Ep 75: The Telemaster is Finished! For real this time…
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Join us for the main discussion, practical takeaways, and stories from this episode of RC Plane Lab.
It has been said before, but this time it’s for real. The Trash Can Telemaster is finished! It has been flown, by both Tom and Ron, and the problem that has plagued it from the beginning has been sorted out. Tune in to hear how the first flights went, and what was discovered about electronic ignitions.
Episode 75 Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are retained.
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[0:00]. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I'm Ron. I'm Tom. I was waiting. I was staring at you like, why aren't you talking? It's my turn. Episode 75. 75. It took us 75 episodes to finally be able to say correctly this time, Telemaster is finished. Yeah, you've said it before. I incorrectly stated that before. I really thought it was. You did, but it wasn't. It is now. It is now. It is now. Confirmed. So much so I have flown it. Yep. For 35 seconds. You did.
[0:41] You took a lap around the field. I was so nervous. Like, I don't know why. I don't understand why, because it flies really nice. The last time I flew, I crashed. Well, that's true. And I was not. But that really wasn't your fault, I don't think. It still doesn't make me less nervous. Oh, I understand. Because then in my mind, like, I would prefer it to be my fault when I crash, because then I can blame myself. Does that make sense? Yeah, I see what you're saying.
[1:05] myself does that make sense like when it's see what you're saying when it's something unknown that you feel is really kind of out of your control then you question everything moving forward especially since you haven't gotten it back to learn I'm done I've given up you have given up but I have not I still feel like like when fall gets here the corn's gonna thin out a little bit before it before the harvest. I'm confident that we'll find it. I really believe that.
[1:29] what? I mean, I will take whatever is still good on it, as in receiver. If that's still okay, I'll send that back to Horizon and let it go. Remember, the engine isn't a cowling. I know. I don't care about the engine, though. I do. Like, you can have the engine. No, it's your first, that is your first. I know, but this is the fates telling me you don't care about the engine, though. I do. You can have the engine. No, it's your first.
[1:49] I know, but this is the fates telling me you don't need nitro. Oh, is that what this is about? It could very well be. Okay. Because I don't need nitro. But we're going to find it. I'm confident that we're going to find it. Okay. Enough about that. Let's talk about the Telemaster. The Telemaster is finished. It's done. So a quick recap. If you haven't been listening to the channel since the beginning, almost, this was the, one of the first projects we started working on for the show.
[2:17] And it's- Well, not just for the show, for us. For us also. Yeah. So in case you haven't been listening, we'll run down the recap of this adventure. This has had a lot of issues. It really has. So we'll go back to the beginning. 2017. Yeah, sometime in 2017, a club member passed away, and the club was helping the wife of the club member, of the deceased club member, get rid of all of his stuff. So I had loaned a table and, I think a couple of tables and some chairs or whatever.
[2:52] So she could display the stuff and have this kind of a yard sale for the club to, get rid of the stuff and, get her some money out of it. Some fundage. Yeah, because there was good stuff there. There was stuff that was still usable. It was older stuff, which I like, but nitro stuff, a lot of nitro stuff. But anyway. And see, that was when I was out of the hobby. That was in one of my hiatuses, so I didn't get to go to it to see everything that was there. Right.
[3:17] Or else, actually, that telemaster might have been one that I would have bought. It may have been. That's right up my alley. It really is. Because that's that's right up my alley like after seeing it because that's that's an awesome airplane old like nobody would care about it as much as i guess i would which is odd usually i'm the guy that goes for the old stuff but no you go for the old looking
[3:37] stuff like i don't care if an airplane is old but you like the the 70s colors and all of that that's true so like you want a newer airplane that looks old. Yeah. And this one wasn't ugly. It was a Hobby Lobby Senior Telemaster, so it was bright yellow. And it actually, from a distance, didn't look too bad. But, yeah, anyway, helped her. A very long distance. Around the block, maybe. But, anyway, yeah, helping widow get rid of the stuff and the so
[4:06] she had the the yard sale and everything that wasn't sold at the yard sale the next day when i went back to pick up my tables literally was wadded up and put into these two ginormous trash cans like these big yard waste trash cans like the big big ones. And, when I pulled up to get my table, I saw these two trash cans right at the end of the driveway with all these airframes, like tails, wings, just stuffed and sticking out of them. And of course, me being a
[4:39] kind of a, I think you called me a hoarder at one point. Of good things, sure. I think you called me a hoarder at one point. Of good things, sure. I couldn't let all this stuff go to the trash. So when I went up to let her know I was taking my tables, I asked her, hey, do you mind if I take some of the stuff that's in those trash cans? I mean, there's some decent stuff in there. She's like, no, no, take whatever you want. That's less than my garbage man has to deal with.
