Greyhead

Here’s a front view to finish off the set of outdoor photos.

mcguyver

your work leaves me in awe. i noticed you detail as you go along i work that way myself. you are without a doubt one of the best modelers ive ever seen. i'm new to this hobby ive been doing it less than a year. i'm working on my third build right now a 1/5 neiuport 11 with working cockpit controls with as much detail as i could shove down the throat of this plane, ive posted several pics of the fuse on this site. ive learned much from your thread. thank you rob

Greyhead

Glad you’ve enjoyed the thread and if it’s been any inspiration for your fabulous Neiuport so much the better.

As yourself I work without the aid of sophisticated tools and like to make as much of the models detailing myself as possible. I get a great sense of satisfaction from making things from “scratch” as opposed to a trip to the local model shop to part with hard earned cash!

The down side of all the detailing is of course the added weight and sometimes drag, which makes the models harder (less easy!!) to fly, but in my opinion it’s a small price to pay.

Greyhead

At long last the strong winds we’ve been having weren’t in evidence yesterday morning so I managed to get the SE5a out to the flying field.

First a range check, then another with the engine running, everything worked fine, so out to the takeoff area, a quick check of the controls and “wow” the elevator’s reversed, back to the pits for a spot of transmitter programming. After all the time I’ve spent setting up the model it just goes to show, never take anything for granted. A certain disaster averted!!

With everything now moving in the right direction it’s back out for another attempt. As I eased open the throttle the model started moving forwards but very sluggishly; half way down the runway and the tail still hadn’t lifted so I closed the throttle. Surprisingly the model carried on and eventually bumped over the “rough stuff”. When I collected the model one of the landing wire brackets had broken; I felt sure it must have been fractured, or at least badly stressed, when I was making it as the ground wasn’t that rough.

No chance of a flight now but I thought I might as well do some more testing, I removed the cowl and tweaked the needle valve for maximum noise and tried a takeoff run again; this time it was a lot better with the tail lifting OK.

I have been a little concerned that my “standard” 13x6 prop looks very small against the large radiator with only a couple of inches of blade protruding into clear air so I fitted the “jumbo” 16x4 and tried again.

This time the acceleration was much better, in fact the tail was up in about a yard and before I knew it the model was a couple of feet in the air. I now had to make a quick decision, keep power on and risk a flight or reduce power and land? Common sense prevailed and I decided on the latter; luckily our mown square at Redmarshall is a good size, even so it was a bit of a bumpy landing but at least this confirmed my suspicions about the landing wire bracket having been weakened as the remaining brackets handled this severe “landing” with no problems.

The bracket was easy enough to repair; I’ve used tinplate this time instead of brass so it should be even stronger. The next fine day and I’ll try again.

I was a little disappointed to not actually get a flight but with a model of this complexity it’s not uncommon to not get off the ground on the first attempt, at least I managed a bit of air under the wings, even if inadvertently!

Bluewavestudios

Thanks for the Progress report Grahame,

Nice to see you are doing everything properly especially after all the hours and work invested in this model. It would be a shame to spoil it now. I hope all the teething problems iron out nicely, there's always bound to be the odd one or two with any new model and at least you have found yours.

Sounds like your decision on prop size has been made for you by the plane itself, Glad to hear she got some wind underneath her wings at last too, even if it was only a short hop. I can only imagine you are looking forwards to a proper flight with her now.

Keep us updated and if you get the chance, send some piccies of her airbourne too, I am sure she will look great in the air.

Regards.......Mark

__________________
I'm Only Here Coz I'm Not All There !!!

gilesfordcrush

Hello Grahame,

Any more test flight activity?

Giles

Greyhead

Sorry for the delay Giles but here it is!

The Se5a had its first “real” flight 2 weeks ago now but I’ve been on holiday so the write up has had to wait; the flight wasn’t without its problems, but it flew well and looked good.

There’s nothing major that needs doing but as always seems to happen with my models the first flights highlight a few things that need some work.

The 14Ba bolts used to secure the landing wires just aren’t strong enough, at least one has sheared off at every landing so I’m in the process of replacing them with solid pins. I don’t want to make them too strong, as I’d prefer them to shear off on a heavy landing rather than over-stress the airframe.

My previous SE5a had very poor aileron response, and a Flair “scout” flown by another club member is the same; therefore I had set this model up with quite a large amount of aileron deflection. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve used the scale aerofoil section this time or that the gap between the wing and aileron is shrouded but this model certainly doesn’t suffer from poor aileron response. The flight was very “exciting” until I switched to ½ rates!

It is also quite sensitive on elevator despite the CG being at the forward limit. I had controlled the elevators using separate servos on separate channels slaved together, the elevator and spoiler channels. Unfortunately this made the elevator trim only move one elevator, meaning that the spoiler knob had to be used as the trim control, this proved to be too coarse and I couldn’t trim for level flight. Before I left for my holiday I ordered a “Y” lead with servo reverse and have now fitted that so the elevator trim works as normal now.

The ground handling was pretty good so I decided against fitting a gyro but I have bent the axle to impart a few degrees of toe-in as suggested by Glider Guider, a lot cheaper!! I’ll let you know how well or other wise it works if we every get some decent flying weather.

Here’s some information that may help Linney with the calculations for his SE5a.

Wing span 58 in.
Wing area 1220 in²
Weight 9¼ lb.
Prop 16 in. dia x 4 in. pitch
Static revs. 6800 r.p.m.

Of course I don’t know the all-important figures for lift, airspeed and drag, which you really need to do any meaningful calculations. All I can say is that there is sufficient lift at what appeared to be a ”scale” airspeed and the large diameter low pitch prop turning at fairly low revs overcame the drag much better than the 13 x 6 prop at higher revs.

Bunkerbarge

Sounds quite an event Grahame. The big question though is are there any pictures?

Congratulations on completing a stunning build that would make any museum proud as a static model but to have all that and and RC model makes it something of a rarity.

Also very many thanks for the many hours of entertainment you have provided us all with in your build thread. Almost as much work has gone into that as has gone into the build itself.

Simply beautiful model, a joy to watch you build it and I'm sure it will be a joy to see her in the air.

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“Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days"

Greyhead

No photos as yet, I like to get all the “bugs” sorted out at a safe altitude!

When I’m confident that everything’s working as it should, then I’ll do some low, slow fly-pasts for the camera, hopefully not too far in the future, but it all depends on the weather.

Greyhead

As was shown in a previous post the theoretical top speed for my SE5a using the 16x4 prop is 26mph, this gave me some concerns, however, looking at a ”typical circuit” eased those concerns somewhat.



At 18% scale the speeds would be

Take off: not below 9mph
Climb out: 10.8mph
Level flight: 14.4mph
Touchdown: 8.1mph

The maximum speed is given as 123mph, it doesn’t say if this was obtainable on engine power alone but somehow I imagine this was the absolute maximum speed the airframe could withstand before the wings ripped themselves off or something equally terminal happened! At “scale” speed this equates to 22.14mph so my theoretical top speed of 26mph sounds reasonable.

Of course the theoretical top speed doesn’t take into account the drag factor and models always seem to fly faster than “scale” speed but in practice it has worked out OK so I’m happy to stick with the large prop even if it does mean that the engine is somewhat “over-propped”.