Pitts S2A third video flight, straight and level
Posted by Akom • Wednesday, October 15. 2008 • Category: ToysI did it! I flew straight and level. Video is available.
Since the side of the fuselage seems to be the best place for the 215g that is the camcorder, I needed 200+ grams on the other side... or less all the way at the tip of the wing? Then it hit me... I have two lipo batteries, about 100g each. And that is how the balanced Fiji Bottlenose was born.
In addition to balancing the plane correctly, I finally got to cleaning the camcorder lens, which helped a bit with the sunspots and artifacts. I also covered the microphone with a bit of soft grey packing foam to act as a windsock - and the sound is no longer clipping from the airstream.
The details...
The good news
it flies straight and level.
The bad news
It doesn't fly very fast. That is, the plane is basically at its weight capacity. The bare plane is about 520g, with battery it's about 635g. My takeoff weight this morning was 930g!
But
But it took off, it flew, obediently, though it could not climb very fast (see video) before stalling. As a result, it mostly filmed the ground, and did so well as it was pretty close to the ground the whole time.
Landing was uneventful, the landing gear popped out, as always - plus the road I landed on is packed dirt, which was so dry that the wheels just sank into sand.
And, as usual, youtube made my video look like it was filmed with a cheap webcam. I uploaded 200MB of 640x480 two-pass goodness!
Note: I've posted this video to vimeo too, see the comparison page
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