[KC8QVO]

Hello everyone. I just tested my GP Flat Out extra 300s with my new 1320mAh TP battery. The airplane took off fine but as soon as it was in the air I knew something was wrong. It was flopping all over the place and needed quite a bit of throttle (more than SHOULD be required) to fly. When I pointed the nose up a bit it would tip stall to one side or the other and loose speed imediately. I had it set on low rates. Flat Outs should be real easy to fly - light and dont need much power to fly. I flew one at our field last fall and it was amazingly easy to fly. SOOO.. I am thinking it is something with the way mine is set up. I had to use 6 pennies on the tail to get to ballance where the directions say. I have the battery, esc, and rx mounted under the wing. The motor I am using is an E-flite 960kv OutRunner 400. When I flew it in the fall it seemed to fly OK. It was still pretty unstable, but didnt feel nearly as bad as today. Any ideas? Just too much weight maybe?

I am trying to salvage the airplane right now. It needs some wood reinforcements I think what I am going to do is take off the pennies and move the battery back behind the wing. Maybe that will fix it. Although, all these repairs are adding weight.. every drop of glue counts with these airplanes.

Steve

[ROT*]

Originally Posted by KC8QVO

Hello everyone. I just tested my GP Flat Out extra 300s with my new 1320mAh TP battery. The airplane took off fine but as soon as it was in the air I knew something was wrong. It was flopping all over the place and needed quite a bit of throttle (more than SHOULD be required) to fly. When I pointed the nose up a bit it would tip stall to one side or the other and loose speed imediately. I had it set on low rates. Flat Outs should be real easy to fly - light and dont need much power to fly. I flew one at our field last fall and it was amazingly easy to fly. SOOO.. I am thinking it is something with the way mine is set up. I had to use 6 pennies on the tail to get to ballance where the directions say. I have the battery, esc, and rx mounted under the wing. The motor I am using is an E-flite 960kv OutRunner 400. When I flew it in the fall it seemed to fly OK. It was still pretty unstable, but didnt feel nearly as bad as today. Any ideas? Just too much weight maybe?

I am trying to salvage the airplane right now. It needs some wood reinforcements I think what I am going to do is take off the pennies and move the battery back behind the wing. Maybe that will fix it. Although, all these repairs are adding weight.. every drop of glue counts with these airplanes.

Steve

Steve;

I have the GP Flatouts CAP 580, be carefull, those flatouts are way less stable then say the Ikarus one, due to the postion of the wing. It is a low wing design = less stable. Also, I think your motor/battery combination is way too big, I have the E-Flite outrunner 370 and it is more than enough! My AUW is 7.5 onces with a TP 3S-830. The 1320 is too heavy for that plane...Check your AUW and try to stay below 8 ounces.

Don.

P.S. I use the E-Flite 400 outrunner and TP-1320 combination in my E-Flite YAK 54F. Very good combo but the YAK is a bigger plane so it can handle that weight.

[KC8QVO]

Wow, 8oz is not that much. I have never weighed mine but I am sure that its over that! Lets see, thats 1/2 lb so Ill see if I can find something to weigh it with.

Steve

[KC8QVO]

Well I just weighed the airplane...

It is between 10.5 and 11oz!!!! Thats 2.5-3oz over hehehe.

The pennies weigh 1 oz all together, so if I can get those off of there then that will be a big improvement. But I still need another 2 oz. Any ideas where I can get that from? Besides the motor/battery... At this point the airplane is all but trash, so as long as it flies I dont care what happens to it

Steve

[Canhos]

Maybe you are just flying it tail heavy??

I don't know these planes at all. But when you add another 10% of your AUW to a tail, something seems amiss!

Good Luck

Mike

[KC8QVO]

Well the airplane was EXTREMELY nose heavy when I put it together. Since I already had everything mounted I just added pennies to the tail to try to ballance it. That was the wrong thing to do though I should have just moved the battery back - which I am going to try next, but that doesnt cure my weight problem completely. The airplane was never "tail heavy" - I just had the weight there to ballance it. On the first flight, the airplane was too nose heavy and I had 4 pennies on the tail at that time, so I added the other two which fixed the ballance but screwed up the weight. It was most noticeable when I went to the new battery, the new battery is heavier than the old one

Steve

[KC8QVO]

Well, unfortunately, my measurement earlier was incorrect. I laid the nose of the airplane on my scale and had the full weight on there instead of trying to ballance it the way I did before. I got 12.5oz without the pennies. Thats 4.5 oz over, 156.25% of the weight it is supposed to weigh!!! I think this might be a lost cause. Time for a different airplane

Steve

[KC8QVO]

I just tore off all the electronics on my Flat Out and weighed everything. The total came to 8.72oz - thats ONLY the electronics - servos, esc, motor/prop, and RX. I think its time for a different airplane for SURE Cant make 10lbs of fit in a 5lb bag!!

I am going to scratch build a light 3D electric plane instead, just for kicks.

Steve