rcparkflyers.com
           -Where flying is fun every day!

Here is the page for all the goings on with the St. Marys Wall Bangers - SMWB. We meet most every Saturday ~6pm to ~9pm in a large gymnasium.



Outside view
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Panoramic view
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Parts:

• 8. EOS 06/07


• 7. 05/13/2006


• 6. 04/22/2006


• 5. 04/07/2006


• 4. 04/01/2006


• 3. 03/25/2006


• -. KC Road Trip


• 2. 03/11/2006


• 1. 03/05/2006


• -. Topeka Fly-In

Found a good site for LED calculations by Rob 'linear' Arnold. Lots of detail on LED basics. LED Center - Basics.

The tools:
LED series/parallel array wizard

LED calculator

Stumbled across this site in my favorites, forgot I even had seen this before. William has a lot of good information about getting started with night flying.

For example to get started William suggest Light sticks. They are simple quick but there are some disadvantages. William states...

One of the simplest (yet least elegant) solutions is to use chemical light sticks to light up the airplane. This has the advantages of being economical (light sticks are cheap), quick to set up, and they require no power source. Their disadvantages, however, include additional weight to the aircraft, disruption of the airflow over the aircraft surfaces (increasing drag and altering flight characteristics), and limited life span. Light sticks will not shed enough light on the aircraft to make the actual airframe visible in the sky, so all you will see will be the light sticks. Therefore, it is important to arrange the light sticks - and enough of them - in a particular pattern so that you can discern the orientation and heading of the aircraft in the dark.

Flying at night requires that you are very familiar with your aircraft obviously and he goes into a few good ideas to get started.

I cannot fully emphasize the importance of being familiar with the plane you want to fly at night. The more comfortable you are flying it during the day, the easier it will be to make the transition into the night. But don't be fooled by your confidence. No matter how well you feel you know your aircraft - no matter how long you have been flying it - it will be a different experience flying it at night for the first time. Do not plan to do anything fancy during your first few flights, because your first few flights will be used to learn some new skills (or at least sharpen ones you already have). On my first night flight, I flew a plane that I had been flying for many years. Taking it up at night seemed almost natural. But that's only because I was already so familiar with the aircraft that I knew what to expect and could accurately predict its movements and orientation.

Lastly he goes into detail on how to set up your LED system. Calculations and all. He uses 43 LEDs on his airplane that is picture on his site..

Nice site William.. I just set up a few LED's on my plane but seeing yours with 43 I'm going to have to get my calculations re-figured.

Happy night flying!!

Here is a nifty mod that everyone should have especially those of us who "pull up" a little to roughly in an emergency and/or our limited aerobatics that the GWS Slow Stick Park Flyer EP ARF is capable of doing get out of control.

Michael's Slow Stick Wing Reinforcement Braces are produced by Michael Berger the same gentleman who started the Ultimate Slow Stick thread I posted about.

A short snippit of his page follows:

This is a reinforcing brace for the GWS Slow Stick wing to replace the provided brace made of aluminum. The provided dihedral brace is weak, and looses it's strength, fatiguing and becoming useless after any force is applied to it in flight. This may happen after a while of regular flying, or multiple loops, strong pull-outs from a dive, or any other such aggressive flying. If you have any upgraded motor, or the stock motor on more than 7 cells, then your provided dihedral braces will ware out soon. When this happens, the brace becomes completely useless, and the wing becomes very weak. The next time you pull up violently, the wing panels will bend upward, and if the enough stress is pulled onto the wings, they will bend upward violently enough so that the tips nearly touch above the fuselage, and the wing will snap at the center. This is called folding.

Great Job Michael.. Tnx for providing a nifty little mod for the beloved Slow Stick

Well I decided to stop on by the RC Groups forum site. I had not been there in a while. I had bookmarked several threads that I wanted to keep track of and did a little review of the listing.

Well I came upon a gold mine of information pertaining to the GWS Slow Stick Park Flyer EP ARF. Lot and lots of pages/pictures of information with regard to helping you get the most out of the Slow Stick. Michael/aeropenguin started the thread in January 2003 and now it is up to 9 threads. Wow.

The thread list:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

Here is some information for all of you who can not get enough flying in. Best time to fly is at dawn and dusk when the wind has not picked up yet or already has died down. But you say it gets hard to see your aiplane and or you are haveing a really hard time "flying the shadow". Well this product should do the trick.

Curtek has a product that looks like a real neat setup without adding too much weight to your aircraft. Here is a page on Mathew's site that has some really good video shots of his product in action.

The e Zone has a couple of reviews on his system. First in April 2003 Curtek Navigation Lighting System and then January 2004 using a Dusk Stik The first review goes into a lot of detail with regard to installation and testing of the equipment on the aircraft. A really nice feature is the following:

When your battery runs low and your motor shuts off the LEDs stay lit. They continued to work for quite some time and I always landed with power to spare. However, should you use these at the slope with a glider the LEDs will all start to flash when the voltage to the receiver is getting low.

Not bad for ~$70 check it out...

Found a neat product...


I do a lot of charging of LiPo (Lithium Polymer) battery packs as that is all I use since converting over to brushless motors. (any mod for more power!!!) Well, all my flying buddies have cautioned me into charging those bad boys with care. I even have a friend of mine who tried to light his mini-van on fire. Oh boy!!

I found this product I believe on RC Groups, it made by company called Battery Bunker seems to be a must have for the RC shack. The pictures are a real eye opener. Charging without one of this could be fatal. Or at the very least extremely destructive. Take a look...

A MUST READ STORY WITH PIX!!!
So you're going to use Lithium Polymer Batteries

BEFORE
AFTER
AFTER 2

Many more pix... Follow the above story link.