[5:07] And in one of those trash cans was this Telemaster. So that's where it all began. So it had landing gear. It had the wings. It didn't have the wing joiners. Yeah, we did not have the wing joiners. What else was it missing? What else was it missing? There was a couple other things that we had. Well, obviously, I think it had a few old servos in it that we tossed that i took out and tossed oh it didn't have the wing supports the wing
[5:32] struts oh the struts yeah those were missing too that's right so basically it was two wing panels the fuselage and the landing gear and that was pretty much pretty much all that was left and the landing gear. And that was pretty much all that was left. The covering was in sad shape. It was all torn and infested with a couple wasp nests. It did have a wasp nest or two. Infestation. And there was a few little repairs that were needed on the,
[5:59] I believe it was the fuselage we had to fix some stuff. Yeah. But minor stuff. Oh, nothing bad. Nothing crashed. Right. Just mishandled when I was going into the garbage can probably yeah yeah exactly what happened i'm sure but anyway so that's that's where the the trash can telemaster story begins basically literally not basically but literally came out of a trash can which is why the name is not like i don't know i i got nothing right
[6:26] now which is why there you go awesome telemaster or yeah it should really be frustrating telemasters where it should be because little did we know what was in store for us but i feel like it's worthwhile like it is yes there was a lot of issues that came up with it but there was a lot that we learned and i'm gonna i wanna i wanna jump to the end okay just to tell everybody what the problem was i mean okay sure servos yeah servos did not get along with the ignition with any of
[7:00] the ignitions that we have tried actually yeah so we switched out and we'll get to this later but going to a different brand of servo fixed it fixed it yeah which looking back looking back boy if we had known that from the beginning looking back we probably could have changed those servos with that first engine and been fine and just fine yeah so this is the fifth engine let's go through them okay so engine
[7:26] number one the engine that we decided to put on at first was a a ryobi 31cc which was something that you had acquired from me we did some horse trading whatever and i converted this engine way way way back like i i don't even remember when a long time ago a long time ago and it was one that i i had no idea what i would ever put it in and then when that airplane came here it's like okay that's
[7:50] that's actually yeah it might be a little big for it but that's okay yeah but it was too big it was i mean really yeah it was too big and we ran into the issue that we would eventually run into again the radio would go crazy anytime the engine was running with something with the ignition i mean you could we were at least on it with that yeah ignition is causing an issue with the when it starts to run yeah and the radio and the
[8:17] servos just go crazy yeah everything on it was fine it would nice and calm the way it's supposed to be nothing jittering nothing moving around as soon as you flip that over and it started everything went cattywampus yeah cattywampus yeah yeah that's that's exactly what would happen yeah before i go to engine number two i just wanted to make a note you did quite a bit of work on the wing, remember? Oh, we did. It wasn't just me.
[8:51] It was the two of us that went through the design work. You got out the computer and designed a little program to cut the new wing joiners out of polymetal, I think it is. Is that what that stuff is? Yeah, we doubled that up. Actually, we tripled that up for the main spar and doubled it up for the secondary spar. Is that? Yeah, whatever. Half a spar, maybe. And I mean, I think that's plenty strong for what it's doing. I don't have any problems.
[9:13] And then combine that with the struts that you got. Where did you come up with the struts? I can't remember. Those were off of the, oh, what was that? The- Cub? Yeah, the cub that got messed up in the trailer that got wet that i had oh that's right i had to throw away perfect well hold on that was one that it wasn't like a good airplane though to begin with that was when i sold the guy i sold it to
[9:40] crashed it he gave it back to me that eventually one day i was going to fix it but then it got waterlogged and it wasn't like a great airplane so it's not like it didn't have any gear in it or anything like that when it got messed up just an airframe just a crashed airframe but yeah so we had to do that i'm trying to think what else oh we made the the center rib yeah because the original design had four, was it four wing bolts? Four wing bolts, yeah. And we didn't like that.
