Solar FPV Plane Flies Forever

Streator RC Flyers
Onboard Top Flite AT6 Texan
May 2016 Issue
Former NTSB official says drone
isn't going to bring airplane down.
1 pilot with 2 co-pilots.
From Left: Mike, Mike, Ryan
Inside this issue:
Taming a Camel
2
Crash of the month
3
New Graupner Radios
3
New HiTec Servo line up
3
Stall
& SpinServo
Recovery
New HiTec
line Tips
up
4
3
Meeting Minutes
4
Airline pilots need to cool
their jets about banning
drones in their airspace, a
former National Transportation Safety Board member
said Saturday.
“We’ve been flying into
birds for how long?” former
NTSB member John Goglia
asked at a conference of
drone enthusiasts gathered
in Queens.
Goglia told them it took
more than one goose to
force US Airways Capt.
Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger
to bring Flight 1549 to an
emergency landing in the
Hudson River in 2009.
Things worth a mention!
 Meeting 5/18 @ 7:00 pm will
be at the flying field.
 We got a brand new windsock.
 Peoria RC Modelers Open
House May 21st 2016
“It took a flock of them to bring
down Sully’s plane. So a drone is
going to bring an airplane down?
That’s a little bit of baloney,”
Goglia said.
Goglia delivered his pro-drone
speech to a room full of students at Vaughn College of
Aeronautics and Technology in
East Elmhurst as part of International Drone Day.
officials seem to disagree.
The agency warned in March
that “operating drones around
airplanes, helicopters and airports is dangerous and illegal”
and cautioned that scofflaws
could be subject to “stiff
fines and criminal charges,
including possible jail time.”
“A drone hitting an airplane in
flight and getting digested by
an engine might be expensive
for the airline, but it’s not going
to bring an airplane down,” he
argued.
Federal Aviation Administration
Solar FPV Plane Flies Forever
We love solar power! Not only is it
environmentally friendly, but it’s
relatively lightweight and involves
fragile high technology. Just the
sort of thing that we’d want to
strap onto the wings of a large
model aircraft.
Solar power on a remote-controlled
plane would get you unlimited cruising range. Now, a normal land-andswap-battery process might be
good enough for some people, but
judging from Prometreus’s YouTube
channel, he’s a fan of long flights
over the Alps, and of pushing long
distance FPV links to the
breaking point.
For him and his friends, the
battery power is definitely
the limiting factor in how
far and long he can fly.
Prometreus didn’t bother
with maximum-power-point
tracking, but instead wired
up his solar cells to work
just about right for the
voltage of his batteries and
the level of sun that he’s
seeing.
So it won’t work nearly as well on cloudy days.
He could switch the solar cells in an out remotely,
and it’s pretty gratifying to see the consumed current in the battery go down below zero. In the end,
he lands with a full battery. How cool is that?
Streator Rc Flyers Newsletter
May 2016 Issue
Page 2
Taming a Camel – Bavarian Demon Flight Stabilization System
I had an interesting time at last year’s Warbirds over Delaware giant scale event. I was flying my newly completed 1/4-scale Sopwith Camel and was
having some difficulty landing the short nosed WW1 biplane. I made three flights each ending by flipping over on its nose and I broke three propellers.
Not my best showing. It just so happened, that Danny Melnik of DemonAero.com was on the WOD flightline watching my activities. After a while, Danny
came over and offered to install one of his Bavarian Demon Cortex 3-axis flight stabilizers in my Camel. Why would I say no? The Cortex is the not so
well kept secret of many top level competition scale, jet and aerobatic RC pilots.
Made of CNC-machined aluminum, the Cortex module is lightweight, sturdy and very compact. It comes with a wiring harness for connecting to your servos and receiver, thin double-sided mounting tape, a jumper plug and a USB cable for programming using PC software. Compatible with all standard receivers, the Cortex can be used with Spektrum RC, JR 2-satellite receivers, Futaba S-Bus, and the Jeti PPM systems. In general the Cortex works with
up to five control channels making it ideal for my Camel, which is set up with two elevator and two aileron channels mixed in pairs. Danny advised me that
the Cortex must be mounted securely and aligned parallel with the fuselage’s centerline.
The Cortex is controlled with the auxiliary channel of your choice and I used my 3-position GEAR switch to switch between two separate stabilization
settings with the center position being the off position.
The Cortex Aux lead is plugged into that receiver channel port. Because of my Camel’s tight radio compartment, Danny used his laptop computer and a
mini USB cable to reprogram the Cortex so the connection ports faced the left side of the fuselage. This allowed the wire leads to clear the pushrods
passing overhead. Again, this took only a few moments and we were good to go.
The module has to installed fairly close to your receiver so you
can use the included wire harness to make all the servo and
receiver connections. The factory-set orientation for
the Cortex is upright and with the servo ports positioned toward
(Above) Danny Melnik of DemonAero.com installed
the Demon Cortex in my Camel right there in the
pit area at the WOD event.
