Chad Northeast's Blog

ZN Line Caelestia

2011-03-03T16:02:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

I am very excited to be able to show you the new ZN Line Caelestia that I will be flying at the 2011 F3A World Championships in Muncie Indiana.

This is a brand new design that has been a collaborative effort between ZN Line (Jean-Pierre Zardini is the sole owner of ZN Line), and myself. This brings many decades of F3A experience to bear on this design. I personally am extremely pleased to have been able to work with ZN on this project. I have flown ZN designed models exclusively since 2002 and have always been very happy with the quality and flying characteristics of those models. This one is sure to be no different! We have taken all the best of our experience to create the best F3A plane for todays sequences. Some of the design features include:

- No chin cowl, for reduced weight and consistent fuselage structure (electric only!)
- optimized air inlets and outlets to minimize the need to make additional cuts into the fuselage
- fuselage sides are curved to provide maximum geometric stiffness to the model
- wing/stab position, incidence, dihedral and thrust line optimized
- Wing tip fences for maximum lateral stability and improved knife edge performance without additional mounting/coupling issues (Thanks to Chip!!!)
- Tip cap on the elevator to protect the moveable surface and also aid in easier setup
- Flared rudder (smaller than Xigris) trailing edge to provide better direction stability and softer neutral feel
- Wing profile and airfoil optimized
- Fuselage profile adjusted for a balanced area distribution
- Slight anhedral stab
- Canopy base set to be parallel with fuselage “zero line” to aid in setup if needed

Designing the model in 3D Cad allowed us to control the finest detail of every parameter of the design. As well the fuse, wing, stab, rudder plugs will be cut on a CNC router based off this CAD model to ensure that all these details are retained.

The model will be produced as a full composite plane, and painted in the mold (colors etc. still to be determined), and I believe even custom paint jobs will be available.

All of the current available electric motors should fit the model without issue, obviously I will be installing the Plettenberg Advance motor, and mounts will be made to specifically mount a variety of motors.

I will continue to post more info and details as the prototype model is produced, and production models are made.

Chad

New Thunder Power RC 820CD Charger

2011-01-30T07:18:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

I recently received one of the new 820CD charger/dischargers from the folks at TP. This is their entry into the high power charger market. Spec’s on the charger can be easily found on the net, but for F3A purposes you will be able to charge a typical 10s 5000 mAh F3A pack at approximately 4C (20A). This will provide recharge times as quickly as 15-18 minutes. Assuming of course you are able to feed it with 28V and 800W of power!

What I am going to show you in this report is how to wire up harnesses to be able to charge two (2) 10s 5000mAh Prolite V2 brick packs that have the 4mm interconnect bullets. Also how to wire two (2) Iota DLS-55 power supplies in order to give you the 28V and power required to charge these two packs in 30 minutes.

Out of the box you are presented with a very nice looking package. Slightly larger than the previous 1010C charger. You will see a larger nicely backlit LCD screen with two line display, sealed raised face buttons that are easy to push yet give a positive feel. Two fans (one for each port) force heated air out the rear of the charger. Connections for the balance boards are on each side of the charger as is the mini-USB update port. You will also notice two charge ports!

The first order of business is to get the power supplies ready for action. I have Dean’s connectors on my DLS-55’s, so it was very easy for me to wire them in series with a simple series adapter as shown in the picture. If you are not familiar with how to wire DC in series there are lots of pages on the internet to help.

When done this was how mine looked. Now the Iota power supplies have a small telephone jack to boost the voltage from a float voltage to a fast charge voltage (approximately 13.6V to 14.2V). With both of these jacks plugged in you will get a too high input voltage warning on the 820CD. Remove one and leave one in, this gives you as close to 28V as possible. If you remove both your peak current will be automatically reduced slightly by the charger to compensate for the lower input voltage.

Now lets get to work on the charger. Here is the charger with the balance boards connected. There are connections on the balance board for all TP connectors as well as 2s to 8s connectors for other popular brands.

In the box comes 4 leads for making your own charge cables. The leads already have the 4mm bullets soldered to them for connecting to the charger. In order to make the leads such that you can charge a 10s brick pack with interconnects you need to solder a 4mm socket onto one of the positive leads, a 4mm male to the negative lead, and your favoured connector to the remaining two leads as shown in the picture. This process is also described in the manual.

The above leads need to be connected to the charger as shown here for the correct polarity. Essentially you will be charging each 5s portion of the pack on each of the two charger ports.

In order to charge two 10s 5000 mAh brick packs you will need to build some parallel adapters. This guide assumes you understand the principles for making parallel connections. It is pretty straightforward as you are simply branching a single to a double keeping the polarity constant. You need branches for both interconnects as well as the main leads.

You also need to build parallel adapters for the balance leads. I took 4 balance extensions and built these two parallel adapters. Same principles apply, you are simply branching a single wire to a double keeping the polarity the same. One note of caution on the balance leads. My leads were not all color coded the same, so it is important to ensure that you are wiring them truly in parallel and not simply by color, as in my case that would have resulted in a direct short across the leads.

Now we have all our leads built, we can start connecting the packs. These are the two packs I will be using, very standard packs used in F3A. These batteries were both fully discharged, one was 37.3V and the other was 37.7V. These voltages will equalize when parallel connected. A small mismatch is not a problem, but I would be cautious if your packs are more than 5% different (37.5 to 38.5V). Typically in F3A our flights are so consistent that this is not normally a problem.

Leaving the packs with the interconnects attached, the first thing I do is plug in the main lead parallel adapter. This will immediately equalize the voltage between the two. When I did this the voltage was about 37.5V.

Next break apart your interconnect leads.

Now connect up both your positive interconnect parallel cable and your negative interconnect parallel cable as shown.

You can now connect your parallel adapter cables to the charger cables we made up and installed earlier. As always double and triple check all your polarities the first time to ensure that you have made all the solder connections correct. Before you start connecting batteries, go ahead and power up your charger.

Now go ahead and connect up Group A of your balance connectors to the parallel balance adapter we made, and then to the Port 1 balancer board. It is important that Group A be connected to Port 1, because the primary negative lead from the batteries are connected to Port 1. Go ahead and do the same for Group B and Port 2.

Once Group B is connected, we are ready to charge. Your final setup should look something like the picture above.

Perform the setup on both ports (port 1 shown in the picture) to charge a 5S lipo at the maximum current possible, in my case 19A was all I could set. Set the capacity (CP) to the maximum as well so that you wont shut down on capacity limit. Ensure the balance circuit is turned ON for safety reasons.

Double check all your cell voltages before the start of the charge just to be certain everything is A-OK. With the high rates of the charger things happen very quickly!

Once you are comfortable that everything is set correctly, hold down the enter key to start the charge, and repeat for the second port. The charger ramps up very fast, you can see here only 18 seconds into the charge we are already at peak current. The voltage displayed is the current battery voltage for the selected port.

There are two other screens available by pressing the +/- keys. One is the cell voltage shown here.

The other shows the chargers max temperature. During my charge the charger reached a peak of about 60 degrees C. The fans were at full speed for most of the charge duration.

5 minutes into the charge 1600 mAh has gone to the packs (800 each). I am expecting over 7000 mAh total.

At 10 minutes in a little over 3000 mAh has went to the packs.

15 minutes in over 4600 mAh, this is easily over halfway from a capacity standpoint. WOW!

We have also reached our peak internal temperature of 60C.

21 minutes into the charge we have put 6566 mAh into the packs, and reached peak voltage of 21V so the charger has moved to CV (constant voltage) mode.

25 minutes in the charger has ramped down to 5.5A, sent 7255 mAh into the packs and is nearing the end of the charge cycle. Remember this is for TWO (2) 10s 5000 mAh batteries!

At just under 33 minutes the charger is finished, sending 7685 mAh (~3840 mAh each) into the packs. If you had only a single pack connected to this charge you would have completed in about 16-18 minutes. I have also done this since getting the charger (4C) charge, and it will come in very handy for those times you really need another flight!

So far I have found the 820CD very simple to use. If you are familiar with the operation of the 1010C charger then you will notice many similarities between the two with respect to operation. The construction is very good, and superior to the 1010C in almost every regard.

I have not yet tried this connected to my Honda 1000i generator. However, a 10S pack being charged at 19A is 798W peak, I expect that the Honda will have a hard time handling that amount of power. The charge current may have to be reduced slightly to allow charging from a 1000W generator. This should be more than do-able for a 2000W generator though.

To download as a PDF file click below,

http://www.mediafire.com/?gkqriqabxezxq3v

I hope you enjoyed the walk-through, if you have any questions drop me an email!

chad@f3acanada.org

Chad

Covering the Xigris C2

2010-12-28T13:13:00.000-08:00

I thought I would post a small how to on covering while I am working on my ZN Line Xigris C2. I will share how I make my covering schemes, which are usually somewhat complicated. It is a fairly straight forward process and nothing to be afraid of trying.

First thing is the template. I take some time and accurately draw my color scheme fullsize. I use AutoCAD but any program that allows you do draw to scale will work fine. With AutoCAD you can plot to a DWF file, and then open with another bit of free software called Autodesk Design Review. In Design Review you can then print your drawing as tiled images so you can get full size images on 8.5”x11” paper.

Next I use a spray contact adhesive to stick the plan to heavy paper for the templates.

Now we have to let this dry a little bit so the paper doesn’t peel off the heavy paper. Don’t forget to label your colors so you get the scheme right!

While that is drying we can do some preparation that needs to be done before we do the major covering job. For all my covering I use the tools in the picture, two covering irons one with a sock and one without. The one with the sock is set to about 125 degrees C, and the other is set as hot as I can get it. A small trim tool for tight places, a heat gun which I didn’t use at all for this job. Various cutting tools, rulers, weights etc.

I always do my covering after hinging, so I do my gap sealing and some other trim details before I do the major pieces.

To do the gap sealing you first take a piece of white and crease it in half down the length. Make sure you have plenty of extra to cover the entire gap.

Then push that piece into the gap, and use the trim seal tool to iron it neatly in place.

Then using a sharp blade, trim the excess to be flush with the surface of the part. As a note, I gap seal both top and bottom so my hinge lines are completely weather proof.

Next apply the trim to the inner face of the elevator.

Thats all the trim work that I need to do on the stab. I don’t bother too much with the very root, as its all covered up once mounted onto the fuselage.

By now the templates should be dry. So you can cut out the individual pieces. Notice that I did not cut out the small silver and blue sweeps on the bottom right. This is because this area is going to be all white, so I will first cut the white covering out with the template, then cut the sweeps from the white portion after.

Now trace the white profile onto the covering. Do both sides at once to save time.

Now I freehand cut with scissors the white parts out. Since they will be the first color on you must leave an allowance for the next colors to overlap. About 2mm or 1/8” is fine.

Now in order to properly locate the colors I make a second set of template trimmed to match the stab size.

I overlay that on the part, and make small pin holes to give me reference points to place the covering.

I then locate the white and yellow (yellow is cut the same way as white), as they are the two bottom colors of the scheme.

I use some masking tape around the tip to protect the bottom colors from having adhesive stuck to them. After you trim the tip colors off then you just pull this off. I find that sometimes, especially red and blue leave a lot of adhesive when they get trimmed away if you accidentally heated past where you will trim.

Then its time to cut the red. Since the red overlaps it needs an exact cut. Its best to use a piece of glass and a sharp blade to trace along the template. Its important that this cut is clean as you will see it on the finished product.

Now apply the red using some guides to help with the alignment.

Now you have to pull the covering around the tip. I use my hot iron to help with this. A lot of patience, and allowing the covering to stretch makes the tip come out wrinkle free.

