Episode 5: It’s All About the Pre-Flight

Announcer: For anyone interested in RC Airplane, we’ll share tips and tricks on how to build models and talk about successful flights, epic crashes, and everything in between. Visit us at rcplanelab.com to sign up for our email list and to ask us questions. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please help us out by rating and reviewing us in your favorite podcast app. Thanks for spending time with us today. Now here are your hosts, Ron and Tom.

Ron: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 3 of the RC Plane Lab Podcast. I’m Ron. I’m Tom. Today we’re going to be talking about pre-flight checks.

Tom: Very, very important subject.

Ron: Very important. Before you take off, you need to do some checks on your airplane. That’s right. Actually, before we talk about that, though, have you had any time to work on anything since last we spoke?

Tom: Well, not at home. We did do a little bit of work here in the RC Plane Lab dungeon. If you will.

Ron: Almost got the stick recovered.

Tom: Looks like we’re about ready to do some installation of the senior telemaster as well. Yeah. Some good progress.

Ron: We’re getting close on that, too. I’ve got some servos put in. The engine’s mounted. A little bit more. The graphics are done. Yeah. It’s looking good. We’re getting toward the end of it.

Tom: Yeah. We’ll have to post some pictures.

Ron: Yeah. And then after we’re done with this, we’ll move on to another plane.

Tom: Yep.

Ron: Something next.

Tom: Yep. There’s always another project.

Ron: Yeah. Actually, before we get started. Okay. So, also this week, I decided to get out a couple. I know we’re not supposed to talk about them, but I have some quadcopters also.

Tom: You can talk about them.

Ron: Well, I learned a very important lesson. So, I have, I think, 500 mAh one-cell LiPo batteries, and then I have a couple 250 mAh one-cell LiPo batteries that are actually for an airplane, a small one. But, I have a charger that goes onto a computer, and I thought, you know what? I’m just going to charge them all together and be done. It’s a five-port charger. Right. But, it’s the same connector on the end of everything. Didn’t think anything about it. Threw the batteries on the charger, and I walked away.

Tom: Uh-oh. I don’t like where this story’s going.

Ron: So, my daughter is actually playing in the living room where the computer was, and all of a sudden, I started to smell smoke.

Unidentified speaker: Oh, no.

Ron: Well, of course, I got scared. So, I ran in there, and I thought, you know, I forgot that I was charging a battery, and all of a sudden, you smell smoke, and you’re like, it’s a burning smell. Yeah. Well, so, I got in there, and I told Piper, I said, let’s go. By the way, my daughter’s name is Piper. I don’t know why, huh?

Tom: And cute as a button.

Ron: Thank you very much. But, anyway, so, we got out of the room and stuff, and then I looked over there by the computer. There was a nice column of smoke coming up, going up to the ceiling.

Tom: That’s not good.

Ron: So, I, you know, I got her safely out of the way, and I went back in there.

Tom: Yeah. So, the battery charger was melting.

Ron: I mean, it was-

Tom: Oh, the charger?

Ron: The charger itself was melting. Yeah. I thought it was a battery at first, too, when I saw the smoke coming from there.

Tom: That would have been my guess.

Ron: So, when I went, I get, you know, unplugged it, put it out in the garage, and got it cooled down. I had no idea that the batteries would be wired backwards. The 250 milliamp hour battery was reversed from the 500 milliamp hour battery on which pull, I guess, which wire was hot and which was black. So, be very careful.

Tom: That’s bizarre.

Ron: Because apparently they’re not all wired the same way.

Tom: Same connectors.

Ron: Same connectors.

Tom: Mm-hmm. But just wired differently. Wired differently. And- Okay, that’s kind of scary.

Ron: I know. So, be very careful when you’re charging your batteries like that. You know, I’ve never dealt with a lot of those small ones for multiple planes, drones,

Tom: whatever.

Ron: But yeah, that was a major learning experience for me. I was very surprised by that.

Tom: Yeah. I would have been, too.

Ron: Well, and it’s not like I wired anything backwards.

Tom: That’s how they came out of the package.

Ron: You know, I’ve had the batteries for probably two or three years, just never charge them on a different charger than what came with it. Yeah. And this time I thought, well, instead of having two different battery chargers plugged into the same computer, use the same charger.

Tom: And you can’t do that. Well, I mean, I think we would all kind of- Assume. Assume.

Ron: Right.

Tom: That if it’s got the same connector, well, it’s probably wired the same as every other battery that uses that connector. Yeah. Man, that’s bizarre. Very- So, it’s a very good lesson. Yeah. Yeah. Check the polarity of those batteries.

Ron: Luckily, nothing bad happened, so- Wow.

Tom: Well, it’s a good thing you caught it early, too. Yeah.

Ron: A lesson learned.

Tom: Yeah. I mean, it was sitting right next to your computer, too.

Ron: Yeah. In a living room on, you know, carpet on a wooden desk and- Good grief. Could have been bad.