The gains for the Cortex gyro are adjusted by changing the endpoint values of the auxiliary channel. Negative values place the Cortex in the Normal
mode, indicated with the LED turning yellow. Normal mode cancels out flight disturbances from wind gusts. A positive endpoint value places the Cortex in
the Hold mode for 3D aircraft to improve hover maneuvers and is indicated by a green LED. In both flight stabilization models the larger the endpoint
values are the higher the stabilization effects will be. For the center position, a zero endpoint setting turns off the Cortex stabilization indicated by a
red LED. As my WW1 Camel is far being a 3D flyer, we set up the two modes as various gains (with different negative values), so both banks are Normal flight modes providing different amounts of stability. The unit does not know or care what channel is used to switch the various stability modes, so it
can easily be tailored to your specific airplane. You can also mix your Cortex channel with your flight mode switch so it automatically adjusts to your
needs. High Gain with flaps and retracts lowered for landings, etc.
Once the Cortex is installed in your plane, you do have to alter your start up procedure slightly. First switch on your transmitter without worry about the
Cortex gyro’s switch position. Next, without touching or moving your model, switch on your receiver. Wait for it to bind to the transmitter and then
watch for the control surfaces to “bump” a couple times. This indicates that the Cortex is active and it has identified and set its neutral positions. Now
when you move the Gear switch you will see the LED on the module switch colors for each of the three positions.
For the first takeoff, I switched the Cortex off and got airborne unassisted. Once I gained some altitude I switched to the Normal (Green) mode and
waited for something to happen. The Camel simply kept flying along but now felt like the wind gusts had been switched off. It tracked straight and level
and the wings barely moved in roll. I was also pleased to see that the elevator was also doing a great job keeping the model in level flight with no pitch
trim changes. Nothing else happened except I really enjoyed the flight. At this point I had only about 6 or 7 flights on the Camel and this was by far
the smoothest. With the Cortex activated the only noticeable difference in feeling was like it had a good amount of exponential dialed in. Switching to
the second (Yellow) Normal mode setting was just as smooth with a bit more stabilizing effect.
For my first assisted landing, I left the Cortex in the green Normal mode. Setting up for landing the Camel locked in nicely with virtually no wingtip
drops or dips from the wind. This was especially impressive as there was about a 15-degree crosswind blowing. I was able to easily touchdown with a
good straight rollout. Up to this point, all my landings had ended in a tail-dragger dance and nosing over. No walk of shame this time.
Note: when you switch on the Cortex, should your aircraft start to osculate back and forth in roll or porpoise up and down in pitch hunting for center the
gain is set too high. Simply switch off the Cortex, land your plane and lower the endpoint values a bit and try again. It is best to fine tune the setting
on a relatively calm day.
Bottom line, the Bavarian Demon Cortex will definitely smooth things out. For a normal fixed-wing scale flyer, the
Cortex 3-axis stabilization, is like an off switch for the wind! You will wonder how you flew without it before.
Streator Rc Flyers Newsletter
May 2016 Issue
Page 3
Crash of the Month
It is the inevitable, we all crash.
Sometimes it’s a radio failure, other times
its “dumb thumbs” or could be the endless
excuses we all think up.
This month our local hobby shop entrepreneur Brian on one of his first few flights of
the 2016 flying season, had one of those
moments.
Now, as all of us RC pilots know even the
most highly skilled pilots have an OOPS
moment. Let it be a little reminder that we
all have a bad flying day now and again.
But they make more planes and we always
get another chance at it.
New HiTec D-Series Dynamo Titanium Gear servo line up.
The titanium D-950TW is part of our DSeries dynamo servo line. All Hitec D-Series
servos have been designed using our brand
new, cutting edge, custom engineering.
Combining industry leading high-resolution,
state-of-the-art ultra-response technology
with a 32-bit MCU and 12-bit ADC for unprecedented programmability and flexibility,
these servos deliver significantly smoother
movement.
The speedy, powerful line operates on a wide
4.8 ~ 8.4 voltage range, allowing use with any
common battery chemistry without the need
for adapters or regulators.
Featuring Hitec’s industry standard 25-tooth
output spline with 3mm hex screw, each
D-Series servo brings monster performance
never known before in the market.
How is this for monster torque numbers
Torque oz-in
@4.8V 292 oz-in
@6.0V 403 oz-in
@7.4V 486 oz-in
If you have want for a top of the line servo and
a serious need for precision and ultra high
torque. This new line has something to fill that
need.
Dynamic Balsa is now a Graupner USA dealer.
Graupner is one of the oldest privately held
model hobbies company in the world developing, manufacturing, selling and distributing thousands of hobby products such as
radio control, charger’s servos, models and
more.
Graupner was founded by Johannes Graupner in Stuttgart Germany in 1930 as a scale
model manufacturer which later moved to
Kirchheim unter Teck which still serves
today as our main offices in Europe.
