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| Basic Yeller |
About that time I was ordering a Witch Hawk 500 kit from BMJR Models and I thought there was a discount for a second model, I added on a Sniffer kit also which qualifies for this class but not the most competitive design. When the Sniffer arrived I decided to build it electric powered with RC for DT function. Yet I still wanted to build a glow powered PeeWee 30 so selected the Basic Yeller design which had to be built from plans.
Building from plans instead of a laser-cut kit seemed like a lot of work but it went pretty well. The structure of this plane is really thought out well with many diagonal pieces in the wing and stab. Finished airplane came out exactly at the minimum weight of 100 grams. For most of the adhesive I tried using Titebond glue using a glue syringe, this worked pretty well for more accurately applying the glue compared to squeezing it out of a tube of Duco.
This was the first glow engine model for me in a long time; I did have a couple of PeeWee engines but obtained one with hole for fuel line drilled in the tank. Engine run time is controlled by using an eye dropper fuel tank, getting consistent run time I need to work on. DT system is a fuse which I have little experience with. Cleaning up the mess afterwards was not something I had missed but it isn’t too bad.
When the model was pretty much complete I gave it some test glides from a small hill, the glide looked really good. I started the engine a few times and tested the fuse DT; I need more experience lighting a fuse. At the first Minnesota free flight contest, I decided to start it up and give it a launch. Darn it climbed out nicely, the glide stalled pretty bad.
There is a PeeWee30 event on the last day of the Nats but I thought I better do some test flights before the day of the event. I shimmed wing on the side to create a tilt for glide, this appeared to help the glide but might not be perfect yet. On the first runs I used 10% nitro but I switched to 25%, this helped the climb and the motor was far from lean. It climbed to a good height on first test flights, and took a long time coming down. The first good flight went half way across the field and landed next to the blacktop, when I retrieved it the stab was down. For the next flight I made darn sure the fuse was lit before launching. What little wind there was had switched and it was gliding towards the RC soaring area. Just at the edge of where they were flying it came down by DT.
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| Flying at Muncie |
Contest day started out windy so I decided to head for home. I was satisfied that I had built the model pretty well and the trim was close to right.
Bill Kuhl
Http://www.ideas-inspire.com
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