No trim the red and yellow along the masking tape, and peel the tape off. Be careful not to cut too deep into the bottom covering. You should be left with a nice straight line. I did this one freehand.

Next I trim the LE covering. Using the edge of the glass and a sharp blade you can get a nice straight cut where you want.

Finished LE

Now I do the blue, this piece is small and hard to keep still. So I cut an oversized piece and peel off the backing. I spray a little water onto my glass, lay down the covering and squeegee out with a card all the water. This sticks the covering down and allows you to make accurate cuts without it moving around.

Now iron the blue in place using some guides to keep it aligned.

Next cut the silver on the glass, and aligned and iron down much the same as the blue. The silver is the final piece so every side needs to be accurate as you will see all of them.

Now it is time to cut the little sweeps out of our white template.

Using the techniques above, cut the sweeps on the glass and apply them to the stab.

Now we have to split the covering down the hinge line. To do that I first fold the hinge line to give the covering a bit of a crease.

Then with a sharp blade, I split the covering down the hinge line. I keep the surface folded a bit to help guide the blade down the line.

Now use the trim seal tool to seal down the leftover in the hinge line.

Voila, you now have a cool looking stab :)

This is a quick way to get a cool scheme. All told I can do two stabs like this in about 3 hours once I have the drawing made in AutoCAD. Usually doing the drawing takes as long as covering!

Chad

The next generation

2010-12-26T19:24:00.000-08:00

Our boy Matthew (4 years) got very lucky this Christmas and Santa brought him a SkyFly Max airplane. Maybe in a few years he will be beating up on the old man in FAI :)

If the weather cooperates we should know how it flies in a couple of days!

My wife also got lucky, and Santa supplied her with a GPS so that she could take up the hobby of Geocaching. This is where you use a GPS to locate hidden “caches”. Its quite a popular activity around the world. Here are her and Matthew getting their first one together.

Chad

2010 Coming to an end

2010-12-19T15:49:00.000-08:00

Well the clock is ticking down on 2010. I hope that everyone had a great year for flying, I know that I sure did.

I started off the year getting my first giant scale model ready to fly. This was a PAU 30% Sukhoi SU-26. Instead of going the traditional DA-50 type powerplant, I decided to give a bigger electric model a try. This has been a fun model to fly at various events. Performance is outstanding, I think able to outperform a similar size gas setup. The only issue is the flight time, which is around 5-6 minutes depending on the style of flight.

I did have one issue with the setup though. I was using the Schulze 40.160-xl controller for the model, and at near full power it would lose synchronization with the motor and shutdown. I was able to work around this by reducing the ATV (as I am running fixed ATV) thereby reducing the top end power a bit. As I had no lack of performance (around 5500W), this was not a concern.

I did however involve Schulze with this problem, as not everyone wants to fiddle around to make things work, this is one of the reasons for using high end equipment. A short video of the problem and the ability to data log the performance with the new controllers helped to explain the issue. A couple of revisions to the firmware were provided by Schulze, and voila, the problem was resolved. I can now run the motor to absolute full power and rapid application of throttle without an issue.

It was not long and F3A airplanes were brought out of winter hibernation. I continued to fly the same Xigris that I flew during the 2009 season. As this is a very good model there was no reason to make any significant changes to it. As I needed some new canalizers to replace the ones I lost in Portugal I spent some time to develop a little different size and shape than in the past. The new size worked perfectly for me all summer long. Maybe this particular size and shape will be available sometime in the future? :-)

Nedim and I drove down to Wenatchee, WA for the first contest of the year in May. Normally we would head out to Vancouver, but as their field had been closed that contest was put off for a year. Wenatchee turned out to be a fantastic field, and we had a great time at that event. I am not certain time will allow me to attend in 2011, but I definitely plan to go back in the future.

I spent the next 6 weeks preparing for what I considered the most important event of the season, the US National Championships. Well Nedim and I made the long trip (2 days!) to Muncie. We met up with many old friends and also made some new ones. No matter how the results turn out meeting the people is one of the best parts. As this was the team selection for the US team, everyone who was there was there to win. In a big surprise (at least to me), Quique chose to not continue (for now) in F3A. I missed seeing him this year, and hopefully at some point in the future he will decide to make a return.

Overall I think I had my strongest performance of any US Nats. In previous years I have been on the bubble and struggling to make the finals. This year I finished the preliminaries in 4th place, and the semi-finals in 5th place making it a fairly strong entry to the finals. However, in the end I finished 7th (for the third time). My first round of F was quite strong, but I was up first (which is never good) and the visibility was poor due to the haze. The first round of unknown I fell victim to my own stupidity and flew half of a 3/4 roll as a 3 of 4 point....DUH! It didn’t cost me a zero, but serious downgrades and threw the rest of the flight off a bit.

After the Nats, we had two local contests one in Edmonton and our Canadian Nats. I won both of those events, even though I really didn’t fly after the US Nats because I was exhausted!

In that same time my wife and I bought a small RV to haul around to contests. With the kids starting to come along, this makes is much more tolerable to spend long hours at the field...as they have a place to sleep and a bathroom!

Shortly after we got the RV, we took a long trip out to Victoria BC for the Canadian team selection. We spent just under a week in Victoria and had a great time camping at the field with the local pilots, Dave, Mark and Hartley. I think the biggest news was that Mark Byrne came out and flew his butt off and beat out Dez Vaghy. I certainly was not expecting that and was happy that Mark was able to secure his first team spot. Dave Reaville who was on the team in 2007 also flew very well for the whole event, I think he missed making the team by only 6 points.

I had not flown much at all since the US Nats even at this point, and I think it showed. While I didn’t fly poor, I certainly was not up to pace with my best performances. At the end of the contest, I had won with Mark in second and Dez in third. This will be the team for the 2011 Worlds. This will be my 6th time to the Worlds, and I am going to be working hard to meet my goal of being in the finals.

My last event for the year was in Medellin Colombia! This was an absolutely fantastic event, and really exceeded all my expectations. It took me a few days to adjusted to flying again. Unfortunately we are not able to practice much in the month of October, so again I had to improve on the fly so to speak :) I think I started a little slow, but was able to put in some very solid rounds against the other pilots.

I was able to spend a lot of time with the local pilots from surrounding countries and hopefully helped them to better setup their airplanes and improve their own flying. There is a lot of talented pilots in South America, and its only a matter of time before they are pushing for the top positions in the Worlds. I really have to extend a huge thanks to all the pilots down there, especially Pablo Kuri and Eduardo for making that trip possible for me. Was one of the best times I have had at a contest. I made some new friends that hopefully I can see again in the future!

That was it for the flying, but things never end. Right now I am currently working on finishing up and test flying a Xigris C2. I have had this plane for a while, and should have flown it a long time ago, however with all the activity in life that did not happen. My goal is to get at least a couple of evaluation flights on this winter.

Also on the go is a Composite ARF Spark EDF jet. This is a plane I got used, but have done major work to in order to ensure that it is ready for serious speed. In a past life I did a bit of pylon racing, so some speed is still in the blood. It is equipped with a Schubeler DS-75 fan, Plettenberg Dinator 70/2, and 12S 5000 45C Thunder Power batteries. This setup is not just any DS-75, but a reinforced DS-75 so that it will be able to handle the 6000W that I plan to send to it :) I am hoping to be able to hit around 350-370 kph with it, which should make it one of, if not the fastest EDF in this part of Canada.

Oh and there is a bunch of indoor F3P stuff as well, but I will save that for the new year!

Behind any successful season are a lot of people that I need to thank, without their help I couldn’t do this

Agnes, Matthew and Thomas (wife and kids) for not killing me
Nedim Bek - for his non-stop dedication to coaching me
Jean-Pierre Zardini @ ZN Line
Frank Noll @ Futaba/Hobbico
Diana and Uwe Plettenberg - Plettenberg
Matthias Schulze and Ulf Herder - Schulze
Jason Merkle @ Thunder Power RC
Bob Obenberger @ Tru-Turn Spinners
Bartek @ Revoc Custom bags
Mark & Robyn Byrne @ CRC Products
Jack Price @ Duralite
Jon Harwood @ HCC Custom Composites

See you all in 2011!
Chad

Back Home

2010-11-13T07:36:00.000-08:00

Well, Agnes and I had a fabulous time at the F3A Open competition in Columbia. We would like to thank all the people involved with organizing the event, especially Eduardo and Ricardo and making it possible for us to attend.

The contest was very well organized and the level of competition was very high. I personally finished in 5th place. Although I am not happy with that result, I did feel that I flew very well during the competition. All the rounds were very close, and I am sure anyone could have won the contest at any point with a bit of luck!

It was great to catch up with some old friends as well as make a lot of new ones. The contest was more relaxed and fun than say a World Championships, where there is always a lot of stress. With the bar right on site we had plenty of time to enjoy a few cerveza and great food while waiting for the next round to start! I definitely had the most fun at this contest that I have ever had flying F3A.

As with any contest you always learn something about your own flying as well as things to try to keep improving. I managed to take home with me a few tips both for my flying and a few ideas to try on my airplane to make it fly even better. With this level of competition in F3A any small improvement can make a significant impact to your overall results.

Agnes also really enjoyed herself. The hotel facility is fantastic for the wives, and as well the shopping in Medellin and Rionegro is great. Agnes managed to find herself many pairs of nice leather shoes and accessories, at much better pricing than we can get in Canada.

I would recommend attending this event to anyone thinking of going. The country is perfectly safe and the organizers make all the arrangements to transport you to the hotel. From that point you need no vehicle. The facility is fantastic as well! I understand they plan to hold the event again in 2012, as next year is the 2011 World Championships, and making two major trips for most people is not possible.

I have taken the time to post a number of our better pictures on my Picasa account here,

Colombia F3A Open

Hope you enjoy!
Chad

2nd Day of Competition

2010-11-04T16:21:00.001-07:00

Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we usually end up down playing pool or ping pong by the hotel pool, drinking cerveza, eating supper...and by then I am either too tired, or too many cerveza to write anything intelligent LOL.

I am not going to post pictures today, as there are simply too many.

Round three is over today, so the scores are starting to take shape. I had a bit of a slow start, with a not so good flight in #1, then a first up position draw in #2. I redeemed myself (almost) in #3 with a second place finish (behind Wolfgang).

Dumb story for the kids....Chip has been talking about snapping out all day, normally with this flight direction and wind I was snapping in (left) on the vertical upline in P. Well....last flight, I decide, damn I am going to be like Chip and snap out. BAM! Big over rotation, shiza...don't' do that again!

Even more dumb, I looked at the scores, assume I lost myself 1 point per judge...I would have won the round....agghhhhh, time for more cerveza!

The contest and the flying has been great, lots of great pilots and flights are being put in. Other than a bit of wind and bumpy conditions, the weather could not be better and the facility is unlike anywhere else that I have ever been too!

Ok, a couple of pics :)

The Thunder Power boys (Chip and I), before Chip's flight

Here is the flightline security guard, he protects the cerveza!

Here is part of the group taking the shuttle back to the hotel, makes a good airplane transport as well!

Thats all for now!
Chad

Not much today

2010-11-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of a report today, but its late and time to hit the rack. Another great day though, and I was so busy helping and flying (both my plane and others) that I didn't even get a picture taken!

Wolfgang Matt and Juan Rombaut from Spain arrived safe and sound and were able to put up some practice flights. Brett will arrive tomorrow evening.

Shaping up to be a great event, I will post up some more pictures and some more reporting tomorrow.

Chad

First Day of Flying

2010-10-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone

Well we had made it safe and sound and managed to get in a couple of flights today. The weather here was fantastic, some clouds, low 20's and only just a light breeze. The odd rain shower would pass through but would not last long.

