"Fancherized" Twister build

JPvelo wrote:And here she is:




Ran about six ounces of fuel through her on two runs in the back yard. Needle is nice and steady but I'm sure I'll chase it around some until it's run in. I wasn't thinking about spinner to fuse clearance when I drilled the engine mounts. I just pushed the motor all the way back and drilled. Lesson learned. The lusterkote I used said "crystal clear" but it's actually matte, which I actually like enough to do on another build.
I'm meeting the club flight instructor at the field tomorrow, he's bringing his twister so I can fly it first. I've not flown a plane this large before. I will try and remember to get video.

Jim

Somehow I missed these pictures. That is an awesomely good looking plane! I am smitten. Hope you don't mind if I steal your color scheme. Looks like a lot of work.
Rusty

I wouldn't mind a CC on that picture... I am going to CF tube on all new builds.

Rusty,
Thank you, that's about 3 hours of masking. You are welcome to steal it. Here's where I stole it from:



Ron,
I ordered my cf pushrods from stunthanger hobbies. Tell them the end to end length for the ball joints and they custom make them. It set me back about $15 and I had them less than a week after I ordered them. Money well spent.

Jim

Nice plane Jim, Your paint job turned out fantastic! Glad it flies well.

Nice job Jim really looks great , can tell you put a lot of time and effort into the build and finishing . congrads on the first flight , to me there always exciting and scary really gets the adrenaline flowing .   

Joe Adamusko is a member of our club. All of Joe's planes are museum pieces. He's a terrific person and just builds the most spectacular planes. None of what is seen on his planes is a decal. All of it is dope. Truly a amazing builder and finisher. Ken

Wow, you Philly Flyers have quite an impressive collection of talent. How many active members are there?
Rusty

I am always amazed at the lengths you have gone to and the time spent to achieved such an incredible finish.

I simply do not have the patience to apply paint - let alone different colours involving masking.

That is a very fine model.

Thank you everyone, very much appreciated. I will try and post some video this week.

Jim

roddie wrote:...I have also not flown a big plane yet... It must have been a RUSH!!! Good luck on the following flights!!

It's different, Roddie. 1/2A at a high speed yanking loops, standing still ripping it back and forth from shoulder to shoulder, jerking out of a wingover straight into another wingover like a bouncing superball, stopping to do lazy 8s to regain your balance... that's a rush. I can only speak for myself, but with the big ones, you start a flight with a plan and try your best to execute it. Even it you're sport flying, you pretty much know what you're going to do, because if you just start flying random maneuvers on a whim, you can't always yank it out of a situation where a pair of maneuvers you did on a whim don't necessarily blend comfortably(for the plane) and you can only helplessly watch three pounds of balsa turn into a smoking hole in the ground. Ask me how I know.   Where a 1/2A flight is whimsical, a big heavy plane's flight demands concentration and I guess responsibility. That sounds haughty, but It really describes the difference. The adrenalin is still there, but the way I've described 1/2A flying as 3 minutes of controlled panic, stunter flying is 6 minutes of a different kind of intensity. Babble babble babble... sorry, it may not be that way at all for Jim and Ron, Ken, et al. Just my way of comparing the two sports.
Ramblin' Rusty.

RknRusty wrote:if you just start flying random maneuvers on a whim, you can't always yank it out of a situation where a pair of maneuvers you did on a whim don't necessarily blend comfortably(for the plane) and you can only helplessly watch three pounds of balsa turn into a smoking hole in the ground. Ask me how I know.
Ramblin' Rusty.

On my second flight with the twister I got comfortable with loops up high. I thought I would crank in a tight horizontal eight up high and it came in on me. Scared the crap out of me.  I probably ran ten feet to take up slack and save it.  It was my first outside with the plane and I thought "crap, I built a warped plane that won't do outsides". It does beautiful eights, inside and outside loops. Just not up high super tight at an angle where the 500 square inch wing catches a crosswind. I don't have Rustys' experience with the big planes but I found out real quick I need to be much more intentional and aware of wind direction.

Jim

It's neat how we all see things differently. It's probably starts in how we experience flying.

1/2A for me much like Rusty was controlled panic. Thing is since I have flown the .35 and larger ships I have learned to fly 1/2A much the same way so it is less panic. The guys I fly with were forever telling me to "Open it up" as with 1/2A I was doing tighter maneuvers as the speed was so high and the reedies like to cut out so darn much that I wanted to get through the stunt quickly.

Thanks to Rusty and others here I have now l switched to bladder fed TD/Medallion with less pitch to keep it controlled and eliminate flame outs.

The big difference between the two is PULL the .35 stuff has so much more and it makes a beginner feel really comfortable with all that line tension.

Even the bigger stuff can get quick as a run becomes lean towards the end of the tank.

Both have their quirks and I love every minute of it. If you guys really want to enjoy this hobby I urge you to build and fly. You won't regret it.

Ron

JPvelo wrote:

RknRusty wrote:if you just start flying random maneuvers on a whim, you can't always yank it out of a situation where a pair of maneuvers you did on a whim don't necessarily blend comfortably(for the plane) and you can only helplessly watch three pounds of balsa turn into a smoking hole in the ground. Ask me how I know.
Ramblin' Rusty.

On my second flight with the twister I got comfortable with loops up high. I thought I would crank in a tight horizontal eight up high and it came in on me. Scared the crap out of me.  I probably ran ten feet to take up slack and save it.  It was my first outside with the plane and I thought "crap, I built a warped plane that won't do outsides". It does beautiful eights, inside and outside loops. Just not up high super tight at an angle where the 500 square inch wing catches a crosswind. I don't have Rustys' experience with the big planes but I found out real quick I need to be much more intentional and aware of wind direction.

