Little Wing Video - test videos mcbirdman

mcbirdman

Gold Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2003
Messages
1,242
Location
Grand Ledge (Lansing) Michigan
Aircraft
lw3 sp long, lw3 2place long yami
Total Flight Time
150
Well, busy at it is working on the building and normal life issues - I am trying to keep moving.

I am starting to get my video equipment figured out. Doing the best I can. Got 2 GoPro Helmet cams. Bought the snap on the back video monitors but will do no good when cameras mounted remotely so I am wiring a color monitor to dash so I can use the remote pan/tilt bases I bought and will also be installing.

I want to be able to make some cool videos and do it while I start running her down to the airport for performance runss and crow hopping. I figure I might as well have the cameras with me as I grow...

Here is a first video, I am anxious to see how it posts, looks and sounds.... Full Disclosure. - starting the engine, prerotate, taxi and camera angle test only - NO FLYING in this video.

Hope you enjoy. We gotta start somewhere...........

YouTube - ‪Little Wing Autogyro ground test runup mcbirdman‬‏
 
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Jim- Looking and sounding good! I remember your Little Wing was horsepower challenged at Mentone several years ago. You have come a long way, and I hope you can bring it. I would love to see it leave ground effect at Mentone this year. Congratulations.


Stan
 
Reposted Video in Higher definition. Looks better.

Thanks guys - It runs good, no belt problems and has been fun to take down to airport.

I am thinking I may be at Mentone not for sure. We'll see how things progress.
 
James

I have seen you Withstand undue criticisim, fight problem after problem, and continue to perserver, going ahead with determination to "get 'er done" and this over quite a considerable amount of time. I would sincerely like to congratulate you for being the excellent example of the experimental home builder which others can look to for inspiration.

Tony
 
Aww, Thank You Tony! I really appreciate it. I know you get it and it is people like you that makes me want to stick around. RE-reading your comment I think it is one of the most heartfelt compliments I have heard about my endeavors.

The last time I came to Mentone I left the aircraft at home. Takes a bit of work to bring in something longer than my car. One of the last two times I brought it I remember unpacking the trunk and my son said something about how his pillow was melted. When we were packing to leave I realized the carpeting in the trunk was deformed. An insulating plate above the muffler had rusted off and was trying to burn up my trunk. After loading up gallon sized water jugs we figured we could limp home.

We were ready to go and then we realized we had a flat tire - something in the field poked through it. We went to get it off and one of the lugnuts spun and if I remember right some other kind members went into town to get a socket we could pound on to the nut, hopefully to get it to turn. I mean without the wheel coming off we were really stuck out in a hot field. Thanks to the assistance of fellow campers the problem was solved.

That week was extremely busy for me. Fixing, scrounging, learning and meeting people I was still happy to be there. The Gyro community is an amazing group of people. It is the reason I want to return. Last time I went I recognised a few of the people who took interest and helped me, and I thanked them. There are two in particular that I haven't been able to figure out.

Regarding progress - A great friend of mine who owns a Car Repair shop with full machine shop stopped by Racer's house Monday night after Todd got out of work. He had flown from Detroit into Colorado, picked up a truck, went to New Mexico and was hoping to meet up with Todd in CO. Springs. Todd was happy as he said it is much easier doing a pickup than shipping. I am so happy it worked out. Jealous I couldn't be there.

Today I will get to see the Yamaha engine that has been brought back. Todd is still making the redrive parts for me but he gave me things to start making motor mounts.

I mounted the motorized pan and tilt head on the gyro and made some custom attatchment bars that minimize vibration. I installed the color monitor in the cockpit with the remote control. Results are very much improved. It is really neat to be able to smoothly move the camera and see exactly what it is pointing at. New holes drilled in camera housing is making wind noise I did not have before so I am trying to seal those areas up.
 
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Looks good Jim.

Love the automatic door closer.:lol:

Not everyone can afford to to put one on their gyro.

How much more thrust do you think you will get with the re-drive?

What was the horsepower before and after installation?

Good luck on the taxi and flight testing.
 
Thanks Rick. If I could only figure out house to latch it automatically too....

H.P. hadn't meant that much to me but engine was rated at 70 continuous, 80 takeoff. Then with redrive they say 103 takeoff available and 70 continous. The advantage is thrust when you need it and then normal output with a more efficient larger prop.

All I know is we used to get 230lbs thrust with 62 inch prop but now with 72 inch prop we get 380+lbs.

Flying we were turning direct drive 2900rpm during intital flight tests. Today at about 15mph or so and 3100 rpm she was very light on gear and hitting 300 rotor rpms. I still can drive motor up to around 4000rpm.

It was in 80's today. I am not sure how much faster they should be turning but stick was back all the way and although it was really draggy I had plenty of throttle left. Now I am just trying to figure if it is better to add throttle and have it lift up or let stick forward, let it accelerate(burning up more runway) and possibly have it shoot way past a few feet off the ground. It felt slow and doggy and I just couldn't bring myself to add more power. I gotta figure out if I am safer learning slower speed hops with a tail dragger or faster run on type hops with the taildragger........ I didn't really expect to fly, just keep running and getting used to the machine. It was fun doing the prerotate, turning around on taxiway and running faster and faster rotor rpms on taxiway without even going fast.

I was staying off the runway even though it was quiet at airport. Maybe some high speed runs on runway would be just fine. Going faster on the much narrower taxiway doesn't give much room off centerline so I practised stick back low groundspeed runs. At least I am getting the feel of incrementally feeding the blades power and how fast they speed up.....
 
Wow, that is a huge increase in thrust.

That should be enough to make it fly safely.