Our trip here was a bit interesting. We made it to Bogota and through customs reasonably easily. However our flight to Medellin seemed to be delayed for a very long time. Approximately one hour after our scheduled departure (10pm), so its now 11pm, we move to a different gate and board a different aircraft.

The flight is pretty short, less than an hour, and on landing approach in Medellin the pilot aborted the landing and turned around and went back to Bogota. So now we are thinking, great, what are we going to do in Bogota overnight. Back in Bogota, no one is getting off the plane, and it seems as if they are changing pilots. Maybe another hour passed on the ground sitting in the plane and we took off again for Medellin. This time we actually landed, I guess about 1:15AM, so just over two hours late. Eduardo the CD from Ecuador was graciously still waiting for us! We were concerned that maybe everyone had given up! Apparently though the model box managed to arrive on time at 11PM!

Enough stories for tonite, I will leave with some pictures of the Club flying field, which absolutely fantastic.

View down the runway to the...? right lol

A view down the runway to the left

A shot back toward the fully serviced and staffed clubhouse. You can get hot food, beer etc. right on site! No need to go anywhere else, there is even cable TV!

Inside the clubhouse, all the planes tucked away for the evening.

Thats all for tonite! More tomorrow,

Chad

Boarding

2010-10-30T12:10:00.001-07:00

The chaos os boarding the plane!

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry Torch.

Boarding in Toronto

2010-10-30T11:50:00.001-07:00

Just about to board our flight to Bogota.

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry Torch.

In Toronto

2010-10-30T09:28:00.001-07:00

We'll we have survived leg one of three.

First the lady at the Air Canada ticket desk was not going to allow the model box onto the plane. Saying it was too big, about a half hour later of me explaining the rules to her she allowed us to go.

Then at security the guy actually knew what a lipo battery was. I was shocked, I have never had someone at security know what a transmitter and lipo is. Well some smooth talking on my part got us through that. There was a good chance he was not going to let the batteries on board.

To top it all off I came down with some flu yesterday. So I am keeping myself nicely medicated!

Chad

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry Torch.

Packed Up

2010-10-29T19:44:00.001-07:00

Well the plane is all boxed up and ready to. Our flight leaves tomorrow at 6AM so already in bed!
Next post will probably be from Columbia.

Chad

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry Torch.

Last flight before Columbia

2010-10-28T18:06:00.001-07:00

Here is a shot at sunset just before my last flight today, which is last practice I will get before we leave on Saturday.

Winter time is on us here as well so it is probably the last flight of this year in Calgary as well.

I will do my best to keep some blogging going well down in Columbia so stay tuned!

Chad

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry Torch.

Road to the trials

2010-08-29T15:36:00.001-07:00

Well it's that time again. The Canadian team trials contest is about to happen. This will determine the team that goes to the World Championships in Muncie Indiana next summer.

This time the trials are being held in Victoria British Columbia. My whole family is going to go on this trip as we recently got a small travel trailer so that we can go camping with the kids.

With the extra people coming along, Agnes my wife, and Matthew and Thomas my two boys I had to rethink how I was going to get my airplanes in the van. I did not want to put them in the trailer as I am a little concerned about something falling on them and doing damage, which would not be good on the way to a contest!

So this is what I came up with. It seems Ike it should work out ok, I guess we will find out soon enough! We leave on tuesday evening and should make it to Victoria by Wednesday afternoon!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Copperfield Heights SE,Calgary,Canada

Day 1

2010-07-19T17:40:00.000-07:00

Well, day one of the 2010 US Nats is in the books.

The morning started out very overcast with a low ceiling, and a significant delay. A number of test flights were made to check the cloud base before it was decided around 9-9:30 to start the first round and even then some of the planes would almost vanish in the low clouds. The morning remained quite overcast for the rest of the morning.

The winds were light out of the west as usual in Muncie and quite straight down the runway, with little to no crosswind that I was able to determine. There was quite a mix of models in our grouping, CARF Valiant's, Integrals, Ventura, Euphoria, Axial, Xigris, Envision, Axiome, Visa, and Passports just to name a few. Some models had swept wings, and Mark Leseberg flew a biplane and was the only pilot on our line to fly with a bipe.

There were a number of very good flights put up in our group. The styles varied a little bit with some pilots electing to fly a little further out and large and others flying tighter smaller presentation. The 2-1/4 spins seemed to keep people on their toes getting the reversals correct, its a difficult maneuver to see correctly.

After the flights were over for FAI we went on a tour over to site 1 to see what was going on. Seems like electric is catching on with everyone, here are two charger setups I found working hard for a couple of Masters pilots.

After that we decided to go eat something, Nedim and I have been driving past this place for a couple of years and never had the guts (literaly) to try it out. Well finally we just had to, I think it will be the last time we visit, even though it was actually pretty good! LOL

Finally the scores for FAI after day 1's flights.

Chad

At the Nats

2010-07-16T19:53:00.000-07:00

Well, we did finally make it lol. After about 3000km and two very long days of driving we got into Muncie about 10pm local time on Thursday.

Today we slept in, which was nice for me since its the first time in a long time I have not been awoken in the middle of the night by an 8 month old! I almost forgot what is was like to get a good sleep lol.

We spent the day getting the planes put together and a few flights adjusting to the drop from 3500' asl down to the altitude here in Muncie. Also the heat and humidity takes a little getting used to, so we put the ez-up to good use.

Tomorrow will be more of the same, more people are arriving to the site all the time and I expect to see a few friends from Ontario make the trip and arrive tomorrow night.

Unfortunately Nedim and I didn't bring any gear to get pictures off the camera, so we need to make a trip to the store to pick up a cable or card reader so that we can get some pics posted.

Chad

Sent from my iPad

Testing

2010-07-11T09:58:00.001-07:00

Testing out how the iPad will work to post to the blog while at the Nats.

Chad
Sent from my iPad

What's New

2010-03-07T12:56:00.000-08:00

Well its been a long time since I last posted anything to the blog (actually since the Worlds). I can’t believe that it has been around 6 months since the Worlds came to an end! The biggest thing that has happened since was that we had our second boy. Thomas was born on November 2, 2009, so is now about 4 months old. He is doing well despite Matthew’s (now 3.5 years) daily assaults!

I have a few new projects on the go for 2010. First is a 30% PAU Sukhoi that I have electrified. I had a 40 sized Midwest Sukhoi that looked very similar to this when I was a kid so that is what prompted the choice. For power I have the Plettenberg Terminator 30-8 motor, which is mounted in the spinner. The ESC is a new Schulze 40-160-xl, which has a lot of new features over the previous future series such as voltcontrol and data logging capabilities. For batteries I will be using the Thunder Power 45C 12s 5000 packs. With the RASA 24x12 prop I expect to see around 5.5 kW with the setup. With a weight of about 18.5 lbs I should be nearly 300 W/lb.

Also on the plate is a small 70mm electric ducted fan of the BAE Hawk, this is a ways off being completed though. I hope to have it ready at some point through the summer. Since its a composite fuse model it requires some painting which I will tackle when it warms up a bit.

On the F3A front, probably not much different. My setup from 2009 served me very well, so I expect to continue to use the Xigris models that I used last year. Rumor has it that Plettenberg and Schulze will have some new F3A products in time for this season. If that is true there is always the possibility of giving those a test run :-)

Chad

Semi-Finals Complete!

2009-08-28T11:38:00.001-07:00

Well, the end of the semi's marks the end of the World Championships for me, with a final result of 16th. This is the best finish that I have had to date at a World Championships, and although I am disappointed that fell from 13th in the preliminaries to 16th during the semi's its still a good result. As a friend from South Africa said "you still beat a former World Champion", referring to Wolfgang Matt who finished in 17th.

We were out practicing at the secret field yesterday, and it turned into an interesting day. On the third practice flight the T-Canalyzer on my primary model decided it had enough and went for a little trip far far away, never to be seen again. I landed and said no problem, the one on my backup model fits nicely, so on it went with a little shimming to get it just right. I did a flight to check trims and make sure it was the same. The very next flight, that T-Canalyzer got lonely for his buddy and took a vacation as well! At this point I was a little frustrated but ok, it was better to happen now than in the contest. No worries, lots of time to make some changes and get used to the plane without the T on it. Uhhhh no, since my only charger that I had brought with me out to practice decided it had enough as well! So I had two packs left that were charged and made the best of those two flights.

I felt I had two good rounds of F today, and had OK scores but not what I was hoping. I guess the loss of my T-friends was causing me to lose some geometry on the high K rolling/KE loop stuff....I dont know...maybe it was just the heat :) At any rate I flew the best I could under the circumstances and thats all you can do!

A shot of us going out for the first round of the semi's

Just before the second round, notice the T-friends are gone...they really do work and I really missed them today!

Diana Plettenberg and I after my second round having a talk about the motor, and just how things are going in general.

The Plettenbergs have been very helpful to me over the years in F3A, and produce arguably the best electric motor for F3A, and I really appreciate all the help and support they have provided! Top notch people!

The results from the Semi's - congrats to all the finalists.

More comments tomorrow....I am going to have some beer, and wine.... :)

Chad

Contest Day Four

2009-08-26T10:28:00.001-07:00

Well, my preliminary rounds are over! I am glad to be done flying P-09!

Yesterday I flew in the afternoon and it was extremely windy and turbulent. A very strong blowing out crosswind made life very difficult for all the pilots, even Quique struggled in the conditions and had a very tough time with the center stall turn/snap and received a number of zeros. Quique is usually very good in windy weather so that gives you an idea of how much fun it was! I put in a good flight considering the conditions, unfortunately CPLR flew on that grouping today and the weather was far more favorable, so his score will end up depressing mine more than I would have liked, but that is the way this event works.

Today I flew in front of panel 2 and received a very good score of 478, my highest raw score of the event. I flew very last in our group and again it was a little windier than those who were lucky to fly in the morning. It will however, normalize quite well I think and should help me stay in position.

Both Dan and Dez flew well I think during the event and should be proud of how they did. The flying conditions, and field layout were far from ideal. We are used to far more open spaces in Canada so fields with a lot of surrounding trees are not always easy to get used to for us :) Also the level of competition is in my opinion the highest I have seen. There are many new faces and names that are flying very well, and receiving good scores for their efforts. The traditional top pilots I think will have to keep on their toes! I was very impressed with Stephan Kaiser, he flew right after I did in the rotation, and for a first worlds was very composed and handled the conditions like a professional. He must be about half my age I would guess, so I don't expect to see him going anywhere but up in the future.

I had a long chat with CPLR about his Axiome design details. A few things I notice about this airplane beyond just the rear sweeping wing, and giant canalizer. Firstly the main wing appears much smaller, Christophe told me that yes this is true, and what he did was subtract the canalizer area from the main wing area. The canalizer is about 10 dm^2 (~155 in^2), so the main wing is that much smaller than what you would expect or consider normal. The rear sweeping wing also requires more dihedral than what is normal for a monoplane, so the dihedral was increased a little from the original point which was to set the top of the wing flat (fairly standard on monoplanes). Also the main wing is placed lower in the fuse than you would normally place a monoplane wing.

Secondly, the stab and fin are very large relative to the wing, and also to other F3A models. Christophe said he was not happy with the directional stability in the Osmose, so he made a similar change to the Osmose Evolution and it was improved. So this is a carry over of that, my next question was obviously does that not make it more difficult in the snap, to which he smiled and said there are always compromises :) Indeed.

The side area of the fuse is also much less than other monoplanes as well, this is a result of the 1/2 bipe wing on top increasing the efficiency of the fuse in knife edge, so there is less requirement for a lot of side area. This helps in the crosswind he said by presenting less airplane to get blown around. The model is still pretty big, so I am not sure how much it helps, but its an interesting direction to take and the Axiome doesn't seem to lack and knife edge performance.

