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Micro, scale EDF EE Lightning 12'' span, Habu UMX gear


Matt Halton
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Hi Matt

There's nothing like a Lightning for getting me to crawl out of the woodwork! What a lovely dinky little beast and what an absolutely tremendous way to employ Habu UMX power and control systems thumbs up You should send Eflite some pics and have them wishing they'd thought of it first.

Your pic had me trawling Youtube for that video you shot of my li'l 70mm fanned F1A back in the good ol' days at Woodspring. My goodness I could have done with AS3X technology on that day.

I hope that yours goes superbly, and after every flight you end up giggling as uncontrollably as I did on your video.

Cheers

Gordon

Edited By Gordon Whitehead 1 on 21/03/2017 19:26:01

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Hi Gordon! Good to hear from you ,fellow Lightning lover! Yes I remember your mile wide grin after that flight, did you ever find out why you had some odd flying behaviour occasionally? It looked superb in flight though. Am presently loving this new tech, really smooths out models in flight and so small too! Already have my next one in line, a Buccaneer for twin Habu fans but exploring rotor upgrades and motors too. Again from hollowed out foam, but more complex, am going to need to hot wire in sections, even though it will only be 19" span at 1/28 scale ( approx) Ha ha I did post a pic in E-Flite's Facebook page, just to see...zero response lol. Maybe a flight video will wake them up!

Extra slim, many thanks, the aluminum tape finish was maybe not the brightest idea I had, it marks so easily, but from a short distance, looks the part.

I will of course post flying photos if all goes well.

Gordon, can you recall where your CG was on your Lightning? I make it just under half the fuselage length, sound OK to you?

Thanks guys
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Hi Matt. I trawled my old RCG thread to find out about the CG. My Lightning's CG began life at 68% of the 14in root chord (9.5in aft of root leading edge). The plane flew OK and handled not too badly, but on hearing that the Mick Reeves Lightning CG was at 75% root chord, I decided to shift it back. I was able to move the battery aft, and the CG went back about 0.85in to 74% root chord where it stayed.

The handling problems resulted from a combination of excessive aileron movement, the need for some washout, a lot of effective downthrust due to the duct installation, a very low CG because the batteries were mounted low, and poor weather preventing a decent run at getting it sorted. Eventually I loosened the lower surface covering from the outboard half of each wings and glued it back on with 5deg washout twisted in. That cured the uncommanded 1/4 left flicks it would perform if trying to turn too slowly. Funnily enough, it would always stall dead straight with no wing drop, both before and after that mod.

Despite good intentions I never got on with building a successor as real life issues got in the way and then I had a change of direction. The appearance of your and Pete Taylor's threads as got me drooling again as I have a Wren 44 needing an airframe, which could well end up Lightning-shaped. But I need to finish a biplane project before tackling anything else at present.

Terry (Pontious on RCG) flew two EDF Lightnings with great success, and Pete's in-flight photos of his Jimjet Lightning are fantastic, so here's hoping for a stretch of great flying weather to crown your model's initial flights with success!

Cheers

Gordon

Edited By Gordon Whitehead 1 on 22/03/2017 19:55:53

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  • 4 weeks later...
OK update time! We went to test fly and unfortunately having had no experience of installing AS3X in a scratchbuilt before, the elevator being inverted for some reason inverts the gyro!
She went from a hand launch straight into a loop and landed on her belly, a few small concrete dents but that's all.

Wasn't until properly checked the cause was found.

So, I bought an SPMA3060 Spektrum USB programmer cable and after much faffing with drivers, finally reversed the gyro successfuly.

Whilst there I loaded the UMX MiG 15 settings into the brick, and activated AS3X with the gear switch.
As luck would have it, the CG is pretty much bang on 75% of the root chord.

She's all ready to go again now and ready to test tomorrow.

Will let you guys know how she went tomorrow.

Gordon ,so glad you fixed yours, washout always wins the day

More soon.

PS , Pontius ( Terry ) has a thread going on RCG and has twin EDF's in his new F1a depron build.

Oh yes, friend bringing his DSLR with zoom tomorrow, hope to get some great in flight pics.
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  • 6 years later...

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