Beaver

[David Begg]

A year or so back I purchased a GWS Beavers off an auction site. It flew beautifully, and was really enjoyable and fun to fly. However recently it has become a 'dog', with sudden dives, turns towards the ground(to the right), sudden desire to climb steeply and when corrected to swoop suddenly towards the ground, a real handful to keep in the air. Nothing was changed, it just started to do this. I have reset the CG to 2' from the leading edge and checked the throws of the rudder, 3/4' each way and the elevator 1/2" up and down. Flies worse than ever. What have I done wrong? All surfaces are tightly attached , weight is well below the recommended max weight of 14 oz (396 g). It has always had an outrunner motor and lipo battery, so it has heaps of power.

Thoughts I have had, to much down thrust or the motor pointing slightly off line???????, my CG figure of 2" from the leading edge is wrong?????????

Thoughts and suggestions are most welcome, I enjoyed flying my Beaver and I want the nice docile enjoyable flyer back!!!!

Thank you.

Cheers

David

[Stefan Hafner]

I had similar problems years ago when i crashed and fixed my T180.  It turned out that the thrust line was wrong, and it took a good while before we managed to get it flying well again. But if it was the trust line once it's trimmed out for level flight it should stay there.  I would expect that the thrust line should be 1 to 2 degrees down and 2 to 3 degrees to the right on a beaver.  The easy way to tell, is to look at the effect that a change in throttle setting has, for example, if you're flying along level and increase the power and the nose rises you need down thrust,

 

If its not the trust line, is it possible that somthing is moving around in the fuselage during flight?

 

Hope this helps

 

Stefan

[ken anderson.]

hello david-range test your radio and check the servo's-could be one of them has decided it want's to retire---if it was flying ok previous and you haven't altered anything sound's like servo has developed a mind of it's own or receiver has a fault--try swopping for different stuff-process of elimanation.................

 

            ken anderson..............

[Andy Ramsay]

Presume your servos are glued in. I've had at least two instances, admittedly after crashes, where one of the lugs has torn the foam leaving the servo free to flex around the other lug. This certainly causes very unpredictable behaviour . I find that stick mounts are also very prone to shifting, especially after a few arrivals. Afraid it's the nature of foam.

[Frank Skilbeck]

Check the wing is on secure, had a similar problem with an IC vintage model and it was cured by using stronger wing bands.

[David Begg]

Finally located and fixed the problem with my Beaver, flew it until the battery went flat this morning, even though the air was 'lumpy' today and there was a bit of wind a few feet off the ground, and Beavers do not like 'lumpy' air or wind.

I feel embarrassed to tell you the fault, stupid, stupid stupid!!!!!!

I had the engine thrust pointing to the left instead of the right, how I did it and how I didn't spot the error earlier I don't know!!!!! but I still did it!.

Thank you for your assistance.

There is always a reason, it just has to be located.

Cheers

David