Hi folks, I know it’s been forever since I posted.  I’ve been caught up with work, it’s the busy season and I don’t get a lot of time to post on the blog.

I do however have plenty of time to work on the front sidewalk and build a radio controlled airplane, go figure!  The plane is a good break from the rc helicopter.  I’ve been getting that back into flying shape too, but for some reason I have a lot of flutter on the rotor at high RPMs. I need to diagnose that this week sometime and figure out what is going on there.  The setup is the same as it was before, the only difference is the blades and a different radio.

Hobby Shops
First at the top of the list is the Twist 60. I went to Barn Speed Hobbies in Lee, Massachusetts which is about an hour each way.  I went for a mini-heli pitch gauge, but ended up buying a Hanagar 9 Twist 60 and a Saito 1.15 4-stroke nitro engine.  I also bought some high-torque servos which they said were pretty good for the price, and which turned out to be total junk.

Not much I can say about that but I’m doing a bit more mail order for the time being. I don’t mind dealing with local hobby shops, like J&J Hobbies in Kingston, Jan is pretty nice and good to me. What I don’t like is being told servo is decent by someone and having it turn out to be a big pile of junk TO THE EXTREME.  I guess if I had an iPhone I could have looked those things up, but it’s not worth the $100 or more a month for that thing.  I think it’s a great device, but the service rates are stupid pricey just to look like a hipster. I do have an iPod touch which I don’t bring out in public and show everyone, it just plays my music and runs a few necessary applications.

Servos
I bought the Twist 60 last week and after the bum servos  ( TowerPro MG995 ) which 3 out of 5 were defective I went and ordered some Hitec MG 5625MGs for a few bucks more a piece.  The torque wasn’t as high, but I knew they would have a better percentage of good to bad! While I’ve had good luck with the Hitec servos, maybe out of the last 10 I’ve ordered I had one defective.  I pulled apart the case on the defect and rebuilt it and it worked fin.   The TowerPro MG995′s were grindy and nasty with bad centering and weird operations.   I kept the TowerPros, I hear the amp board is good so I’m going to mod a bunch of S148′s over to digital just to be weird.

Twist 60 Plane
The Twist 60 went together pretty easy.  The tail feathers bolt on, and the rudder and elevator servos mount in the tail of the aircraft.  Best to have a couple 18″ and 9-12″ servo extensions for this model. The fuel tank was kind of lame because the hole in the firewall was cut bigger than the neck of the tank.  A little bit of silicone around the neck of the fuel tanks seals the gap and keeps fuel from spraying back along the tank and into your landing gear block/electronics section.

It’s a shame this plane has been discontinued but there are some hardcore people making short kits and that kind of thing if you look hard enough (hint: twistaholics on google)

It comes with the hardware to run as a nitro-methonal or electric aircraft.  As I planned to run it at nitro I did a couple of small modifications to it.  The biggest was that I sanded down the firewall and sidewalls of the engine compartment and coated them with 30 minute epoxy to seal it against fuel, I also painted the inside of the fuel tank compartment with epoxy in case any leaks develop.  Secondly I went through the fuse and epoxied critical joints in the fuse with a light coat of 30 minute epoxy to strengthen it a bit.  This required cutting the covering of the bottom lightening hole behind the canopy but I feel it was worthwhile from things I had read elsewhere.

Electronics
Radio: For the electronics I used an Aitronics SD-10G 2.4Ghz radio, I’ll have to write another post on this radio, it’s pretty awesome.  I used the 10 channel receiver.  It runs in FH3 modulation mode which causes some problems with analog servos so that’s why I used the Hitec 5625MG servos in all locations, including the throttle.

Regulator: For the power supply plane side I used a Outrage 2s/7.4v/2200mAh LiPo battery powering a Fromeco Arizona regulator.  The Arizona regulator is a helicopter regulator, but that just means it has 2 lower voltage outputs for the gyro in a heli.  I didn’t use those outputs in the setup.

Servos: As I mentioned I used the Hitec 5625MG servos.  They work well and seem sturdy and strong enough for this application.

Engine
When I bought the plane I bought a Saito 1.15 4-stroker along with it. This is my first 4-stroke nitro engine and it was not as difficult to setup as some people seem to make it out to be.  The documentation is very straight forward, and this engine didn’t seem to have any quirks or weird things leftover from production.  I ran about 1/3rd of a gallon through the engine on a test bench before sticking it on the plane.