[10:07] I was not a fan because I didn't like the ugly holes in the front of the wing. Yeah. And then that was something we were going to have to fix anyway because I think the blocks were missing out of the fuselage. Yeah. So we ended up, what did we do? We designed kind of a latch system with the center of the center wing rib yeah so the the root rib we we've made out of three-eighths plywood basically yeah that's right and i cnc machine that yep
[10:34] and glued that onto the root rib of both panels and then on the front of that is a basically a finger that actually kind of goes and when you set the wing on the on the airframe that finger sort of goes up and under up and under forward and under the the former that's right in front of there and that's all reinforced and actually works out pretty nice it does we even made a little notch i believe for that to sit in so so that way it doesn't slide back and forth yeah or slide to
[11:00] side yeah and then two wing bolts in the back and it's very secure very simple and very quick to put on compared to what it was before so yeah so i just wanted to yeah i think give you credit there because that was a pretty slick cutting those spars i think it's so much easier than the other way and i think it looks better too it does it's fantastic plus i don't care if i if i hit that on anything because it's actual 3a plywood yeah so it's very strong
[11:28] but anyway yeah so engine number one was the ryobi which gave us the fits with the radio which we would eventually come right back to and then have to actually figure out so engine number two so once we decided that the ryobi was not going to work for us i went to my begrudgingly i followed along we did and we we went nitro because we did we put a nitro motor on it and so the first i'll say the first nitro motor because there were a few you're
[11:58] right but hold on now if we would have had the motor that's on there now on there i think i would have fought harder to not go with nitro like i think the reason i was okay getting away from that the motor that was on there was because like literally it was long that and it was just too much motor for the airplane i think well it's more of the length for me because i don't mind if something's a little bit overpowered because i
[12:20] like to have a little extra if we need it but that was like a literal foot yeah actually it was more than a foot that it stuck out from prop hub all the way back to firewall yeah well and that was so that's a rear exhaust engine and the muffler and everything is on the back of the engine so it adds to the length yeah yeah you're right and then the standoffs were three inches or four inches something like that yeah because you had to
[12:43] clear the muffler and the carburetor, which was also rear-mounted. Yeah. So I think that's why I was okay pushing away from that one at first. But, yeah, I'm happy, by the way. Very happy we're all waiting it up. I am, too. I would not have been if it was any of the next three engines that we put into it. Four engines, whatever it was, yeah. It was a few. So engine number two came from my nitro collection super tiger 75 which is a huge collection it's it's fair so super tiger
[13:15] 75 ran great it ran well enough anyway just but just didn't really i mean it's a it's a big airplane and i don't know if we've i don't know if we've weighed it yet have we weighed it but it's we did but i don't remember i thought we did but i don't remember what it was it's 20-ish is it that heavy oh easily i would think it's heavy it's a heavy airplane so super tiger 75 just wasn't enough it wasn't enough oomph it it was like i watched you fly that,
[13:47] and I was scared it was just literally going to fall out of the air. It was wide open, and, yeah, it did appear as though, I mean, it flew fine. I mean, let's be honest. It was scale. It did fly, yeah. I mean, scale to a full-size airplane that, doesn't have a big enough motor on it, too. I mean, scale to a full-size airplane that doesn't have a big enough motor on it, too. Yeah, but it just didn't have the—it had no reserve, let's just put it that way. True.
[14:18] So, next up was another nitro engine from my collection. It was an SK—well, it still is—an SK90 two-stroke. And that engine was perfect. I mean, for the airplane, it was the perfect amount of power. It worked. I wouldn't say perfect. It ran great. Like, it ran great on the stand. I put it, we mounted it on the airplane. It fit the airplane perfectly. It was the right length. It was the right weight. I mean, everything about this was perfect.
[14:44] So, we got it mounted it except it was nitro except it was yeah nitro which for you is fine which is for me it is perfect so yeah we mounted it and flew the airplane once with it and on that flight the crankshaft snapped yeah i mean literally you got i mean i don't even did you make two passes i think i made one complete circuit and it snapped on the second yeah on the second circuit yeah and it just i mean it
[15:10] stopped yeah i mean there was no like putter putter die it just yeah so hopped and stopped there's there's pictures i believe when i when i did the rebuild of that engine yeah it was a basically the crank pin snapped off the back of the crankshaft. I'm pretty sure it was a manufacturing defect. But anyway, I think there's pictures of the rebuild of that engine on our website, I think. I don't remember that. I know I took a lot of pictures and sent them to you.
[15:39] But if they're not, maybe we'll put them up there. I think they're up there, though, somewhere. But anyway, so that was engine number. Maybe you put those on Facebook, because I remember you posted something. I don't remember ever putting them. Yeah, you're exactly right. It's on our Facebook page. Good. So scroll back, hit photos, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. So you didn't send them to me, by the way. No, I didn't. You tried to put that on me. I did.