Jim

Yep, It's like a big kite up there. Sometimes even when you line up correctly the wind up high is different from down low. Especially around uneven terrain and trees. My Cardinal did the exact same thing you mentioned this past weekend due to winds shifting at the top of the circle.

Keep in mind when overhead you have a more room and the plane will fly itself back into tension before it hits the ground no matter what direction it goes. When I lose tension up high I just follow the plane with my eyes and get ready for the yank when it catches.

I have never lost a plane from an overhead. It's always lower in the circle. I say that but if you lose power in an overhead it's a different story.

Ron

JPvelo wrote:
On my second flight with the twister I got comfortable with loops up high. I thought I would crank in a tight horizontal eight up high and it came in on me. Scared the crap out of me.  I probably ran ten feet to take up slack and save it.  It was my first outside with the plane and I thought "crap, I built a warped plane that won't do outsides". It does beautiful eights, inside and outside loops. Just not up high super tight at an angle where the 500 square inch wing catches a crosswind. I don't have Rustys' experience with the big planes but I found out real quick I need to be much more intentional and aware of wind direction.

Jim

That's 100% true, and you have to be aware of how much energy one move has bled off before you can decide if the plane has enough airspeed(see wind direction) for lift and inertia to continue or abort. That's a quick life or death decision for a new 35 size pilot. You have to fly big and keep enough energy to transition from one move to the next. That was so hard for me to get the hang of after so many years of the little ones with their high power to weight ratio brute forcing through moves that would make a big one literally fall out of the sky. You learn much more about aerodynamics when you have to become aware of lift and airspeed every second. It becomes a big part of your awareness during the building process too. That's how the intensity and "Rush" Roddie mentioned comes. The fun of it comes as a more serious awareness of how to manage the physics of flight. Again, I don't want to come off as sounding big or snobby, but it's fun processing the flight as a stream of knowledge. It is only barely beginning to come naturally to me, and expert pilots can work with every slight shift in the wind, adjusting where they pull maneuvers and modifying control inputs as conditions change during and between each lap. It's a rush.
Rusty

Power and speed shouldn't be an issue using the LA on that plane. There's far more power in that engine required to fly the Twister. The Twister was designed for a Fox.35. I don't want to instruct you to do something that someone has already offered advice on. I just think that if things are getting light up top, I would consider moving your leadouts forward 1/8" at a time until the problem is gone. If your leadouts are back, you will receive lots of line tension down low and level but you will receive very little up top. I would also hold the plane with the spinner on the ground standing directly behind it and sight the wings from the rear while holding the very rear of the fuse looking straight at the back of the wings. A warp can easily be undetectable with a plane with flaps. Flaps can also be slightly off of the true centerline of trailing edge giving you the illusion that the wing looks fine. Don't compensate using tip weight. A properly trimmed out plane essentially needs none to very little weight. You really shouldn't require more than 3/4 oz for that plane. If necessary, a small tweak of the flap should quickly remedy the problem. The Twister wing doesn't have a lot of torsional strength due to no D tube sheeting in the leading edge so even the covering can twist the wing during the application. I'm not suggesting that this is at all a problem, I'm just offering any suggestions to what can be problems.

While it becomes very hard to offer advice based on a paragraph, you also mentioned about the engine cutting and burping towards the end of the flight. You may have already cured that ailment.  Leadouts that are too far back can also be suspect in this situation. One problem with clunk tanks are the shape of the pickup. That tank in particular has a tight radiused outside corner where the clunk is thrown. You would have better engine runs towards the end of the flight if you took the clunk and filed a hard angle onto it so that it allows the hole of the pickup to get closer into the radiused corner. If not, fuel will always be remaining in the tank where the pickup can suck onto it sporadically causing sputtering and burping. You don't want that , you want a clean shutoff. The problem with filing the angle is that in doing so, the plating is removed from the clunk which can lead to green build up if left unrun for periods of a time and the weight is also lost due to removing material. I do a few things to benefit such as making a Y pipe which now allows the uniflow to travel with the clunk. This can really help if the tank is becoming problematic.  Ken

Had the twister out for four flights today, still no video. Sorry.  Would've flown more but it was pretty windy.Made some changes to the fuel system. I added "rails" to the top and bottom of my tank tray to minimize movement and prevent foaming. I also switched my standard clunk to a sintered bronze filter clunk to help deal with foam. I was going to re plumb with a slightly longer feed tube but the new clunk is longer so that wasn't necessary. Did it all work? Like a charm. Runs were consistent from start untill the the last three laps. It speeds up and then chugs/surges for the last lap.

Jim

I am glad you had a good run! By chance did you add a few drops of Armor All to your fuel?

Sounds good. Thanks for the update. Too bad it was windy, but we'll keep waiting for your video documentation.
I'm heading out to fly in the morning. Winds forecast to be 6 to 9 mph during the hours we'll be there.
Rusty

Cribbs74 wrote:I am glad you had a good run! By chance did you add a few drops of Armor All to your fuel?

The stuff works wonders. I use Son-of-a-Gun. Same thing.
Rusty

Cribbs74 wrote:I am glad you had a good run! By chance did you add a few drops of Armor All to your fuel?

No, I've not heard of that before.

Jim

For some reason it's an anti foaming agent. It sounds weird, but it works. I have no idea why.