These are descriptions and movies of the E-Flite Mini Funtana on its maiden flight.
The maiden flight occurred February 12th, 2005. Went ok. Flew great! Not an abundance of power
with the stock setup... took 50% throttle just to keep it flying... and 75% throttle to buck a
10mph headwind. Didn't really try to hover it. There is enough power, as it will climb straight
up out of site... but pullouts won't be spectacular. Shot a couple landings, both were a bit nasty but
caused no damage. I took too much out of the downthrust and it needs down elevator to fly straight...
then dives when power is removed. Will have to put some back in. I'm not sure the increased rudder
size made any positive difference. There is still a lot of pitch-coupling with rudder.
Also noticed it took quite a bit of left
aileron trim, which I think I introduced by shrinking the tail surface covering too much... the elevators
aren't straight now. A little work with the covering iron should fix that. Kept the first flight short,
about 7 minutes. Good flying bird despite the issues.
Second flight happened an hour later. Flies the pattern better than my Yak... no surprise with its
longer tail and thinner airfoil. Too high of a wing loading to compete with the Yak in 3D though... but
pure 3D isn't why I got this plane anyway. About 8 minutes into the second flight, I noticed the power
starting to weaken. It was taking more throttle to maintain airspeed. I figured it was just the
battery getting low. Had to wait my turn to land, and by the time I did about a minute later... there
was no power left. Being deadsticked, my landing was short and hard... bending the landing gear on one
side and cracking that part of the ply gear plate. Tried to throttle up to taxi... but no response from
the prop. Ok, battery really empty.
Got it back home. Straightened the aluminum gear (the landing would have broken the stock CF gear in
a million places) and repaired the landing gear plate. Charged the batteries... which only took 1100mah.
A little more than half the capacity. Took the cowl off to see what was up with the
motor... noticed black plastic shavings inside. The gearbox had broken right at one of the motor
screws and had allowed the motor to slip and I guessed eat the spur gear. Ok, new gearbox time. Took the
old gearbox off... and noticed the Park 400 was REAL stiff turning it by hand. Hmm... not good.
Attached it back to the CC35 ESC and throttled up. Nothing but beeps and noise from the motor.
Wonderful... the motor is bad. Grabbed the Razor RZ-2500 I had sitting in the shop and hooked it up
Spun up fine... good, nothing wrong with the ESC. Went ahead and installed it on a Cobri gearbox.
Got to thinking about what happened to the first motor. Took the model to our R/C club meeting
a few days later for show and tell. Somebody asked me where the cooling holes were. I pointed to
the exit hole in the fuse near the tail... and started to point to the semi-circular hole in the bottom
of the cowl. However... that hole was MISSING!!!
Time to back up for a second. When I got the kit from the LHS, its cowl was way darker than the
yellow ultracoat. Bad paint job. So, the LHS ordered a replacement cowl from Horizon. When it
arrived a few days later, all I did was look to see that it matched the covering. It did, so I put
it back in the box. All of the test fitting and such were done with the original cowl. Never
looked at the new cowl until it was time to permanently attach it. I have since added a comparison
photo to the assembly page of both cowls side by side.
BOTTOM LINE: If you get a replacement cowl... or even if you don't... check to make sure there
is a cooling exit hole in the bottom of the cowl. If there is not, and you leave it that way... you
stand the chance of burning up your motor like I did. Even though I had a heatsink on the motor, the
exit hole in the tail, and didn't use more than 75% throttle for more than a second or two (which drew
only 19.5 to 20 amps static)... I still burned up the motor.
DOH!
MOVIE CLIPS
(These movies were produced using Arcsoft's Video Impression 2. The 384Kbps size
may run better on slower computers, and are quite a bit smaller than the 760Kbs versions without loosing
much quality. If you have a fast computer and connection, get the 760Kbps version... otherwise try the 384Kbps.
If you have trouble viewing these by directly clicking on the link, try right-clicking on the link, choose
save to disk, and play the video ouside the browser.)
02/12/2005 - MAIDEN FLIGHT! This is the video of most of the maiden flight.
Pretty boring video overall... no fancy flying, just trying to get comfortable with the new airplane.
The whole flight was done using high-rates... which is basically all the movement I could get out of each
surface. Take off was interesting, rolled immediately to the right and required some left aileron to
arrest the roll. My cameraman had the camera zoomed in too close (12x zoom), and he lost it for a second.
The plane didn't hardly change course, as it looks like it may have come close to him. It did
not, just the 420mm zoom lens filling the frame with model. The first few minutes of flight, I was
getting it trimmed to fly straight and level.
I'm still having some issues with the new camera (Minolta Z3). Forgot to turn off the auto color-
balance, as it has trouble with bright skies, so the movie has a pink tint to it in places. With
the wind-noise, and heli operating in the background, the sound isn't good... I suggested turning
down the volume. If I can come up with apporpriate music, I'll dub over it. Hopefully future movie
clips will be of better quality and of more interesting flying.
7:33 minutes (320x240-256Kbps - 12.0MB) (320x240-384Kbps - 19.5MB) (320x240-768Kbps - 38.0MB)
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