In 1935, the first glider model was introduced, and in 1938, the first building plans
and materials for ship scale modeling were
produced. The first radio control product
was introduced in 1954 and from that time
onward Graupner was seen as a cutting edge
technology manufacturer in the RC industry
leading the path to many innovations that
makes what the RC hobby is today. With
the introduction of the HoTT technology
(Hopping Telemetry Transmission Protocol)
Graupner has been leading the path with
real-time telemetry innovations enhancing
safety and situational pilot awareness for a
safe and worry free operation of its RC
radio products.
Graupner products have been known for
quality and performance and through a
dealer network of over 1000 dealers worldwide Graupner products can be found local
hobby shops, online or on our Graupner internet storefront.
Graupner USA was established in 2013 with
its offices, support center and warehouse in
Northern California. Graupner products can
be obtained through our network of dealers
or online at the Graupner USA website.
At Dynamic Balsa we are now your local
Graupner dealer. We are excited to be in the
Graupner USA dealer network.
Stop by and check these new awesome radio
systems out.
New Graupner MZ-24 12CH HoTT System
Stall & Spin Recovery Tips
The stall, or more accurately the inadvertent stall, has probably caused more RC planes to crash than any other cause. The safety of your
airplane depends on your knowledge of its slow-speed handling and stall characteristics. To minimize the number of crashes due to stalls, the
pilot must understand the principles of what makes a plane fly and how to make practical use of the information.
First, we must understand how the wing supports the plane in flight. As the plane moves through the air, the amount of lift is determined by
the particular airfoil and its angle of attack (AOA). The AOA is the angle formed by the wing’s chord line and the oncoming airstream. The
other primary factor in the amount of lift is the speed of the airfoil through the air. A stall will occur when the AOA exceeds the wing’s critical angle of attack. At this angle, the lift suddenly decreases and the drag increases, resulting in the plane losing altitude very rapidly. The
pilot has control over the AOA with the elevator. For example, if the pilot inputs up-elevator the tail drops and the nose rises, which increases the wing’s AOA. An important point to note is that the plane can be moving in any direction, including straight down, and a stall will
occur if the AOA is exceeded.
The only way to recover from a stall is by decreasing the angle of attack below the critical angle by pushing forward on the elevator. By learning your plane’s slow-speed and stall behavior, you should be able to avoid getting into an unintentional stall situation in the first place. Take
your plane up high; reduce the throttle while increasing the elevator deflection to maintain your altitude. As it slows, note how the plane reacts to your control inputs, and when it does stall, note if a wingtip drops or if it stalls straight ahead. Recover from the stall by lowering the
nose to gain flying speed. Adding power will speed the recovery and minimize altitude loss. Practice this until you can recover with the wings
level. All models stall differently, so you’ll want to learn your model’s characteristics.
Spins are an exciting aerobatic maneuver when done intentionally, but an unintentional spin close to the ground will spoil your day. A spin cannot occur unless the plane is stalled. If at the moment of stall there is a yawing moment, an autorotation will commence. The spin is caused by
a complex series of events. If rudder is applied as the wing stalls then it will cause one wing to drop. For instance, if left rudder is applied
with up-elevator, the left wing will move downward and rearward resulting in a left roll. The left wing will therefore have a greater angle of
attack and slower speed relative to the right wing. The right wing will essentially be less stalled than the left wing resulting in autorotation
about the spin axis. In the fully developed spin, the aerodynamic and inertial forces are stabilized into a predictable pattern of rotation. The
rotation, airspeed and vertical speed are stabilized and the descent path is vertical. Unless something is done, the spin will continue.
Turns in the landing pattern can lead to spins if a skidding turn is attempted. A skid is when too much rudder is used for a given bank angle.
Often a pilot will use rudder when overshooting the turn in order to avoid a steep bank angle. This is the recipe for a spin. If you find yourself
in a spin, most planes will recover easily by letting go of the controls and letting the speed build up. Some high-performance planes require
opposite rudder and/or down-elevator to recover. Use caution during the recovery as the speed can build up quickly. Also, avoid a secondary
spin during the recovery by not using excessive up-elevator. Every plane has its own peculiar spin characteristics, so make sure you try spin
recovery at high altitudes.
A CELEBRATION OF LIFE FOR
DEB UNDERWOOD GREEN
MAY 15th 2016 12 Noon to 4 PM
OTTAWA LIONS CLUB 501 BELLVUE
AVE. OTTAWA, IL
Please Bring a Dish to Pass
April Meeting Minutes
Meeting officially called to order at 7pm. There were eight members present.
A new battery for the mower was okayed. Brian reworked
the old wind sock pole and the new wind sock mount and John Installed them.
They are working very well.
Dave has got the field rolled several times and it is like a sheet of glass.
Dave also brought up that we need more gas cans at the field and we are
buying two more.
Holding a drone race was discussed and agreed upon and will be going to be
Newsletter Contacts
Eric “Gyro” Archer [email protected]
Brian “Wonky” Burcar [email protected]
If you come across any articles you’d like to
see in next months newsletter, feel free to
email it to either one of us.
Thanks for all the support from our members.
held on Sunday June 12th.
The meeting was adjourned at 7:40pm.