Progress on the Legacy.

I have the flight time just about right. I got in two full flights and the flight time was 5 min and a few seconds. About 30 seconds short of what I need. Next time out should be right, about 5 min. and 30 seconds per flight. I plan on painting the nose over like I did on the Nomad 2 when I converted it to electric.It's raining and is forecast to keep raining all weekend. I emptied the fuel jug into the gallon container which filled it up. I had a gallon of synthetic oil handy so I mixed up 5 more gallons using synthetic oil instead of castor. Depending on how many flights I get with the electric planes I may be done with the castor fuel in a few weeks. The Pathfinder that has the new wing hasn't been flying like it used to. I bored a hole in the nose and glued a mini ball in it. The mini ball weighs 1.1 ounces and is used in civil war rifles. It measures .570 diameter and is soft lead so there is a lot of damage when it hits.

Test flight.

I got to the park a bit late as the temperature didn't get into the 50's until after I got home at 1030. The new motor box worked perfectly. There was no unusual vibration and the plane flew quite well. Now I have to get the total flight time set so I can get the entire pattern in with about 6 laps to spare. I have 3/4 of an ounce on the tail I can play with to get the stability I want. The Nomad 4 sports a modified stock muffler now. It has a one inch extension that makes it quite long. I removed it and bolted it back together so it looks like a normal muffler. I got in 3 short flights just to see how it performs with the nose weight from the muffler. It's usable as it is.

Rainy days are dangerous.

My trip to the park was put off because of the weather. So I got the idea of putting a proper electric motor mount in the Legacy. I had been holding off doing that because of the things that have to be removed first. All those things are expoxied to the fuselage. Namely the maple wood engine mounts. I had glued them in to last forever. I got the idea to split the maple with a chisel. But instead I put the chisel at the glue joint and hit it with a hammer. That popped the glue joint loose for a couple inches so I pried along the joint until the maple broke aft of the fuel tank area, almost to the end. I did the same thing with the other wood mount and then used the die grinder to remove as much maple as I could reach. Then I assembled the electric motor box and got it to fit. After some trimming I got things fitting like I wanted and glued the box in place. A little more trimming to fit the electronics and the battery and the plane is ready to fly again. I put the finished plane on the scale and it's 0.8 ounces lighter than before.

Legacy electric ready to fly.

I managed to finish the power swap on the Legacy today. Things are a bit cramped as the plane was built for an engine. After putting everything in a place and getting the motor to turn in the proper direction i put it on a scale to find out what the new weight is. 69.9 ounces. That's 57 ounces without the battery. But it wont fly without the battery. It didn't disturb the balance too much, just a bit more nose weight which should help the stability some. I removed the green stripes and painted more black. The nose ring had to be sanded a bit to stop the spinner from dragging. The paint is drying and it's ready for a test flight.

I'm doing it again.

I've been looking at the Legacy trying to figure out how to put an electric motor in it. I have to shape the motor mount so the electric motor will fit but I don't have my die grinder handy. I made a slot for the new motor mount to sit and glued some plywood together for the mount itself. I ordered the parts I need from Brodak and they should be here shortly. I installed the Evo.60 in the Mandarin and got some flights with it this morning. The engine starts off all right but speeds up. I'm going to try a smaller propeller next time out. The prop was 12 inches long but my finger took a half inch off each blade two weeks ago. The Nomad 2 I converted to electric is flying well. I was curious as to the weight now. before it's weighed with an empty fuel tank and it was around 52 ounces. Now it's weighed with the flight battery installed. I was surprised to see 60 ounces on the scale.