Points to consider if you are designing your own version of the Axiome :)

At this point of the contest I am very pleased with how I have performed. I am also happy beyond words with all my equipment, it always works and is extremely reliable. I never fear for a failed noise test, or a deadstick, or any other condition that would result in a missed round. I think this is one of the most important aspects to F3A.

The Xigris is performing extremely well, this plane has met all my expectations. Considering that I did not even test fly the model until July 1st and was only able to get about 100 flights on the plane before leaving for the Worlds I think that is a huge testament to how easy it is to fly. It is a large plane and presents very well especially in rolls and snaps. A big thank you to Jean-Pierre at ZN who really helped out to get me the planes as soon as possible so that I could have them ready for the Worlds!

Tonite is a time for resting, the past 4 days have been very intense and I feel under a lot of pressure to maintain my result and improve it. Tomorrow we will spend the day at the secret practice field (its not on the list of practice sites! :) ), getting ready for the two semi-final F rounds that will be flown on Friday.

I have not seen the preliminary results yet, but from some calculations I have seen I think I may be in a position to improve into a finals position if I can put in strong rounds of F in the semi's. I am not sure so I have to wait until the final results to see how many points out of 10th place I am. Remember that after they re-normalize the prelim scores for a carry over the scores compress a lot so what looks like a big margin suddenly becomes very close :)

Wish me luck!

Chad

Contest Day Three

2009-08-25T04:11:00.001-07:00

Well, I am not the best at upkeeping blogs! Two rounds for me are in the books, a third this afternoon in about 4 hours, and the final preliminary round tomorrow.

For the contest the weather has tempered somewhat, either that or we have become acclimatized completely! It does not feel as hot, the wind is more moderate, and the air seems to be just a little smoother than it was during practice.

I feel the Canadian flyers have performed well for the first two rounds, without many significant mistakes in our flights. The style this year to my eye is to fly big, Onda, CPLR etc. are flying quite huge flights. The rolls are stretched out and quite slow to fill the long lines. Flight speed is not fast, and distance is no closer than 160m. Some flyers were flying even bigger and further out, and do not present well, but still scored quite good. A few of the "big guys" who don't normally fly that style seem to be trying to adopt it in an effort to pick up some extra points.

Personally I do not like the looks of this style of flying, as it takes out a lot of definition in rolls etc. which to me is a big part of pattern, but when in Rome, do as the Romans do!

The percentage of electric models is enormous this year. I have not seen all the lines fly, but from those I have seen fly I would guess something around 70-80% of the pilots are using electric power. Mostly split between Hacker and Plettenberg, with some Axi etc. filling out the bunch. If you consider inrunner to outrunner, to my ear it sounds as though there are more outrunners being used. For glow motors, YS is easily the most dominant, with a few OS 200's in use as well. I heard that Onda has a new YS 175.....not CDI, but I have no other information on it.

Another interesting development has taken place with the in flight noise score. In my 5 Worlds that I have attended this is the first one I recall judges actually using the in flight noise penalty against pilots. I think this is because many people are now using electric that even though they are still quiet, some are louder in the air than others and being penalized. Fortunately in F3A three of the five judges must apply the downgrade before it is actually taken into account, so most people avoided an actual downgrade. One pilot from Argentina was not so lucky, his model was extremely loud in flight (Hacker inrunner) and was penalized by 3 judges. He also failed both his initial noise check, and his recheck, so he will likely lose that flight anyway.

There is lots more to talk about, but I am out of time for now, so a couple of pictures from the ready box of the second round yesterday.

Here I am about ready to go

Nedim hanging onto the Xigris during the sound check, I test around 85 dB.

Austrian pilot Helmut Dansagmeuller (sp?) with his own design model. Similar in profile to Mayr's Osiris, but this one is bigger!

Practise Days Two and Three

2009-08-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

On the second day of practice we flew out at the Worlds site on what I assume is the B line (northern end) for most of the day. For most of the day it was simply us and Shane Robinson from Ireland on that site. Shane was flying an Axiome which to my eye seems to be flying quite well. I have had a chance to see a few of these planes fly by different people and they are nice flying airplanes.

Gunther Ulsamer arrived and is again flying his own design the Opium. For some reason he has an affection to name his planes after drugs? The curious thing about this plane is that he does all the construction, and its fully composite and painted in the mold (or appears to be). He said it took about 6 months to complete the first model.

He is flying a new Hacker outrunner prototype motor in this model, I don't know much about it because he doesn't speak english and Dez doesn't speak much German! It looks like a Plettenberg from the back though!

His model had some interesting fences on the wing, apparently to reduce the bumpiness in turbulent conditions. Its very bumpy here, to my eye I am not sure it made much difference, as his plane seemed to be bumped around as much as anyone else.

After practice that day we went to see a bullfight, this was very interesting. Its hard to explain but basically a guy on a horse places a certain number of darts in the bulls back, there is much flair and obviously he is scored based on a bit of showmanship as well as skill in placing the dart. Then at the end a row of guys challenge the bull to charge them, and the first guy jumps on the bull trying to get between the horns. Most of the time they were not successful, as you can see in the picture!

For the third day of practice we flew at the south end of the main site. The Hong Kong team were there flying, and later Gunther and Bernd Bershorner arrived, as well as a few others to simply check out the site but not to fly.

Bernd was flying with the Vector Steering on his Plettenberg, this allows him to deflect the motor up to 7 degrees (or more) to aid in knife edge flight.

Here you can see a shot of the servo that drives the unit to rotate.
Bernd was flying an Addition which by comparison to some of the fat airplanes is a fairly small fuselage. He appeared to have every bit as much knife edge performance as some of the wide fuses. This may help him by having a smaller plane that deals with crosswind better, yet still have sufficient knife edge ability. We will see more in the upcoming days!

Thomas Kwan of the Hong Kong team was flying a Neptuno. I forget his name, but its of his own design I believe and is very similar to the Mid-Rex flown by Suzuki of Japan. This plane flew quite good as well. It has very nice construction, and well built.

Team Hong Kong, Thomas Kwan, Alex Lau, and our good buddy from California Adrian Wong holding Thomas's plane!

Practice Day 1

2009-08-17T14:47:00.001-07:00

We flew at the main site in the middle for day 1. Just us and the US team minus Jason who was at the hotel feeling ill was out there. The site is situated in a valley, and is basically surrounded by trees. The wind is near straight crosswind to the runway at ground level, and very turbulent. At altitude it can change significantly but is a little more stable, so it makes flying very challenging.

Brett and his helper Bryan were working on some issues with his motor which I think are now resolved. Quique was flying his new Ventura bipe which looks very nice, and quite similar to the Euphoria but many subtle changes do exist. Quique was also sporting a very fancy radio case which was a gift from some friends of his, its a work of art. He commented that people pay more attention to his radio case than to his airplanes, and he was right!

Andrew showed up a bit later with his helper Verne and got in a couple of quick flights then left to get some needed rest. It was a good day and an opportunity to relax and shoot the breeze with my friends who I missed getting together with at the Nats this year.

Thats it for tonite, I will try and do a little more catch up tomorrow for Day 2 and Day 3 practice. Tomorrow is actually our 4th day of practice and we plan to head south a little ways and practice at a different site since more competitors are beginning to show up and the main site is getting crowded.

Chad

Updates

2009-08-17T14:31:00.001-07:00

So after a very long trip, everyone made it safe and sound. I will skip all the gory details about getting held up in customs for many hours trying to explain that our planes were not commercial shipments and simply our personal items, and the small part about paying a bond....oh and the part about having no air conditioning in the car, and the boxes not fitting, and the 39 celcius temperature on the trip to Pombal (with no A/C). The plus of all that was I slept really, really well the first night haha!

So I will start from the first day of practice, and go from there :-) Will do one post at a time so its easier to follow.

Chad

Off we go!

2009-08-13T12:16:00.000-07:00

Boarding has started we are on the plane with all our gear (I hope!)
Here is a shot of everyone trying to get on the plane!

Chad
Sent wirelessly from my CrackBerry.

We are through

2009-08-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Well after a nice $400 charge to get the planes on with lufthansa we quickly made it through screening (except me who got felt up by the nice security dude) without further problems.

We carried on a number of battery packs this year and had absolutely no trouble getting them accepted as carryon baggage. This saved a lot of weight in the luggage which allowed my wife to pack our snorkeling gear!

Here is a picture of Dan, Agnes and Nedim hanging out after going through security.

We will be boarding our flight in about 1.5 hours.

At the airport

2009-08-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

Well the bags are checked in and just waiting to pay our excessivly high fee to get our boxes on the plane!

Chad
Sent wirelessly from my CrackBerry.

Worlds Time!

2009-08-12T19:36:00.001-07:00

Well the time has come, the planes are boxed up, and the bags are packed.

Tomorrow morning we head to the airport for a 1PM departure, a short stop in Frankfurt and a Friday arrival at 11:25AM local in Lisbon. From there a quick 200km drive north to Pombal will have us resting easy with a cerveza in hand!

Oh wait, that's only as long as I am not following Dez haha! Inside joke.

Not really any pictures yet, but I will be posting them up as they happen and internet access allows. Obviously there will be a bit of a lag until we arrive before real updates will happen.

I have posted a couple of links to some blogs/update pages from other people as well in the top left corner of this page!

Here we go!

Chad

Saturday

2009-07-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

We were blessed with great weather all day. Hot and fairly calm. Tonite we are all around the RV's drinking a few brews and BBQ'ing. Also we are preparing for the unknowns that the FAI guys picked tonite!

Chad
Sent wirelessly from my CrackBerry.

One more picture

2009-07-25T19:44:00.000-07:00

One last picture of the guys practising the unknown.

Chad
Sent wirelessly from my CrackBerry.

We made it

2009-07-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

Well we arrived safe in chilliwack and have unpacked the models and getting ready to put in a couple of practise flights.

The weather is quite nice. Sunny and warm with a medium breeze from the left.

Chad
Sent wirelessly from my CrackBerry.

Nap time

2009-07-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Nedim getting his beauty sleep!

Chad
Sent wirelessly from my CrackBerry.

Last minute practise

2009-07-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

Here is team Alberta getting a few last minute flights before heading to BC for the contest this weekend!

Chad
Sent wirelessly from my CrackBerry.

Testing

2009-07-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

Just testing out how well posting to my blog from my blackberry is working.

Chad
Sent wirelessly from my CrackBerry.

Day Two

2009-03-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

Got in a few more flights today for practice, not flying for the past 5 months is starting to show up a bit, but a few more flights should get most of that polished off.

Ivan came down from Ocala (where he is staying at the field in his motorhome) to get in some flights with us. He is flying his trusty Genesis from last season with a 170 CDI motor that is running really well for him.

Jason actually brought his plane out today and as usual is looking a little better than the rest of us (his flying that is, he needs a haircut lol ). We ran through both the P and F patterns and spent the afternoon playing around with the Eagletree datalogger getting a look at some inflight data of various setups.

I decided to go up for another flight, and I guess Jason was getting bored with flying and decided to try his skill at nature photography....so for his first subject a bee seemed like a good choice! I think the camera was less than 1" away when he took this shot.

Tomorrow we hope to get out a little earlier and put in a few more flights, so far I am up to 9 flights and hope to get in at least 30 more before I leave :)

Chad

First Day

2009-03-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I arrived safe and sound late last night and Jason was still awake to get me at the airport. We got back to his place and unpacked as little as possible and pretty much went straight to sleep as it was nearing 2am local time.

