I want to try Combat.

larrys4227 wrote:Thanks Rusty for the follow up. I bought small 5" ballons and experimented with assembly.... waaayyy too small. I did see 9" ... I'll grab those tomorrow. I hope this works with the SureStart. I modlfied the firewall of the Bat to accept it .. so I'm moving forward at least

Yeah, it'll work fine with a surestart. You don't need the choke tube because all you have to do to get fuel initially to the engine is to give the balloon a little squeeze and fuel flows right into it. You'll see it drip out of the back of the engine. In fact I flood it about half the time, so I just raise the nose a bit while I flip and burn off the flood and then it cranks right up. But the tunnel you probably made will give the intake plenty of air. I stacked mine on a couple of washers for an air gap.

I also added an extra 1/8" ply plate with medium fiberglass and epoxy to strengthen the firewall and give more bite for the screws. It also helps balance as it may need a bit of extra weight up front. The balance points in the instructions are conservative. Ours are balances a full inch behind the LE and we're thinking of adding even more tail weight. Combat planes do their job better tail heavy. It's all about quick turning rather than lazy level flight.

To hold the bladder in place, I bored a small hole near the side of the center strip that a small zip tie can be fed through from underneath, around the neck of the bladder and back through the hole and secured. When it's upside down, it still flops around more than I want , so I may tie it down in a similar way near the rear. Most people use a film canister or something to contain it, but that's so bulky and aerodynamically ugly, I never worry about it.

You could do what I use with pressure bladders and contain it like this picture. It's hard to see but there's a black string tying the back end down. BTW, if you're not familiar with pressure bladders, that 1-1/2" latex tube will hold enough fuel for a 15 minute flight. That Satan is still one of my favorite flyers.
Rusty

Thanks for the tips Rusty. I left th choke tube on and made a couple of rails to mount to. Still to early in my membership to post pics ... I will when it lets me.

Hope to fly the Satan with GoldenBee tomorrow morning .... lots of rain around tho. Crossing fingers ....

Thanks again

That is one wicked looking wing rusty!

rogermharris wrote:That is one wicked looking wing rusty!  

Thanks. Which one, Roger, the Li'l Bats or the Satan? The Li'l Satan is quite a pocket rocket.

How long are your lines on the 'Bat and 'Satan? I've got 42' on the Satan ....

larrys4227 wrote:How long are your lines on the 'Bat and 'Satan?  I've got 42' on the Satan ....

im going to put 30' on my bat is that long enough?

I just got the first flight on the Satan. Now it's raining. It ran rich but good ... so i think I'm in the ballpark without screwing myself into the ground@ 42feet

Last time I flew my Li'l Bats I used 30' dacron lines. It's fast but managable with a Surestart. Any longer lines and I would have had more trouble than I did. Probably would have been fine with no wind, but I had a steady moderate breeze. As I circulated I could see the lines go slack then tight on each circuit. Trying to hold a steady height was impossible. As I came into the wind the thing would climb quickly and as the wind swung behind it would almost pancake on the ground. It took all my effort to stop it oscillating up & down. Reducing the control throw helped with the overcorrection, but with the breeze there was no way I could attempt anything other than round & round.
The Li'l Satan would be a whole different ball game because of the built-up wing. The Bat is like throwing a plank of balsa in the air & seeing what the wind would do with it. Maybe longer lines, a hotter engine and dead calm would make all the difference.

Rod.

I have 35' lines for the Bat, but 30 will do unless you have a really fast engine. I usually fly the Satan on 42 or 45, and it' really flies fast with the TD. But if I want to fly it over at the church across the street I'll put it on 35'. That kind of a flight is a thrilling crowd pleaser. Lol. The trick when a plane is too fast is to just keep it turning corners back and forth and don't try to keep up going round and round.
Rusty

RknRusty wrote:

rogermharris wrote:That is one wicked looking wing rusty!  

Thanks. Which one, Roger, the Li'l Bats or the Satan? The Li'l Satan is quite a pocket rocket.

i like them all but that Li'l Satan is sweet! i was building something similar back in the day with a doner wing from a crashed plane. never quite finished it up before i lost interest in the hobby

Ok .... because I don't have anyone else to tell ....

SUCCESS!!!!!

6 flights on 6 attempts!!  Stooge worked pretty good, but improvement/redesign needed.

