Road to the 2018 World Aerobatic Championships (rc planes)

[JustHatched 12,123]

This is going to be my thread to post pics and videos on my goal of being invited to the 2018 world areobatic championships.

 

I've been doing lots of aerobatic flight practice on a simulator and with my real planes and am going to be attending the regional championships in September, this will be my first actual competition, from there it'll be practice, practice practice over the winter and I will be attending as many competitions as possible in 2017, pretty much anything in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Kentucky (the North Central region) in an attempt to become the 2017 regional points champ and attend the nationals in 2017 as well. If all goes well I may luck out and be 1 of 36 people selected to be on the USA team for the worlds in 2018. If I am not selected perhaps I will at least be able to pick up some corporate sponsorship and I will have to wait till the 2022 worlds.

 

SO when Rose is attending me practicing and competiting I will post pics and videos here along with any podium spots or spectacular crashes. 

[JustHatched 12,123]

Turned my first laps with my Extra 300 trying to get a feel for the plane, had a bit of a rough landing cuz I just couldn't seem to get the stall speed figured but it did land on its wheels just a bit harder than it should have, no damage. It flys very smooth and I have managed to get it trimmed very well.

[Beez 5,091]

Sounds really neat Hatch. I knew you flew but had no idea you were at that level.

Are the planes standard or can you fly anything? Gas or electric? What kinds of stunts will you do?

I guess we will all find out as you take us on this journey.

[JustHatched 12,123]

On 7/19/2016 at 2:40 PM, Beez said:

Sounds really neat Hatch. I knew you flew but had no idea you were at that level.

Are the planes standard or can you fly anything? Gas or electric? What kinds of stunts will you do?

I guess we will all find out as you take us on this journey.

I'm not quite to that level yet, I can do the stunts but need to learn the sequences they want them done in and how to confine to the "the box" (imagine flying in a box without touching the sides, same thing with a big imaginary box)

 

Can be gas or electric and you can fly anything you want but the larger the plane the less effect wind has on it which means smoother flying. While technically you can do this with most planes (within their design limits) the best planes for it are Extras, Edges, Yaks, 

 

Extra 300

 

Edge 540

 

Yak

[JustHatched 12,123]

Had a bit of a set back, I was working on some knife edging and split s maneuvers and when landing for the 3rd time of the day I was a hair further out from the runway than I thought and the landing gear brushed the tall weeds and flipped the plane into the ground breaking the carbon fiber propeller, damaged the wheel skirts and smashed the left wing tip. Wing is fixable as is the skirts. This got me to looking for spares and I now have another plane just like my Extra 300 (minus a few parts) on it's way from Florida at the cost of a new set of wings (getting wings, tail, fuselage, canopy, landing gear, gas tank, and skirts, all brand new)  

[JustHatched 12,123]

This is what I am flying to do this shit, soon there will be some vids of my flights

 

 

[Skorpion 2,527]

What sort of size ranges are these planes?

[JustHatched 12,123]

For competition mine is a smaller plane with 89 inch wing span though you can use smaller the wind effects them more. Typically 104 inch wing span is popular up to 120 inches. Rare to see anything bigger competing.

[Skorpion 2,527]

Wow! I was thinking something around 89 inch would be the larger, and the average size being about half that haha.

Edited July 26, 2016 by Skorpion

[JustHatched 12,123]

Started repairs today, upon inspection the fuselage suffered damage on both sides where the wings attach. Mostly just cracks with a bit of plywood pull apart. Doesn't show up in photos but you can see where I got it clamped while the glue dries

 

 

Since I had to repair the fuselage and will have to rebalance the plane I went ahead and installed the Smartfly power management system, Smartfly optic engine kill swtich, Cricket voltage monitors, a 3rd battery hookup and a choke servo

The smartfly power ensures the receiver get a consistent 5 volts so that the 6.6 volt battery doesn't over load it while sending 6.6 to the servos and in the case of this plane as it has multiple servos working together to do the same job it tracks the movement of them and alters the voltage to each servo has the same travel rate without working against each other and it will accept 2 batteries and will switch back and forth to the highest voltage battery and if a battery fails it senses that and shuts it off so it won't damage the good battery. So with this a 3rd battery is required for the ignition and the smartfly kill switch is hooked the the power system via fiber optics to eliminate receiver noise getting into the ignition.

