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Sunday, November 9, 2008

Tango Romeo 3703 cleared for takeoff

2008-11-08 - Saturday
9am

Headed to Rinching Flying Field. I need to get the rudder ball link to be fixed before I can fly with peace of mind. Well, The Raven are able to fly but I don’t want to take any unnecessary risk. When I reached Rinching fly site, Sifu Zul, Eipul, Yus13 and Zali already there. Zali have the ball link part, provided by Cikgu V earlier. He helped me to change the link, after 2 minutes my TR3703 is ready to fly.

Spent some time watching Eipul fly his TRex900 then Sifu Zul flown his TRex900 with his 'selamba' full 3D maneuver. Everything is just so easy for him. Envy him very much.. One day probably I wil able to do 50% of that! :)Sifu Zul has demonstrated to me how he flipped the throttle hold switch and autorotated down controlling the descend, at about 5 feet from the ground he flipped it back to un-hold the throttle and flew up. Looks very simple.. ha ha ha.

Then the field was clear, looks like it was waiting for my Raven, so I started the engine. This time the engine started fairly easy. Moved the Raven to the field, started to increase the throttle. Engine was ok, controls and links were ok. I was using the half tank left from yesterday test flight. So this will be quite short warm up flight before the refueling. Flew it, hovered with some movement keeping the tail pointing to me. Looks good! Continue to hover up and down till the main tank fuel finished - now i have the header tank I have more confident and I don't have to rush back to land it while the header thank is still at 3/4 full.


After the warm up flight, I filled the tank up. Wait till the Flying Field is clear, then I started my Raven's engine again.
This time I was more confident, the Raven flew great during the warm up flight. Still, I was thinking, if the engine died again, will I able to do better autoration now? How exactly to do it? I have been practicing the autorotation on RealFlight 3.5 with about 60 to 70% success rate. Don't think that is sufficient to risk my Raven with. Still lot to learn.
So I took-off slowly, did slow foward flight to the middle of the field, rotate it into nose in, keep it there for a brief period, then started to do figure 8. Keep the height more than 50 feet, I'll need that if the engine died. Completed one figure 8, bring it down to check the engine temperature. Just nice, not warm as last time.
Thinking about the autorotation again, should I tried it using my real Raven?? Noooo! Not yet!!
Took-off again, did few more figure 8 (still need to improve a lot!), then I started to try 'climb meanuver' (this is what I call it this time) at the end of each side. This is very important for me to procced with "stall turn" or "full loop" later. I need to get the feel how high and fast it climb and stop the climb. It went ok. I'm yet to continue to with the 2 maneuver. Not this time.
Then, landed the Raven, Sifu Zul commented that my engine was too lean, will check the temperature and tuning later. Hovered her till the header thank left only half fuel. Good time to pack home.


New things to note:1. I noticed during the decent, the engine sound pitch was much higher indicating higher headspeed. I need to work on this, how to reduce (or actually maintain) the head speed while decending.2. New location for vold indicator is not good! I can't really see the LED while flying!
When I reached home, I straight away work on the moving the volt Indicator LED. Figured that in the cockpit it self will be much better, fixed it there.

1730
I have visitor, another Raven's owner Firdaus as came over to visit. Brought him to the PHAF. Nobody was there except for us, we have the field for ourselves. It is quite windy but I know the Raven TR3703 will able to handle that without any problem. Lots of things we discussed, from the different of the Ravens, tips, parts etc.

Starting up the engine, I need to clear the 'hydro lock' because when I filled up the fuel earlier I forgot to close the tube to the carburetor. Then then engine started ok. Did some hover, figure 8. Then I noticed the Red light from the cockpit! O O, better bring it to the ground fast. Looks like the receiver battery was quite low. It is at yellow while hovering and lighting red when lots of servo movement. I manage to land it and shut the engine of.
We chat some more 1850, time to go home.

Firdaus, thanks for the visit. Come by anytime and let share information some more.







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