[16:03] So engine number three was, well is still because i repaired it it's ready to go again but anyway while i was waiting for parts for that we needed another engine so back to my collection of is that what engine is that what changed it though i mean i thought like at that time i thought you couldn't find parts for it i mean like if it was something where you could
[16:23] just order it right away and we could put it back on in a week and a half i don't think we would have switched an engine out like a quick search at the time and i couldn't find parts okay and because i have engines ready in in the wing wings basement they shouldn't be in the wing they should be in the fuselage well i guess that's true as soon as i said that i but yeah once once we had
[16:47] another plan a quick search right not a quick search but a little bit more detailed search on the internet i did find a source for replacement parts for that sk engine which i got and it's ready to go but in the meantime we needed an engine for the, for the Telemaster. So back to my collection for an ASP91. And it's funny, like looking back on it, I remember now where this ASP91 came from. Like I couldn't remember because I'd had it a while.
[17:14] Because you have hundreds of engines and you can't remember where they come from. It actually came from that yard sale that the Telemaster came from. Oh, really? Yeah, I remember now. And it was new in the box. That's ironic. It was brand new in the box. That's ironic. Yeah. So anyway. Technically, there was nothing wrong with that engine other than I was pushing to have it inverted. And that was, I guess those don't run very well upside down. So the ASP91, the Redhead
[17:40] 91s apparently have an issue. They don't like to run inverted. Like if you have them mounted inverted, they don't like to run that way, which makes sense because on the stand, on my little stand, there's a video of that somewhere too. It might be on Facebook. Would you stop saying that? Because I don't remember any of this stuff from back then, so I don't want. Anyway, on my stand, it ran awesome. Yeah. Plenty of power, ran good, transition good, idled great,.
[18:14] And then as soon as we put it on the airframe upside down, it was just not, I just could not get it to run reliably. And that was when we tried, isn't that the engine we tried different heights on the fuel tank? I mean, we went through so many different mounts and stuff on the front of that airplane. We did. For height and and all that stuff and i feel like i gave that a cut the college try like i feel like i did
[18:32] everything that we could do like you said raising and lowering the tank and fiddling with the needles and all that stuff and that was a very frustrating time for me because I feel like I'm okay at tuning engines, and I could not get this doggone thing to run on that airplane. Ironically, not the last frustrating time that this airplane has given us. Yes, yes, exactly. So that brings us to engine number five, which is actually the engine that is still on the airplane.
[19:03] engine number five, which is actually the engine that is still on the airplane. This is a DLE 20cc that I got. This is a gasser that you really like. I do. I got this one in another deal with a friend. It was on a profile plane of some kind, and I'm not a big profile plane fan. So I took the engine off, and we put on the on the telemaster and that's when we our troubles began began again again well it so this is another one of those i'm really glad
[19:34] though that we that we that we really stuck it out and figured out what was going on no i am too because and i even mentioned this to you probably more than once, I said, it's a good thing we're doing this project together. I didn't know you were serious about that, by the way. I was completely serious. You told me if this was my airplane, by now it would be in the garbage can again. Absolutely true. I can't, I can't believe that.
[19:58] I was so frustrated with this airplane more than once that it it wasn't worth the frustration and i and i'm not bragging but i have so many other projects on the table and airplanes yeah that i could fly wasting this one would have been so easy had i been doing this project alone but it's a good thing i wasn't because well and in all honesty too this is not an airplane that you like i mean i don't want to say like but it's not your style of airplane. No, it's not a stick.
[20:27] You're more of a sport, sports stick style, sure, airplane, but you're not into the lumbering gigantic, just little airplanes that do nothing but float around. And I mean, that's really all this one does. It's a giant trainer. It's a big dopey airplane. Yeah. But it's- Which I think that's cool. I mean, I like that. I mean, I'm ashamed to admit it, but I do like flying it. It is fun's cool i mean i'm ashamed to admit it but i do like
[20:47] flying it it is fun to fly why are you ashamed to admit it well because it's big and dopey and doesn't do really anything other than just kind of it sounds like you're you're talking about me right now big dopey doesn't do much well no what i'm saying is not like an aerobag he it doesn't do well it does do rolls i did a i did do a roll ugly roll but you did it was a roll it was yeah and it'll do loops i'm sure too especially with that
[21:11] that engine on it has plenty of power like i think i flew around mostly at half throttle yeah which is and that half throttle looked like it was much better than the full throttle with that 75. yeah that's absolutely true but so let's talk oh go ahead no it's gone so let's talk about the trouble with the the but the this engine gave us which it wasn't yes the engine gave us problems but i'm going to say it wasn't the
[21:38] engine okay let's talk about the troubles that this engine highlighted let's talk about the troubles that this engine highlighted. Let's talk about the lessons we have learned. Yeah, perfect. Because we wanted to stick with this engine. Yes. And maybe not just this engine, maybe just gassers in general on this airframe. Well, in any case, knowing now that this is an issue and this is a possibility, with servos being not friendly with ignitions. I've never heard of that.
