[NSRCA-discussion] Futaba 2.4 FASST

[JShulman]

Well, I got out the 2.4 and put it in my beater trainer... and "beat it up".
Of course, it was anti-climatic as it didn't give me anything even close to
a problem.  I didn't get to do antenna position testing (too much fun
flying), but on this
day, the RX was stuck in the foam with the antenna side facing up. One
antenna was kind of vertical (had to curve it forward) and the other was
moved horizontal, towards the back, next to my throttle servo and on-off
switch.

The first flight was short. I arrived to the field about noon and took out
my fuselage so I could install the Rx. Having been flying my 14 in my
trainer (and always getting weird looks cause of it) I had to remember which
plugs where to what. 5 minutes later, the trainer was programmed and ready
to go on the 2.4. I did a quick range test on the ground, about 100 paces
and it was solid so I fueled, started it and took-off... no issues. But
after 2 minutes the motor died. Hmmmmm... then I remembered, I forgot to
replace the carb with the new one I just bought, oops. 5 minutes later again
and it was purring like a kitten. So take-off again, and point the nose up
(about 20 degrees, its under-powered) and start climbing for the clouds.
Well the clouds were really up there, so after 10 minutes of climbing to
them, and seeing that my 54" plane was now a speck in the sky, I flew around
for a little bit. Went from one end of the field to the other, all the way
up there. Now at our field, we have a big cell phone tower right in front of
us about a mile away. Having flown on both the left and right of it didn't
produce any interference at that altitude. My friend Ryan, who was watching
all this, said I was somewhere between 1500-2000 ft. I'll take his word for
it as he
flies some full-scale and looking down from that altitude gives him a
different perspective. After my neck couldn't stand it anymore, I dove the
plane down (I did throttle back) and about 4 minutes later I had it back on
the ground.

Now this plane is one that I bought literally to go and beat up with the
understanding that at any given moment it will crash. Usually intentionally,
but as it's also my test plane for radio equipment, other things can happen.
So Ryan fueled it up and preceded to have some fun with it. Full power
touch-n-goes, wing-tip skids and the occasional "oops" prop balancing
touch-n-go.

So the third flight was my turn to abuse it, after a new prop was put on it.
High power touch-n-goes (some hit-n-goes to shorten and rebalance the prop),
wing-tip hits and full power,
full pull loops and turns. Others wanted to see the range of the
system. I rocketed up to that
speck again. I landed, fueled
and went back up. This time there was a Spektrum flying at the same time, no
problem. Someone else said "I've got 5 other Spektrums mind if I turn them
on"... I said go get them.

So he runs back to his trailer, grabs all his radios and starts turning
them on while he's walking up to me. He gets to me and says, that's 6 total
Spektrums on (and I'm a speck again) and he's really impressed. Of course
I'm getting bored up in the clouds so I bring it back down. On the way down
he has another idea... line the radio's on the edge of the runway and let
me do my high speed demolition flying. He puts his Spektrums along the edge
of the run way and I come screaming by and do one of my multiple
bounce-n-goes and it's rock solid. I come back the other way and same
result, shorter prop but solid link. By this time, we are
all impressed with the system.

So that's 2 spread spectrum systems working at the same time, with no
issues. The future is bright.

Regards,
Jason
www.jasonshulman.com
www.shulmanaviation.com
www.composite-arf.com


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