blog for whoever

Hobbyzone’s Super Cub comes with a 7-cell 1000mAh battery pack, and the only thing it really has going for it is that it’s probably lighter than any other 2/3A NiMH pack available (not talking about lipos). Even though I was consistantly getting over 1100mAh on each charge and over 10 minute flight times, I still wanted more. So I was anxious to pick up an 8-cell 1500mAh pack to replace it, since it’s a direct replacement and perfect fit for the battery compartment on the SC. Well it arrived today, and me being the patient person that I am, hooked it right up to my Intellipeak Digital Ice Charger (best charger ever invented BTW), discharged it at 10A and quickly went into a 2A charge cycle. After waiting what seemed like forever, I bumped up the curent to 2.5A (not recommended) and it probably went another 10 minutes or so before it finally peaked. I only got 1360 or so mAh into the cells, most likely due to it being their first charge, and it was a quick one. Subsequent charges at 1.5A and less have shown the pack can charge up to 1520mAh without problems. It usually takes cycling a new pack a few times before it shows its true potential.

True potential or not, the first run on the pack was awesome in the Super Cub. It had so much stinking thrust I could pull out of almost any maneuver without concern. I could pull hard into large loops and do loop after loop without loosing altitude. Man it was sweet! The plane becomes a whole new animal with the extra voltage, and power for that matter. I believe the Elite cells are quite a bit better than the stock cells, meaning they have less Vdrop and less IR (internal resistance). Whatever it is, they make the Cub take off like a rocket (yeah, even for a park flyer with a 48″ wing span) I could climb to several hundred feet in only a few seconds. It felt nice, anyway I’ve got some more video that my brother shot with the new battery pack. So here it is. Some of the slower-moving shots are with the motor either off or at 50% throttle.

My brother came down the other day and we got a chance to fly the Super Cub while he shot some video. It was a great day for flying, the wind was really light and the skies were clear. My 8-cell pack had just arrived so I charged it up and took it out for a spin. Wow what a difference over the stock pack. The plane just climps so easily and pulls into loops without any problems. It makes flying into the wind easier too, and easier to get out of trouble should I do something stupid. So here’s the video. This is with the stock 7-cell battery. I crashed it into a bush too, but otherwise it was a good flight.

Well I’ve got a few more flights in on my new Hobbyzone Super Cub and all I can really say is this plane is a blast to fly. I’ve finally gotten the hang of flying around, doing loops, and zooming by overhead with the wind at super speeds. I still can’t land it, maybe because I don’t have a good landing spot. So far I’ve broken 3 props. I went to almost every LHS in town to buy more, ended up buying 4 more from two different shops. Now I should be set. Otherwise the plane is still in really good shape, nothing major other than the props has broken and I’ve crashed it everytime I’ve flown it so far. I mostly just end up hitting small trees/bushes and not crashing into the ground but I ran into a wall twice. The plane is pretty rugged and flies really well, as long as I keep it high in the air. Landing it just hasn’t worked out for me yet. I’ve got around 6 flights on it so far, which each flight being just a few minutes. I hand launch it now, instead of runway launching it like I did the first time (turms out it’s way harder to do it that way). But handing lauching it is a piece of cake, just throw and off she goes. I can’t wait to get my 8-cell pack, I need more power.

I’ve been looking at what could be my next plane to buy. I want to buy all new electronics too, Futaba makes a sweet 6-channel radio that I want. With that and a decent ESC for $25 I could have the SC up and running with all new electronics and at 72MHZ instead of the cheesy 27MHz which every neighborhood kid and his Radio Shack RC car operate on. Not that I mind the electronics that came with the Cub, for now I haven’t had any problems with them. I want to try experimenting with different 480 motors in the Super Cub. I want to get an RPM meter and measure what the stock prop spins at and then see what kind of motors I can buy to bump it up. To bad I know very little about props and pitches and thrust and all that. I downloaded MotoCalc from www.motocalc.com, which is a tool for calculating all that stuff and have been messing around with it. It’s pretty fancy software, and tells me more than I need to know about the many different configurations I could run in the plane and how it would perform. I’d like to drop in a Graupner Speed 480, since I used that motor quite a bit in the Sleeper RS480 Conversion. I like that motor, it runs cool, has a ton of torque, and I believe it’s faster than the stock Hobbyzone motor that comes in the plane. But faster isn’t always better, it needs to have the power to spin that prop too, which a 10×8 prop is pretty big. I can’t believe what kind of wind it creates if you stand behind it with it running full speed, it’s like a super wind tunnel. It makes sense, if the thing is going to fly at 30MPH, it’s got to blow wind at at least that speed, right?