[22:08] I never thought about it. But through deductive reasoning and through figuring out things we hadn't changed, we finally came to that conclusion. And through not giving up. Which I would have done had it not been for you. And we wouldn't have learned. And you're right. So we were having problems. You were having problems more so than I was getting that engine tuned yeah like it was running and then it would just like sputter and then cut out not run yeah which funny thing so
[22:37] what was it last last weekend saturday last saturday we made it out to the field with the sole intent of flying this thing and calling it quits and calling it calling it done we don't have to this isn't over our head anymore we're done exactly yep because we thought we had everything fixed yeah so well no it was even before that what what did you do on this engine so when we first put the engine on last summer the time flies it would
[23:12] run just like you said it would run it seemed like it would run okay when it was cold but as soon as it warmed up a bit it would just it would just run erratically and then it would just not run i would it would it would run okay and then it would just not run. it would run okay, and then it would start acting goofy, and then it would die, and it would be hard to start, and it just wouldn't run. And it would do that consistently.
[23:33] So, no matter what I did with the needles on the carburetor, they didn't seem to make any difference as far as the way it was running. So I'm like, okay, well, this, the carburetor needles aren't making any difference. It's got fuel. I mean, everything was running. So I'm like, okay, well, this, the carburetor needles aren't making any difference. It's got fuel. I mean, everything was right.
[24:03] I was using the correct voltage battery for that particular DLE ignition, which it's a, I'm not going to remember exactly what, but there's a sticker on the box, on the CDI box. And I think it's like a V3 or V2 or something like that. And what I found online while this was all going on was that certain ignitions only ran with 4.8 volts, and then all other ignitions you could run up to like 6 or 12 or whatever volts. You could use a five-cell pack.
[24:27] And so I did all my digging and i i had the correct battery for that ignition and everything five cell nimh right exactly so through deductive reasoning i figured well the needle settings i'm not that either it's a bad carburetor which it's the carburetor that was on it. I say was because we'll get to that now. Was a genuine Walbro, not one of the knockoff ones. It was an actual Walbro carburetor. And those aren't really known for, not being good. Okay.
[25:00] So I figured, well, the carburetor is probably okay. Ignitions are cheap enough, especially replacement ones. The DLE ignition, I think, was 89 bucks or something like that, and I could get a genuine CH ignition, which I'm a fan of because everything I've read online, they're good stuff, and even if they're not made in America, it's an American company. Does that make sense? So I bought a CH ignition, so it was a little bit cheaper than the DLE. So it's a quality ignition.
[25:27] So then we put that in there. Not much cheaper though, right? They're like 75. 75 bucks. Yeah. But it's, an American, air quotes, American company. So we put that ignition in last summer and it seemed to make a small difference, but it still didn't seem right to me so next up would be the carburetor so i ordered a carburetor from i forget the company valley view for the dle 20 cc it's cool looking carburetor too it's got an anodized
[26:00] diaphragm plate on it red it looks sharp it actually goes with the airplane if you look closely i sure haven't but i will next time but anyway new carburetor new ignition should be good to go and it was it ran okay but not like good enough and we were getting late in the season where we were like well it's too late to fly we've got all this other stuff going on we'll we'll tackle it next spring. Then the dualist hit. And then the dualist project. Yeah, exactly.
[26:28] So yeah, we went hot and heavy on the dualist and the trash can telemaster got kind of sidelined. But we assumed, or I did, that, oh, okay, we ran it. It runs good. Next time we have time, we'll take it out flat and call it finished. And I think that's when you called it finished. See, I don't remember time frame on stuff. I don't remember when that was, but it was definitely called finished by me before it should have. I had a little premature
[26:56] premature finish. Yeah, I called it way too early. Yeah, I called it way too early. Yeah, so here we are.
[27:16] A couple weeks ago, I think it was, you said, hey, let's fly the Telemaster, call it finished so we can have something to talk about on the show. And let's put it to bed and just move on. And when we call it finished, it's not like we're never going to fly it again. Something that's finished is an airplane that we can pull off the shelf, charge the batteries, and go fly without any issues. That's a finished airplane. It does not require any more work. Right.