Tom: That’s, yeah, that’s a good lesson. So, yeah, from now on, folks, if you’re charging multiple batteries on a charger that maybe didn’t come with that battery- Totally, yeah. Double-check the polarity. Make sure that it’s charging correctly.

Ron: Yeah. And the polarity’s correct.

Tom: Yeah, that’s scary.

Ron: Yeah, I just wanted to bring that up.

Tom: And LiPo batteries kind of scare me anyway. I- Yeah, you’ve heard all- I mean, they’re really, really safe nowadays, folks, but when LiPo’s first came out, I was around when they first came out. And, yeah, they were very, very volatile, you know, early on.

Ron: Well, they still are, but I think a lot has to do with how you treat them.

Tom: Well, right.

Ron: And the safeties that are built into the- into electronics these days are a lot better.

Tom: The charger, yeah. The chargers and the cutoffs on the speed controllers and things like that, but-

Ron: Yeah, which surprised me, because on most of the chargers I have for the bigger ones, you know, they will tell you if it’s reverse polarity. And this one didn’t, it just went straight through and- Just went on.

Tom: Yeah. I wonder if the batteries weren’t registering any voltage when you plugged them in.

Ron: No, they were not dead-dead. Really? Wow. Because I had used them. Yeah. Huh.

Tom: Yeah. So, needless to say, you’re looking for a new charger.

Ron: New charger and at least one new battery. Right, right.

Tom: But, yeah. So, like I said, I just wanted to bring that up and- Yeah, that’s very good to bring that to light, because I would have just assumed.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: That they were all, you know, if they use the same connector, they’re wired the same, but apparently they’re not. So, let that be a lesson to all of you.

Ron: Yeah, like I said, even the chargers, though, were backwards. Yeah. Because it’s how it was-

Tom: Different manufacturers?

Ron: Different manufacturers, yeah.

Tom: Yeah, and on those smaller batteries, I mean, who changes the connectors on those? I mean, like on the bigger batteries, I’ll put, you know, a Dean’s connector on it or whatever.

Ron: XT-60 is what I use most of the time.

Tom: Yeah, or whatever. And, you know, if you’re soldering them on there, you tend to do everything the same, so it’s compatible with your chargers and-

Ron: Well, and the XT-60 actually also, or tells you on the connector itself, positive and negative. Right, right.

Tom: So, you don’t make that mistake. That’s how the Dean’s R2, but-

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: But, yeah, those little tiny batteries, I mean, nobody, I mean, I don’t know anybody that changes the connector on those.

Ron: No, you buy them, and they only plug into one thing most of the time. So, yeah, I was very surprised by that.

Tom: Yeah.

Ron: So, be careful and check before you charge. Yep. Anyway, moving on, pre-flight checks.

Tom: Yeah, pre-flight. So, pretty important subject, something you should do before every flight. Every flight. Yeah, it’s just, I mean, basically a pre-flight, no matter what type of airplane you’re talking about, nitro gas, electric, its function is the same for all of those. And it’s basically just a quick once-over. Doesn’t have to be really, really involved, but making sure that the control surfaces are doing what you’re commanding them to do. And that’s essentially what it is.

Ron: Okay, so let’s go through what do you do when you go to the field.

Tom: So, for me, once, you know, we’re assuming, you know, you’ve already done all the other stuff that we’ll cover later. Yeah, the yearly, like once-a-year checks and stuff. But basically, you’re ready to put the airplane on the ground and take off and fly. So, this is what I do, okay? I start with the ailerons. Actually, I take that back. I actually start with the elevator. And as everyone, maybe not everyone knows, but most people know, you know, you pull back on the transmitter to go up with the airplane. So, what I do is I, as I’m pulling the elevator stick back, I’m looking at the elevator, and it should rise up to meet me. So, you pull back on the stick, and the elevator kind of rises up to meet it as you’re watching it. And then, just the opposite, you push the stick forward, and the elevator goes down. That’s number one. That’s where I start. Because that, to me, the elevator is the number one channel. It’s like the number one most important, you know, without an elevator, you know, you can’t really do anything about trying to climb. And your attitude in the air, yeah. Yeah, so, that’s the first one. Then, I move on to the ailerons, which is on the same stick here in America. So, same kind of thing. I’m just looking at the airplane as I’m moving the stick. So, if I move the aileron stick to the right, as I’m looking at the airplane as if I was sitting in the cockpit, you know, looking forward out the nose, I would look at the right aileron, and as I move the stick to the right, the right aileron should rise up to meet me, you know, or my thumb, give my thumb a high five, whatever you want to call it. And the left aileron should obviously be moving in the opposite direction. And then, vice versa, when I move the stick to the left.

Ron: All right, next.

Tom: Yeah, so then, moving on, I move over to the left stick with a rudder. And as I’m, once again, you know, looking down at the airplane as if I was sitting in the cockpit, move the rudder stick to the left. And as I’m watching the airplane, the trailing edge of the rudder should also move towards the left.