The pics are of both smartflys

 

The lit up things in the above pic are the Crickets (smartfly kill switch is the red thing next to them), these light up to the voltage in each battery (3rd one is on its way here), but what they also do is monitor the lowest voltage in flight, when the servos are activated there is voltage drops so it will flash the led of the lowest voltage while also showing the average voltage with solid lights. 

 

Here is the damage wheel skirts needing fiber glass repair and the damaged wing, I have the wing tip stripped and gonna go get some new foam and balsa tomorrow

[Dodge 7,265]

Dude that sucks...

[JustHatched 12,123]

1 minute ago, Dodge said:

Dude that sucks...

Yeah, but it could have been so much worse

[Dodge 7,265]

Probably true.

[JustHatched 12,123]

I got my plane fixed a bit back, here is pics of the wing repair

 

I used and ash tray to hold down a new piece of balsa down for the glue to dry, I had to cut 3 inched off the wing tip to re build it

Thought I had other pics, you can see the repaired wheel skirt in the above pic as well. I re sheeted the 3 inches and put some foam filler where the foam was damaged, recovered it and it looks like new, can't tell it was fixed unless you look real close

 

Here it is under cover waiting for first flight since repair, it flies great again

 

[JustHatched 12,123]

Oh and if this ever happens again and it is so bad I can fix it, I picked up another plane just like it brand new for the price of what one wing normally costs

 

[JustHatched 12,123]

Video taken from my last flight over the weekend, Rose was having difficulty keeping the camera up to speed with the plane.

 

 

[Skorpion 2,527]

You missed a checkpoint

 

I want one now. It looks like a lot of fun.

Good control on the rolls as well. Is it as easy to control as it looks? I somehow feel like I'd crash on the easiest of turns, if I even made it off the ground

[JustHatched 12,123]

On 8/31/2016 at 2:20 AM, Skorpion said:

You missed a checkpoint

 

I want one now. It looks like a lot of fun.

Good control on the rolls as well. Is it as easy to control as it looks? I somehow feel like I'd crash on the easiest of turns, if I even made it off the ground

Control varies per plane, even the same design plane varies pending setup. That plane in the video is designed to do any kind of stunt with proper setup and balance. I have the control surfaces set at 3 rates and what you see in the video is on low (least amount of movement), if on high it will do about 6 rolls a second.

 

That said, my Sweet N Low will also roll, but it is a slow roller and will drop the nose when rolling and looks like a corkscrew, so to get a good looking roll you have to give some knife edge rudder when it goes on its side, then give down elevator when upside down and then knife elevator when on the other side. It takes some quick reflexes to get it to do some tricks right and some it just wont do. If you want to learn to fly google Real Flight Simulator 7.5, it is very much like flying the real thing and a great way to learn without worry of crashing. 

[JustHatched 12,123]

Unfortunately I won't be attending the regional championships this year, can't seem to get in enough practice time and I know my skills aren't where they should be. I'll work on it over the winter and hit the circuit hard come next spring. I'll also be getting my other Extra 300 flyable so I have a backup plane,

[JustHatched 12,123]

Still working on competing next year, been working on the simulator mostly cuz actual flight time is hard to find at the moment. 

Somwhere on site is probably a pic of my competition plane, last weekend I acquired another identical to it to have for a backup that is ready to fly plus another that is new in box which is crazy cuz they have not been made for a couple years. That has me at 2 flyable and 2 new in box so that should keep me set for flyable competition aircraft for awhile

 

[JustHatched 12,123]

My first competition date is set, May 27th in Ohio with the next 2 weeks later in Iowa. I am hoping to be in the air practicing the routine in March and at least 2-3 times a week until it's show time.