Have fun and keep us posted.

Rick
 
Behind the power curve ?

Behind the power curve ?

Jim,

May be useless info, but with pusher (and I think tractor) once you hit "drag" it's time to ease up on the stick. With a pusher you also have the added incentive to get off the tail wheel (balance on the mains), but I would suspect a similar process also should be used to get rotor and airspeed up to flying condition on a tractor. One of the guys with a bee was complaining about insufficient lift because he was flying behind the power curve. It was recommended that he ease up on the stick, and it worked.
My tractor projects are still in work (probably for some time yet), but it's nice to follow your exploits. Thank you for sharing.
 
James, what type of pan/tilt bases are you using? Where did you get them? Do you have any photos of the way you mounted them?
 
Thanks Rocky - NOT useless ! I am learning and listening. Thank you for the consideration.

I have been thinking about it and I know I have the stick far back to fly slow. I could still give it power and it would be behind the power curve with the notion it probably wouldn't lift high and I would have a slow enough ground speed to keep her straight.

However, going faster would give more tail authority to keep her straight although there is no bad tendencies I have noticed so far. I did go down to airport and although it was mainly about camera test for vibration, wind noice and dash mounted monitor - I did taxi faster/harder than before. If you like I will post the maybe boring to others - video. I am not in a rush but I feel more and more comfortable getting the blades up to speed and how fast I can do it. I really have the blades back as the stance of the taildragger and my bigger main wheels lean the mast back a little more than "usual".

I don't want to flap Dragon wings... I heard it is easy to do. I know to dump power and push smoothly the stick forward if stick starts shaking. So maybe I am taking too long bringing them up but I wouldn't know. When I slow down to turn around I push the stick forward after letting off throttle and letting it slow down enough to make a 180 degree turn. The rotors slow down quite a bit - the lowest I saw was was flickering 60-90 rotor rpm. I know I have been waiting for 120 to bring stick back more than 1/2 back and then easing in throttle. Then I have been adding in more and more to see the 200 even up to 300 rpm.

I think as I get more time running up and down that I should let the stick forward and speed increase. I think I might be better off with speed - hoping it will have a stabalizing effect. Going slow I can feel the tires kind of drifting due to aircraft being light at those speeds. My main thought is that flying level would require the airframe to be much more parallel to runway and that the stick would be closer to nuetral than all the way back. I think I have to agree Rocky that easing up on the stick would keep the aircraft from trying to stand on the tailwheel and allow me some stick movement to flare even if it got up a ways. I don't think it matters if I could muscle it off BthPC. Not really what I want to do... So I went back and looked at the Ken Brock videos with the most important lesson being that to much angle it mushes down but the right attitude of the airframe it just flys off effortlessly. I am glad you are putting your input in and pleased it is along the lines of what I am finding. Ron says it lifts off three point. I doubt holding stick full back helps it happen that way. He said... surprise.... ease forward only enough to allow the machine to acelerate to flying speed. I guess I don't know what that speed is yet but I am probably only letting it go 15 or 20 and I think most like to go at least 25-35 or so to fly.

Researching/Pondering - I sort of gleaned the idea that the blades CAN be all the way back even when turning. They sure slow down fast and if I should not tilt them forward in a turn it would likely save a lot of runway just recovering from slowing down to negotiate the turn AND pushing the stick forward. Can you clarify this for me? I just felt like tilting the blades forward for turns is good habit so that in windy situations you dont catch a gust but then again if they aren't kept spinning fast enough it may be easier to get into trouble. Could you set me straight on this please? I'll try to get the video around of test 2 video. Thank you for your interest and advice.
 
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Hi Tim, yes. I'll have to try retrieve off other computer. I tried the x10 motorized base but vibration was an issue that was only partly solved by wrapping soft foam around the base and the head. Problem was there was what you probably would call gear lash in the tilt axis and it let the camera rock forward and back.

I decided to mount an extendable pole on the rear mast supports and since my newer more precice pan tilt head has no lash slack but weighs more I mounted it upside down to let the "mass" of the motorize base to hang down rather than apply a rocking type motion being perched above the pole so to speak. I went on ebay and won a a bid around 120.00 for two of them I think with remote cords and extentsions. I so wanted the x10 to work not only for size but because I could program the wireless remote to 4
assignable memory positions. That is why I had to buy up a bit by getting the wired ones but they do have speed adjusments for pan and tilt. Mine only go 180 degrees but they have more expensive 360 of course. They run on 4 aa batteries and smoothly. Far from perfect but the best I could do to relive my starting adventure. They are called Bescor motorized tilt pan heads http://cgi.ebay.com/Bescor-Video-Mo...d=130521915102&ps=63&clkid=404262338704498365

Hope that helps. The reason for the extendable pole, btw supported by two thin cables, on lifting and one pulling forward is that I can leave it in place to put it in hanger or extend it out for a wider view. The way it sits now is best for me as the wheel pant is in center low of the screen when looking forward which minimizes any attention away from what is more important. I can just glance down and know how to reset it if I turn it back say .... to look how close the rotor is to the tail or whatnot.

I am glad that I have those automatic teeter limiters though. I am so used to knowing how low those blades are sitting there that I feel funny pulling them back all the way. Next time I am going to rotate the camera to the back at startup just so I can see for myself. Isn't that cool?
 
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Here you go Tim, Nothing fancy, just a removable 2 point attachment with two cables with pole that can extend out or be shortened to put in hangar. The Balcor hangs below the end and has the cable routed to cockpit. It works MUCH better than before. I used software to stabalize the image and now I don't see a need to.

Here is a couple views from the new video footage.
 

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