This morning I was pretty lazy, and almost outslept Jason....and didn't get up until 11:30am. The plane came out of the box and everything was assembled and readied to hit the field...after a quick stop at the local McD's...(hey you can't hang out with Jason without going to McD's).

I manged to get in 4 flights today mostly of the F-09 pattern. I figured it was better to start out with F-09 because I have not flown since November.... :) The weather here is nice, perfect shorts weather for a white Canadian boy like me, maybe mid 20's. The wind was straight in our face at about 15-20 mph, so not too bad for the first flights in 5 months. There were a few other locals at the field practicing, Don and John Lowe, Dave Stoddart and Al McCaskill. Jason didn't bring his plane out so he flew Al's Dirty Birdy and found out on landing that its not so great at knife edge :)

Jason got a couple of shots, I was lazy and left my camera in the car tonite so my pics will have to wait until tomorrow.

John Lowe with his new Osmose Evolution, YS 170DZ power. Plane looks really nice and flew well with lots of performance. I would expect to see quite a number of these around this year.

Jason caught this shot of my Integral, not sure if its taking off or landing....must be taking off because all my landings ended up at the other end of the field :)

For all my friends at home enjoying the nice cold weather....see the shorts...ya its nice and warm here, and sunny......and no snow :)

2009 is starting!

2009-03-16T20:57:00.001-07:00

It has sure been a long time since the last update, really not much has went on. It has been a normal winter, with some indoor flying but that is it. There are new projects on the way, and when they arrive there will be more content.

March has started to pick up, I just did an aerobatics seminar this past Saturday to kick off the season. Tomorrow I am heading to the airport to catch my flight to Orlando, FL. where I will meet up with Jason Shulman and spend a week practicing for the upcoming season. Coincidentally the Ocala contest will be on the weekend I am there, so we will be attending that. My friend Ivan Kristensen from Ontario has already made the trip down so I hope we can all meet up and get in some flying in the Florida weather. Keep your eyes on the blog for updates of the activities.

As soon as I get back from Orlando on the 26th, I will be busy getting ready for the first ever Canadian E-Fest type event. This will include an F3P contest and F3P-AM contest that I will be participating in. I am not sure there will be time to update the blog again until after that event, but in any case check back for pics and results of it as well.

Chad

My other hobby

2008-09-08T20:48:00.001-07:00

Well, flying isn't really the only thing I do for fun. Living on the edge of the Rocky Mountains provides a lot of opportunity for outdoor adventures. Mountain biking has become very popular out here, and I dabble a little during the summer when flying is not occupying all my time.

I try to plan my trips such that broken limbs won't cause me to miss any important flying events. Some of the trails can be a little risky :) Also I am not really that good of a mountain biker...so I fall frequently lol!

These particular pictures are from a ride around Mt. Baldy and through Baldy pass. It was about 20km, 10 of which were uphill. Its a loop trail, on the 10k climb up you gain about 600m in elevation, and drop that same amount in about 3km on the way down :) Makes for an exciting trail!

Here is a shot of Mt. Baldy from the parking lot. Eventually we ended up on the other side of it.

There was a lot of logging going on along the first part of the trail.

Checking the map...you do not want to get lost out here. The trail networks are usually quite extensive, and it gets dark in a hurry.

This was a huge washout section likely created by the spring runoff, with my amazing biking skills I decided it was better to carry my bike across :)

This is at the pass, about 1850m ASL. You can sort of make out the trail just above my rear tire....yes that narrow little path of rocks that rapidly disappears is the trail, and that is the only fun way down :)

Not sure what happened here...but I probably fell and decided that this was as good a spot as any to have a break. Some of the downhill sections are pretty steep, and if you get timid and slow down is pretty easy to lose you balance and you have to stop.

A couple of the nicer sections of the trip downhill!

We had a 5km ride back down the highway to the parking lot, I thought this hill would never end.

That's it for now, my riding friend is expecting his first child any day so not sure when we will get out next. When we do though I will be sure we take more pictures and I will post them here.

Chad

F-09 Video from Team Trials

2008-09-05T06:21:00.000-07:00

My good friend Xavier took some video from the team trials. This is my first round of F, camera work is a little shaky but its still a pretty decent video. He does a good job of hiding all my mistakes as well!

Canadian Nationals and Team Selection

2008-09-03T19:08:00.000-07:00

Well another year pretty much wrapped up for me. I just got back yesterday from Lindsay, Ontario where the Canadian Nationals and Team Selection competition were held.

Once again Dave Reaville did a stellar job of reporting this event as it was happening. So I am not going to go into any details on either the Nats or Team selection. His daily updates can be found here in case you have not already been there :)

http://patternwest.blogspot.com/

A few things of note at the event though. A new young face appeared (at least to me) by the name of Ethen Chariandy in Sportsman, his dad Colin was flying in FAI. I had the opportunity to judge him in sportsman, I figure we have 10 years left before he comes along and starts beating us up in FAI :) It is a refreshing change to see some young talent starting up in pattern in this country.

Also a long time friend was back with us, Ivan Kristensen. Ivan had started out the year with a huge amount of bad luck and lost a couple of very nice airplanes which I am sure would put anyone into a holding pattern. However, while down at the US Nats he came across a Genesis which he has used to release those "crash monkeys" and get a bunch of flying under his belt. Although Ivan decided to pass on the team selection for this time, he has assured us he will be back in top shape for the next one in 2010. I am already looking forward to it!

The team selection....I have to say this was by far the most competitive and largest team selection that I have personally participated in. This was also the first year we used the format of P and F rounds to determine the team. I think this format has pushed the guys to a new level in their flying and really challenged them to do better.

Going into the finals rounds on Monday there were only 124 points separating 2nd from 7th place, and only 26 points between 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th places. This made the team spot anyones chance, the prelims were so close that the finals rounds became very important. At the end of the day and with only a 0.3 point margin between 3rd and 4th! the team was selected as myself, Dez Vaghy and Dan Venables.

I have to say I was most impressed with all the flying by the FAI guys. There has been a lot of improvement in the last year from what I saw. Although in competition not everyone gets go home happy with their final results, I think its more than safe to say that for everyone flying it was the best flying they have ever achieved.

The pilots of the finals with their airplanes.

Back: Chad Northeast, Dan Venables, Xavier Mouroux, Mark Byrne, Dave Reaville.
Front: Dez Vaghy, Colin Chariandy, Paul Hepworth

5 of the 8 contestants were flying Comp-Arf Integrals, 2 flying ZN Twisters, and 1 a Prestige. 6 pilots flew the Plettenberg 30-10 Evo, 1 pilot a YS 160DZ, and 1 pilot an Axi 5330 F3A.

The 2009 Canadian F3A Team, Chad Northeast, Dez Vaghy and Dan Venables.

My Composite-Arf Integral. This is the same model that I flew at the US Nats a month prior to this event.

Ivan got this cool shot of my Integral departing the field on a fun flight after the contest while awaiting the results.

I have to give a big thanks to Ivan and Dianne Kristensen, as well as Harry and Rosemary Ells. Ivan and Dianne picked me up when I flew into Toronto and kept me sheltered and fed like a king (did you see that 40' motorhome!) during the contest. Harry and Rosemary put a roof over my head and transportation back to the airport on the last day. Without great people like this helping those who travel out it would not be nearly as fun or feasible to do!

For more pictures visit these sites,

http://picasaweb.google.com/Dave.Reaville/CanadianNationalsAndTeamTrials#

http://picasaweb.google.com/xavier.mouraux/2008LindsayContest#

http://albums.phanfare.com/5187035/2661331

Chad

US Nationals 2008 - Thoughts

2008-07-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

Well the 2008 US Nats are all over. I have not made it home, but am spending a week relaxing at my parents house. I quit my job before I left for the Nats and don't start the new one until the 5th of August so I decided to take a bit of time and spend it here.

This year the Nats was a big success for me, I accomplished many of the things that I set out to do this year, namely flying consistently, and making the finals. I have struggled in recent years with having consistently good flights, which was something I worked at this year. Although not all my flights were the best flights, they were all good flights. This is important at events like the US Nats where everything is very close.

There were a few new things at the Nats this year, being an off year most people are still flying gear from last season. Quique was flying his modified Euphoria which include a bunch of changes to the fin area and wing area. As well he has removed the quad servo setup from the wing and went with single 42 in-oz mini servos (don't remember the model) to drive both the lower and upper ailerons on each wing half. He said he cannot tell the difference between that and the quad servo setup, and it saved a huge amount of weight. He was also running the YS 170 on the CDI (capacitive discharge ignition) system, and I think a 19x11 prop (custom prop) at about 72-7400 rpm. This seemed to work well for him, his flying style was to fly in close with a slow but powerful style. I don't think this style would suit a monoplane very well, but the biplane presented nicely when flown like this. He unfortunately had a number of issues with what I think was the ignition system during the finals which cost him both his second F and unknown flights. He accepted his position at the Worlds as the current world champion so his 4th place finish did not affect him flying at the 2009 Worlds.

I was using a couple of new items as well, firstly being some new Thunder Power Prolite 2600 cells. These cells were used to make a 10s 2p 5200 mAh battery. These cells are 18C and the pack weighs approximately 1180 grams. I am not exactly sure when or if these will be available but they are very impressive cells, I was able to log some flight data on the cells, and during a normal P-09 flight the packs never drop below 35V, even after 8 minutes of airtime and 70A loads. The performance of the packs is higher than anything I have ever flown, and flight time is easily 9 minutes with excellent voltage remaining after the flight.

Also I was using the RASA folding 21x15 prop this year. I mount my motors to a firewall so I had a special hub made to allow me to run this prop without having my motor in the spinner. This setup provides much smoother power delivery than an APC, is approximately 2 dB quieter than a 21x14 and extremely quiet in flight. I think the folding prop has the advantage of absorbing flight loads by moving during the flight, this has the benefit of not reacting these loads into the airplane which reduced torque effects during corners etc. I notice a definite reduction in the torque reaction with this setup and am extremely pleased with it.

Some interesting news was that Jason Shulman was running the Plettenberg Xtra 30-10 Evo motor this year. I finally convinced him :) He is very happy with the motor, his feeling is that it is more powerful than the Hacker 14xl motor with about the same battery usage, and runs at the same temperature. The benefit is that there is no maintenance. I think its important to note that only Jason and I were the only two pilots in the finals to bring ONE airplane to the flight line. I think this shows the confidence we have in our equipment, the Plettenberg motor is nearly flawless.

The flying at this event was very high, Jason is a machine, I think he needs to get a job so the rest of us have a chance! Everyone in the finals flew great, and the talent pool is very deep. Its only going to get more difficult as the years go by.

Sorry I dont have any pictures, my good friend Dave Reaville is the man at taking pictures and keeping the daily blog going. Dave is absolutely superb at this, no one does it better IMO. Every spare second he has is dedicated to keeping the world informed, and I think we all owe Dave a big thanks for that.

His pictures are here,

http://picasaweb.google.com/Dave.Reaville/2008AMANationals

If you have not seen his blog I have a link posted on the left to it.

A bit about my setup for those wondering,

Comp-ARF Integral - special "Chad" paint scheme
Plettenberg Xtra 30-10 Evo motor
Schulze 32.80KA controller
Futaba R6014 Rx
Futaba servos - BLS 451 on ailerons, BLS 351 on rudder, 9650's on elevators
Futaba 14MZ transmitter
RASA 21x15 folding prop, approx 6500 rpm @ 72A static, special hub for mounting
Thunder Power 10s 5200 (2600 Prolites, 2P)
Thunder Power 2s 900 Rx pack
Tech-Aero Regulator

All up weight was 4780 grams

Well thats enough for now, I have to thank all my sponsors those guys are a huge help all the time, no way to do it without their support. I also have to hugely thank Jason Shulman and Comp-ARF for their help in getting me the Integrals for the Nats, Jason is a super guy to deal with a great rep for Comp-ARF. The Integral is a fantastic airplane and I am very pleased with it.

