Shiny new toy...

[Chock 17,769]

Ooh, look what Mister DHL delivered to me today. Shiny new RC MiG 29. Fifty quid - you can't go wrong. 🙂

 

Edited July 28, 2020 by Chock

[HighBypass 2,339]

A prop behind each wing for control I see?  There's Su-27 variants out there too. 

[Chock 17,769]

Yup, differential prop steering. I'm not really a lover of ducted fans, I find they tend to have to go at blistering rates to develop enough speed to keep things airborne, which makes it a chore to fly rather than an enjoyable thing. The other issue with the MiG-29 is that a ducted fan model of one would have to be fairly big to kick out enough thrust because of the engine placement. This model's in for a respray in a splinter winter camo scheme tomorrow because I don't really like the colour of it as it stands and I've already done my other MiG 29 in the grey and green scheme, so this one can have a different paint job.

[Penzoil3 480]

Ooh, nice new toy! I still fly my Eflite Blade mcx chopper. Or a Syma S5XW quad drone. I have a couple 4" choppers I fly in the house.

 Sue

Edited July 29, 2020 by Penzoil3

[Chock 17,769]

Three-tone winter paint job. Still needs the red stars and other markings, but looks a lot better in this paint job than it did as it came:

Edited July 29, 2020 by Chock

[spilok 1,134]

30 minutes ago, Chock said:

Three-tone winter paint job. Still needs the red stars and other markings, but looks a lot better in this paint job than it did as it came:

Can't wait to see a video of it's maiden flight!

Stan

[Chock 17,769]

7 hours ago, spilok said:

Can't wait to see a video of it's maiden flight!

Stan

Your wish is my command, however, it crashed as you will see in the vid. Problem was the GoG, which is tricky with models such as the MiG-29 since it has a lifting body and lerxes, so judging where the CoG should actually be is tricky; you cannot be certain of what exact aerofoil it has, nor how effective the tail down force of the tailplane is, so sometimes you just have to fly it and see how it goes. 

Lots of these Chinese cheapy RC aeroplanes are tail-heavy and require a bit of weight throwing on the nose, and normally with these things I take a bit of putty to the flying field so I can trial and error it, but on this occasion I didn't have any with me, and the aeroplane was slightly damaged in the crash too. So it was just the one flight today (and crash). However, damage was minimal and is now fixed, which is the good thing with EPP aeroplanes, if it had been a balsa one, it would be matchsticks after that crash, but basically only the nose cone broke off and just needed gluing back on. The paint will need a bit of a touch up in that location but that's it, good as new. This kind of thing is what you have to accept happens with RC aeroplanes - sometimes they crash and you have to fix them, especially on maiden flights when they are an unknown quantity.

As you will see from the video, it wasn't just slightly tail-heavy, it was excessively so. Even at around half throttle it was going vertical, which kind of looks cool when a MiG does it admittedly, but it meant that if you came off the throttle it would stall from the high pitch angle, so I took it up to a bit of height to see if there was a way to control it for a landing, but there was no chance of that, so I did what I could to try and get it down in one piece, which wasn't much as it was pretty much beyond reasonable control. I added the comedy explosion to the video for a laugh. It's fine, see the pic of the repaired damage, and I will add some nose weight and fly it again tomorrow, so all part of the fun of flying models. 🙂 Anyway, here's the first flight and the extremely tail-heavy pitching up:

Repaired nose with a bit of paint chipped off. That's perhaps the only slightly annoying thing about EPP construction, it can take an impact, but when it compresses, and paint on it does not compress and so it chips off, which is what has occurred here, but I'll take having to give it a quick squirt of paint over having to rebuild the structure any day of the week, which is what you end up doing with balsa models, and  is in fact why the scratch-build balsa SE5a which I'm currently making, has got a litho plate metal forward fuselage!. Anyway, here the minor damage with the nose glued back on:

 

Edited July 29, 2020 by Chock

[spilok 1,134]

Chock,

Some really nice manoeuvres before the crash....quite an "explosion"!  Ha!  I'll bet you have her flying beautifully in a very short time.

Stan 

[Chock 17,769]

Oh  yes. She'll fly properly tomorrow when I've added some weight to the nose. 🙂

[Mace 1,926]

1 hour ago, Chock said:

Oh  yes. She'll fly properly tomorrow when I've added some weight to the nose. 🙂

I'm trying to think up some quote from the movie Firefox.

Ah...I have it

(irritated Soviet First Secretary voice)

"IT IS YOU!  IT IS YOU WHO HAF FAILED!  THE AMERIKAN HAS STOLEN THE MIG THEARTY-ONE!"

Or something like that.  And just imagine that movie next time you take your -29 to the skies.

[B7X7-900 10]

Looks sorta like a 'cobra maneuver' to me...

[HighBypass 2,339]

Yeah - who needs to spend thousands on RC vectored thrust hovering MiG-29 when you can get one for 50 quid? Despite the model's failings that video did make it look cool! 

[Chock 17,769]

so, I've just got back from another test flight. I was looking after my  horsey, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone. Anyway, I had figured that it needed maybe four two pence pieces in the nose to balance it up (each one weighs 7.12 grams), so that's quite a bit of weight, however at the flying field it was tricky to jury rig it with that many in the nose compartment, so I switched to five pence pieces (which weigh 5.6 grams), figuring perhaps six of these, but again it was a bit of a squeeze in the battery compartment, so I put three in with a bit of putting holding them in place and flew it with that.

It was still tail heavy, meaning that if I went anywhere over around half throttle it would be pitching up. but in keeping to low throttle settings, it was controllable and I managed to land it okay although flying as it did, that's not as easy as I want it to be.

Sooo... the plan is this afternoon - based on a bit of guesswork and experience with this kind of thing - to glue five two pence pieces in there, since in gluing them you can put them flush along the edges of the battery compartment and make them fit and I think that will do the trick. It clearly has enough power to fly with this additional weight and that should mean it will fly okay and be able to use full throttle without too much pitching up. I may test it out later on and will actually remember to take my camera, which I did have ready this morning in preparation for this flight today, but in putting stuff in the car for the horse, I managed to forget the camera. 🤣

All part of the fun of test-flying toy aeroplanes, and I have to say that in spite of it still being a bit squirrely with that tail-heaviness, it does look good in the air.