flying 442
02-28-2007, 10:07 AM
At the fun-fly that I goto, the heli’s and the foamies take turns flying the hanger. Before long your want a foamie so you can double your air time. I found the big planes are for those who have mastered flying, as turning in a tight space full of people and planes can be a trick.
I looked on the web and found the Air Hogs and other small planes, but even they can be hard to turn it that space. What I did might not be the right way to make one, but it was quick and worked. I took 5 of the $20~$30 micro planes to my side yard and found I liked these two- Air Hogs Aero Ace jet and SilverLit’s “Single wing plane”.
There are a lot of sites on mod’ing the air hogs, so I’ll show you what I did to the Single Wing. I taped a penny to the nose and moved it back and forth until it would-
1 fly level at mid stick
2 climb to a stall at full stick
3 glide to the ground with no stick
Most would stop here, but the added weight on an under powered plane makes you carry too much speed. This makes turning harder and it drops too fast with no power.
So at this point you take a pin with a string tied to it and poke it in the foam above the wing to find your center of gravity with nose and tail both sitting level. Then remove the penny, I found the plane was tail heavy so I cut the solid foam all the way up the fuselage. I had to watch out for the tail wires as they run through the foam. Now the plane was nose heavy, so I trimmed off some of the motor cover and most of the plastic around the charge plug and on/off switch. I kept going nose and tail like this until I dropped as much weight as I could.
They make these things so a 5 yr old could step on one and it would still be ok. After removing this much it can still take a nose dive from 15ft, but could break easier than before. I could have stopped at this point as it could now do a figure 8 in a small area. This plane comes with a heavy NiCad so I removed that and installed the LiPo from an Air Hog. I think the NiCad was almost twice the weight of the LiPo so a future task might be to run two LiPo’s and have more amps with longer flight times. Now after removing the NiCad I found it really upset the center of gravity. I was missing major nose weight, so I trimmed even more out of the tail. I wanted to add landing gear so I took this time to add it and then balanced it out from there.
The motor is underpowered no more! It is now very happy with a lot less weight, I can even power out of mistakes. I find that most of my slow flying is now in the very low throttle range and it doesn’t dive as bad during sharp turns. It now needs 1/4th the room to turn that it did making it the perfect small yard, small scale foamie.
I know that this is nothing new to most of the old timers and that this is more work than many would do to a $20 plane. But if you want to have fun with a plane you can fly into a wall and keep going, this might be what you’re looking to do.
I looked on the web and found the Air Hogs and other small planes, but even they can be hard to turn it that space. What I did might not be the right way to make one, but it was quick and worked. I took 5 of the $20~$30 micro planes to my side yard and found I liked these two- Air Hogs Aero Ace jet and SilverLit’s “Single wing plane”.
There are a lot of sites on mod’ing the air hogs, so I’ll show you what I did to the Single Wing. I taped a penny to the nose and moved it back and forth until it would-
1 fly level at mid stick
2 climb to a stall at full stick
3 glide to the ground with no stick
Most would stop here, but the added weight on an under powered plane makes you carry too much speed. This makes turning harder and it drops too fast with no power.
So at this point you take a pin with a string tied to it and poke it in the foam above the wing to find your center of gravity with nose and tail both sitting level. Then remove the penny, I found the plane was tail heavy so I cut the solid foam all the way up the fuselage. I had to watch out for the tail wires as they run through the foam. Now the plane was nose heavy, so I trimmed off some of the motor cover and most of the plastic around the charge plug and on/off switch. I kept going nose and tail like this until I dropped as much weight as I could.
They make these things so a 5 yr old could step on one and it would still be ok. After removing this much it can still take a nose dive from 15ft, but could break easier than before. I could have stopped at this point as it could now do a figure 8 in a small area. This plane comes with a heavy NiCad so I removed that and installed the LiPo from an Air Hog. I think the NiCad was almost twice the weight of the LiPo so a future task might be to run two LiPo’s and have more amps with longer flight times. Now after removing the NiCad I found it really upset the center of gravity. I was missing major nose weight, so I trimmed even more out of the tail. I wanted to add landing gear so I took this time to add it and then balanced it out from there.
The motor is underpowered no more! It is now very happy with a lot less weight, I can even power out of mistakes. I find that most of my slow flying is now in the very low throttle range and it doesn’t dive as bad during sharp turns. It now needs 1/4th the room to turn that it did making it the perfect small yard, small scale foamie.
I know that this is nothing new to most of the old timers and that this is more work than many would do to a $20 plane. But if you want to have fun with a plane you can fly into a wall and keep going, this might be what you’re looking to do.