[27:34] We don't have to bring it inside first and do anything to it. It's just ready to, like you said, throw it in the car, go to the field, have to charge the batteries, and have fun with it. Exactly. And we're there now with it, by the way. Finally. I flown it. So, yeah, a couple weeks ago, that was what we were going to do. We were just going to go to the field, fly it, and call it finished. And that's where you kind of picked up at the beginning of the show.
[27:57] That's where we didn't actually go through with our plan. We tried. Not like we didn't try. Well, when we got there so the first i think it was saturday was the first trip we made it out there and we noticed like it wasn't running the way it should run right it had issues it was just i mean what what i don't even know how to how to call but it was like missing it was sputtering it was it was just not running right it ended up
[28:22] being too lean it was it was a little bit too lean on the high end. But you also noticed then, when you were messing with it, that the opto-kill switch that we had on it, the light for that was flickering. It was flickering when the engine was running. Right. But when the engine stopped, the light would come on solid. So that was our first inkling that there was still something wrong.
[28:41] Something was going on. still something wrong and then we noticed the like all the the servos were just kind of flapping like they shouldn't be moving but they are just oscillating back and forth it was it was weird like i've never really seen anything like that the one before like it when we had it with the with that first ignition, with the first motor, it wouldn't jump around like the way those servos were jumping around.
[29:10] But it would go like the higher speed that the engine was running, the more off they would be. Yes, yeah. Which is weird. Yeah. Whereas with this one, when the engine is running. They just oscillate back and forth. Yeah, it was just jumpy. Like randomly. Yeah, it wasn't always, it was it was really really weird so we started kind of digging into it i think our first guess because we were trying to go through to see what have we not changed in this
[29:38] airplane right what could it be now and i think the first thing that you took you ended up taking it home that night you put a new receiver in it yeah i i took one of my receivers and therefore my transmitter and put that in it took it home that night and did that and then we went back out the next day ready to fly it figuring that was going to do yeah this is it oh that was easy i mean i'm i was upset that my receiver was bad because it was an ar 7000
[30:06] with the satellite and all that and they're not cheap but it's like okay well if that's what's wrong with it then so be it i'll send it in let them kind of try and figure out what's going on with it and stuff but not the case so what did you put in you put in a it was a i think it's an ar 9010 it's the big nine channel with the push button bind button on the face of it. Yeah. Nice receivers. Yeah. But it was doing the exact same thing. And we were, I'd say, flummoxed, right?
[30:40] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we figured it was going to be okay, but we didn't even put the wings on. Right. Like, we just wanted to make sure everything was connected. Yeah, let's fire this up we figured it was going to be okay, but we didn't even put the wings on. Right. Like, we just wanted to make sure everything was connected. Yeah, hey, let's fire this up, make sure that everything's good. And it was just… And it was not. It was just the elevator. It was.
[30:52] Which was the other thing that was kind of weird. And we, once again… It was the elevator. Yeah, it was just the elevator, because the rudder was rock solid. And I noticed, like, right away, the throttle servo, rock solid. Like, didn't budge at all. Yeah. Excuse me. Yeah, so it was just the elevator servo. Well, obviously we didn't know that the wings were doing it too because we didn't have the wings on it. Well, we kind of did because they were doing it before. Right.
[31:21] But we didn't get to the part of putting it back together to see if they were still doing it because we knew we weren't going to fly it with the elevator all messed up one of our friends was there he gave us another servo to try and the exact same thing which was surprised do you remember what that i don't know what the servo was it was a high tech of some kind okay so that's good to know too by the way so we ended up bringing it because it was hot
[31:46] last weekend so we brought it back to my house and the plan was actually if we could figure out what was going on fix it and go back out and fly it and still have it done that weekend which once again didn't happen so the first thing we did with servos, we swapped, right? The rudder and the elevator servo. Well, before we even started swapping servos, we started unplugging extraneous stuff like we didn't need, like the OptoKill. That didn't make a difference.
[32:15] We took some extensions off the batteries, remember, and plugged straight. We even bypassed the switches once. Oh, yeah, we did. Thinking maybe the switches. Right, that's right. None of that made any difference we we swapped extensions themselves hold on the opto kill did make it run better though because after we took the apto kill switch off you were able to tune it and you got that engine running the way you liked it that's true so you're happy with that
[32:38] yeah but yeah that as far as the the glitching of the control surfaces, none of that seemed to make… Any difference? A big difference. Like, if I grabbed the wires going back to the elevator and the rudder, and if I pulled them up out of the fuselage while I was running, it seemed to make it better. But then it wasn't enough to convince me that it was that. I think that was probably just grasping at straws and us thinking that it was making a difference when really it wasn't.
