Back to the Raffle plane.

I changed mufflers on the second Twister from a stock one to a Fox .35. It's the same as the Last Twister. I'm out of in line fuel filters. I lost the filter screen from a couple filters so I cut some panty hose and installed that in the filter shell. It may be wadding up as the engine is acting strange. I need to make a trip to the hobby shop or call the filter maker and see if I can get some fliter elements. I flew the Raffle plane this morning. It still flys well compared to what it did before I cut down the flaps. I'm thinking it is nose heavy and I removed one ounce of weight from the nose. It's a loose copy of the Veco Squaw but the Wagner plans don't show the balance point of the Squaw so I could have some starting point. Using the placement of the leadouts on the plans I made a change to the nose weight. I changed handles so I can get more line spacing adjustment, actually less spacing. I'll test that next time out. Probably tomorrow morning. It was only 73 and 73 degree dew point when I started out today so I brought two planes and was able to fly them both before the shade left the pits. The hot rod is a little something I bilt in 1997/98. I built it as a street rod, reliable and powerful. A Chevy 502 engine and TH400 transmission. My son has it now and has converted it into a reliable and more powerful Drag and Drive car. Holley fuel injection,special built Gear Star overdrive transmission 3500 stall speed converter to help with the 4:10 rear gears on the highway. A ladder bar rear suspension to replace the weak street rod parallel 4 bar suspension. That original set up bent on the first ever run down the strip. It has a 8 point cage in it also with light weight seats. He's putting it through it's shake down paces to be ready for Noble, Ok in Sept.

Trimming the second Twister.

The "Last Twister" flew great right away. I expected the "Second Twister" to do the same. It didn't. I finally got a handle on it by adjusting the elevator to flap alignment. Now I'm zeroing in on the tip weight. I had about an ounce and now it's down to a quarter ouce or less. I just cut a corner off so I don't know really what it weighs. The engine is the same as the one on the Last Twister,.40LA, except for the mufflers. I have a stock muffler on the second one and a Fox .35 muffler on the Last one. Other than that the set ups are the same. The Last ones engine used 3.75 ounces for the pattern and the second uses 3.0 ounces. There's no reason that I can find for the fuel economy difference. Neither engine is running at a high speed, launching at 8500rpm. Over 5 second lap times and good line tension on both. This is one of the 3 engines that I bought parts for and put back in service a month ago. Crankshafts and connecting rods are the only parts that would effect performance that I bought. I used the original parts to make 3 .46's several years ago. The planes are flying well, that's the bottom line.

Trouble shooting an E.S.C.

I was flying the Cardinal and didn't get too far when the motor quit. I didn't know if the battery was dead or some other part had failed. I installed another battery and it flew like normal which pointed me towards the battery. I flew another battery and it worked normal. At home I checked the remaining voltage in the suspect battery and it was about what i figured it should be given the short flight. I installed a forth battery and ran it on the ground. It didn't even start this time which now points me towards the electronic speed controller or E.S.C. I had a new one and installed it on the plane and ran it for a minute and it worked fine. The next day I went to the park and got in 4 flights with the new parts and everything worke perfectly. Back at home I removed the shrink wrap from the suspect E.S.C. and gave it a 5X inspection. I found what looked like some dirt of some kind on one of the processor connections. I cleaned it off and installed the E.S.C. back on the test mule plane. At the field I lew it 4 times with no problems. I'll keep testing it more before trusting it on a more important plane. I did order another new one from Brodak. At the field today I got in more flights with the suspect E.S.C. and a quirk with the timer bugged me. It ads power in several stages during the flight. Back at the shop I removed the timer (FM 0c Hubin) and put a programmable timer on a FM9 hubin timer. Tomorrow I'll try that combo. This timer and E.S.C. should give me a steady rpm throughout the flight. P.S. I flew the new set up this morning. I had to increase the rpm to 10500 to get a 5.3 sec. per lap time. I used 3 batteries to arrive at that time and one full pattern flight. It gave a nice steady rpm throughout the flights. Success at last.

Cardinal photo from hell.

For some reason I can't get this photo to attach to a forum that I had no trouble attaching photo's in the past.

Raffle plane part2.

The flight didn't improve. Back at home I just stared at it for a while. I could see that the flaps were a bit large for a model this size. Just for the heck of it I trimmed the flaps down a bit. That made a big difference in how it flys. Now it's back in the line up for fun flying. The weather is quite warm and I have to get to the park at 0700 and out by 0830. The shade goes away by 0800 and that makes it rough to put up with. I've been flying most of the planes I have ready to go just to keep them ready for use. The electrics are working well.