Ron: And vice versa, move the stick to the right, the trailing edge of the rudder should move to the right.

Tom: And then, last is the throttle. A couple of different ways you can do that with an electric. electric, probably you’ve already got the programming set up so that forward is forward and back is brake. Or if you have one of those cool airplanes that’ll do reverse, it’ll, you know, do reverse or whatever. I recommend doing that with a prop off, at least initially for the first programming. That gets into some other stuff we’re going to talk about later. But on a nitro airplane or a gas airplane, you can do it with the engine not running, especially if you can see the carburetor. You know, obviously you push the stick forward, gives a gas, it should be opening the throat of the carburetor.

Announcer: Okay.

Ron: Yeah, so I’m a little bit different, but pretty much the same as what you do. Yeah. I do ailerons first because I go by looking at the airplane. Sure. So I’ll do the ailerons first, left, left up, right, right up. And then I go back to the elevator, pull back on that to make sure it goes up. And then I just do the rudder. Yeah. And then, you know, you do, if you’re flying nitro, you’ll do a run up on your motor after it started on the ground. Yep. Uh, you’ll do a run up on that before you take off to make sure you clear it out and make sure you can get full throttle. Um, and then kind of the same thing with electric. I’ll run that all the way up too, just to make sure there’s no.

Tom: Well, I have a timer set on my transmitter.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: Uh, and transmitter, most transmitters these days are all programmable. So you can like, for instance, on my old DX8, I have it so that it starts a timer when I hit full throttle the first time.

Ron: And then when I pull it back, now I’ve got a timer.

Tom: Yeah. Because I kind of know kind of in advance of how much time I can get with each airplane that I fly. Yeah. So I set a countdown timer. And that’s a good idea. That way you don’t run out of battery when you’re flying.

Ron: Right.

Tom: Right. So, and that’s the same thing for electric. Run it all the way up to set my timer and kind of kills, you know, two birds with a stone, so to speak.

Ron: And most of the time with electrics too, it won’t arm until you go full throttle and then back down to nothing. Yep. Um, and that’s, that’s very handy too.

Tom: Yeah. And then, so once the pre-flight is over, you know, once everything I’ve verified that everything’s moving correctly and everything is going the directions it should be going, um, you know, you’re ready for takeoff. So next thing to do is check the runway and make sure the runway is clear. Nobody’s on it, you know, retrieving an airplane or something like that. And I’ll kind of get a quick glance in the path that I’m going to take off, make sure there’s no airplanes in my takeoff path and off we go.

Ron: Yeah. Check the windsocks, see which way it’s blowing and decide which way you’re going to take off on the runway.

Tom: Yeah.

Ron: Right. But yeah, take off into the wind all the time.

Tom: Yeah. It’s amazing how many times I’ve seen people get that wrong.

Ron: Yeah. I know. With landing too, and landing scares me more than taking off.

Tom: Yeah.

Ron: Because if you have a, a tailwind, when you’re landing, you’re going to lose your lift and it will just fall like a, like a brick.

Tom: Yep. And usually not, and not, um, in a good way.

Ron: Well, yeah, because when you’re landing, you’re already going slow. Slow, exactly.

Tom: You have your throttle down.

Ron: Right. You know, you’re, you’re getting ready to take the airspeed away. Right. So if there’s a tailwind that hits fast, the airspeed just goes away.

Tom: Right. Usually with, with landing, you’re decelerating. So you’re, you’re already kind of, you know, losing momentum. At least with a takeoff downwind, you’re, you’re accelerating, hopefully. Right. So you can, you have that momentum that if, you know, you happen to get off the ground a little early, you know, you may have a little bit of extra time because you’re already accelerating.

Ron: Yeah. And full throttle, which helps a lot too when you need the extra power. Right. It’s already, yeah, exactly.

Tom: Yep. But yeah, I mean, that’s pretty much, uh, that’s pretty much how I accomplish a pre-flight and I do that every time I fly. Oh, absolutely. Like every, every time I take off, it’s a quick, I mean, once you’ve done it a few times, I mean, it’s almost. It becomes habit to me. Exactly.

Ron: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I have a little, uh, a little checklist that I carry with me. That’s a laminated. Nice. And that way you can just check it just to make sure you don’t forget anything.

Tom: Yeah. So you don’t miss anything.

Ron: Right. Actually, I’ll, uh, I’ll go ahead and post it on the website for, uh, under the show. And if anybody wants to go download it, they can download it. And I would recommend, um, laminating it. That way it doesn’t get messed up. You know, it’s, it’s three by five, four by six. I don’t remember how big it is. A business car. Maybe a little bit bigger. Something small. Uh, and just throw it in the, um, into your, your case with your transmitter. That way you always have it no matter what you’re flying. And that’s a very good, a good tool to have with you.

Tom: I, I actually have a confession to make. Like I, I don’t do a pre-flight every single time. I mean, I, I try to, but there’ve, but there’ve been, there’ve been at least one time that I can remember that I, that I didn’t do a proper pre-flight.