Also thanks to the Canadian crew, Dave, Mark, Dez, Harry for their help at the practice field and "motivational" speeches during the contest, and also to my caller Nedim who does a great job and helps me out a bunch.

Last but not least my wife and son Agnes, and Matthew, for putting up with "dad" being gone flying all the time.

Chad

Integral 2008

2008-06-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, since I am so excited about my new planes here are some very fresh pictures of them.

I thought I would try out a Comp-ARF Integral after seeing quite a few of them fly in 2007. I had flown a ZN Twister which is a really nice airplane since 2006, and this (2008) would have been my third season flying them, so I felt the need for a change.

I picked up a white one simply to try out, I didn't want to go painted since if I didn't like it I would be out more money! I starting flying it in March/April and felt it had a lot of potential. It flew as good as the Twister ever did, and I felt it did some things better. Considering the Twister was out one year prior to the Integral that is no real surprise.

So that left me with one white Integral! I knew I needed more but I didn't want the same thing as everyone else, it had to be a little different. I also did not want to go through the pain of painting up multiple white ones, I simply don't have the time anymore to do that especially in June.

So I talked to Jason Shulman, who was my rep for the white Integral about doing something different. Jason took a lot of time to help out and we came up with a modified set of colors for the stock C-ARF scheme. When I received the pictures of it I was super happy, it was better than I could have hoped!

I have to thank Jason for his help getting this going, and if you need an Integral (or anything else CARF) for that matter he is great to deal with. Although this is not a "stock" scheme, it is available as a custom scheme, just ask Jason for it :)

Trip to Greece

2008-05-19T13:02:00.001-07:00

Hello all,

Well here is our first report from Greece. We are currently in Nafplio at the moment which is a small port town in the Peloponnese area of Greece. Somewhere around 150km from Athens toward the southwest and very near to the city of Argos.

Our trip so far has been great. We spent the first two nights in Athens and did the customary touring of the Acropolis which is the location of the famous Parthenon temple and other runis.

From there we rented a car and pounded through the world renowned Athens traffic, which wasn't that bad after driving in Buenos Aires back in November. Although I cheated and have maps for my GPS of Athens and most of Greece :)

From there we drove around 350km from Athens to Meteora. This is the site of numerous monestaries which were created in the cliffs of Meteora back in the 15th century or so. These are amazing structures and are still used by monks today. The scenery here is unlike anything I have seen. The rock formations are stunning as is the hike on the steps to the top of them!

After a day at the monestaries we set out for another 150 km drive to Delphi. Dephi dates back to the 4-5th century BC, and was the location where the two eagles that Zeus released at opposite ends of the world met, thereby making it the center of the universe. There is a ton of history here and wikipedia will do a much better job of explaining it all :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi

How they created these sites some 2500 years ago is beyond belief when you see the sheer volume of rock that was used to create the buildings. It would be a serious challenge today to create such buildings.

The drive into and out of Delphi is awesome with very winding roads. I had as much fun as I could in our small worn out Hyaundi, the guys in their Porsche's and BMW's were probably having much more fun than I was!

From Delphi we set out for another 350km trip to Nafplio which is where I am writing this from. We will spend a few days here and see the Palamidi Fortress tomorrow, apparently there is around 1000 steps to climb to get to the top! From there I am not certain exactly where we will go.

For some reason Greek history is full of people who like to build things up on mountains, I have done more hiking in the past 5 days than I have done in the past 5 years!

For all the pictures (there are well over 1000 so far), here is my Picasa page, check back over the next few days as we have a reliable internet connection at this hotel so I should be able to get most of them uploaded.

http://picasaweb.google.com/can773/

Chad/Agnes

2008-03-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

I recently received one of the new Schulze NextGeneration 7.36-12 chargers. These are the new chargers that will replace the existing ISL series of chargers that have been around for quite some time. For charging Lipo batteries these new chargers are a marked improvement over the previous ISL series.

I won’t go into the specifications of the charger, other than to say it is capable of charging and balancing (integrated) Lipo packs up to 14s with a limit of 240W. For the full specs you can visit this page,

http://www.schulze-elektronik-gmbh.de/next-spec-e.htm

I have not done a lot of charging with this unit yet as our weather is not that conducive to flying at the moment, but with its ability to discharge at high rates I was able to put a few cycles on one of my 10s 5000 Extreme V2 Thunder Power batteries.

Here is a shot of the whole unit, its not much larger than a TP 1010C once you consider the size of the balancer. The yellow portion is an add on to allow you to plug your packs into the charger, there are various adapters for all the major brands, this one works with TP and FlightPower and you plug packs into it like you would a TP 210V balancer. I don’t have extensions yet but they are worth getting to give you some room.

The screen is very large and nicely backlit. It provides a lot of data including a graph of voltage vs. time.

As you can see here, I am doing a discharge of my pack. You will notice that the discharge rate is over 6A. One of the great features of the charger is if you are connected to a partially discharged 12V battery you are allowed to discharge at the full 240W limit of the charger. This is great for putting rapid cycles on large packs like this one.

Cycling through the various screens you can see information on the current battery being charged as well as a cycle history (if you are doing multiple charge/discharge cycles), and the Ri of the pack during a discharge.

The next screen over provides information on the charger version, as well as your source voltage and how much current and total capacity is being drawn from your source during a charge, or in this case how much current and capacity I am putting back into the source since I am discharging a pack. You can reduce the power and maximum current that the charger will take during a charge when using car batteries or power supplies that do not have the ability to deliver the full 240W power level of the charger.

The next screen is the balancing screen. This displays all the cell voltages in mV and their imbalance below the highest cell (the highest cell always reads 0mV). You can set the precision of the balancer manually from 4mV to 30mV or you can let the charger pick the best precision as it charges. The balancer is not a current sink type, and works extremely fast compared to the current sink types.

The charge is USB upgradeable much like others on the market. As well it has a serial output that can be used to output ASCII information about the charge. There is also a fan and light output, which can be used to drive an auxiliary fan for cooling batteries, and a light that flashes intermittently when the charge terminates so you can see from a distance that your pack is charged. Also there is a thermal probe and you can set a maximum pack temperature which the charger will terminate. The charger includes all the wiring for the accessories, except the serial output.

Since I like gadgets by far the coolest thing in the box was my very own Schulze USB stick which has manuals, etc. already on it. Sweet!

That’s my brief overview of this new charger, I am very impressed with it so far and hopefully our weather will improve and I can put some more time on it at the field.

These chargers can be purchased in North America from Icare-RC in Montreal, Canada.

http://www.icare-rc.com/

Feel free to shoot me an email with any questions about this unit.

Chad

Where in the world is Chad

2008-03-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, well I am typing this from a little place called Owego, NY! Its an interesting little town, we just got back from a restaurant called the "Jailhouse" and yes its an old jail converted to a restaurant, and some of the tables are even in jail cells. Very interesting to say the least, with good food and most importantly a few beers!

So what am I doing out here....well this company CNYOG (Central NY Oil and Gas) is installing a gas compressor supplied by Dresser-Rand, and we (myself and one other guy) from SKF Magnetic Bearings are here to commission the magnetic bearing system that we designed for the gas compressor. Fun stuff, and yes I am here over Easter long weekend working....my wife is real impressed! Its putting a dent in my spring flying preparations! The HUGE plus is, the extra days in lieu I get will give me a lot more practice time in Ontario for the team trials.....so look out boys! Always gotta look on the bright side of everything.

So, when I get back (who knows when that is) I have some trimming to do on the Twister as well as some new stuff I am trying out and will post here when I get some pics and results. There is more cool stuff coming but we will keep that under a hat for now :)

Have fun over Easter....I sure will be......here in the hotel :)

Chad

SVF Pattern Contest Feb 23-24

2008-03-02T05:53:00.000-08:00

Ok, I think I promised some people I would blog this event.....well I lied :) haha. Actually the hotel had internet but they wanted $2.99/24hrs, and my friends enjoyment of reading the daily updates from Phoenix, was not worth it!

We flew down on Wednesday the 20th, without a single hassle from anyone during the trip. We got to Phoenix, got the rental, got Dan fuel at the hobby store, hit the hotel and put the planes together. It was probably around 6 before we got to the field and I got in one quick flight just to make sure the plane still worked. I had not un-boxed my model since Argentina. It was too dark to get any more flying so we called it a night.

We had arranged to meet with Jason (Shulman) and his friend Tony Watkins down in Tucson for some practice. So Thursday we drove down and got there around 10ish. Jason and I pretty much spent the day flying F-09. This is probably the last opportunity I would have to see someone like Jason fly the new schedules until Muncie, so I paid close attention and he showed me some of his super top secret tricks for F-09 :) Sorry if I tell you I have to kill you lol! Dan and Nedim got in lots of flying as well on both the P and F schedules. I am sure both of them will join me at the US Nats and Canadian Nats this year so this was a good opportunity for them to get a jump on the season as well.

On Friday Jason and Tony were making their way to Phoenix so we stayed and flew at the SVF field. It was mostly raining that day so we only got in a few flights, but people came out to register and shoot the breeze.

The contest on Sat. and Sun. could not have asked for better weather. Warm and sunny on Sat and reasonably warm but overcast on Sunday, with next to no wind on both days. The quality of flying in all classes was very good. Everyone got in 6 rounds, with FAI getting 5 rounds of P and 2 rounds of F. Only 4 of us flew F on Saturday, but the other two joined in the fun on Sunday and I think everyone really enjoyed it. I really cannot see there being much debate about flying F at local contests anymore. The only debate should be how to score it to keep everyone happy. At this contest it was a separate animal from P and did not count toward the final placings. If it did, it would not have changed the top three positions, but maybe the bottom three positions a bit.

We left Monday AM and again had a totally uneventful trip home with our gear.

Thanks to Rusty and Troy for a well run event!

Chad

Jason's pics and report over at the Giants

Dan, Nedim and my pics at my web album

He's Baaaaaaack!

2008-03-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

Nope its not the Terminator, its even better.

For those that don't recognize the old guy holding that silly French airplane in the above photo....well then you must have been living under a rock for most of your life! Its none other than Ivan Kristensen.

Now I hope Ivan doesn't get mad at me for spilling the beans, but it seems he picked himself up a fancy new Osmose to play with!

I got a call from Ivan back in December just shooting the breeze about pattern in general, where it was, where its going, how I felt about it etc. I didn't think much of it at the time, after all Ivan had been flying pattern at the World Champs level since before I was even born, but had left behind his most distinguished career in 2000 to pursue IMAC competition more heavily. 2001 was my first Worlds so I never got a chance to really fly with Ivan which was a huge disappointment for me personally. So a long time pattern flier wanting to shoot the breeze about pattern didn't really set off any alarm bells.

Then he started asking about servos....and airplanes, and what I thought about certain ones....and what servos I use. Mmmmm, I am struggling to comprehend why on earth would Ivan care what servos I use in my pattern plane. I am sure he knows as much about Futaba servos as I do....but ok, so we continue and I spill my guts about what servos I use and what planes I think are good. Then it hits me DING!? DUH? "Ivan did you get a plane? " He avoids the question for a moment then finally admits he has a CA Osmose on its way. I almost fell out of my chair.

At what level Ivan will come back to I don't know, and don't want to speculate (publicly anyway) either. He has not flown a pattern plane in almost 8 years, so I am sure it will take some time for him to get back in the saddle. I am also sure that he is quite aware that our team selection for the 2009 Worlds in Portugal is this summer!

