RDRC Spring Fly-in, 4/16/2022

 The RDRC Spring Fly-In was on 4/16, and good weather prevailed. Chris and I attended, and had a great time hanging out with everyone. Delicious concessions were available,  so we didn't go hungry :-) . Some cool control line action was also on site. Mark Farmer won the grand prize, his pic is in here, somewhere. We're looking forward to the next event! Here's a few pics, as well as a few short videos. 

 

 

Twist Updates...

 I've been working on my old birds, trying to get them in shape to return to the air. This old 2006 Twist has been tough. It has a ton of air time, and still has the original engine it came with (albeit kinda weary). Before I retired it, I noticed the elevator servo would get stuck from time to time, so that needs to be addressed. I picked up a new batch of servos, a new flight battery, and got busy. She's now updated with new electronics, and ready to go flying! Here's a few pics...

http://www.RCDAVE.net

RDRC Spring Swap Meet

After a LONG period of inactivity, I'm finally getting back into the hobby. What better way to kick it off than with a trip to the local RDRC Club's spring swap meet. Wow, great turnout, lots of stuff, and really gave me a bit of a jump start :-) Here's a few pics...

Building new NiMH Packs...

While shut-in sick over the last few weeks, I took an opportunity to build a batch of 5 cell NiMH 3600 mAh packs for some of my airplanes. They're bonded, soldered, and covered in this heavy-duty heat shrink sleeve. One of these is going in my Kadet Senior first, once I figure out where the fuel tank leak is coming from. 

More battery problems, Kadet Senior...

Wow...I've been working on these airplanes since back in November of 2018. When you stop flying for a few years, everything goes bad. I've repaired my portable glow driver, my power panel, my electric starter, my fuel pump, and pretty much all of the batteries in all of my airplanes. Oh well, at least it's winter and I have time to do it. When I pulled the Sig Kadet Senior down, I discovered a bunch of problems...bad flight battery, leaky fuel tank, and a broken exhaust header on the engine. Here, you'll see the bad battery and the packing from around the fuel tank that shows the evidence of a fuel tank leak. Hopefully, by the time warm weather is here, I'll be all repaired and ready to fly...here's a few pics from the tear down of my Senior. 

My Sharper Image DX-4 Drone

Debbie got this for me on my birthday, in 2016. I still have it, and it still flies great with the little built-in 3.7vdc 800mah internal battery. This is a basic entry level drone without GPS, but it does have a 3mp camera built in, and streams back to the phone on WiFi. 

 

It flies about 8-10 minutes on a charge. After poking around a bit, I see where folks are piggy-backing a 12mah 1 cell battery on the bottom and pushing flights out to about 15 minutes. This thing is a blast to fly in the yard. Gotta figure out how to have my phone not disconnect from it and reconnect to the home WiFi when the signal from the drone is a little sketchy. Once I get up near the top of my ham radio tower, it tries to reconnect to the home WiFi and stops recording...trivial, and I haven't put my effort into a fix :-) I guess I could just delete the home WiFi log in stuff from the phone when I'm playing with it...just an idea.

 

Considering my lame drone flying skills, this sweetie will keep me entertained for a long time. It's easy to fly, hovers nicely, does a few stunts, and is pretty fast. Below are also a few cheesy videos I made with it...

 

 

Building a new flight battery for the Lucky 13...

Wow, I'm still checking and repairing batteries. This is a great time of year for this sort of work, since I'm not real keen on flying in cold weather :-) The Lucky-13 flight battery was shot...a 3000 mAh battery that was checking about 800 mAh...not good! I still have a bunch of cells in a RC car pack that cycle nicely. I set my Accu-Cycle up to test single cells, and test them all, one cell at the time. Here, I chopped out a nice 5 cell pack that tests at about 3500 mAh. I installed the connector from the old pack, slipped it in a piece of sleeve, and shrank it down. Here it is, ready to be reinstalled into it's new home. Once that's in place, I'll move on to the next bird and check it's flight battery. 

Two chunks of 3600 mAh NiMH batteries broken apart, testing each cell, separately.

5 cells, all tacked together. Next, it's time to install the power connector.

 A final test, with all 5 cells in series. It cycled out at about 3500 mAh.

Fresh heat shrink covering installed, ready for installation in the airplane.

Dave AMA119484
http://www.RCDave.net

Still Repairing Stuff...

Well, I picked a good time of year to decide I was gonna check things over and get back active in the local flying club, since it seems I'll be busy repairing stuff for a while... Things have been "parked" over 2 years, and it's amazing how much goes bad from inactivity. While checking over my flight gear, I discovered my glow driver wasn't working. I opened it up, and found the battery had failed and was leaking. No biggie, I've been chopping up a good 16 cell 3000 NiMH RC car pack for batteries to build more receiver packs for my airplanes, so I pulled a sub-C cell from that and slipped it in. Nothing. I opened it up, and saw the center contact was oxidized black. I grabbed the Dremel tool and a small stone, and removed the oxidation to expose the shiny yellow brass contact. Once reassembled, all was well. Another piece of field gear ready to go!

My broken glow driver...
 

A 3000 mah NiMH salvaged from the RC car pack...

I removed the outer jacket so it would slide into the glow driver easily...

The center contact in the upper housing was oxidized black, and wouldn't make contact with the battery...

After repairs, all was well and ready to go flying!



Dave AMA119484
http://www.RCDave.net