48" Edge 540 Building, Flying, and Questions

[Aaeolien]

Awaiting patiently for a weather window to maiden this. Batteries are charged hoping tomorrow. I am going to sit down hopefully tomorrow during a quiet time at work and get a full build thread out together about my experience as a balsa noobie. Snuck in a couple of EPP edge flights earlier but felt it was too windy to maiden my first balsa. Lol. Come on wind stay down for tomorrow.

 

[wedoitall]

i was just getting ready to pm you to see if you gotta fly the 48" edge yet. know u said something about sunday or after.

i messed up the rudder control horn and control rod the other day, very first time i dumb thumb a plane. wasnt too bad, was trying to hover and the nose came back, throttled too late and she came down on the rudder. i made a horn outta old credit card and stopped by a local flower shop and scored some wire they use to tie up flowers in arrangements, use it for the rod. gotta fly this evening ,not quite full throws, but i gotta fly, works till i get extra parts in the mail. only thing that bad about living in the sticks, no LHS to pickup small stuff.

 

[Aaeolien]

Doh bummer on the rudder arm. I've broken mine a few times on my Th planes as well.

Yah was hoping to have maidened on Sunday but the 20mph winds and snow said otherwise. Lol. Could have done it today but not exactly a plane I wanted to take out and maiden alone. Lol. Was hoping my father would've been able to meet me at field and at least video it but he ended up way to busy. Nice to have an extra set of hands to reach trims or whatever during a maiden so held off. It'll get flown its just waiting down there taunting me saying fly me fly me. Haha. It's had it's maiden taxi tests in the driveway so I know it at least rolls. Hahaha.

 

[wedoitall]

dont ya just love the ol maiden taxi'n test. just dying to get it up in the air. .......sorry man, didnt have to type that last bit, did I. toward the end of the week looks like good weather and decent winds. for now.

 

[Aaeolien]

Successful maiden. What an awesome airplane. Such a smooth flying machine. Needed practically no trim at all and the tiniest bit of elevator needed for inverted flight. Did a little knife edge on the 2nd flight and didn't really notice any coupling issues. Will really give that a test next time I am out. Was able to fly a whole bunch of harrier with relative ease and it was so locked in that I was right down on the deck quite a bit with the harrier flying. Amazing is best way to describe it. Had a minor issue with the wheel pants on the first flight landing. Shoulda just left them off but I had to have the look. Haha. So going forward they are being taken off for now. Eventually they will go back on the plane.

For never having flown a balsa before I was extremely happy with how smooth and easy this one flew. And it floats on the 3s setup. Couldn't believe how well it would slow down. Tried a brief KE spin but had it roll out after a couple rotations, definetly just my flying rather than an airframe issue. Just need to find the sweet spot.

Anyhow video from the 2nd flight is uploading will link it later but for now batteries are charged so I'm going back out to get a couple more flights in. Lol.

 

[gyro]

Thats fantastic Chris, really glad you enjoyed it! Looking forward to your review!

 

[Aaeolien]

Video as promised.

[video=youtube_share;l9hMhoN5u0s]http://youtu.be/l9hMhoN5u0s[/video]

Did go back out and put a couple more flights on it. Such a confidence inspiring airplane. Did some more KE noticed a tiny tendency to roll to the gear which I think I can probably balance out. It's so little. Favorite new move has to be waterfalls connected together into a vertical tumble. So cool looking. Did a chain of 3 on the last flight. Yes these 2 flights I was wringing it out a little. Haha. Had a hard time getting a clean pop top. Just couldn't get it rotating on them. Practice I'm sure. Started getting braver and did some snap to hovers nice and clean looking and Very fun. And got real brave and did a few nice low level rollers. Well 10 feet low. Which is much lower than I planned on trying rollers today but hey the airframe inspires confidence.

Too much fun is all I can say about this thing. It puts a lot of confidence in your head. Running it on 3s and it is very floaty. Give full elevator and a tiny bit of throttle to keep the nose up a bit and it'll just float to the ground. I never thought I would be out there flinging it around like a foamy already but that's what it gives you. I haven't found in the short number of flights any bad tendencies that it has and if you put it together like the manual tells ya to you won't have any problems. The kit is extremely well built. I have started putting together the build thread and hoping to have it up here later this weekend.

I was all stressing out about balancing it perfect and what I ended up with was a slightly tail heavy airplane around the 90mm mark for the CG. I ordered the zippy compact 3s 35c 2200 batteries aiming for lighter weight and they are all the way to the firewall still resulting in the slightly tail heavy. I is 100% flyable with no problem at all like that. I may add a tiny bit of weight in the cowl to sneak that cg forward to the 85mm mark but for now a click of down trim and its fine upright and inverted. Only thing I have found is the slight roll to the gear during KE flight and pretty sure that is cg related and I can fix it easily.

 

[wedoitall]

Nice, Chris! i know you have been waiting alil while to get to fly her. cant believe how floaty she is. did she seem pretty stable on those low harriers? I want one.

 

[Aaeolien]

Super stable in upright harrier. Practically no wing rock once I got it locked in and kept my thumbs from getting to crazy on the sticks. Didn't really give inverted a try.

 

[Aaeolien]

It is one super floaty airplane. I never thought that it would be as floaty as it actually is.