Ron: Oh. And, and did something happen on that time you didn’t do a proper pre-flight?

Tom: Well, yeah, we’ve, we’ve talked about it before, but, um. Yeah. I forgot about that.

Ron: Do, do tell, please.

Tom: Everybody loves crash stories, right?

Ron: Absolutely.

Tom: So, yeah, um, I had acquired a, an airplane from a friend, um, that was fuel soaked and we can, we can talk about, uh, fuel soaked airframes and how to bring them back to life, if you will, uh, some other time. But I had acquired this is a Pica dualist. If anybody listening knows what that is, it’s a twin engine, uh, pattern plane, pattern type plane. So it’s very smooth, very fast, um, kind of a precision aerobatic kind of a design, you know, from the seventies. Um, and I think Pica made the kid even into the eighties, but either way, got this airplane from a friend and it was fuel soaked. So I, I took the airplane, completely stripped it, uh, treated the airframe, uh, put it back, you know, recovered it, put it back together over the course of a winter. Uh, this was, uh, quite a while ago, I was a college student, so it took some time, uh, and it wasn’t cheap, you know, covering is expensive and, you know, you got to replace batteries and things like that. And I didn’t, I don’t recall, but I don’t think I got the engines with the airframe.

Ron: So I had to, you know, buy engines, things like that.

Tom: Uh, but anyway, uh, when I reinstalled the radio, I just assumed that I put everything back exactly the way it came out. You know, the right aileron servo was in the right panel. The left aileron servo was at the left panel. I had the, you know, I had the, you know, the control linkages on the inside or the outside, whatever it happened to be assumed that I had put everything back exactly the way it came out. So in theory, it should have been perfect, right? Cause it flew fine, you know, when I got it, which by the way, I had, I had flown that

Ron: airplane previously.

Tom: So yeah, I spent all that time putting it back together, took it to the field, um, you know, and friends watching, you know, cause I was, had been working on this thing all winter, you know, met some friends at the field who were also flying. Um, and they were excited cause it looked really cool. It was a beautiful airplane and I fired everything up, ran the engines up, tuned them so that they were in sync and twin engine. Uh, and I neglected, I did not do a proper pre-flight. I mean, I ran the throttles up, that was good. It had retractable gear and I had tested the gear up and down on the bench at home. And not one time did I ever really think, even in the, in the reconstruction phase, did I think to check that the ailerons were moving the correct direction or the elevator or the

Ron: rudder?

Tom: Not one time cause I’ve just assumed, you know, so I’m at the field and I’m ready to take off and, you know, a little bit of nerves, you know, it’s a, it’s kind of a maiden, you know, I’ve, even though the airplane used to fly, it’s, it’s, it’s been deconstructed and reconstructed, right?

Ron: Well, even if not, when it’s new to you and rebound to your transmitter and stuff, it is pretty much the days of being rebound when it’s reconnected because you’re right. I guess that would be the FM days, right? But it’s still a good idea to check everything, everything when you first fly an airplane

Tom: and that’s kind of, even as you’re putting it together, I mean, I, I didn’t do any of that.

Ron: Well, I mean, I almost consider it a maiden when you just get an airplane yourself.

Tom: Oh, okay.

Ron: Because somebody else might’ve flown it, but it’s set up completely different now that you have it, unless you bought it exactly how they had it.

Tom: Right.

Ron: If you got the same transmitter from them, then I guess it’s not really a maiden, but anytime it’s on a new transmitter, new electronics, it’s a maiden.

Tom: This was a, it was a, all the internal electronics were, um, I got with the airframe and all I

Ron: had to do was plug my receiver in. Okay.

Tom: So at the time, I mean, and it was, you know, it was a JR to JR, so everything should move the same direction from JR to anyway. So I’m ready to take off and Randy and, you know, everything’s running good and a little bit of nerves and luckily this particular field, um, many, many moons ago, very, very long field, um, and had paved runways, crisscrossing room. So a lot of room to fix anything should, you know, somehow, you know, you don’t, you have an engine out or whatever. There’s plenty of room at this place. So I taxi out and I go taxi to the complete end of the, I mean, we’re talking like a 25, 30 second long taxi out to the, I don’t know if, yeah, I don’t know if it was because of nerves or if I was trying to, you know, try not to, I wanted to put on a show or whatever. But anyway, I get to the end of the field and I’m, you know, running the throttles up and man, this thing just rockets down the runway. I mean, just engines were screaming. They were perfectly tuned. You know, it was one of those picture perfect takeoffs, you know, it’s just right about, you know, we’re in front of me, it, it kind of rotates and it lifts off and it’s, it’s just climbing out so nice and beautiful start to throttle back. Cause it’s, you know, gaining some speed and I don’t really want to fly it around in full throttle on this first flight, you know, and then I go to make a turn and you know, it happened so fast. Looking back on it, it happened so fast and I had no time to react, but cause this thing was, was hauling. And I go to make a, I believe it was a left-hand turn. I was going to do a left-hand pattern, you know, get everything trimmed and then bring it back in and check everything. So I go to make a left turn and the thing, you know, starts rolling like violently to the right. And, you know, looking back at, I should have, you know, reduced the throttle a little bit more. And obviously, you know, I should have realized right off that the ailerons were backwards, but I didn’t. And the thing rolled and rolled. I mean, it rolled, it was still rolling when it hit the ground. And I managed to pull the throttles back to idle before it crashed. But yeah, it was a, it was a kit again. Wow.

