Just finished painting my RCP Mig29 V4 NAMCV3 and upgrading the power system by adding the NTM Prop Drive 2700 motor with 6x4 APC prop and 60A ESC.
Since the Mig35 is still in development and not yet operational (or at least I could not find reference to it being operational in any of my research), it has only been painted mostly grey for airshows and testing. Grey paint schemes and my 53 yr old eyes don't get along well, so I went with a white, blue and red "camo" paint scheme in honor of the Russian flag. Should be easy to keep track of, even at 100 mph... :)
Here are a few more pictures of the plane.
On the spine of the fuselage, I put our NAMC patch and the patch that RT designed for us with our motto in latin, Think, Design, Test and Validate.
Here is a picture of my new power setup and the layout in my electronics bay. This shows battery position based on the current CG.
My overall weight is now 700 gr/24.7 oz with the 2200 battery. My weight is now spread over 11.25" from the front of the ESC to the tip of the bullet nut on the motor. This is only 1/2" more than the weight distribution with the FP motor which was 10.75". As mentioned in a previous post, the NTM motor is about 3/8" longer than the FP motor and I needed the ESC to be that far forward to counterbalance the heavier motor. As it sits right now, the bulk of the weight, the battery is in the same place as it was with the Focal Price setup. This is pretty light for an NTM setup for me with full paint job and 6 servos, so I am excited to see what sort of speeds I will get, especially on 4S where my thrust to weight ratio will be theoretically 2.2:1.
I played around with thinning the paint a bit more since my Su35 MK2 build and found my paint scheme (I only painted the top) added only 18 gr/0.6 oz (I even painted the white areas to make the color "pop" a little better) which is about half what my old paint schemes used to weigh, so I am happy with that.
Weather isn't looking suitable for flying again til Tuesday, then the testing and evaluation with the new power setup will begin.
Cheers,
Scott
Scott,
ReplyDeleteI'm digging that paint scheme/pattern. I sure hope your understanding of NAMC is that it is "open source." I'm copying that scheme ;)!!
So your polar moment will be affected by 2.5 oz and only 1/2 inch! Wow. Clearly, you have demonstrated the importance of minimizing polar moment by centralizing the electronics around the Cg. I definitely going to do some adjusting of the ESC position to minimize polar moment.
Too windy to fly all week. Hopefully the wind will slow down and it will warm up. 30 degrees here this morning, almost didn't make it to work;)
A la votre,
Stephan
Thanks Stephan -
DeleteOf course, everything here is "open source", copy away! I look forward to your masterpiece... :)
Yes, you are right about making the effort to get the electronics or the bulk of the plane's mass as close to CG as possible. As I mentioned in a previous post I always knew this would be the case, but through lack of planning or how things were laid out on the plane I never ended up with things being this concentrated and it makes a significant difference in the plane's balance, stability and agility. So after seeing how well this plane flies, it will be something I will be focusing on much more closely in future builds.
Next up in my build queue will be another FRC Su35 MK2, I am very interested to see how that plane will be affected by moving the motor forward, and again concentrating the weight within as short a distance as possible around the CG.
I'm wondering if because of the unique "mid mount" prop in slot design of these park jets that any time you can get all the "Cs" (center of gravity, center of mass, center of thrust and center of lift) as close together as possible, it dials in the performance that much better.
When you look at the V4 lineup from RC Powers, the motor mounts on the Mig and F18 are moved significantly further forward on both than on the V3s. The Su30 V4 doesn't have a predecessor, but it also has it's motor much closer to the CG and although I am not wanting to push the Mig to extreme high alpha or hovering, the concepts must be the same if all the "Cs" are being pushed together into a smaller area of the plane.
You are right about distributing the lighter components around to reduce that polar moment. I think that focusing on having the bulk of the mass (the battery) as close to CG as possible makes a big difference and if rearranging the other components if possible to allow this to happen, it has a very positive impact on airplane performance.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that it calms down and warms up, looks like only tomorrow and Friday will be good flying for me, so batteries are getting charged up as we speak... :)
Cheers,
Scott