I bought Byron 4-stroke fuel.  It’s 15% nitro and 16% oil. Saito recommends 20% oil so I bought some oil additive, also Byron brand and remixed the fuel up to 20%.  The Byron fuel has about 3% castor in it.  The original Saito manual says to run ‘mostly synthetic’ fuel, while the American sources say to run 100% synthetic.  I prefer to run a little castor in my mix, and I believe the original manufacturer knows what they are talking about.  Not everyone is a super-pro engine tuner who never has an accident.  Additionally, fuel system problems can cause lean conditions, and have a bit of castor in there makes me feel a LITTLE safer.  It may require more maintenance in the long run, but these engines are so simple that it’s not a problem to tear one down and clean it up!

First Flight

I took the first flight on this aircraft on Sunday the 15th(2009). The plane flew pretty great. I was expecting it to be a disaster but all I need was some down trim and it was great.  As you can see from the video it really wanted to go up!  Some of that was me of course, some of it the trim.  Together it made for a great first takeoff and that Saito yanked it right up into the sky with no problem at all.

I just puttered and played around a bit, adjusting trims and other things. I wanted to get a first flight in casually just to make sure everything was working as desired. Future flights will involve a lot more crazy as this plane is going to be great!  A friend shot some video of the flight as you can see here (if you can’t, the link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eLHxliTmDA )

The Sidewalk
Not nearly enough work has been done on the sidewalk.  I spent a weekend a while back building new front steps.  The new regulations/building codes require a different setup on the steps which means I needed to get them in place to really know where to put the sidewalk.  The steps have gone pretty good and just need some ballisters put on the sides and paint to be done.  I’ll psot some pictures up once I get the ballisters on and paint them to match the front porch.

Related Posts

1. Hanagr 9 Twist 60 eConversion
2. Reactor Bipe EP, Sky Fly 2, Hangar 9 Twist 60 (With Saito 1.15) (video)
3. Weather Slowing Down New Front Sidewalk

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog, sorry for the long delay I have been extremely busy with work and non computer related hobbies. It’s incredible how the time flies.  We’ve been working on digging the trench for the sidewalk, the soil is tough to dig in and is taking some time, although it’s not nearly as tough to dig in as the back walk was.  This soil has much less rocks in it, it’s just that there is a lot more of it to remove.

Here is the most recent picture of the walk aka the kiddie pool during a recent rainstorm.  It’s important to remember to add proper drainage to your digging areas, or this happens.  There is a drain trench that leads to the roadside cliff edge, but it’s not deep enough.  If it were not for this drain trench, the excavation area would have been filled to the top.  This weekend I hope to get more material removed, it’s quite a piece of work for me because my body deteriorates quickly with heavy labor due to the rheumatoid arthritis, however I know we’ll get it done eventually, and most importantly before winter. The stairs will be getting removed and the sidewalk concrete will extend to the edge of the deck, then new steps will be built and secured to the concrete pad to make everything nice and solid.  The steps are in not-so great condition, though still strong but I think new steps will look great.

New sidewalk excavation

REACTOR BIPLANE

Aside from ditch digging we built a model biplane over the weekend and got some airtime on it.  The biplane is a Electrifly (Great Planes) ‘Reactor Bipe’.  It’s an electric biplane with a 38″ or so wingspan. I probably would have been better off buying some repair parts for the heli and a new radio but this looked really neat and hopefully it’ll help me blend in with the plane guys more at the R/C field.  The electric motor is a .15 equivilant size, theoretically, though I somewhat doubt it, it still does a pretty good job.

Electrifly Reactor Biplane

The Reactor Bipe was originally built with the suggest Futaba 3114 servos, but these tended to strip really easy and it got frustrating running out of servos.  I purchased some new gearsets for the servos, but they will be used in some other, lighter project because they just really don’t hold up in this application.  I replaced the servos with the Hitech HS-65MGs I was using in the Mini-Titan helicopter and things improved GREATLY, these servos really have the needed strength for the large control surfaces and are pretty fast as well.

The Reactor built pretty quickly, you do have to be careful about a few points. I noticed after assembly that using the pre-cut hinge slots that one ailerone was a bit lower than the one on the opposing wing.  Double check the position of the hinge slots and everything else if you are concerned.  Additionally where they recommend to use 30 minute epoxy, I’d definetly go that route.  The manual for the tail includes and update sheet to use CA to adhear the horizontal stab, rather than epoxy.  I suspect this is because epoxy could drip and cause the elevator tie rod thing to become bound.  Even with CA this is possible, be careful when applying the CA glue to the horizontal stab.  Additionally when gluing the control rods to the clevises, make sure the thin CA doesn’t drip into the joint.  It will adhere them solidly, and while you think that you escaped disaster because the arm and surface still moves, you’ll quickly discover that this is only because the clevis is slowly twisting itself apart, instead of actually rotating in the control horn.