Ron: When it was done.

Tom: Yeah. I took it home for the longest time. I had this bucket, this plastic, just a pail, you know, two gallon pail, whatever. And that was my dualist bucket because that’s what I had in the car that day. I used it to keep, you know, car washing supplies in. And that’s what I collected all the parts in for that airframe. Yeah. When it was all done.

Ron: So I had a dualist bucket and that sat in my closet for a really, really long time because I couldn’t bring myself to buy another one. Didn’t have a part to get rid of it. Yep.

Tom: So, no, that’s too bad. And all due to a neglect of a pre-flight. Yeah. Had I done a proper pre-flight? I mean, who knows? That airplane might still be flying today. I mean, I’ve got some old airplanes, but.

Ron: Literally that half second of checking the aileron could have saved the whole thing.

Tom: Saved everything.

Ron: Yeah. It’s a tough lesson learned, but I bet you haven’t forgotten to do one since then.

Tom: I don’t think I have.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: Um, I mean, I’m sure there’s times I’ve been, you know, in a rush or whatever, but I, I try to, I try to do it every single time. Even if, even if I’ve flown that airplane previously the same day, I’ll do it again just because you just never know.

Ron: Yeah. It’s pre-flight. So anytime you land and take off, especially if the battery’s been taken out, if you’ve turned anything off. Yeah. You always make sure that everything is moving the way it’s supposed to moving freely and ready to go.

Tom: And once you get in the habit, folks, it really, I mean, it takes no time at all.

Ron: Yeah. It’s gotta be what? Three or four seconds at most.

Tom: Yeah. Because you get in, you know, you’ll get into a rhythm of, of doing it. And then anytime you do it from that point on, if something’s not right, you pick it out just like that.

Ron: And you fix it.

Tom: So very, very important. Don’t, don’t neglect it and get in the habit of doing it every single time.

Ron: Yeah. So that is what you do when you, you know, are at the field and you’re, you’re flying an airplane. So what else would you check at the beginning of the flying year?

Tom: Oh yeah. Yeah. So like annually, like a, like a pre-season kind of a once over. Like an annual checkup. Yeah. Like an annual checkup.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: Yeah. I, so I, I check all of that, you know, pretty much a pre-flight. And then me personally, um, I check everything on the airframe, you know, first and foremost, um, batteries, uh, batteries over winter. You know, sometimes I’m not really good about storing them on a storage charge or, or what have you, or if they’re a nickel metal hydride, you know, re-peaking them so often or whatever. I’m really terrible about neglecting my batteries over the winter.

Ron: Right.

Tom: Me too. And we do have a winter here where we live. We do have a winter where we can’t fly.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: It’s just simply too cold. So the first thing I’ll check, you know, before the flying season is all my batteries, like all of them, nickel metal hydrides, lithium polymers, lithium ions, whatever you’re using, check them all and check them according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.

Ron: Right.

Tom: Um, myself, nickel metal hydrides, I’ve got a really great charger. Um, it’s a little older, but it’s, it does a great job. It, it will cycle the packs and it’ll cut them off at a safe voltage. And then it will give me a readout of the estimated capacity of that battery pack. And if that’s not pretty close to the rated capacity of the battery, I just replace it or I’ll use it for a bench test battery or what have you.

Ron: Yeah. So on mine, when you do it, like I can charge and discharge up to six times, like six cycles without any, without putting hands on it. Um, and then I’ll, I don’t, like I said, I don’t know how yours works, but mine will tell you at the end, how many, uh, uh, milliamp hours it put in and then how many it took out. Yep. How many it put in, how many it took out. And those should be cycle. Oh yeah. For each cycle you can go through and see.

Tom: Oh, I thought, I thought, okay.

Ron: No, it’s, yeah, it’s for each cycle. So, and, and you can tell like on batteries when they’re a little bit older, uh, that haven’t been charged for a while, those numbers get to be a lot closer together towards the end of the charge cycles. Oh, okay. So you might be, you know, if you’re a 2000 milliamp hour battery, you might be putting in 1500 taken out a thousand towards the end of that cycle. You know, you might be putting in 1800 and taking out 1700. Oh, okay. So you can tell that it’s kind of bringing it back to life. And as long as you’re, you’re taking out close to what you’re putting in, then, you know, you have a pretty good battery still.

Tom: Yeah.

Ron: And then I also check it under draw to make sure it’s not, you know, dropping voltage and that with our checkers too.