Lil' Satan w/ GoldenBee II
5x3 stock 'flexible' prop on 42' Spiderwire
Lap times --- high 3's ---> Glad I didn't try 35 foot lines LOL
25%/25% Sig Champion (extra 5% castor added)

Might be a tad nose heavy but it flew great even with a 5-8mph wind, and it's glide was decent enough.

Haven't figured out the starting procedure, so a bunch of flipping going on to get it running.  Its still breaking in tho .... got alittle bit of dark residue on the wings.  Glad for that extra 5% castor.

It'll do inside loops all day long, and did a few lazy 8's.  It's stumbling abit exiting the backside of the 8 .... so I didn't try any outside loops. Wingovers were effortless.

I didn't completely lean it out .... tried to stay conservative till the residue is gone.  But I did get solid runs with no burbling.

Had to vacate the field ... the heavy rains showed up and put an end to my morning.  I did stop and get 9" balloons for the Lil' Bat project ... will have that running very soon.

Overall .... Great Morning!  Very pleased with the Satan and Golden Bee ...

Wish I could post pictures ..... everybody likes pictures, right?

All right, I'm done .....

Later ....

I'm probably driving you all nuts today .....

Another Update!

Got the balloon tank with the SureStart mounted on the Lil' Bat!!  This balloon will hold alot of fuel!  Got 3 rich runs of 10cc each and it runs great! But of course, thats on the bench and flying could be completely different.  Once I release the hemo's after filling, the fuel doesn't try to run into the engine ... I think its because of the restriction of such a small filter, but once I get it to pop a few times with a prime .... the little motor just sucks it right in.  Leans out quite a bit the last 15-20 seconds and then shuts right off.  The balloon is flat as a pancake.

Very pleased again ..... I'm having a day of it here ... LOL

I think I can post pics .....

And just because the forum will let me .... and for those that haven't seen it ... my Lil' Satan





... After its maiden flights this morning ......

cool stuff larry! another good looking Satan!

Driving us  crazy, hell no, I love it. Sounds like you've got a badass setup on that Satan. Effortless wingovers is proof of that, it's a horsepower maneuver. If you do outside loops, I highly recommend entering the loop from inverted flight. I say that because starting high and diving straight at the ground gives you little or no opportunity to bail out if you realize you don't have enough air. Save that for when you're more familiar with the plane.If you do start from the top, begin your down leg biased to the right side of Downwind. That way you have a headwind for more lift while flying through the bottom, and then a tailwind will help push it back over the top.

If you've already mastered inverted flight, start practicing the reverse wingover before you do outside loops. Those are the opinions of an Intermediate skill class pilot... Me. Other better stunters might pitch in and contradict me, so consider your sources. I know how you felt leaving the field. Doncha love that feeling!

Looks like a CF pushrod on the Satan, I like that. Mine has one too with an adjustable Sullivan Gold-n-Clevis at the stabilator.
We flew our bats at the meeting today. I'll post later about that. But we had good fun and a warm fuzzy when we left too.

Keep it up.
Rusty

P.S.: Post-flight/run on those bats, keep backwashing the filters at least until you're sure the pickup tube isn't shedding any swarf from drilling holes. And prop the plane nose-up between filling and flying. Prime by squeezing the balloon while holding the plane level. If it's flooded, hold it slightly nose-up while burning off the flood. Once you hear it trying to pop over, hold it level again and eventually it'll dry out and crank. It's easiest to fuel and  crank standing up with your pit man(who understands the routine) holding the plane.

I diverged from my "Want to fly Combat" thread, since we actually flew them both at Saturday's MCLS meeting, and this is the "Flying Discussions" forum. In our last episode, my Red,White and Blue Bat with the "Red Lynx" would not hold a needle setting on it's break-in runs. And the Yellow Bat with the Black Lynx would run, but only peaked at 16K rpm.

Well, I cleaned out my Red Lynx spraybar and added a stiffer fuel tube sealing the NV, and test ran it at the meeting. It ran very fast and steady.
I used the GlowplugBoy 35, and I'm glad because it was so hot, I watched lots of people with their big planes developing pre-ignition pinging and knocking, and then lean overheated sagging later in their runs, on both profiles and full fuse planes. The pre-ignition sounds like something loose on the plane rattling, but it's the engine crying painfully. Luckily  I think they were all ABC/ABNs, so it won't hurt them much, but a steel engine, especially ringed pistons...would have been toast.

