, one of which was flashed with ACCST D16 v2.1.1, and rebound - it's since been flying and still works now, along with the SR10. I now have one RX8R Pro mounted but not flying, and two new RX8R Pros, which regardless of what firmware they're flashed with, will not bind with the Tx. I'm completely out of ideas. The only thing I can think of, is if there's a possibility of copying the working Rx to flash the other three. Or maybe I'm not binding correctly and the working one was a fluke. Or maybe there's a problem with the three Rxs (although one was working before this all started). I think my next best option after this to change everything back to nice cheap FlySky radio kit that just works, and just give up on the fancy talking radio because it's massively over complicated. If anyone has a simple answer that'll get all of my Rxs working with my TX, that'd be great.

Stick it all on the gear switch maybe? Wheels up - tiny elevator throws, wheels down - plenty of "up" available. I'm not exactly a novice, but this project has produced more buttons, knobs, and switches than anything else I've done.

She looked rather nice up the field today. The engine is running solidly after some tweaks to the top end, and now has enough compression for reliable hand starting. I reckon the idle is still going to take some settling. I took her for a little drive round the runway - very nose happy, even though the grass was cut this morning. The ground is still pretty soft, and the Club Press says it's not short-short yet, but I think I'll shim the UC mounts for some forward rake, and maybe consider a flight mode switch to give me full elevator on the ground. @GrumpyGnome gave me a second opinion on the CoG (a bit difficult in the wind), but we think it's about right, especially considering Martins experiments, and the 3/8" each way elevator.

Not sure. There's certainly no rush. When my DLE30 was new, every landing was a nightmare as the idle would creep up whilst it flew. It took most of season to run in, so there'll be plenty of ground running on this. Plus our patch is still pretty soggy.

25g fibreglass on the wings and about 60% of the fuselage, fabric and dope on the rear fuse and tail, including rib tapes/longeron tapes, two months worth of surface detail, 90% of a full cockpit interior, including sliding canopy, twin Rx batteries, ignition battery and ignition unit, 120 sized retracts, two extra servos (instead of the single torque rod servo on the plan), and about 6-10 cans of cellulose paint (depending how much actually ended up on the model).

Well I've finally seen a picture of one flying, that puts my mind at ease slightly! I had the same worries when I built the Galaxy Merlin. 😂 Just Dubro 3" treaded. There's not a lot of wing left around the cut outs. You can see on that mid-build picture of the underside of the wing, I cut a full depth (top skin to bottom skin) ply spar in to the wing joint, the width of the UC spread, then dug out the foam core, right through to the top skin. A two piece flat ply spar was glued in to the inside of top skin, again the full spread of the UC, then a ply web glued along the wing centre line, between where the wheels sit to stop the centre LE flexing. The rearmost hardwood UC mounts were epoxied in the right angles between the two ply spars. Once I put the wing bandage on, I wrapped a length of 100gr fibreglass around the LE from the top of the spar to the bottom of it. Still crossing my fingers that the retracts won't punch straight through the top skin on the first landing.

No, there's no option on the kit for tip ailerons and flaps, but I did some actual measurements of some diagrams, eyeballed some full size Hurricanes at Duxford and Shuttleworth, and came up with cutting a step in to the TE by ~6mm (the thickness of the TE wood cap) to make the tip ailerons deeper, and used the stock torque rods to do split flaps.

So "Yikes!" is what you consider assisting is it? I think I've seen enough of your assistance to know I can ignore it as a matter of routine. 👍

It matters because the entire point of the question was to find out information from people who've actually built and/or flown one. If I wanted advice about similar models I'd talk to people flying things like the H9 109, at 64" span, up to 1.25 four stroke/20cc petrol, and a projected weight of 10.25-11.5lbs - one of which already flies at my club, with that engine, at that weight. Unfortunately, despite the great qualities of the Galaxy kits, they appear to be as rare as rocking horse eggs, which is why Pegasus already uses one of my models in their advertising, after I raised the point about lacking information directly to them. Feel free to be as belligerent as you like, but you should expect to be treated the way you treat others. Especially if you put it out before checking what you're talking about.

3" on 90-120 size electric retracts. It trundled well across my relatively long garden grass, although I'll have to be very careful - that 15" three blade doesn't have a lot of space under it. I'm happy for this to be another "perfect days only" plane - there's plenty of winter hack sport planes to go around.

Have you ever built and flown this model? If not, move on.

She's a runner, and survived her first taxi across my terrible lawn without nosing over. VID_41780807_075158_023.mp4 VID_41780808_113856_456.mp4

I'll just go bin the thing now then, thanks for your valuable input.

Throttle works both ways.