Tom: I’ve got, yeah. And most, most, uh, folks that fly with a lot of, uh, lipo power stuff, they should in their field box or whatever they take with them, you know, when they’re flying should have a, one of those load testers. They’re cheap. They’re easy to get. You plug it into your lipo battery and usually they, they give you a percentage. I think the one I have, when you plug it in, it pops up a percentage of, you know.

Ron: Yeah. For lipo is the one I have tells you the actual voltage. I don’t do the, I don’t have my one that, or the one that does the percentage, but I’m talking about the nickel metal hydride ones. Oh, okay. So I still do a, a load charge on that too, or a load test on that and see what the, I

Tom: still have, I still use my, uh, my, uh, tower hobbies way back in the day. Uh, it’s an analog gauge.

Ron: Well, it works, but it works.

Tom: It puts a load on the batteries and it gives, and there’s like a, you know, a range that’s green. Um, and also has numbers, you know, printed on the dial, but, um, I still use that to this day. Green, yellow, and red.

Ron: And you know what? It has never failed me.

Tom: No. Every time, every time that I’ve checked a battery. And it hasn’t been in that green range or well into that green range, I haven’t flown and I’ve never, I have not lost a airplane due to a dead battery.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: That’s good. So.

Ron: It’s important to keep those changed. Yeah. If you keep up on your equipment, you won’t have the failures that you do if you don’t. Yep.

Tom: So, yeah. So the annual pre or the preseason, uh, checkup, that’s the first thing I do is the batteries.

Ron: Um, and that’s usually not in the plane for all of them either. I mean, you can take those out pretty easily in charge.

Tom: No? No, you should absolutely take, take them out of the airplane to do that. Okay.

Ron: Yeah. Lipos you don’t keep in a plane, but I mean, I understand like some of the.

Tom: Well, I keep. So.

Ron: And also like for us that fly gasoline, you’re going to have two sets of batteries too. Right. So I understand that that’s going to be a little bit more difficult to get to, to take out.

Tom: But. If you can’t take them out of the airplane, at least unplug them. That’s a very minimal.

Ron: What do you mean?

Tom: Well, so.

Ron: Like at the end of the year or.

Tom: Well, you should unplug them, you know, between flights and after flights and things like that. But for winter, um, I, I do know, you know, several people that, you know, have either forgotten and let them plugged in. Oh. Yeah. I’ve turned the switch off. So it’s good. Right. Well, maybe. There’s still a little bit of a draw. There’s probably, yeah, there’s probably some draw there, but if you can’t take them out of the, I’m terrible. Like I leave all my batteries in the airplane. I unplug them all. Right. But I, I do. I’m, I’m terrible about that. Mostly because I don’t have a lot of room where my stuff is stored and, you know, trying to wrestle around a 50 CC airplane in my little tiny basement to get the batteries out can be kind of a challenge sometimes. So I leave them in. Um, but on my lipos and lithium ions and things like that, I do. Make sure that my, my charger has a cool feature. And I think most do, it’ll take them up to the storage charge or take them down to a storage charge. So I do that and I check them, you know, kind of regular throughout the winter. But, um, yes, it’s a, it’s a, it would be a very good idea, especially with the lithium batteries to get them out of the airframes and put them in a, you know, a battery bag or box or one of those safe boxes or whatever.

Ron: And that’s especially true if you’re not storing them in a basement or if you’re not storing them somewhere that’s climate controlled. Right. Cause the heat and the cold, more so the heat is really bad on, on batteries. Yeah. So.

Tom: Yeah. That’s a good point. Um, that the storage of the batteries is, is very important. I should have hit on that too. Um, any lithium style battery, lithium ions, lithium polymers, lithium, uh, what’s the other one? Iron, whatever they are. Yeah. Store them in a safe, one of those, you know, battery box or a battery bag, something that will protect everything around it. Should that battery go off. Yeah. Um, that’s, yeah.

Ron: And that, that’s more of, that’s more of an issue with lipos than anything else. Right. Yeah. Actually, I keep my lipos in the refrigerator. Um, I don’t know if that’s the best way to do it, but I, I remember being told that, um, you know, a high thirties, low forties is a good temperature to keep them and low humidity is very good for them also. So the, I mean, the only place I have in the house that’s always that temperature and low humidity is going to be the refrigerator and we have multiple fridges. So it’s not like it’s our main one in the, in the living room or in the kitchen. Sorry. It’s out in the garage, but still.

Tom: Yeah. We’re not saying store your batteries next to the grapes in the fridge.

Ron: No, no, you know, but yeah, that’s where I keep mine. Yeah. At least a battery safe, uh, device, um, ammo cans are great for that actually. So, but yeah.

Tom: Anyway, that, so, you know, the batteries, that’ll be the first thing I check. Uh, and then, uh, I’ll go kind of over the airframe and just make sure that, you know, all the hardware is still tight.

Ron: Mm-hmm.