So we hooked up the lines and prepared to put on an exhibition. Since Wayne flew his Thursday, it was my turn. The Red Lynx was screaming and I gave Wayne the go signal. When he let go, I had too much UP elevator and it immediately flipped over into a loop and nearly got him. But he stepped out of the way as I fought for control. Since it was upside down, I ended up doing my whole first lap inverted. It ran fast and tight, I found the wind and turned it back over into upright flight. Too bad nobody had a camera on that launch. I did some wingovers and loops, but it takes all the air there is to complete a loop. We already knew his was like that too. Both have the CG as far aft as recommended at 1" behind the LE, but apparently that's not enough for either plane. We'll be adding tail weight before trying again.

It went rich after half the flight so I just flew it out and landed. I did manage 3 consecutive loops and wingovers, a dozen or so inverted laps, and a reverse wingover. Wayne then flew his yellow Bat with the Black Lynx, and it too went rich and bogged for most of the flight. I decided this was not gonna work and hunted in the shop today for a pair of fine thread NVs, so I can put them both on pressure bladders. That should fix the unsteady runs. I found them. But upon removing and inspecting the regular needles we'd been using, neither needle had much thread left on it. Theses are the long ones with the yellow Nyrod extensions. I guess the proverbial tuning fork vibrations wore the threads off. Ken has warned about that before. So before I put the new 128tpi pressure spraybars in them, I'm going to shorten two more regular needles and see if they'll work better in the existing spraybars. I hope so. But if not, I'll switch to fine thread NVs and run on pressure.

But nothing broke and we flew the tanks empty, and we'll try again this coming week.
Rusty

Doing and performing stunts isn't much of problem, other than anything over my head ... but, I was commenting that the GoldenBee is stuttering on the backside of the lazy 8's, which is the end of short inverted to the 1/2 outside loop.

Yesterday, I got several hours of flying time in .... lost count of the number of flights. I got 3-4 perfectly needled flights on the Satan and it was really ripping it up.

However, it is still stumbling on outsides ..... and inverted lasts a 1/4 lap and then dies.  Sounds like a classic case of sucking air. I'm going to need to find a diagram or picture of how the pickups should be orientated inside the tank. Once I get that, I'll pop the backplate off and see whats going on.


I got quite a few flights in on the Lil' Bat with SureStart and balloon tank.  Still breaking it in, so was needling on the conservative side.  After the first flight, it was real apparent that I needed shorter lines.  Chopped them to 30' and was much better.

Launching was certainly different.  I grabbed an old bath mat out of one of the bathrooms and using that as my wing stooge.  Worked really good .... but the launches of the Lil' Bat were certainly entertaining.  Plenty of plants into the ground .... vertical takeoffs .... and several inverted launches right out of the stooge.  Never knew what I was going to get from launch to launch.

Gotta play with CG .... loops were huge and certainly not nearly as quick as the Satan. It flew good tho .... even with rich needle settings.  A few more flights and I'll start letting her rip on leaner settings.

I also need to work on the balloon tank.  The back end of the balloon is higher than the neck, which is attached to the plane. I'd like to get the whole thing flat against the wing.  It might benefit to be moved to the inboard wing as well, so the motor doesn't have to pull fuel against centrifugal force.  All in all, the motor ran good and started easily.

I found 3-4 diagrams on where the pickup should be on the GoldenBee stunt tank. After work tonight, I'll take the backplate off and see whats what.

larrys4227 wrote:  Launching was certainly different.  I grabbed an old bath mat out of one of the bathrooms and using that as my wing stooge.  Worked really good .... but the launches of the Lil' Bat were certainly entertaining.  Plenty of plants into the ground .... vertical takeoffs .... and several inverted launches right out of the stooge.  Never knew what I was going to get from launch to launch.

Man, that sounds exactly like my bat launches.  Used an old car mat on a saw horse with a plank held down with a "G" clamp.  The wing slid out nice and neat, but as you say, the thing could go anywhere once it broke free.  I did a couple of figure 8s straight from the stooge, and plenty of pancakes.  These things are real squirrelly.

sounds like a real eye opener on launch that would have been something to see for sure. glad to hear you got it under control and hopefully you can get them both running equally enough to make a go at combat with the pair

I got home this evening and took the backplate off the GoldenBee .... sure enough, the pickup was at the 6 o'clock position. Moved it to 9 and reassembled. Also, as I was loosening the bolts, a bunch of fuel dribbled out ... at least a CC or two.

This should be exciting next time I fly .... mega-stunts and longer flight time.