13.4.2004

The plane arrived in a large box about 1,8m in lenght. It was well packed and the optional aluminium coated wingbags were also protecting the contents.

The packing and postage from Germany to Finland was only 69 euros which I think is reasonable for this size package. It was classified as fragile.

About 4-5 mm thick white foam is used to stiffen the fuselage. It has thin glass (something like 25 g/m^2) over it.

The finish of the filming is very good, couldn´t have done it better myself. I think it´s Oracover.

It´s a mean looking machine!

Plywood plates for the MK elevator svivel are installed with the help of some balsa stick and tape.

19.4.2004

Servo wells are already made in the wings and the servo wire is also installed. I had to make the servo wells a little bit deeper to locate the Futaba 9150 digital aileron servos.

Tool is simply made by gluing a sandpaper to the bottom of a straight agle base and rocking it back and forth.

Firewall is located with the help of short balsa bits glued to the correct postions in the fuselage. 

Firewall will be carbon with nomex honeycomb. 

I also made the plywood rings for the hyde mount but these were made to the wrong diameter so they are scrapped. New ones are currently being made.

28.4.2004

Firewall is now done. It´s 12mm nomex honeycomb with 1 layer of 300 g/m^2 carbon cloth on both sides. Weight is 43 g compared to the supplied 6mm plywood of 71 grams. Original was used as template to cut it to correct size as it needed slight shape adjustments.

The honeycomb could be replaced with 6mm nomex as it is now quite stiff and the area is also quite small so no major deflections should occur even with the thinner core. This would reduce the weight with about 10 g. 

I cut carbon tubes to fit into the motor mount holes, which will be fastened with 3 ea of 4mm screws. Holes are also made to throttle and mixture adjustment pushrods.

3.5.2004

Nosering and largened elevator horn for the MK elevator swivel are done from 2mm carbon plate.

The nose ring will have tygon fuel tubing as a rubbing material between the ring and the OS 140 RX engine. 

Radio installation plates are done from 4,5mm nomex with 300 g/m^2 carbon facesheets. Weights are 13 g and 20 g. Fuel tank will also have a similar support.

The thick carbon could be substitued to thinner 160g/m^2 fabric as this adds unnecessary weight. 

6.5.2004

As I had to loan my digital camera for a while, I don´t have any pictures of updates. I will add these later. 

Firewall is now glued in place with epoxy resin thickened with silica microspheres (FIN: piituhka). For the nose ring I did a support plate from normal 3mm aircraft grade plywood. 

The servo plates were glued to the glass fuselage with Cascol polyurethan glue which proved to be a good solution as it expands a little while curing thus filling the open ends of the honeycomb.

Wing servos (Futaba 9150) were installed and 20 cm extension leads were added to the servos. I didn´t want to splice the original wire as this would be problematic if servo replacement is to be carried out at the field. Another 20cm lead is to be placed at the receiver. 

The carbon plate for the elevator swivel is glued to the MK system.

Hyde mount is taking shape, it´s 80 mm in diameter with 2mm rubber. 

20.5.2004

Have my camera again and more updates.

OS is now fitted in place with the nose ring. The hyde mount is finished and weight is 98 g. I wrapped carbon tow around the disks to keep the 2 mm rubber in place. It´s not a tube, it is done from rubber sheet with short overlap and glued in place with thin ZAP. It finished quite stiff so have to see how it handles in use. 

Nice visual appearance with the carbon firewall!

The nose ring is in place and really supports the engine. I am thinking of upgrading couple of my other planes to have also this kind of motor mount arrangement. 

As much as I did think of the engine placement beforehand (just went along with the inspiration :-) ) and read other reports of header getting in the way of the plastic mount and hyde, it happened to me too. 

Well, I have to grind some material off of the plastic mount and have to see what to do with the hyde. I could have placed the engine about 7 mm more forward in the plastic mount and made the hyde shorter so this wouldn´t have happened. 

I made some modifications to the servo plates if you refer to earlier pictures. 

