March 2010 Archives

Do not tail slide into the ground...

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Had a great evening flying my Parkzone Citabria with a friend. He was just getting started with his Citabria and ended up sliding tail first down a net used as a wall. Something caught his elevator and stripped the servo - bummer.

Then I remembered all those Airhog toy R/C planes - they are only throttle and rudder! So we trimmed the elevator to stop the servo from whining and gave it a go. Worked like a charm! Now to be fair, he couldn't make nice gentle landings, and turning hard was out of the question, but he was back in the air and the evening wasn't lost.

So, to quote a TV great - "If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.".

Citabria Upgrades

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I received a larger battery for my Citabria last night (again thank you). It is a 138mAh battery and boy does it make a big difference. Not only in improved flight times, but in power as well. The newer battery must have a lower internal resistance, because I noticed improved climb rate and brighter lights.

The only downside with the larger battery is that it is larger. Meaning, it will not fit in the charger. Well, I fixed that. By cutting open the charging slot, I extracted the connector and now I can plug anything in!

ThereIFixedIt - Improve Minium Charger

I also reconnected the lights and swapped the yellow LED on the right for a proper green one. The green LED is not as bright and packaged differently, so it won't really help sorting my plane out from the crowd, but at least it is now running the correct colours.

Light upgrade

Good to be back in the air

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citabria_stand.jpgAfter a long hiatus, I returned to the air tonight. There was another Golf Dome fun fly events and with my Citabria repaired and no other events to hinder my schedule, off I went.

Got 3-4 good flights in, racked up another 30 minutes of air time and even managed a minor patch repair to get the lights working.

That repair will need some work, as I think a loose connection caused the receiver to reset. At home I redid the binding process and it was back to normal.