John,
I had a similar experience with my Skeeter. For money vs. durability... try a
Multiplex DART (around $100). It's heavy, but it can take the rough launches
and landings.
1) I pack a lot of latex foam around the battery.
2) I use a smaller battery... after all, it's a hand launch
3) I put some 3/4oz. glass around the nose
Dave Termohlen
John Gossett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 05/29/2001 12:49:13 PM
To: soar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
cc: (bcc: David Termohlen/ORBVA)
Subject: [RCSE] Fragile Skeeter
Hello All!
No story, just some Skeeter talk. I took off work
early Thursday afternoon to fly the skeeter since the
weather was just beautiful. Light breeze and a few of
those cotton-ball clouds floating around. Thermal
city!
After reading about presets on RCSE, I decided to
attempt a temporary work-around to fly since I didn't
have my Hitec manual with me to figure out how to
program the presets. I set up to fly, performed the
range check and initial light hand-toss to be sure the
plane was in working order, then as an experiment, I
held the Hitec with the elevator on full up and threw
the skeeter straight ahead to see what happened. It
did a very sharp turn up at which point I let go of
the stick and the plane climbed at a 45 degree angle
(or so) to a nice 30-40' altitude before I nosed over.
(I had learned previously that if you wait too long to
nose over, the plane stalls and looses a lot of
altitude recovering.) It looked great! I flew it
around my downwind, base, approach legs and landed
very nicely and smoothly. Great!
Then when I went to pick the airplane up, I grabbed it
on the fuse ahead of the wind and noticed that
something didn't feel right. The fuse felt mushy. I
turned her over and found that the bottom of the fuse
had split in two places and the nosecone was also
partially detatched at the seam as well. "Hmm," I
thought, "I didn't think I dorked it on the landing."
I found out that I had neglected to pack the CA in my
tool kit, but I did have some packing tape from my
highlander days so I taped her up because I was not
going to miss out on such a beautiful flying day! A
test toss and she flew, so once again I decided to try
the impromptu thumb-operated launch preset. And once
again, she launched higher than I had ever
javelin-launched before. Flew great until I was
getting ready to land when all of a sudden she just
belly-flopped down from about a four foot height.
Really wierd looking and it didn't sound good either.
I inspected the skeeter to find that the fuse had
split its entire length on the bottom and one side and
had broken one of the top longerons just behind the
wing mounting bolt. The front wing mounting plate had
also completed disconnected from the fuse. (The
verticle ply plate with the hole for the wing - I
forget the technical name for it.)
In retrospect I now realize that what happend the
first launch was that my 270mAh battery flat pack was
standing, pushed as far forward as possible, wedged
between the two longerons. The manual launch preset
(thumb on stick) and vigorous throw resulted in the
battery attempting to exit the bottom of the plane.
The battery acted as a wedge between the longerons and
split the fuse apart. The tape repair held it together
nicely and prevented a second battery-exit occurance,
but the second launch had all those forces re-directed
further back with lots of damage occuring.
My guess is that when I get around to programming
preset, I need a lot less throw on the up elevator so
I don't subject the fuse to such high stresses. I hope
the Terminator fuse will take more kindly to such
launches when I build it! (I also keep in mind that I
get what I pay for!)
I have repaired the damage, but haven't had time to
fly since Thursday. I am a little fearful to fly the
fragile little thing!
John Gossett
Austin, TX
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