Tom: Um, make sure that there’s nothing bent, you know, like landing gear or, or, you know, push rods, anything like that. Um, you know, just kind of look it over, give it a once over, make sure, uh, that nothing obvious is, uh, standing out. And then I always like to, to, you know, check the balance on all my props, uh, in the spring before I start flying. Um, vibration is a, is a terrible thing. Does weird things to electronics, um, sets up weird harmonics and you never know what’s sort of, you know, RF noise, you know, something metal on metal rubbing in the air, in the airframe, vibrating, what that kind of signal that puts out. So check, check the prop balance.

Ron: So you do that on every plane before you fly it in the summer then?

Tom: Yep. I mean, I, I try to, uh, there’s airplanes that I know I’m not going to fly that summer,

Ron: so I’ll, I’ll leave them alone. Well, yeah.

Tom: But on the air, on the airplanes that I know I’m going to fly, uh, for sure, uh, I will, you know, pull the prop off. It doesn’t take long and, you know, if you, I like airplanes, I like tinkering, so it’s kind of one excuse I have to tinker with my airplanes.

Ron: And what, like, what, uh, what size propellers do you do? Because obviously, oh, any.

Tom: I check them all.

Ron: Anything, even the, like, five inch little electric ones?

Tom: Well, those are more difficult to balance, right? Right. Uh, because the balancers, you know, they, maybe not, the rollers aren’t smooth or if you’re using a magnetic balancer, you know, the, those things, it takes forever to balance

Ron: a prop with those.

Tom: But yeah, I, I try to balance as many of them as I can.

Ron: Okay.

Tom: Um, even on the small electric ones, an out of balance propeller is just no fun at all. And they sound terrible, if you ask me.

Ron: Yeah. It does have a weird, um, harmonic to it, I guess. Buzz or whatever you want to call it. Yeah.

Tom: Um, but yeah, I, I, I try to check all of them and the bigger the prop, the, the more important it is, you know, cause you don’t, certainly don’t want an out of balance prop on a big 50 CC, you know, airplane because that’s just no good for anybody.

Ron: Or, or 170 CC.

Tom: Or, yeah.

Ron: Yeah. I don’t have any quite that big, but. I gotcha.

Tom: Yeah. Um, and then the next thing you know is, uh, what better, you know, you’re already going to have the, the propeller off to balance it. But you may as well go over the engine just once. If it’s a nitro or a gasser, um, look it over, you know, make sure there’s no weird, uh, like, uh, was it last? It may have been last summer. There was, uh, I had an airplane that had a, had a weird, um, what’s the word I’m looking for? Like this sooty black oily drip, like underneath where it sat all winter. Uh, and, uh, so I, upon further investigation, you know, once I had the prop off, I looked at the engine and sure enough, I had a crankcase, a front crankcase bearing that was leaking. Oh. Uh, and on a nitro plane that, that can wreak havoc cause it allows air into the mixture and, you know, the air, the engine doesn’t run like it’s supposed to. So I found that on the, you know, on the annual checkup while the prop was off. I had to look at the engine and that’s where I noticed where it was coming from.

Ron: So, and that’s a good time to find problems, not when you’re at the field trying to start it, trying to figure out why it doesn’t run right. After you’ve taken all the time to get stuff ready and hold out to the field, it’s good to have a decent plane that’s been checked before you head out.

Tom: Right. And even electrics with the prop off, you know, if you grab the electric motor and kind of turn it a little bit by hand, you’ll be able to feel, you know, the strength of the magnets, you know, or if there’s a bearing maybe hanging up. Yeah. You’ll start to feel a weird, like almost like a grittiness to it. Exactly.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: Uh, so, you know, it’s a good time to, to do all that, you know, with the motor or an, or a gasser. Uh, and then, you know, if, if we’re, if we’re dealing with nitro or gas, this would be a good time to, to look at the tank and the lines. Uh, make sure the clunk is, you know, free to move about inside the tank. Um, a lot of gassers over time, that Tigon fuel tubing will get like stiff over time. It’ll dry out. Yeah. And so when the airplane’s upside down, the clunk is still stuck at the bottom of the tank, which is now, right. So the wrong side up and now it’s running out of fuel when every time you go upside down, that’s no fun.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: So yeah, check over the tank, you know, make sure the seam on the tank, every tank or not every tank, most tanks are plastic and they’re molded in two pieces and there’s a seam usually. And those seams, you know, over time can, you know, separate or whatever and develop leaks. So this would be a good time to kind of check that.

Ron: Well, and the other thing with the fuel lines too, is if they do dry out and they get brittle when you’re flying with all the vibrations from just flying in general, from an imbalanced propeller, right. Just from a nitro engine. Right. Or a gasoline engine. They all have vibrations built into them. Absolutely. Just because of how they run. Yep. But that is a bad time to have your, your fuel tank or your fuel lines fail on you. Right. So it’s not a bad idea to replace those every year to every two years anyway.

