Morning Ride

I'm trying to move my schedule forward to start riding in the mornings. One of my neighbors has been bugging me to join him on road rides Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 5:30AM. I'm not there quite yet, but this morning I was able to get up a little earlier and get in a 13.4 mile, 17.8 mph average ride.


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This is a nice short route, very scenic with rolling hills. Highway 24 in particular is great, blowing grass fields, white picket fences and horses all make it feel like you are far out in the country.

I'd like to scout out a route slightly longer with more elevation. I know there are some good hills a little farther south west, closer to Lake Minnetonka.

Speedwing Ready for Flight

When it was pouring rain on Tuesday night I finished up the speedwing. It turns out there were multiple cold solder joints in the motor to ESC connectors. I ended up re-soldering all of the motor connectors and a couple of the ESC connectors. It works like a dream now, no skipping or hesitations at any throttle setting.

I also added a velcro hold-down strap for the back of the canopy- I felt the magnets I had initially used didn't have enough hold-down strength. I don't want the canopy flying off at 150 mph and getting chopped into little pieces by the prop. I used two pieces of nylon tubing for pins at the front of the canopy - ala Parkzone's standard canopy hold-down system.

I'm excited to fly it for the first time, hopefully it'll fly well. With any luck it'll fly better than John's Super Stryker.

Parkzone Ultra-Micro P-51 first flight

Last Friday in a fit of impulse buying, I picked up a new Parkzone Ultra-Micro P-51. That isn't to say I haven't been thinking about buying one for a long time, but the timing was last minute. Due to weather conditions, racing, and house projects over the weekend I didn't have a chance to fly it until today. After the wind conditions calmed down to only breezy, added to a little peer pressure pushed me over the edge and I decided to do a quick flight off the parking lot out back of our office. Ryan volunteered to take video on my Droid, and here is the fun that resulted!



After a handful of very close calls, and realizing it was just too windy I tried to put it down. The landing was a little harsh, but only minor cosmetic damage resulted. Even with the challenge from the breeze, I can tell this will be a fun airplane to fly. (in calmer conditions!)

Mudfest!

Saturday's first Minnesota State series race, Freewheel Frolic at Salem Hills, was the muddiest ride I've had in a long, long time. Probably not since racing back in 1997 or so, I think at Welsh Village, have I experienced such a mud fest.

I finished 10th in my age group, and 71st overall, out of a field of 162. (this was from the preliminary results posted at the race on Saturday) I wasn't very satisfied with my performance. The first two laps I really wasn't working too hard, and was really having a hard time with the conditions. Much of the course was clay mud with the consistency of crisco. It was a little like riding on semi-packed snow after lots of cars have rutted it up. Instead of just keeping my weight back, pedaling, and blasting through it, I was riding very conservatively. It wasn't until the third lap when I starting pouring on the gas a little more. I was feeling more comfortable with the mud, and in addition, the trail was drying out making everything easier. 

All in all it was a great time, even after freezing my butt off before the race started, sitting in the rain waiting for the start time to be announced. 

Hopefully I'll be more in tune with the trail next race!

Talk about a mess going back in the car!

Speedwing Nearly ready for flight...

I was finally able to spend a little tonight working on the speedwing. The control surfaces, motor, even stickers are installed and ready to go. Other than one problem I found tonight, I only need to put a couple pins in the front of the canopy to hold it in place, figure out how to stuff everything into the canopy for flight. The problem is the speed control, it seems as though there might be a bad solder joint on one of the connectors. It spins up sometimes but not others, and it seems as though if you rotate the connectors it'll affect the results.

Even so, some preliminary motor data:

Turnigy 3200kv 28-36
3 cell, 2200 mAh, 25C battery

4.1 x 4.1 APC prop = 30 amps
4.75 x 4.75 APC prop = 40 amps  (plus lots of noise!)

I think I'm going to try a 6 x 4 prop as well. I have an 80 amp speed control and I figure I might as well make use of it. Otherwise I may order another 40 amp to try and drop some weight. The extra space would be helpful, as there is hardly any room for batteries & the associated wires. This thing should rip- the wingspan is only 25 inches, and with 40 to 80 amps driving the prop it should have plenty of go-power. I think I'll probably have to experiment with the thrust angle and center of gravity a bit to get it to fly well. Hopefully it'll be controllable the first time up.

As you can see, I went with a classic 1930's US army airforce color scheme. It should be easy to see in the sky. The bottom is navy blue.

Supercub w Floats

The supercub and floats I picked up a few weeks ago was a great purchase. I have ten flights so far off water and it flies beautifully. Not as much power or speed as I'm used to, but fun even so. I've been working on precision and accuracy which should help me out on my other models.

On a side note the mobile blogger tool seems to be screwed up- it was posting garbled text to my blog.