Long-term Memory

After way to long, I finally found some time/weather combination to fly again. I’m a little embarrassed it took so long…

Of course, all my batteries were fairly dead. The glow heater was completely gone (0V), but was still usable after charging. My starter-battery was dead beyond repair. The LiPo’s of the miniTitan were is fairly good shape after more than a year in the fridge: 3/4th charged.

Before the flights, I upgrade my CastleLink software to version 3.40.0, and upgraded the ESC firmware to 3.27 along with these (PDF) new settings.
Continue reading ‘Flight log 2011-10-15’ »

As reported in my previous post, I needed to re-balance the rotor-blades. Again… Also, the glowplug needed a checkup.

The glowplug was easily fixed: some oil got between the alligator clip and the glow plug which caused some bad contact. After cleaning both the clip and the plug the glow heater was able to pump 4A through the circuit.

Rebalancing the blades was a bit more work…

Continue reading ‘Flight log 2008-06-09 – Follow up’ »

When demonstrating my Raptor last week, I noticed some resonance in the body just before reaching my normal flying RPM. I only noticed it briefly during the spool-up, once the rotor reached its normal speed of ~1700rpm the vibrations where gone. This called for a checkup of the rotor balance, which is what I’ve done this weekend. I used the page over at Raptor Technique to guide me through the process.

The blades seemed to be fine; their Center of gravity matches almost perfectly (less than 3mm difference). Their weight also looks fairly identical, as I could balance them on the (blunt) edge of a knife (1.5mm wide).

Next up was the flybar. I noticed that both paddles are not aligned as it should be. After some tweaking, this is the result:

Which seems a lot better than before!

All that’s left is give it a test-flight and see if it’s better; but with the current weather, it will have to wait a few days.