Tom: Tigon fuel tubing is relatively cheap. Yeah.

Announcer: So, and it also gives you another reason to tinker with your airplane.

Ron: Yeah. And you don’t have to have a lot of it. I mean, it’s not like you’re buying six feet for an airplane. You’re under a foot for most of them.

Tom: Although you do have to be careful. You don’t want to buy too much Tigon. You buy just enough to do whatever project you work. Because I’ve discovered that, um, so a while back I bought, I think 12 feet or whatever. And I had all this Tigon tubing that I wasn’t using. And so I coiled it up and stuck it on my, on my little peg hook thing downstairs. And wouldn’t you know it, it stiffened up even just not being exposed to fuel.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: So. It still dries out. It still does. Yeah. So, you know, buy enough to do your project, but you really don’t need to stock up on 50 feet of Tigon tubing just because it’s on sale at loads.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: It doesn’t last all that long. Right. So. So, yeah, um, you know, there, um, a lot of folks that store their, their planes, you know, in a garage or out in a, in a shed or, you know, not even a trailer outside.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: Or yeah. And a trailer outside. We’ll, we’ll get to that. Um, but something that’s a very real thing here in the Midwest are mud daubers, which I don’t know if you don’t know what that is. It’s, it’s basically a wasp that builds a nest out of mud and they like to build their nests someplace cozy, someplace close and cramped. And I, I have seen this before where, uh, folks have stored their planes out on a garage and mud daubers have actually built their nest like in an exhaust outlet of a muffler or the carburetor of the engine, uh, or even if it’s in the airframe and you don’t see it. Well, first of all, it’s a nasty surprise when you go to start your airplane and all these wasps come out of it, but it’s also, you know, with vibration, you know, because we didn’t balance our propellers, it knocks these things loose. And then you got this mud dauber thing nest bouncing around or bouncing around inside the airframe and, you know, poking a hole in your covering or whatever. So check over the airframe and the engine and all the openings and stuff and make sure you don’t have something like that, especially if you store your airplane in a garage or

Ron: otherwise outside of the house. Yeah.

Tom: So, and then, uh, and then, yeah, the last thing kind of I’ll look over is the, is the condition of the covering. Um, you know, that’s, that’s kind of why I’m recovering the airplane over here. I noticed here at the end of last season that she wasn’t looking too pretty and there was a couple of seams that were coming loose and was fuel soaked underneath and it just couldn’t iron them down anymore. So that’s something you want to catch before you fly. Cause I can tell you a wing without covering doesn’t develop much lift.

Ron: No, it’ll, it’ll come off and you’ll have a crash for sure, which also can be checked or can be, uh, avoided by doing a proper pre-flight and checking it every year. So that’s right.

Tom: Yep.

Ron: Yeah. You, you kind of get out of it what you put into it. If you spend the time to make sure what you’re flying is correct, you won’t have the issues that you would if you don’t.

Tom: Yep. So that’s really about all I have. I mean, I’ll, I’ll go over all of those items on my, on my annual checkup and, uh, hope I don’t find any nasty surprises the first time I’m flying.

Ron: Yeah. Um, kind of going back to when we were talking about the trailers and you alluded to the, the issues. So that’s, uh, that’s on me. I won’t get into it too much, but, uh, just know that my trailer had, uh, a bit of a leak over the winter, come to find out, uh, that I didn’t catch in time. So I would say I lost probably three airplanes, uh, due to the wood swelling and warping, warping. They just, they don’t like to be wet. Um, one or two I could probably rebuild, but they weren’t ones I was all that excited about. So I don’t know if I will or not. I’ll probably just pull electronics off that I can save from it and go from there. So yeah, be careful with your, your trailers.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. If you store, if you store anything in a trailer, um, especially through the summer months, um, at least here in the Midwest and anywhere else that there might happen to be humidity, um, check those things often to get in there and make sure. Cause that, I mean, the first sign is corroded hardware.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: You know, a lot of the hardware is steel on these things and steel, you know, turns to rust. So usually you can tell if you’re, if you’re in a, in a bad situation, the first thing you’ll notice is rusty hardware. There we go.

Ron: You know, lesson learned.

Tom: We spend so much time and energy and money on these things, you know, let’s do, do everything we can to take care of them.

Ron: Yeah.

Tom: You’re right. Try to fly them for many, many years.

Ron: Make them last longer. Take care of them for your kids.

Tom: And you can do that by not crashing them and preventing crashes with a proper pre-flight.

Ron: Yeah. So everybody pre-flight check every single flight. Anything else?

Tom: No, I think that, I think that about covers it. Um, you know, we’ve gone over what, uh, what you should look for in a pre-flight check, you know, how to perform one. Um, Ron’s going to hopefully post a handy dandy checklist on the website.

Ron: Yeah. So check us out there and, uh, until next time, I’m Ron.

Tom: All right. And I’m Tom.

Ron: Thanks. Bye.

Tom: See you.

Announcer: Hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab podcast. 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.