Up and running again...

[Rotary R/C]

Well, after righting off the gilles 202 I have now maidened her replacement.

My new UCD 60 is actually a pretty nice plane. I'm running it with the TT pro 61 which so far seems to be adequate (note how I said "adequate" and not "perfect" :P ). I've had too many deadsticks with it to tell how well it will really perform.

The plane itself is pretty freaky to fly the wing loading is so low that I had to force the plane to land and used up almost 600' of our 800' strip to do it (ending with a little bit of a rash on the wing tip thanks to the brush at the end of the runway). The Gilles being almost twice as heavy and much larger would come in nice and steady and ease itself down on the runway and stop. No bouncing. This on the other hand needs to be told to land even with a deadstick. You force it down and think "okay, I can ease off and let her slow down and stop". Nope! back up in the air she goes another 3, 4 even 5' off the deck. A few more flights with her and i'll be able to relax a little more and know that I can bleed off more speed in the air without worrying about her not making it back to the runway on a deadstick.

Overall it is a very, very agile plane. My impressions are though that the 61 is going to work pretty hard in 3D. I did convert to a pull-pull rudder set-up mounting the servo undeneath the airframe, and against all suggestions and after evaluating the landing gear setup I opted to leave it stock and it has proven to be up to the task of hard landings as I have bent the left side of the landing gear already. I also converted to 4-40 linkages for the surfaces.

Anyone have any advice on getting this set-up running reliably inverted. It runs very nice on the ground and even when held vertically but every flight so far ended with a deadstic around 4-5 mins in flight (mostly low throttle flying just getting used to the plane). It literally just dies, cruising at steady RPM about 1/4 Throttle. I've tried plugs with idle bars, four stroke plugs and regular plugs with no change in performance. In my opinion it originally seemed to be running rich although good. I have since tuned her in with the pinch method on both WOT and idle (HSN & LSN) and it is running very good now on the ground, but I won't have her in the air until Saturday.

Thanks in advance.
Marc
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[Rotary R/C]

Has anyone had any issues with flame-outs in their UCD-60? I'm getting them every 2-3 times out of every 5 flights or so. It's kinda of irritating My Saito 1.80 was inverted and I never had issues with flame outs. Mind you it was a four stroke. It ran like a charm. My TT 61 pro runs very nice on the ground but very unreliable in the air thus far.

Doesn't seem like to many people are perusing this area lately so I'll continue searching for the answer in the meantime.

[Rotary R/C]

Turns out the TT 61 pro inverted does not like 4cyl fuel, only 2cyl. Was using my left over gallons from the Saito guess it was a big mistake!

[3D Meatshield]

LOL! Hate when that happens!

Glad to hear you are up and flying. I wish you the best with the gear, maybe GP beefed them up some so they don't rip off as easily (or maybe your hard landing's aren't that hard )

I ran mine originally on an os 91 surpass, then moved up to a saito 1.25. The 91 was marginal at best- it wouldn't even hover, regardless of prop. The saito was out of this world, hovering easily on several props. I never put a 2c in it.

Oddly enough, my 91 runs like a raped ape on 2 stroke fuel.

[Rotary R/C]

Yeah it sucked and it had us scratching our heads for a while trying to figure it out, it was almost night and day when I switched the fuels and nerve racking as I kept expecting it to dead stick on me at any time.

As far as the landings go, I learned to fly on helicopters and flew my R50 for a couple of years and then I made the leap to planes. As you can probably imagine, you can't land a heli hard (or shouldn't ) so my landing skills with planes tend to be on the "delicate" side. Plus we have 800' of runway to land on so we can afford to bring planes in a little on the lazy side.

I'm almost tempted to rebuild my Saito 1.80 and throw it in there but that is probably WAY overkill If not, I'll rebuild it over the winter time and either sell it as being rebuilt (new bearings, complete valve train, muffler etc...) or buy another airframe for it. It was a sweet engine before the crash. So far i have it completly stripped and have soaked and cleaned all the salvagable parts (they actually look almost new now) and are now in seperate sealed containers soaking in WD-40 until I order all the rebuild parts which will run about CAD$160.00 after taxes.

I didn't want to a 2C in it her either but my budget made me do it I tried hovering with the TT 61 PRO and it seemed to be a struggle and then it would flame it out. Once I buy some 2C fuel I'll give her a better go at it and see what she can really do.

[3D Meatshield]

LOL a 1.80 in that thing would probably rip the firewall off- my saito 1.25 separated mine and I caught it in time. Seems like everything GP makes is on the fragile side.

So how has the Do treated ya? Is that lg still attached ?

[Rotary R/C]

I did rip it off once but it was due to dumb thumbs and making the decision to fly on very windy day. This plane is so light on the wing loading it's crazy. My Gilles would have come in like a rock in this type of wind. This plane is is like trying a friggin helium balloon. It just floats! I'm really going to have to learn to plant her down And make her stay once she touches down, I suck! lol...

I pancaked her hard! Crushed the left wing tip, ripped the landing gear out and split the fuse right on the CG. I got her all fixed up again and recovered though. I had to perform surgery on her and removed all the damaged balsa and laid in some fresh new stuff. Took me a couple of days but she is good as new. I don't have any flying season left here now that old man winter has moved back in to the area. For now I have my Fancy Foam YAK55M to fly for indoors. I ordered two of them.