Mark's RC Powers SkyRider

I'm having fun with foam planes. Several planes ago I decide to build a balsa flying wing. While researching wing deigns I came across RCPowers.com and the idea of building with foam. At a cost of about $3.00 per sheet of foam and a scratch build time of evenings instead of weeks or months I'm loving foam. I'm sure I will go back to balsa soon as I still prefer the look and flying qualities of balsa but for now I'm having fun with foam.

This has been a fun plane to build. It is much larger than I expected based on the videos on RCPowers.com. I'm using a Grayson MicroJet V2 motor with a three cell battery and a 30amp ESC with an 8x4 prop. Testing it in my garage at full throttle I was overheating the ESC in less than a minute of playing around. The MicroJet V2 is one strong motor. My ESC's default settings are for a helicopter and I was too lazy to change them so the prop free spins when the throttle is cut. Not really a problem unless you are taxi testing a plane that only turns under power and you are testing in a small parking lot. I taxied it right into a curb and broke off the motor mount. I then rebuilt and it managed to do the same things the next day. Without the free spinning prop I doubt this would be such an issue. I then rebuilt the motor mount out of ply and ran runners back to distribute loads over a larger area.

I setup my radio with full throws at 100% and reduced throws at 50%. Before the first flight, I had taxi tested it and adjusted the landing gear so it would track straight on the ground. However now that I was out in the field, it wanted to turn right and required almost full left rudder to track straight - I must have bumped something transporting the SkyRider to the field. No worries, I came to fly anyway. So, I gave it full throttle and some back pressure and taxied across the grass building speed but without leaving the ground - full back pressure and still nothing. I then decide to switch to full throws. Had I had my first cup of coffee I would probably have been thinking better and would have just adjusted the trim but I'm not usually that smart. With full throws it quickly leaped into the air. I applied forward stick as I was just hoping to hop off the ground and stay in ground effect on this first flight. Due to the out of trim state of the plane, full throws, and my inexperience with this plane, it came down quicker than expected and broke in half between the landing gear. It will be easy to fix but it made for a short first flight.

This morning instead of the 10mph winds of yesterday I had calm winds. Last night I repaired yesterday's damage with a hot glue gun and changed the trim. One great thing about working with foam is how easy it is to repair. Following is a video of my first successful flight. The first takeoff attempt was once again with reduced throws. Once up I was amazed how easy it was to fly.