Elevator and rudder servos are in place, the rudder servo being in front and 6mm higher than the elevator servo to separate the pull-pull systems from each other. Servos are Futaba 9451 digitals.  Elevator has also wires connected to the MK bellcrank. 

You can also see the throttle servo which is currently Futaba 9304 and the Jaicco Perfect Swich which has voltage regulator of 5,7 V.  

Cabin will be fastened with this spring loaded pin system and with two dowels in front. 

The landing gear plate is now supported with 3mm aircraft grade plywood glued vertically to end of the plate. This prevents the fuselage and landing gear plate from flexing under landing loads. 

Others with one piece wing have reported some cracks in the fuselage around the plate after some flight time. 

I applied the stick-on decals to the rudder, stabilizer and wings. Small advertisement at the same time. 

I also found out that one of the decal sheets has my name. Wau, this is really nice customer support. I will add these around the cabin when the plane is finished.  

29.5.2004

I had to carve a little bit off from the firewall to fit the tuned pipe adapter. You can see the 12 mm nomex core. The adapter is cut short because the offset lenght was too great for the plane I had it previously. 

Also a picture of the home made hyde mount. Weight is just under 100 g. It is fastened to the firewall from inside the fuselage.  

I added short pieces of large diameter rubber tubing into the fuel tubing cutaways. These are used to prevent the fuel tubing from being scratched by the sharp edged firewall. Also some plywood disks for the hyde mount fasteners. 

Fuel tank has this neck support plate with fuel tubing as isolator for vibration. Will see how it works out.  

Each carbon landing gear leg is fastened with 3 ea. M4 socket head screws. 

OS 140 RX will have this much of cool air opening. It is actually a bigger hole than I had had previously. 

Belly pan has 5 mm carbon tubes which connect to vinyl tubes embedded into the fuselage. This works nicely as you can drill the tube and the friction alone keeps the carbon tube in place. I still have to figure out how to make the latch mechanism. 

Ailerons and elevators have their horns and pushrods installed. Horns are made from carbon and are about 2mm thick. Pushrods are 5 mm carbon tubes with 3 mm inside diameter. It is easy to insert either 3mm or 4-40 threaded rod endings into the tube with medium ZAP. Light and strong. Ball links are Du-Bro nr. 497.

Tail wheel is also from Du-Bro. It is currently quite rigid, I am thinking of putting some kind of spring system to have some flexing. 

Rudder has wires and horns installed. Pull pull system is from Du-Bro. It has nylon coated stranded steel wire. I succeeded in making the wire exit hole quite thin and professionally looking. It is easy to make because the fuselange sides are flat and you can use long ruler to draw lines to correct direction and location. 

I modified the tuned pipe installation to have this kind of fastening method. It has thin spring steel flange and large cable tie. Simple and light. 

Tuned pipe is the original OS/Hatori. The tuning lenght is 615 mm from the exhaust flange to the reflector plate. 

Cabin has blue base color and I decided not to add any pilot. After all this is pure aerobatic performer. 

31.5.2004

The first flight gets nearer every minute!

The fastening of the belly pan has given me some headache but I finally did a solution that could prove out to be a good one. Just simple piano wire slightly prestressed keeps the belly pan firmly in place.  

I originally had planned that the receiver would be placed beside the tank. This proved to be too small place and after I found out that I had to move the battery behind the servo plate for CG reasons I also decided to put the receiver there too. I will post the picture later. 

I also had to move the rudder servo about 10 mm rearward to have enough space for the servo wheel to turn

Elevator pushrods are from 5/3mm carbon tubes. Nice alignment with the horns perpendicular to the rod. . 

3.6.2004

The first flight was a success!

Weighing just under 5 kg with 250 g of batteries (lighter one will be installed...) the OS 140 RX with APC 17x12 has no problem to pull it vertically as long as you want. The hyde mount with the nose ring works very nice, it could be almost too stiff as the cylinder head doesn´t vibrate much more than +- 2mm.

 The down lines are the most straight ones I have ever had and the control authority with the digital servos is very good. 

It might be a little tail heavy as I don´t have to push while inverted. Lighter battery will fix this one also. 

