Stryker F27-Q

[akent]

Mod #3: I just cut the elevon hinge area and DOUBLED the throw!!
It's at 2 1/4" now, or about at a 70+ degree angle!

I did setup triple rates on the Aux2 switch of my JR9503, so I can turn everything down...
I hope to fly it in the next couple of days...
Kent

[akent]

For this plane, at least for me, this is the cat's meow for a setup.

1. Stock power. Stock prop. Note that the stock prop is like rubber. I have bent it numerous times. I just bend it back straight and it's fine! I am still flying the original one, though I did buy a few spares!
2. Carbon strips on the elevon trailing edge. These are not really necessary, but they make the plane tighter.
3. Cut the elevon hinges to give them more throw. I have the control rods on the second from the outside hole. This increases the throws over stock. The servo links are on the outside hole.
4. I now have the battery about 1" behind the stock position. This is a Zippy 2200 3s 40c battery. A lighter battery would probably work best at the stock location. I have the CG in the middle of the larger hand throwing cutout.
5. I installed several strips of Scotch thin double sided tape on the nose. The magnets are not enough to keep it from popping off all the time. Now it will come off if you hit the ground, but it's not popping off if you look at it wrong.

That's it!

I'm flying mine only on high rates! I'm running 50% expo on all surfaces.

For the uber fast spins, you go as high as you can, let off the throttle, point it down (or do a blender), get it into an inverted flat spin (left stick lower left, right stick upper right). When it is spinning flat, move the right stick to the lower left. That sounds strange I know, but that works every time! On my friend's box stock one, too!
What happens with the elevons is at the upper right, the right aileron is at full deflection down while the left one is neutral. In the lower left position, the left aileron moves full up while the right one is neutral! Don't ask me why this works! I have no clue!
You can also get it to spin fast upright, but that's a lot harder to do.
This thing spins so fast that I think it's creating lift! It comes down VERY slowly and I am sure nothing would happen if you let it come all the way down like that!
Yesterday, I had mine way up there and had it spinning. I heard someone drive up and then say, "What the hell is that?". It made me laugh!

I am having so much fun with this plane that it is all I flew yesterday!
I also brought my Geebee R3, the Sniper, Su29, Fast Funjet, UMX Beast, and my 500 Heli. I flew NONE of those!!
Kent

[19000rpm]

I don't know why, but I'm amazed at how good it flies stock.

I like the fact you've done your triple rates and expo only use high rates. LOL

[akent]

Well, I flew the 'Q' again lots of times on Sunday.
I think I have come up to the limits of this thing!

I did the fast spin once and was too low to bail out. It pancaked in. That broke a prop. Believe it or not, this was the first broken prop! They are kind of like rubber, so you can straighten them, well, most of the time.

With the new prop, it flew MUCH better! I guess the old one was losing pitch or something. Well, this time I was at WOT and did the sudden pops to vertical, and sudden WOT pops to inverted flat spins. These popped stuff off of the plane that I could see floating down. It handled very strangely after the last WOT pop, too. I could still do spins, blenders and the rest, but sudden turns made it corkscrew. Something was very wrong.

After landing and looking at it, the lower rudder skids came off! It also loosened up all of the (G10?) stiffeners on one side! The rear plastic braces had broken loose from the foam and one side of the top housing had broken loose! One of the elevon hinges was laying on the outside!! WOW!!!
I didn't fly it after that.

I looked at it last night and with lots of squirts of CA and some Welder glue, it's as good as new now!

This thing does need to be looked at from time to time if you are thrashing it hard!
I can't believe it has put up with this abuse. I have never thrashed anything as hard as this thing!

Oh, and there was a fellow there videoing my flights. He said he would put them on youtube and let me know.
Kent

[19000rpm]

Looking forward to the vid.

[Gabe]

Um...wow.

That's all I can say.

[akent]

Ah, I finally have internet!
We have been in the Davis mountains in west Texas since Monday.

On Sunday, I flew the Stryker all day for the first time since fixing it.
It really does fly just as good as new!

It's my favorite plane, still!
Kent

[Gabe]

Great to hear, Kent!

Still my favorite as well. Can't wait to get my Q!

[akent]

Well, last Tuesday I brought my Miss Dara and my Stryker Q to the field. I was trying to get some practice with the Formula 1 racer and then have fun with the Q.

After flying a few batteries through the Dara, I pulled out the Q and launched it. It still flies great!

What I was working on with this is to get it reliably into a right side up Boomerang. It's a lot harder to do that. BTW, a Boomerang is what they call the super fast spins, where the thing is spinning at probably 3 times per second or more!
I was able to get it into one. When I got it into the upright flat spin and then initiated the boomerang, it did it alright, but it was like a spinning top getting ready to fall over. It was spinning in all orientations! I don't understand that.
Well, it didn't come out of it. It pancaked at an odd angle. This pulled off all of the underside parts and stripped BOTH aileron servos! It hit weird.

Well, I took it home and repaired the bottom side strakes the best I could and then installed some 8 buck D-MG16 servos from HK. These are digital and metal geared. I had to rig up some longer arms and then hog out some foam for it to work. All looked good again!

On Sunday, I through the Q up and WTF!!! It spiralled in!! It turns out the D-MG16 servos turn REVERSE of the stock ones!!! ARRGGHH!!
It didn't do any damage, so I reprogrammed everything and threw it up again. All good again!!!

For the next battery, I made sure I had every possible amount of throw there. I threw it up and it was flying better than ever!!!
UNTIL...
I did my famous WOT to inverted flat spin. That puts UBER G's on the airframe. This is basically about 90mph to 0 in a few milliseconds! You go WOT in a straight line and then jam the sticks into the corners!

Well, this time it exploded in mid air! I could see parts flying in all directions and the main plane started coming down end over end slowly! That was the strangest thing I've ever seen!

I went to pick up the pieces and everything was within a 100 foot circle, except the battery! It was nowhere to be seen... We fanned out and there it was, about 400 feet from the crash site!! It slung that far!

Well, I took all the pieces back to the table, got out my CA and Welder and put it back together. The stupid thing flew just like new again!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe how much abuse this thing can take!

It's getting a little ugly now...
Kent

[akent]

By the way, the guy taking the video a while back has never been back to the field, nor gotten in touch with me. That's a bummer.
I need to get some video though. I know there are lots out there for this Q, but I have never seen my WOT to immanent explosion maneuver before.
Kent

[19000rpm]

Probably the other small accidents weakend the airframe enough that those high G maneuvers took it over the edge.

Good to hear you've got back in the air. It's an amazing plane.

[Gabe]

Kent that's nuts! What the heck man!?!?

At least she still flies though, right? Cool story buddy.

[akent]

I flew the Q today at Zilker Park. That's where they had the ACL festival last week. The grass was trampled, but still nice, as it always is!

Well, I just couldn't help myself, so I did one of my patented WOT to sudden inverted flat spins. While the Q didn't explode this time, the canopy was floating down and the plane was doing the end over end to the ground like last time when it did explode.
I walked over to it and the battery was GONE. I picked up the canopy and plane and proceeded to walk all over the place. The grass was very short, so it 'should have' been easy to see the blue battery.
I walked for probably 800 feet in all directions from the site.
The battery was GONE! I think the ground ate it!!
Kent

[Gabe]

Haha! No way!

[19000rpm]

Oh no! That's a big battery to just "disappear".

I did have one battery bury it's self pretty good last year. It was in some really soft ground after a week of rain. That's the battery I threw into the lake because it was smoking hot and getting hotter. I was too concerned to transport it anywhere.