The manual comes with recommended control throws for low rates, high rates, and 3d.  If you use the recommended control arm holes and low rates, you’ll find that the control is very grainy/low-resultion.  You have to turn the travel/ATV down so far, that you are only using a very small portion of the bandwidth for each channel, and you can actually see each step in the control surfaces.  This is bad because you loose a lot of precision.  I would recommend using the outer holes in the control horns on the control surfaces, and the inner holes on the servo control arms if you just want to start out easy.

I’ve put in 4 flights in the last two nights, all of them were great although the plane is pretty ‘touchy’ on the controls.  I will probably work in some exponential to make the middle of the controls softer, as I feel this would be okay for a plane (I don’t like expo on helis).

Electrifly Reactor Biplane Side View

Reactor Bipe Airborne

COPPER VAPOR LASER

Another side project which has been absorbing my time is the Copper Vapor Laser project. I’ve been building a tube furnace for this laser since the bore of the laser, where the copper vapor and helium (or neon) is energized by the electricity needs to be heated up to 800 degrees F for a copper chloride/bromide type solution.  While the tube furnace I am building is overkill as I actually wish to build a version of this laser using elemental copper.  The disadvantage of using elemental copper is that it requires extremely high temepratures, in the range of 1500 degrees celcuius (almost 2800 degrees Fahrenheit).  Because of this I have been lovingly crafting the furnace out of high temeperature ceramic fibers (Inswool), ceramic boards (Insboard) and a variety of refractory mortars.  For the bromide/chloride lasers, heat will be provided by a nichrome heater element(s) with no problem.  In order to reach operating temperature for the elemental copper vapor laser, I will probably use one or two propane torches inside of the cavity.

The bore for the CuCl/CuBr laser is a quartz tube, the bore for the elemental copper (Cu) laser will be a high temperature alumina ceramic bore.

The advantage of an elemental copper laser is that you do not require a double pulse power supply.  With a Cu Chloride or Bromide laser, you have to hit it once with a disassociation pulse, and a second time with the lasing pulse.  With elemental copper you don’t need to disassociate the copper from a bromide or chloride solution, so one step is saved there, at the cost of extreme temperatures.

Copper Vapor Lasers have been used in some of Pink Floyd’s shows, they produce powerful golden yellow and soothing green laser lines (beams).  Additionally CVL lasers have been used for the purpose of enriching uranium.  While I am a scientist at heart and love to explore all sorts of different realms, I don’t think that enriching uranium would be a recommended pastime, so I probably won’t explore that part of science!

Here are some pictures of the tube furnace in progress.  I’ve gotten much further, but don’t have pictures at this time. I will update my laser site later. This is the furnace for the CuCl/CuBr version of the laser.  For the elemental copper version of the laser, this will probably end up encased in an additional external Inswool blanket wrap to bring up the insulation value and retain more heat inside the core.

Related Posts

1. Reactor Biplane with FPV Hardware Flys
2. Pouring a Concrete Sidewalk with Coloring
3. I wrecked the Reactor Bipe, Time For a New (used) FPV Plane

Here are a few shots of the property at the end of March, I will be taking photo’s for end of April as well so you can see the massive difference over just one month.  I took these pictures back at the end of march, so that is when this post is dated, however I added it on April 27th.

New Sidewalk — The back yard was getting very muddy to walk between the back door and the driveway so we solved the problem by laying in some concrete pavers and a retaining wall.   It was a tremendous amount of work, I believe the soil is 60%+ rock in this area which makes for much labor. In order to lay out the pavers we had to dig out the soil beneath which was filled with huge chunks of bluestone, and I do mean huge. Some of the pieces of blue stone weighed as much as 50 pounds.  Then we leveled out a lot of gravel and then leveling sand on top of that.   The retaining wall was just simple stacked pavers. I used a hammer drill to drill through all but the very top concourse of bricks and then we drove rebar stakes down into the earth about 2 feet to keep it in place.  Over the last couple of winters the sidewalk and the retaining wall have held up great!

Walkway work

The Back .40:  This is the back yard of the property, beyond the ‘developed zone’.  It’s  probably closer to .60 acre, but I like the ‘back 40′ comparison better.

Back woods area at the end of March '09

Mom’s planter, we gave the planter a special name for my Mom and I’m going to be sending her photo’s from time to time so she can see what I planted in there for her.  It should be quite nice if all goes well! Notice how the lawn looks in this photo.

I planning on growing something nice for my mom in here each year, this years special ingredient is.... stay tuned

Barn side yard – If you look at the ground in this phot the ground color is all moss growing there on the surface.  This tree is kind of nice(it is still in winter mode) but I plan on trimming the bottom branches a bit so it’ll be nice and open instead of ground cover.

Just one of the pine-type trees in the front yard, I need to get a photo gallery together for identifying different trees and plants in the yard.

Related Posts

1. Leveling the Yard a Bit
2. Cleaning out Flower Beds
3. New Lawn by Barn Progress Report