The wind was blowing quite hard with a  lot of gusts but it calmed a little bit after 9 o´clock in the evening so I was able to make the first 2 flights. The 83mm TruTurn spinner is still somewhere between Germany and Finland so I have to use smaller size spinner that I had.  

Wheel pants will be installed after I get the weight down a little bit.  

My local airfield is a military field in Halli (EFHA) Kuorevesi in the middle of Finland.

4.6.2004

Today I succeeded in making another 6 flights with the HS. The plane flies very smooth and is really a pleasure to fly. I decided to participate in the F3A Nordic competition which will be held in the following weekend. 

The plane has now only 8 flights and I can only remember the first 10 manouvers (out of 23!) of the Nordic schedule! Well, let´s see how it goes.

6.6.2004

The competition was held in Turku, southwest of Finland. 12 participants in total in three classes, F3A, Nordic and Sport. 

I managed to reach second place in Nordic -class! Even though the weather was really windy and the landings looked a bit hard it survived without any major damage. Only landing gear got some scratches when it veered in take off to the nearby bush and almost flipped over. 

The yellow colour nicely separates from the rest and shows very good in the air. 

16.8.2004

I have now been flying the HS for some time and like it very much. I noticed some black residue coming from the exhaust and decided to change the bearings. Some OS140RX users have reported that the rear bearing doesn´t last very long, I managed to get 150 flights without any incident. And the rear bearing still looks fine. 

The rear bearing is SKF 61904 and front is SKF 6000. I left on the rubber seals on both sides on both bearings. Will see how the lubrication works with the sealed rear bearing.  

I have been using Graupner made silicone tubing as the pipe connector. It hasn´t burned throught yet, only mechanical rubbing breaks it. It gets quite black if it is in direct contact with the exhaust gases.  

I made some foam supports inside the fuselage to prevent the fuse from shaking so violently during idle. Also supporting the tuned pipe adapter resulted some noise decrease and also decreased the shaking. The idle is much smoother now. 

The support is made from simple thin spring steel flange connected to the adapter with cable tie. I have 20mm extra piece between the adapter and pipe, that´s why the tubing is so long. 

You can see the battery as the rearmost item in the fuselage, it is now Sanyo KR1100AAU with 5 cells. This replacement saved some 110 grams from the heavier pack.  

Also bought new header and twin plug cylinder head from Mintor in Italy. The header replaced the multipiece adapter that I had previously and resulted some 60 grams weight savings. 

I haven´t tested the twin plug head yet, curious to see if it improves the idle and midrange. 

Now is also installed a 83mm Tru Turn spinner, this one with the solid backplate. Could have saved some weight with the lightened backplate. 

24.8.2004

My second F3A Nordic competition was a total success, highest flight scores on all four flights resulting a first place in a tight competition between the top three pilots. I also received a special regognition (silver spoon) for a good performance. 

Competition was held in Hämeenkyrö (EFHM) airfield, middle of Finland. F3A had 7 pilots, Nordic 6 and Sport class only one. 

I have now over 50 flights with the HS.

11.9.2004

This seasons last competition was held at the legendary Jämijärvi airfield. I only managed to get 12 training flights after the last competition. Sure had hoped to get some more but...

The start of the competition didn´t go as well as I had hoped for, while starting the engine the glow plug died! If I would have had the twin plug head the engine would have started and I could have made a first round flight. Well, the excitement and competition stress only grew bigger... 

Nothing to worry about, the following 2 flights went so good that I got the highest scores and because of foggy and wet weather we didn´t fly the last round. So I managed to get first place again!

While at the saturday evening banguet the F3A Team Finland awarded me the title and plague for "Vuoden tikunvispaaja" which translates to something like "Seasons pilot". This was the first giveaway of this prize and it will be given to the best performing pilot in the following years.  

The Season End 2004

 The 2004 F3A Nordic season was great success for me as I won the F3A Nordic Finnish Cup 2004 with the High Society. I managed to get 83 flights with the HS. Training has already begin for the season 2005 where I will try the F3A FAI class and participate in the F3A Nordic Championships in Norway. New planes are on the works and can be seen on my pages. 

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