[33:11] I mean, it wasn't good enough to fly. But yeah, before we actually started swapping servos around, I mean, we tried every connection, either swapping it out with another connection that's good, like a receiver extension or servo extension or whatever none of that made any difference even with my good receiver in it so we thought okay well it's not the receiver let's plug everything back into your receiver
[33:35] to make everything simple so we can work it from your radio yeah because your radio was programmed for it yeah it wasn't and then that's when we started moving servos around and we i noticed like we're doing all this without the wing on it right i noticed that when we started like the throttle server was good and i assumed or i was but we were figuring we were getting feedback possibly through that servo through that servo Even if the servo itself wasn't like moving, glitching,
[34:08] maybe there's some kind of weird feedback. Oh, we even tried a Dave, our friend at the field, tried to make a poor man's choke, basically, tied the leads around like as if you had a ferrite donut or whatever to try to maybe stop the the feedback and that didn't make any difference either sure that well once again that seemed to make it worse that could just be once again that's grasping at straws but yeah it wasn't right it didn't make any
[34:38] noticeable difference towards the positive and we even we even disconnected completely the push rod going from the throttle servo to the ignition or the carburetor yeah after we got it back to my house we did a lot more in depth because we had air conditioning and it was okay yeah so yeah we ended up running it without any connection like the first thing we did was we undid the oh what was it we just took the the linkage off of the carburetor and let it kind of
[35:05] dangle still did it so then maybe grasping at straws again maybe the the metal push rod is acting as an antenna or something yeah and pushing the signal back through there nope had nothing to do with x we ran it without the push rod Then you're right. That's when we started plugging servos into different parts on, like we switched the rudder in the elevator so that you were controlling it
[35:32] with the wrong stick,. It followed, we noticed it followed the servo, not the channel. Yeah. Well, then we kind of got got looking looking a little closer and realized that all the servos we were having problems with which ironically enough was all except two were futaba s3003s yep that's what i had sitting around when i put stuff together and that's what
[36:00] i threw in there not even thinking and remember initially the very first servo we took out of the airplane was the elevator servo because that's the one that was giving us the most obvious trouble because we have the wing on it yeah and when we remember when we took that server out the case was all busted up and cracked and stuff remember that yeah i forgot about that so yeah that's when that's i think that's kind of when dim though it may have been the light bulb
[36:23] may have been like coming on at that point. Because then we were like, hey, servos. This seems to be following this particular servo. So, yeah. Yeah, we tried that. But like I said, it's interesting if it wasn't just Futaba that was giving us problems when he gave us a high-tech one out there. It was doing the same thing. It was, yeah. Which is odd. That is odd. So you can't use those either apparently at times with these yeah and i don't know if it's i don't know if it's the length
[36:52] of the wires because i can't imagine there's nobody out there that runs a high-tech or a futaba s3003 on a gasser like i said maybe if it's smaller to where you don't have extensions and there's not that much feedback coming through it that it's not maybe like i said maybe if it's smaller to where you don't have extensions and there's not that much feedback coming through it that it's not maybe like I said maybe that they work as an
[37:09] antenna with the length of the wire that we had on it because we did have well but I mean still we had a good extension aren't that much shorter with the with the servos you put in there yeah but it's all about well no it's how how one, I guess, is designed, how it handles feedback. Oh. How each servo is. Yeah. Because I guess, I mean, you've got to figure an antenna is a certain length of wire that can actually pick up the signals. Right.