I personally am very motivated to see him at least thinking about getting back to it, even if its casually. I have been waiting for an opportunity to compete against him for some time, and just the thought of being able to do that will push me hard this year to be flying 110%.

Welcome back Ivan!

Chad

I hope the whole season doesnt go like this!

2008-01-26T18:48:00.000-08:00

Ok....well first thing, I changed the blog template...dots are cools :)

Sooooo, at this time of year in Calgary you pretty much pray for days like today near the end of January. Slightly above 0C (32F), virtually no wind, and only a bit of snow to get in the way. I have been looking forward to actually getting some flights on Futaba's new FASST module in my 14Z for some time.

To top it all off, I managed to score myself a Honda EU 1000i generator lightly used for less than half of what they are new, so needless to say I was giddy as a schoolgirl to hit the field and run my FASST module and new to me generator through their paces.

Well, I range tested the system as per the instructions dictate with the power down feature. I walked probably 75 paces away and still had full control of the model even with the motor running.

So off we went and as expected the model was quite out of trim as I had moved it off of my older 9Z onto the 14Z to use the 2.4 so everything had to be redone during the swap. I spent about 2.5 minutes trying to get the trim nailed down exactly when..............

The motor (which is a Hyperion 4020-14) started making a funny sound. If you are familiar with electrics you instantly recognize this sound as a problem with the motor "skipping" a phase during rotation. So off comes the power and I knew there was a big problem, as the prop was barely able to freewheel. This confirmed I had a short in one of the phases so down I put it on the runway, and the lovely smell of burnt windings was evident!!!

So apart came the plane to inspect the motor and sure enough you could clearly make out some burnt areas of windings inside the motor. So score that Chinese made motor 1, Chad 0 !

So what to do? Well as is tradition on Star Trek where they torpedo fallen comrades into space....we decided that it would be an equally fitting tradition to torpedo the motor into a snowbank on the flying site LOL. So I warmed up the pitching arm and off it went!!

The day was not all bad....I did recharge up my short 2.5 minute flight 5s 3300 using the generator. Although it didn't take long the generator worked fantastically, so I was quite pleased with that.

Also the FASST system performed without a hitch as you would expect, I am sure this will be a fantastic system during this year.

Now all thats left to do is find a replacement motor...not sure I will go back to the Hyperion motor, but I need to come up with something quick as the weather could be flyable any day here and I need to be ready :) Plus I want to get more than 2.5 minutes of time on the FASST system before I stick it in the Twister when we fly in Phoenix next month!

Well until next time.....

Chad

Got FASST?

2008-01-15T20:41:00.000-08:00

FINALLY customs let my shipment through!!

My 14MZ Fasst module and 6014 receiver arrived today, all I can say is the anticipation to get this was very high ever since I got the shipping notice from Tower. After a bit of time trying to find my compact flash card reader, the new software was installed into the radio and off we went.

I first installed the receiver into my Inspire 60 as this will be the first plane I use it in for test purposes. I don't anticipate any problems, but I also don't want to risk an expensive model if I make a mistake.

Here is the reciever installed in the Inspire. Takes only a few seconds to determine a nice location for the antennae to go (they should be 90 degrees from each other)....and its tons nicer than trying to find space for a 39" long one! Sorry for the blurry pic....I dont plan on being a photographer any time soon :)

Once the rx was installed and servos plugged in as per normal 5114 practice, I fired up the transmitter. After the software update the tx will state you are on the wrong modulation, then will automatically correct itself after hitting yes.

Are you kidding? :)

A quick push of the yes button and you are off to the races!

FASST! Biggest news around!

Needless to say I am very anxious to test it out in the air. It will have to wait a few days though as Calgary this time of year has short days and unless I could skip work (skipping work to test the new FASST is not wrong though is it?) I will be waiting until Saturday.

If you are just setting up your new FASST setup and have any questions drop me a note and I will try and answer them as best as I can.

Chad

Gee....That was Abrupt! The Inspire takes a small hit :)

2008-01-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

Ok....some days you should just quit flying :) Like today, the flight just prior to this one I pretty much emptied my pack and almost did not have a successful landing. It was really close, but I pulled it off. This is the reason why the video camera should always be rolling....Ryan missed getting that very exciting flight on tape. Instead however, I proved my continued irresponsibility on the following where he did have the camera ready.

The end result was a fun flight, trying knife edge spins and just general goofin' around. At the end of the flight however about halfway through the fun little 180 harrier turn nice and low (see the vid) I decided that this would make a cool landing shot. Ahhhem....well maybe not :) About 1/10th of a second too slow on the throttle, and I am in the shop testing out my fancy new Li-Ion powered cordless Dremel tool (which by the way is awesome, thanks Agnes).

So I am in the process of replacing my gear plate with a better one.

As you can see I had enough AOA on landing to pretty much clean the bottom off the rudder!

Indoor fun

2008-01-09T18:38:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I got my new Clik F3P flying for our Monday night indoor.

This plane is fantastic, very very good pattern qualities, but still able to cut loose and thrill you :)

My setup is as follows,

Motor - MP Jet AC 22/4-40D
Prop - APC 7x4 slowfly
ESC - Castle Creations Phoenix 10 - with heat shrink removed and wires as short as possible
Reciever - Futaba R114F - case removed, and antenna replaced with 30g magnet wire
Servos - Futaba 3110 - lower case removed, screws removed, leads replaced with 30g magnet wire
Battery - Thunder Power 2s 480 Prolite

My RTF weight was 145 grams, but it could be lighter with even lighter choices in equipment.

Here is a video of it taken on its first outing,

Long time....

2008-01-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

Ok, so its been a long time since my last blog entry....which was actually during the worlds!

I am sure people are wondering what happened to the blog. Well the simple answer is I really didn't feel I had the time to update it properly. Dave and Mark were doing an excellent job as well I just wanted to concentrate on the main reason for being at the Worlds.

Second reason is I was disappointed for a number of reasons with my results, and decided that it was better to avoid posting something that might have been out of frustration. My personal feelings at this point are that I flew better especially during the semi-finals than the results would indicate.

So, my thoughts on the Worlds....

Power systems

I bring this up first because its always seems to be at the front of the conversations! There was about a 50/50 split e-power to glow power....so here goes.

Electric - Lots of electric, motors mostly dominated with Hacker, and I would say a fairly even split on Flight Power and Thunder Power batteries. For outrunners the Plettenberg was the most used. Most of the electric setups (that I saw and I did not see all of them) were flying faster than in previous years.
20x15 props, 20.5x14, 21x14 etc were probably the most common. All in all its fairly mature but people are still learning how to really make things work, this was evident as there were ESC failures, battery failures etc.
Counter-rotating props, there were two being used, very cool. I was told by Seba that it works great, and I am sure it does. It is a much more complicated setup, and heavier (if nothing else it has two props!). While it may be an improvement, is it worth the con's that go along with it? Personally I don't think so.
I don't think you will see much in the way of electric power changes in the short term, most seem very satisfied with the systems that they are using.

Glow - Ok, the usual suspects were out and about. The 170DZ was quite popular, and YS is by far the most used glow motor out there. They seemed to run very well and had no struggles with power. The OS 200 4-stroke was being used by a few people, and it has a softer lower sound than the YS, and also a tremendous amount of power. Nothing really new here either, just continued development.

There was the odd fail to start with the glow models....and a few dead sticks related to the heat. One of which probably cost CPLR the world champion title!

Planes

There were a ton of Oxai models at the Worlds, Zeque's, Astrals etc. They were very prevalent and all seemed to fly very well. Integrals were extremely popular as well, mostly Composite ARF versions but there were a number of ZN Line versions as well. I heard that 10% of the models were Integrals.

A lot of people were using the CPLR T-Canalizer and most felt it offered an improvement. I saw a lot of flared rudder trailing edges, something I was doing about 3 years ago on my Enigma's!

The big thing is the bipes, there were not many, but one did win the Worlds. Is this the beginning of the end of the mono-plane in pattern? I certainly hope not. Personally I felt Onda's Narlar which is a newer version of what he had in France and Poland was by far the better performer in flight. Not to take anything away from Quique and his Euphoria but I felt it looked a bit twitchy in the conditions compared to Onda's which flew very locked in. To me this is simply a case of time, Onda and Naruke have been flying and improving that bipe for years, where the Euphoria is a new design without the advantage of that level of refinement.

They did handle the wind well, but they are big and I don't think could be done electric power and meet weight limits. This will limit guys like me from pursuing those airplanes at least for now :)

Flying Styles

Nothing really changed here from France, with the exception of the electric guys generally being propped faster. Some pilots flew very tight and quick with a high level of sharpness on the corners, while other flew a little deeper and more open styles. I would say it was split about 50/50 in the top 10 between those two styles, with Onda, CPLR, Seba, BPLR, Akiba being the latter, and Jason, Andrew, Carrier being the former, with QQ and Suzuki some where in between.

So did the right guy win? I think so. From what I saw in the finals QQ really didn't put up a "wow" flight but they were very good. Onda flew excellent, but his unknowns suffered as a result of missing snap rotations. I really think he will be World champion one day. CPLR flew the last two rounds like you would expect him to....but part of pattern is keeping your equipment running. I really felt like he was on his way to winning the F-07 round when his motor quit.

Regardless of the outcome it was the closest result in quite some time, and I think everyone was on edge waiting for the results as it was impossible to know for certain who won.

I do find it somewhat discouraging that the US, Japanese and French teams are so strong. It leaves only 1 position in the finals for someone who was not from those countries. However, I suppose it demonstrates a level of focus in F3A that the rest of us don't have and maybe we should pull up our socks before 2009 :)

Enough of that....spring is approaching!

Chad

2007-11-15T02:02:00.000-08:00

I will post the results from the prelims here. I have not posted much lately as I have been trying to dig myself out of the nice big hole I got into after the first round, and Dave and Mark have been doing a good job of keeping theirs updated. Once its all over I will post my thoughts on the event.

For now here are the semi-finalists and country finishing order.

CPLR
Shulman
Onda
Somenzini
Matt
Akiba
BPLR
Silvestri
Carrier
Jesky
Wissinger
Marquet
Suzuki
Friggeri
Dierickx
Beschorner
Rubin
Ulsamer
Fremming
Mayr
Northest
Graselli
Danksagmuller
Filgas
Van Vliet
Bloodworth

Warm-up pilots
Robinson
Shaden

Country order of finish
France
USA
Japan
Italy
Germany
Belgium
Austria
Swiss
Argentina
Canada
Austailia
China
Russia
South Africa
UK
Ireland
Korea
Ecuador
Hong Kong
Chile
Brazil
COlumbia
Suriname
Thailand
Venezuela
Singapore
Liechtenstein
Norway
Netherlands
Sweden
San Marino
Portugal

Opening Ceremonies

2007-11-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

Well the opening ceremonies are now over!

We woke up early this morning for our official practice at the competition site on line A. We got there early enough to see CPLR, BLPR and Carrier practice ahead of us. CPLR and Carrier flew good flights in the fairly stiff in blowing crosswind, but nothing to blow you away. BPLR's flight had some serious flaws in it which I am sure he will not make tomorrow during the competition rounds.

We each got in a flight and I managed to squeeze in a second flight during our 45 minute time frame for practice. We also noise tested the models with each of us registering around 93dB which is just under the 94dB limit.

After practice we got the models processed and took some team pictures.

I get my models ready for processing at the hanger.

The Canadians getting models processed in the hangar. My planes are in the front with Dez's Prestige's next in line at the back.

After processing we quickly got on the road and went for a flight at Galvez field. Once again we met up with the Italian team who were also practicing. Silvestri got a flight on his Shadow with the counter-rotating props, which I was looking forward to seeing. You could definitely hear the cavitation noise from the props during flight at times. The plane had extremely slow downlines and flight speed relative to his other model. I am not sure if this is simply setup or a function of the two props, either way in the severe crosswind it made for some high crab angles to maintain track.

