Hobbyking Cessna 182 Deluxe with Flaps - Maiden flight

[solentlife]

Out of box :



Tail proved hard to fit so I cut more away than manual says .. it slid and then I glued the bit back ...



Hinges ... terrible tape jobs that had so much slop I could move aileron up / down 2mm at hinge line !



Removed tape and mylar hinged ...





Ready to go .... with FlySky 9X Tx with FrSky module .... factory fitted servos, ESC and motor ...







(Take note of box UNDER the bench !! Yep - THE Skymaster - subject of another thread ... )

Oh and welcome to my purpose built model den !!

OK .. after modifying hinges etc. by removing the crap tape sloppy hinges Skyartec had fitted ... I took her to airport for her maiden ...





She had terrible left bank and needed near full right trim to settle out ..... so after adjustment on ground and a new battery ...





What a sweetie ...... apart from nose wheel loose on landing and turning causing her to flip.

Got her home and found one aileron horn loose ... so that explains the lack of roll rate and also the left bank syndrome. Hopefully it will also let her go inverted without falling of to side !!

As a cheap intro to the 182 .... she flies nice but fast. Out of box - I would not fly it without sorting hinges and odd things on her ... like cosmetic tape has no allowance for surface hingeing .. so needs to be cut .. but then it doesn't stick down very well !

Since then - I have now removed my mylar hinges and gone back to tape hinge on ailerons and flaps - BUT properly fitted and with TESSA extra strong tape.

Just waiting another good day to get in air again ...........

[Richard]

Gees thats what you call a runway

Lovely looking model with loads of power, you're right its very quick but maybe when you get more used to it you will be able to slow down more.

[solentlife]

If you watch carefully quite late in the second vid ... I do actually pull her back to 50% throttle as she passes moderately low right to left ... and she tracks / flies level no prob.
When you see the glide in to land ... you can see her float and even lift a touch as she gets real close to touch. I was amazed at the glide on it and she landed further on than I expected and funny enough both landings in near same spot !

The manual actually says :

With throttle all the way on, your airplane should climb without any elevator input.

later in manual it then says :

Most of the time, you can fly at higher altitudes at half throttle.

Makes a change from most recc'd motors to have so much power.

The upshot is though ... I love the little plane. For price it's a babe. Once the niggles are sorted like hinges ... it's fine.

There may only be a handful of us in Ventspils who fly but there seems to be a real Cessna following ...



My Cessna sitting on top of a 26cc gas powered job ...

Photo taken at a meeting we had at same Airport Ventspils where we invited various from around Latvia and also advertised for spectators ! It was too windy for most models though ... but I dragged out ol'faithful ME109 ... which had to have my foot up it's back**** to stop it being blown backwards ...



The maiden flight of the Cessna was next day and you hear me comment in one of the vids about it ...

Hoping to go flying this evening ... just waiting txt from guy who contacts airport.

[solentlife]

Well ... I really enjoy flying this Cessna .........

Last flight other day, when everyone was packing gear into their cars to go home ... I fitted another pack ... fired her up and decided to do some real close in wing wrenching aerobatics ... area box of 50m square ... similar to what I used to do with my display Wot4 in UK many years ago.

Amazing ... she did it and was untidy as not designed for hard aerobatics ... but what fun ... the smile on my face must have been something to see !

Everyone stopped and watched ... and when I landed received a round of applause !

Boy was I happy ... then realised I hadn't video'd the flight !

OK onto serious bit ...

I've noted that she rolls fast to right (looking at tail with nose away from you), but slow to left. Ailerons deflect same both ways ... prop is normal anticlockwise turning ...... so logic says she should roll better the other way.... as then it's rolling with engine torque. But no - as said it rolls 2x faster to right.
This has me scratching head to understand why .. any suggestions ??

Flaps ... totally unnecessary addition to the model. I've flown it now in calm, light airs, medium breeze and at no time have I needed flaps, in fact if you deploy them - you need bootfulls of down elevator to stop the model ballooning up even at near zero throttle ! So I will have to do some experimenting with mixing in elevator to flap to counter this. Only reservation I have is that I'm not too happy about having bootfulls of down elevator on a take-off run. Wondering if I can fix it so I can switch out mixing ... mmmmmmm

The nose wheel saga has now been sorted ... the assembly is in 5 pieces : wheel ... main leg ... grubscrew joiner tube ... short leg in mount block on firewall ... operating arm with grubscrew to top of short leg.

So I have been assuming that main leg into joiner was problem and used loctite and allsorts to lock it and stop leg turning. In fact it was inside plane was problem where operating arm was turning despite tightened grubscrew. That now has been sorted and nose wheel now tracks fine. Pity it's such a set-up ... a more simple single leg mount would have been much better ...

So there you are ... Hobbyking Cessna 182 (Skyartec).... once sorted - it's a real joy to fly. The FlySky 9X with FrSky 2.4ghz has proved absolutely rock solid with it ...
I'm one hell of a happy guy !!

[Richard]

Rock on... I mean fly

[solentlife]

Anyone with ideas why roll rate different ?

[Brianathayes]

(15-07-2011 15:59)solentlife Wrote:  Anyone with ideas why roll rate different ?

That is a puzzle, isn't it! I trust both wings are at the same angle of attack, or you haven't got a warp on them? Also, although it shouldn't affect the whole roll manoevre, have you checked lateral balance?

[solentlife]

All appears OK ..... thats the strange thing !!

[solentlife]

OK - so quite a few flights into its life now and still haven't figured out why roll-rate to onbe side is half that other.

Anyway - like most u/c ... the front nose leg gets bent over time. So silly me, I forget what material this model is made of and bend it back. Open up throttle ... on take-off roll and front of model comes away !! She trips over prop, strips rudder servo.

What I had done .. when bending leg - it strained to bulkhead glue joint to the foam fuselage and the take-off run did the rest.

Luckily was a clean break with no damage ... so I have now reseated with 5 minute epoxy and she's good as new ... plus of course swap out the servo with a spare I have.

[Richard]

I've been scratching my head about this roll rate too and I can only think that the aileron on one side travels more than the other...

But I bet that you have checked that already