Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Maker Hangar: Episode 14 – Flying”.
Hello and welcome to maker hanger, my name is lucas weekley and today we’re going to be talking about how to fly your rc plane, we’ll go over flight sites, how to throw your plane what to do when flying and a couple other things. So, let’s get started, there are a couple different options that you can choose for your flight sites. So let’s go check those out. Some of you have a large enough backyard to go and fly your airplane. It needs to have minimal trees and a large enough area to take off and land.
However, everyone has access to a local park and most of them are large enough to fly the maker trainer. Now, if you do a little bit of searching, you might be able to find that your town or city has a local rc flying club, which you can get a membership to and fly there. Of course, these fields are large enough to fly the maker trainer and are fully equipped to all of your needs and have other people who are experienced and can help you, however, for today’s demonstration i’m going to be going to my local park, because that’s what everyone’s? Probably going to have now, there are a bunch of other places that you can go and fly, such as a football field or a soccer field. It just has to have very few obstructions around it, such as trees or power lines, and it needs to have no obstacles in the field itself, so that you don’t have to dodge anything when landing, try to go flying at evening before sunset or in the early Morning, these times of the day have very little winds, which makes it easy to fly when you find a place to fly, stand on the side of the field. This will give you the perfect position to view your plane being on the side of the field. Minimizes.
The time that the plane is facing towards you and maximizes the time that it’s going away from you, this makes the plane a lot easier to fly, fly in a pattern. That’S comfortable with you either that be right-handed or left-handed turns either way will work the same. Okay, so let’s set up the maker trainer. Now you have your two wooden spars, one is your actual spar and the other one is a push rod, and then you have your controller and, of course, the plane, so we’re gon na unfold, the wings from their folded state we’re going to lift them up with The velcro we’re going to fold them out just like that, make sure all the wires are being tucked back in lay the wing back down straight we’re gon na grab our spar feed it in through one of the sides, push it as far as you can get It and then get your other spar.
Now. I’Ve marked this at seven inches because that, from one end will get the spar directly into the middle. If it’s 36 inches long, you know put that in and tamp in the spar the rest of the way. So now this bar is in the middle of the wing we’re going to go into our fuselage, and this is also where i keep my rubber bands. So i have two rubber bands that you normally get like from broccoli or vegetables from your supermarket. These are really good for support, so i’m going to put those on and a cross brace across.
So this one goes here: hold it go across, make sure that they’re flattened on the wing and the other one crosses over okay and then the other rubber bands. You can get at like office depot or staples. These are kind of thicker paper rubber bands, and i’m going to run these across like this and then also diagonally like before. Okay, so now we’re going to take our radio turn it on make sure all our switches are in their zero state, make sure all our controls are zeroed out, make sure we’re on the right model and then we’re gon na come in and plug in the battery.
Okay, now i’m gon na come to the back of the plane. I’M gon na check my control movements. So when i pull down on the stick, the elevator should come up like it did there. When i push forward on the stick.
Elevator goes down when i’m pushing to the right with the aileron: stick the aileron. The right aileron should go up and then, when i push the left, the left aileron should go up. So all our controls are moving the right way. We can check our throttle, really quick, that’s working so you’re ready to take off and to do this with the maker trainer. You have to throw the plane so for your first flight, i recommend you have someone else, help you and throw the plane for you.
This way you can have both of your hands on the controller, and you can compensate for anything that may happen on takeoff. Give the plane full throttle that’ll, give the plane enough power to jump into the air any less throttle than that. Then you’ll find it difficult to get your plane into the air and it’ll just come and glide back down to the ground when you throw the plane, throw it at a slight up angle.
This will give it enough time to get to a proper speed and also maintain lift. If you throw the plane level, it won’t get enough speed to get into the air and it’ll just come down and land. If you throw the plane downwards, then it’s just going to nose into the ground at full throttle which is not going to be very good now hand. Launching can take some practice, but just remember not to throw the plane down or level and then you’ll find the optimal angle to which you can throw your plane. You may be worrying about the prop hitting your fingers as you go to throw the plane now, as you can see, there’s plenty of space between your hand and the propeller. So don’t worry about it for your first flights, i recommend you take off the plane and then land it in a straight line, just like we did in the simulator. This will help. You learn the controls of the elevator and make you a little bit less scared. When you go to turn the plane to do this, take off the plane, like i explained before level it off and then bring it to an altitude slightly taller than yourself.
Once there cut the throttle and glide use the elevator to control your descent and allow the plane to slowly touch the ground and skid to a stop, then walk over pick up your plane and come back where you started. Do this a couple more times, it’ll really get you comfortable with the controls now you’re ready to turn your plane now. Turning is a tricky part of flying, but it’s pretty easy to get over to turn. Take off the plane, like i explained before, and bring it up to a safe altitude about 50 to 75 feet, make sure you have plenty of power about 75 to 50 throttle then bank, your plane slightly and then pull up with your elevator to complete the turn And also to maintain altitude once you’ve completed your turn level off the plane and return the throttle back to a cruising value about 40 to 50 percent. Now that you’re in the air and turning around get a couple mistakes high, a mistake: is the altitude needed to recover from a mistake that you have done with the controls, such as banking, the plane, the wrong way or pulling down instead of up, you want to Get around two to three mistakes: high, just in case you’re, going to fly in a oval pattern around your field, where the straightaways are the length of the field and then the turning will be the width of the field. While you’re up there. You can begin to trim your plane. This involves using the trim tabs on the sides of the sticks. If your plane is pitching down, when you let go of the controls, then you can use the trim tab parallel with the elevator control, and you can give it a couple clicks downwards to compensate.
If the plane is banking to the left, then you can add some right. Aileron trim to compensate do several of these oval circuits over your field before you come in for a landing when landing complete a turn at the far end of the field, then kill the throttle all the way and let the plane glide use your elevator to control Your descent and make the plane come down very slowly. Eventually, the plane will come down and touch the ground and land do not try to land at your feet. You will probably overshoot and possibly crash and also, if you descend too fast, you’ll pick up too much speed and possibly overshoot your landing strip once you’ve landed, go over and walk and pick up your plane.
Remember, there’s nothing wrong with doing this on your first couple of flights, now there’s a couple things that could cause your plane to crash while flying so a plane can crash when you throw the plane down and it noses into the ground. If you don’t give enough power in the turns, then the plane will tip stall, meaning that the downward facing wing tip will lose, lift and the whole plane will slip out of the air and hit the ground you could lose orientation. This is why having a simulator is important and you could come in too fast for a landing. All of these can be prevented just by flying your plane very conservatively. But if you happen to crash, there are a couple ways you can repair your plane.
You can cut out the part of the foam that broke and replace it completely or you can reform it and then add some tape and hot glue, and even some barbecue skewers to hold the shape of the foam and that’s it for this episode. Remember practice makes perfect and you’re never gon na have a perfect first flight. That’S why this plane is called the maker trainer, try to go out and fly as much as you can. Then the controls will be solidified in your head and it’ll just be like riding a bike once you’ve gotten good enough at hand launching flying around and landing, then you’re ready for some basic maneuvers and we’ll go over that next time, as well as some modifications that You can do to your plane to make it fly better and also do more awesome things so i’ll see you then, thanks for watching .