One of the Italians gives Silvestri a hand launch of the counter-rotating prop Shadow. It seems they did not like taking off from the grass as hand launches were commonplace.

After our practice we hit the opening ceremonies. We were treated to some spectacular kite flying, as well as full size fly-bys, and parachutists. Here is a shot of us just before the ceremonies began.

Some of the kites performing their acrobatics, these were very impressive.

The full size planes doing their overhead fly-by's. I did not catch the make of the planes as most announcements were made in Spanish.

One of the parachutists coming in for a landing, they happen to train right at the Esperenza practice field that so many pilots were flying at during the week.

Well, thats it for tonite. The big show is tomorrow, all of us are up in the morning. I am #5 on line A in the morning, with Dez about an hour after me and Dave should be finished up just before lunch. Then we will probably hit the practice field and make any adjustments that are required.

I want to thank everyone who has sent wishes via email or comments, I hope that tomorrow is a good day!

Chad

2007-11-09T16:51:00.000-08:00

I will keep this post short as I really have to get to sleep on time tonite. Our official practice is first thing in the AM tomorrow right after the French, and we want to get out there and see their flights as well.

Today we practiced with the Japanese team, they are truly a model team for Precision Aerobatics. Well organized, very disciplined, extremely courteous and pleasant to be around. I really enjoyed watching them fly today, even though I did not think that they are as on their game as I have seen previously. Its still practice and I am sure they will bring out their best stuff for next week. Suzuki has a new plane that is quite unique with a very narrow fuselage, it almost looks like a profile plane. Its named Mid-Rex, and I will post some pictures of it tomorrow. Akiba is flying the OS 200 and the other guys are running the YS 170's.

We had a great BBQ lunch supplied by the local modelers. I will get pictures of everything up tomorrow.

Chad

Practice

2007-11-08T17:31:00.001-08:00

Well its been a few days of practice, and finding the best and worst sites to practice at! Some late nights and some early mornings. Finally a little bit of a let up to do a blog update.

Official practice and model processing starts tomorrow for some teams, we are slotted for official practice Sat. morning just after the French team. From there we will get our models processed and probably head out for some practice before making our way back to the opening ceremonies.

We first spent a day of practice at the Esperenza where there were the following teams: Ecuador, UK, Columbia, Norway, Sweden.

John Harrop (I hope I got it right) of the UK team is flying this Plettenberg powered Integral.

Kevin Caton from the UK is flying this Pletty powered Twister.

A bit of a crowd watches me practice at Esperenza, unfortunately I wasn't putting on a good show in my opinion!

So far electrics are definitely not dead. From what I have seen at the practice fields they are far more common than glow powered models. We all know that at least half of the top 10 will be running glow, but I personally predict (based on what I see walking through the hotel lobby and the practice sites) that at least 50% of the models here are electrics. I will also go out on a limb and say that Flightpower and Hacker are far and wide the dominating power source of these models, with YS leading the glow models.

After Esperenza we decided to go on a longer drive to find some isolation. We headed down to San Lorenzo which is some 120km away from Santa Fe. There we found no one to fly with except ourselves! I personally got in 8 flights and I think I managed to rid myself of some poor habits that I had been exhibiting at the previous practice sessions.

Our fellow Canadian drivers zooming down the highway toward San Lorenzo at 130kph (the normal speed limit)

San Lorenzo was not a bad field, same orientation as the Worlds site which is nice. Right alongside a highway with traffic that liked to honk its horn as it drove by, some what distracting, but at least we were alone with a lot of opportunity to fly.

The Canadian team prepares for a day of practice at the San Lorenzo field.

Dave Reaville's caller Mark Byrne takes a ride on Dave's Twister in Argentina....look ma no hands!

Today we hit the Galvez field, in the same direction as San Lorenzo but about half the distance. It is also a nice field with the locals welcoming us with a cooler full of cold drinks! We spent part of the day practicing with the Italians and the Portuguese.

The lineup of pilots at the Galvez practice site

The counter-rotating prop arrangement on Sebastiano Silvestri's Angel Evo S. He did not fly the model but said in calm weather it works very well, however in the wind it does not have the speed. The props were very large (I could not see a size). The gearbox is built into the front of the Hacker motor, with dual shafts (one within the other) driving the props. It seems like a very complicated setup with a lot of potential failure points from my perspective.

We ended up getting rained out of Galvez and went back to town to catch up on some errands that needed to be ran. Tomorrow we are heading out bright and early to beat the rush while a number of teams should still be at the site dealing with model processing.

Off to bed!

Chad

Sorry!

2007-11-06T18:43:00.000-08:00

Sorry guys, no update today! We just got back to the room (11:30pm). I will update tomorrow again.

I will say that we were out practicing with the UK, Ecuador, Norway, and one member from the Swedish, Columbian, and Irish teams at the Esperanza site today. Weather was decent with fairly stiff winds again.

Chad

First Day of Practice

2007-11-05T17:01:00.000-08:00

Well today we hit the Parana practice site around noon to start getting ready for the big week next week.

First we started off with a well needed breakfast to get us through the rest of the day. The breakfast at the Holiday Inn is pretty good.

After we ate we packed up the cars and took off toward Parana, on the way just happens to be a Wal-Mart, so we had to stop and pick up some essentials like water, chairs, snacks etc.

The Wal-Mart patrons in Argentina are not a lot different than the patrons at the local Wal-Marts in North America, just look at the picture and see if you agree?

The drive to the Parana practice site is fairly scenic with construction, a tunnel, police (or military we are not really sure) checkpoints that check to see if your lights are on! A few general shots of the country side during the drive...

We did fairly easily find the practice site and joined the team from Chile, and a couple of members from the German team who were finishing up and left shortly after we got there. We managed to get in a few flights and later in the day Adrian Wong from California along with the Hong Kong team and the team from Thailand arrived and began getting their gear setup and ready.

I managed to squeeze in 4 flights and start getting accustomed to the conditions. It was fairly windy today probably up around 15-20 mph at the top of the box. With the wind at our backs at this site and a bunch of tree's behind us landing was a bit interesting due to the turbulence. Everyone was having trouble with the tricking landing situation.

Rene of team Chile and his pair of Genesis (Genesi?)

Some members of the local club were out to setup a shade shelter for us. Someone was missing the directions as it ended up taking about 10 people to finally figure out how to assemble it, easily the most entertaining part of the day!

Here are the guys from Thailand trying to get a YS 170 going. They were having a lot of trouble with this engine. We left before they were able to get it running but hopefully they got it solved.

Adrian Wong and his team mate from Hong Kong watch the flying. Adrian was just checking out the practice sites as he did not have his planes assembled yet. His primary suffered some damage to the canopy which is unfortunate as it is an Akiba built Proline.

This is an Extreme Composite Proline which one of the Hong Kong team members was flying. It seemed to fly very well and had a ton of power with the YS 170.

We will be back out practicing tomorrow at one of the sites. Not 100% sure which one yet.

Chad

Ola!

2007-11-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

Well we did finally make it! Actually some 36 hours after we left the airport in Calgary.

It felt like forever on the airplane from Toronto, around 12 hours I think with a short stop in Santiago, Chile to drop a few off and pick a few up.

Here we are standing around the airport in Chile waiting to get back on the plane to head to Buenos Aires.

A shot over the wing looking toward Santiago, Chile

It was around a 2 hour flight from Santiago to Buenos Aires, which seemed extremely short in comparison to the marathon that we had just completed.

A shot over the wing as we approach Buenos Aires

At this point my camera batteries decided to let me down and I didnt get any more pictures until after we were safely in the hotel today. However I will grab the ones that Xavier and Dez took tomorrow and paste them in here. Until then a story will have to do!

Once in BA at the airport, after grabbing our luggage we quickly cleared customs and security and proceeded to grab our rentals. The rental office was a brief 5 minute drive from the airport, and one of the staff came to pick us up and took us to get the cars. We left my dad and Xavier to fend off the porters trying to load our luggage and planes into every taxi that drove by!

A missed exit leaving the rental office cost us a few minutes of time trying to find out way back to the airport, however we made it back and jammed all the boxes etc into the cars and off we went.

We let Dez take the lead on the trip to Santa Fe since he had a GPS and Xavier had maps...what could go wrong! Well we ended up in downtown BA traveling some fairly busy streets and getting first hand exposure just how exciting driving down here is. A few years ago I spent a bit of time in Venezuela so I had a bit of understanding what to expect (I didnt actually drive in Venezuela myself), but nothing makes up for experiencing it yourself!

Long story short (well not really) we made it out of BA an hour later on the road to Rosario.....awesome its all downhill from here! (literally!). So I knew that there was a bypass around Rosario, unfortunately it was night time at this point so we pretty much missed the exit to take the bypass and into Rosario we went. Ok, long story short (this time I mean it), we spent two hours trying to navigate our way back to the highway. A gas station and a few more maps later (to hell with the GPS!!) we were back on highway 9 and hit Santa Fe and quickly found the hotel (Holiday Inn) at about 2am local time.

So we slept in a lot today, and while most of the crew went out walking around I stayed in the room and got my gear all charged up, assembled etc etc etc.

A shot of our hotel room with parts scattered about during the assembly of the planes

The plane survived the trip without even a scratch on them, which is always a great thing. Once of my boxes had some minor damage to it on arrival so I was quite happy to see it unscathed. All the other equipment like batteries and chargers were as we packed them in the luggage prior to leaving Calgary.

Before we went out to supper we hit the Esperanza practice site and had a chat with the locals flying out there. This looks like a really nice site and we will be out there tomorrow AM after we hit the local Wal-Mart for a couple of cases of water and some chairs! You can always count on a Wal-Mart and McDonalds to be nearby where ever you go in the world to ensure you feel right at home! We can actually see the McDonalds sign from our hotel window (I will get a picture of that tomorrow)....and no we have not been there yet.

Tomorrow we should get all the pictures sync'd up and now that my batteries are charged I can continue to get more!

Thats it for today!

2007-11-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

Well we made the first leg of the trip to Toronto safe and sound. A small bit of convincing and a Visa transaction later and we were on the plane in Calgary. Here is a shot of our plane in Calgary as they load on the luggage....hopefully the planes are safe and sound!

Here is a shot of my dad Brian who is coming along for the first time to watch the World Champs. He doesn't fly himself so this should be quite the experience to see what its all about. Or at least see what all his hard earned money went towards when I was still a kid!

Once we hit Toronto we went out for supper with my sister as we have a 6 hour or so stop. After a nice supper and doing a bit of catch up over coffee at the local Tim Hortons (its a Canadian thing) we made it back to the airport. After a quick visit with security and the transmitters we met up with Dez Vaghy (pilot), Xavier Mouraux (Dez's caller), Harry Ells (team manager) and his wife Rosemary. Dave Reaville and his caller Mark Byrne along with their wives will join us in Santa Fe in a couple of days.

Packing

2007-10-31T21:26:00.001-07:00

Almost finished packing up tonight. We are leaving Friday AM from Calgary, the trip will take approximately 24 hours including our long layover in Toronto on the flight down. We will arrive mid-afternoon on Saturday the 3rd then drive the 450+ km to Santa Fe north of Buenos Aires.

Hopefully everything has gone well at that point and we can hit the practice field first thing Sunday morning (Nov 4th) and start adjusting our models to the local conditions!

Supposedly the hotel has high speed internet access so it should be fairly easy to update this page daily with pictures and comments. So keep your browser pointed this way for updates.

Chad

Test

2007-09-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

Test post