Doesn’t seem to be many people posting on the forum. So if you all promise to be good, the Keithy will tell you all a bedtime story. Once upon a time…………..
Here is my third Phase 6, (Mk III P6 )
I find this colour scheme ‘works for me’ so like the Mk II version it’s blue and white on top,…..and red and mustard underneath.
First flight was this morning, on the slopes of the Big L. (Where else?)
After a brief shower, broken cloud floated beneath the otherwise sunny blue sky. Temperature was a little chilly but nowhere as near as cold as it had been in recent times. The wind was fair at 30 - 35, gusting to 50kph WSW - W.
I’d deliberately put in some down trim on the elevator because launching by myself I feared the model might rapidly rise and ’blow back’ towards those infamous trees! So on the first launch the P6 just nose dived into the heather. :oops:
“Okay, so that was too much down trim!”
I removed some of the trim and launched again. Out into the lift she flew. She still had too much down trim for level flight but after a little correction the plane was bouncing along quite happily. Just a very slight tendency to roll to the left, so a couple of clicks of right aileron was needed and she was set for straight and level flight.
Time to check the CoG……..gain height, into a 45 degree dive, hands off controls. She just continued at 45 degrees.
I made a mental note to remove a little nose weight before the next flight. (I like my models slightly tail heavy.)
Let’s try some manoeuvres,……loop? Yeah, that was fine. Roll? …….well, okay, but needs improvement. I only had the flaps mixed to 50% of the ailerons EPA. I made another mental note to correct that.
How about inverted flight? Well, again it was not as I’d like it to be. A lot of forward elevator was needed to keep her level while inverted. I concluded that when I took some of the weight out of the nose then the inverted flight might improve.
What else should I try while she’s out in the lift? Oh yes. Crow brake, let’s see how she performs with that mix. I put her into level flight and gradually brought in the crow,……the model nose dived!!! Way too much down elevator mixed in with the brake. I make a third mental note to remove half the % elevator mix.
So after all these tests I settled down for some fun flying. I don’t know how much time passed, may be 10minutes or so and I suddenly noticed something dangling below and behind the inboard right wing. It was long-ish and thin. I couldn’t make out what it was. The models’ performance didn’t seem to be effected by it, whatever it was, The P6 kept flying around gently turning , climbing and doing all the normal stuff. “Could it be a strip of covering?” :?: I wondered. “ Not very likely” I replied to myself. It seemed too heavy to be just a piece of plastic film. :? Although it was ‘flapping’ behind the rear of the wing it was also hanging below the wing. The thought occurred to me that it might be a long piece of grass or straw that I might have picked up following a few low passes that I had done. (But I didn’t think I had flown her
that low today.)
This question of what it could be kept visiting my mind. “I’ve got to find out!” I said to myself.
I flew the plane low in front of me but alas it was flying too fast to really see what the offending item was.
“I know, I’ll use the crow brake to fly her past me slowly.” I congratulated myself on having such a good idea.
Out in the lift in front of me I flew her from left to right. Then round in a half circle so she was flying above the ridge at about 15 feet, flying from my right towards my left. As she approached me at a distance of 40 feet away I began introducing the crow, fully prepared for the nose to pitch down, as I’d seen her do previously. That’s when something happened that I wasn‘t prepared for………
Instead of the nose pitching down, the right wing dropped, Big Time! Almost as if I had put the plane into knife edge flight. She lost a lot of height, not that there was much of it for her to loose!
Instinctively I put in full left aileron to try and level the wings. But I was in low rate and the wings managed only a partial return toward level flight before the plane stopped flying……Ouch! :cry:
There was just one bit of good luck in this woeful tale. As all who have flown on the west slope of Big L know, the top of the ridge is covered in a thick layer of heather. So despite a nose first ‘landing’ only very minor damage was incurred. :roll:
But what had caused the right wing to drop so dramatically? A tip stall? Not at the speed this plane had been flying. No, the answer has to do with that “Thing” that was hanging down behind the right wing.
It turns out that the “thing” was the flap control rod. No. it hadn’t come uncoupled at one end. What in fact had happened was that the servo arm had broken, so the rod was hanging from the flaps’ horn. As soon as I started to apply brake, the left flap deployed, raising the left wing, and being so low to the ground, gravity had the last laugh. :!:
I had this same problem some years ago with servo arms breaking in flight. I remember one occasion when Fred, Joe and myself were flying off the south slope in 100kph winds. In that instance the aileron servo arm broke.
I have no idea what caused the arm to fracture. As far as I can remember it wasn’t being stressed by hitting anything at the end of it’s travel. I can only put it down to a weakness in the injection moulded arm. But this is the third time such a thing has happened to me.
I have no idea as to the cause.
Here's a picture of the underside of the wing. You can see the right aileron control rod but the flap rod is missing
And here's a close up of the right flap servo, still in the underside of the wing with the broken arm :evil:
(Little) Keith