[37:36] So if your wire is longer, maybe it's getting signal and getting feedback that way. Yeah. But I don't know. By changing those out. Yeah. back that way yeah but i don't know by changing those out yeah he took all the the fataba s 3003 servos out and we replaced them with jr these are some old ds821s i think okay ones that you had sitting around yeah there were new they were they were just servos i've never never used
[38:08] never used. But yeah, they fixed it. And that is just, like, do you think? It's maddening. Do you think from the very beginning, had we… Oh, gosh. Yes. No, it's a serious question. Do you think that is all this whole problem was? I think so. Like, I don't want to go through the work, but I almost want to switch out and put that motor back on just to see if it'll fly it or to see if we can run it and not have any issues. But I don't wanna go through the work
[38:29] cause that firewall had to have a lot of work done to get it to remount. Oh, that's right. It's like Swiss cheese now. It was, we fixed it. Oh boy, you fixed it. That's right. We had to put a new firewall on cause yeah, there was a lot of holes on it and I wasn't comfortable with it. Yeah. But yeah, I do. I think had we figured this have we had i not been so quick to to put a nitro motor on it and you had been maybe a
[38:56] little more adamant about keeping gas as the power plant i think if we had figured that out i think that we would yeah come to the same conclusion well like i said had it been this motor we started with i would have been more adamant about sticking or sticking with it but just yeah i wasn't sold on that one with the length right of it i thought we were going to have problems with cg i thought we're going to have problems with a lot of stuff
[39:20] i did i did too and it looked bad i mean that the propeller was six inches or more away from the little cheek cowl things it just didn't look yeah i ended up cutting those off it actually looks pretty good without i think it looks better without i might do it especially sometime but especially the way you finished it with the with the black and the silver into the red i think think it looks really good. Well, thank you. And now we have it, Tori.
[39:46] We can fly it anytime we want. That's right. Right. We switched out the servos and fixed our issue. So let this be a lesson to anybody out there. If you're having radio glitching issues while your gasser is running on electronic ignition and you can't figure it out, don't give up on it. Swap out all the servos that are giving you trouble. Maybe, maybe. Or start out with one. Start out with one servo and see if that's a problem because it was a pain to switch
[40:17] out all of those servos in the wing. Five servos total, right? Four servos in the wing and the elevators. Yeah well we yeah yeah because i don't think we changed no we did change out the oh we did put a different rudder yeah so six or yes so but it's finished it's finished it's behind us it's flown it's ready to go again video should be on youtube by now too because that was you gave me some grief about that because i was the only one that had flown it. Even though it was brief,
[40:48] I flew it twice, maybe. Well, you flew it more than I… You flew it then more than I have now. Yeah. But that's only because I wimped out. It was really getting windy. I was not comfortable. It was a little bumpy. Yeah. But you did fine. I still had the nerves. You did windy. I was not comfortable. It was a little bumpy. Yeah. And I still had the nerves. You did fine. I know. I mean, I can fly. You landed right in the middle of, well, of course it was 500 feet away from us.
[41:12] Well, that's because it floats. It does float. I mean, I can fly. Like I am fine with that, but I was just nervous because of the airplane that it was. Had it been little air tractor or the Duelist or something I've flown before, maybe not the Duelist because I put a lot of time into that one. Had it been something else I tractor or the do list or something i've flown before maybe not the dualist because i put a lot of time into that one had it been something else i didn't care as much
[41:28] about it probably would not have been an issue i would have flown it and had had no problems whatsoever but like i said the last time i flew i crashed and that kind of gets you a little nervous but now we have both flown it and successfully so we did, what, we got, gosh, five flights on it today? Was it five? What do you consider a flight? Takeoff and landing? Takeoff with a subsequent landing. Then more than that. Oh, yeah, because we were doing some video and stuff. Yeah.
[41:58] You probably did 10 or 15 of them by yourself. Yeah. So, I mean, and it flies great. So, I'm happy to report that it is finished. I'm so glad that I was working on this project with you because for sure, had it been just me, it would have ended up back in the trash can for sure. Well, I'm glad it didn't. I think it looks good. It looks fantastic it looks fantastic happy with it the decals or the the graphics that you put on it i think that i think it really looks
[42:30] awesome well thank you especially now and and i know you didn't like the the white with the red that's still not yeah i'm still not sold on it as it flies by it looks so nice yeah it really does i think well good so i'm glad you like it now. It's not in the trash can anymore, and whenever we want to take it out and fly it, we can. You can. Yeah, it's ready to go whenever you are ready. You just have to buy a truck now so you can haul it. It's ordered.
[42:56] It might be three years or four years until it comes out, but it's ordered. What are you going to do in the meantime? We'll figure something out. Put a hitch on the on the other car maybe might have to okay or just have you come out every time and that's fine all right anything else you want to talk about or are we done for tonight no i think that was my phone apparently i didn't think that on silent yeah i think i think we're done like i said i'm i'm really happy today
[43:21] went really really well about as good as you could expect it to go really yeah if i mean right up no issues took i mean you would not have thought this plane gave us any problems the way it handled today exactly which is good yes the kind of airplane you want to take out and fly and we shall okay okay until next time i'm ron i'm tom thank you for listening good night good night we hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab podcast.
[43:45] For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle.
