Jimmy flew it around the parking lot today… free flight:
Couple of more shots of this beauty:
I ran out of time today because I had already heard from Jon that he was having trouble with the atmospheric pressure valve/diaphragm being unstable on his 115. Then Charles wrote me a PM this morning saying the same thing about his 115 (waits until the last second I might add, lol)… so I silver soldered on a nipple and installed a 3W snorkel. I had to make a slight grind on it for the choke to close properly. Hopefully mine will run great:
Maiden day finally arrived! I got to the field at 2pm… oh Ukiah, what a paradise, but nobody to fly with… I showed up on the nicest day of the year, or maybe the century!… 75 degrees, 2-4mph breeze… I had to unlock the gate. No one up here flies! Well, no fighting for air space, anyway. Everything on the plane checked out fine so she went airborne. To me… this plane is a winner! It wants to stay put unless you give it some input… it doesn’t dart or sink… it just stays put. The CG worked out ideal for precision, but wanting the plane more for freestyle so I’ll probably move the battery packs.
After 9 flights my Fromeco 5200 grunt packs were at 7.8v with a 1amp load. lol They would probably go for like the rest of the year. lol
The Smart-Fly PowerExpander worked perfectly (I am a long time advocate for power distribution!), as did the anodized TruTurn spinner. The new style Jersey Modeler 5-gal electric fuel can made fueling mighty convenient. All the ZAP glue, DUBRO and MicroFasteners products held up and basically everything worked as advertised.
I have no complaints about this plane at all! And, my only complaint about the assembly (other than having to do it myself, lol) was all the time I spent picking glue out of the elevator hinges. Hinges that were going fully slammed bevel to bevel with no gap at all in the flying video… in other words I need all that throw and need the glue out of there to get it! Not a deal breaker, just some glue picking while I watched TV, and the flight performance more than made up for it. It’s almost forgotten at this point, almost. lol
I love the plane, but the BME has issues. The engine started easy and ran cool all day. The cowl was always cool, and me, Mark, and Jimmy all touched the heads on landing… you could leave your finger on them for about a second before they got uncomfortably warm. I shot the engine at 136 degrees at its hottest point after it had been sitting around 2 minutes. I never shot it when we landed, but it was definitely running cool…. I had it very rich, though (32oz tank sucked dry to flame out in less than 8 minutes) and baffled, too:
The prop just keeps unloading forever on the uplines… this engine is the king of uplines! But, I call it the “balls out” or “flame out” engine. I talked to BME and they sent out a different model carb for it. I swapped carbs but being that they were different models they also required a different linkage setup. Oh joy. So, this time I ended up using a 3W servo mount… and removed all the big time modeler stuff.
Don’t try this at home, kiddies.
You see, I gotta little crazy on this one. lol I wanted the separation I already had between the location I had the ignition and the location I had the throttle servo. So, I wanted the carb arm on the same side and not the opposite side like the new carb has it. But, there are serious clearance issues with running it on the other side. And, as I said earlier in the thread, I did melt a balljoint once when it was too close to the exhaust (my heatgun will melt a balljoint in no time). So, I wanted to go opposite side carb arm than BME set it up, I wanted to go metal clevis so it had no chance of melting, and I wanted to go composite arm to avoid metal to metal noise. I must add that a balljoint on the BME setup carb arm on the new BME carb will work just fine (and I could have relocated my ignition), and I’ve even used metal arm to metal clevis setups before on other planes (balljoint on the opposite side)… but in an ideal world I wanted it composite arm, opposite side. lol So, I took the time to do it… which like I said, is a little crazy. lol
I get 120/120 ATV on a non-programmed servo with this setup (while making sure to maintain plenty of leverage for solidly closing the butterfly)… which means great throttle resolution:
I tried snorkel on, snorkel off, various exits for the atmospheric pressure nipple, and even an RC Blimp plate:
Here’s a vid from late last evening trying out the replacement carb and RCBlimp cover (I had the low needle 1/4 turn out and it was still loading up on the low… blink and she’ll flame under 3000rpms). I really am working overtime with the motor in the vid… trying to predict whether it is going to surge, sag, or flame out. You might not know it, but I was pissed alot of that flight. lol The vid would be so much smoother if the engine would hold a reliable rpm, and also if the engine would just run at all under 1/4 throttle. Hard to be low and slow bump’n the throttle from almost flamed-out to surging. Aaarrggg! This plane is just so fun, hate dealing with this! Anyway, here’s the video:
Another vid from the next day… still loving the plane but fighting the engine:
As I’ve mentioned, having the two Fromeco 5200 Grunt packs in front of the fuel tank made the CG great for IMAC. But, I have had 8oz on the tailwheel since early on. I moved the batteries back to the center tray and removed the 8oz, we’ll see how that works out for CG next time I fly it. I also sanded down the inside of the wing tubes so I could use the CF wing tube. The aluminum wing tube weighed 10-1/2 ounces and the CF wing tube weighs 6-1/2 ounces. So, next flight will be 12 ounces less than the plane weighed in the videos. I also have the CF landing gear to put on:
I took the engine off the plane to have a look inside and see how it was doing. I’ve run 8 gallons of Pennzoil AirCooled @ 32-1 and 2 gallons of BelRay H1R @ 40-1. There is no blow-by past the rings, as you can see, and the engine is clean as a whistle throughout:
I popped a plug to see how they were doing, and you can see it looks just right (black and/or oily would be too rich, white-ish would be too lean). Damn BME sure tightens them mothers on there. :O Thought I was going to need a breaker bar to get it off:
Here’s a better shot showing how squeaky clean the inside of the engine is after 10 gallons of fuel through it:
BME sent me a third new setup and I have now tried that too. I have been through three carbs on this thing so far, but it still doesn’t run right. You know, I’ve written many a lengthy threads about these carbs over the years, it’s not like I’m not familiar with how they work… but frustrated I read all the tips and tricks I could find last night until the wee hours of the morning. Here’s a few of the links:
http://wind-drifter.com/technical/wg8walbro.htm
http://www.geocities.com/farellus/idle_adaptation.html
http://www.theultralightplace.com/troubleshooting.htm
http://wem.walbro.com/distributors/s…/southwest.asp
http://www.geistware.com/rcmodeling/…n_pressure.htm
http://www.aerocorsair.com/index.htm
I’m a patient man, but this engine has about used up all I got… I love flying this plane too much to keep mess’n around with the high risk of a crash. I need a reliable engine, any reliable engine will do right now.
UPDATE: I never got the BME-115 where I wanted it… transition and idle never was any good and it kept flaming out. Finally, my favorite plane did flame out one too many times and crashed. Would love to try another one of these planes with a DA-85 sometime. The lighter DA-100 or the current BMEs might not be bad… but if I had another AW 104″ Yak I’d be trying the DA-85, definitely.
Here are a few flying pics from Ukiah:
A few pics from Skaggs Island:
And a vid from Skaggs Island:
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