Anyway, yesterday it was too windy to fly, I could barely hold the plane in my hand without the wind wanting to rip it out and take it far far away. And today it’s raining, no wind, but it’s raining. Maybe later on it will dry up and I can take her out. In the meantime I’ll be watching videos of other people flying their Super Cubs.

So I got an RC plane for Christmas, my first RC plane, and took it out for its maiden flight this afternoon. I was so nervous to throw this huge plane all made of Styrofoam into the air for fear that it would almost immediately nose dive into the ground. I had watched a bunch of videos online, and read all the how-to’s in the forums, but nothing could prepare me for my first flight. I taxied around on the ground for a while, just to get a feel for turning it and throttling it. I made a few feeble attempts to take off from the ground, but wimped out as the plane approached any kind of actual speed. After about 10 minutes of just thinking about flying, I decided it was too windy and went back inside.

An hour later the wind appeared to have died down some, so I took it back out with the thought that even if it flies for only 5 seconds and then crashes into a pile of Styrofoam rubble, it will still be fun, so I’m going to just do it. But I didn’t want to throw it, I thought it would be easier to take off from the ground slowly, that way I’d at least get to fly it up a little bit before crashing it. I set it on the ground, accelerated slowly up to full throttle and then watched it go. As it gained speed I pulled back slightly on the stick and I couldn’t believe my eyes when she actually started flying, soaring up in the air in an amazing and triumphant flight. Within seconds I was panic-stricken, as now I had to keep it up in the air and the wind that I had thought died down appeared to be driving the plane against all my commands. I pulled up higher and brought it back around into the wind and tried to do a few large circles overhead, but the wind kept pushing the plane further and further away from me. It was glorious to see it fly, to feel the plane respond to the little commands of my fingertips, I was in complete awe and shock. I flew the plane at what felt like a decent altitude, but I couldn’t get it to fly back towards me, every circle back was met with more wind that pushed it further away. Soon I was having a hard time even telling what direction the plane was going or any orientation of the plane at all. It was about that time that I knew I was in trouble, the plane was too far away, and I couldn’t fly her back, that’s when it plummetting to the ground in a silent puff of dust.

Where did it even land? My house is the last house on a street that backs to a huge empty wash with more than a mile in almost every direction. It’s the perfect place to fly, and the worst place to crash. I began my journey out into the desert to retrieve my fallen plane. I knew it was out there somewhere amidst the tumbleweeds and brush. After a few minutes of searching I found her stuck into a small bush, amazingly with almost no damage, other than a few small sticks poking out of the wing. First crash and she’s okay! And man what rush, I’ve never been so scared and excited at the same time to fly this thing. I was too excited to walk all the way back to my original launching spot, so I thought I fly it again out there in the wash. I tried another take-off from the ground and managed to pull it off again, just barely. This wash has a huge 12-14 foot embankment that goes straight up, well I was down in the wash with the embankment on my left. I thought I was plenty far away from it, but as the plane gained speed on the ground, it began heading right towards that huge dirt wall. It picked up more speed and continued for the wall and I pulled down on the stick and almost straight out of a movie the plane literally takes flight just a few feet before disaster and scales the wall at a 90 degree angle to the ground just missing the top of the wall by a foot or less. I quickly pushed down and turned and managed to keep the plane in the air for another minute or so but I couldn’t gain control again I started flying erratically and soon enough she finally nose-dived into the sand. That was so cool, I wish I had that on video! I’ll never be able to do that again.

Anyway, the prop was bent into oblivion so I walked it back inside and replaced it with the spare that Hobbyzone gave me in the box. I’m going to need a few more I can already tell. The wing got a bit chewed up in a few places, so I taped it up with some tape left over from all the Christmas wrapping that occured the night before. I’m going to re-peak the battery and take her out for another flight in a few minutes. But wow, overall I am so excited, this plane is so sweet and so fun to fly. And it flew so good. When it was up in the air, I adjusted the rudder and tail flaps so it would fly level an straight, so now that’s set I don’t have to worry about it. It was just the wind, I couldn’t fly into it and keep it going straight so it just kept getting blown further away, and I didn’t think it was that windy. Next time I’ll know to get it landed until the wind dies down.

So I already bought an 8-cell 1500mAh battery pack from Mike at www.Cheapbatterypacks.com to replace the stock 7-cell 1000mAh pack. Maybe with a little more power, I’ll be able to fly in the wind better. Man I’m such an amateur though. It will probably take a while to get the hang of this thing. Now to get everyone I know to buy a plane so we can all fly together. Check out the pics of this super-cool ready-to-fly plane, before she crashed twice.