Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Simple Hawk Sky and EZ Hawk Modifications

Today, taking advantage of rare good weather, I flew the Hawk Sky from Grayson Hobbies, with excellent results. When I got the plane I noticed that the ailerons were "reflexed", so that with the stick neutral they both deflected down about 3 degrees. I left them like that. In effect, the middle section of the wing has undercamber. I set up the motor pod with a 1/32 inch shim at the back edge to give downthrust and substituted a gray nylon Park Zone pusher for the stock prop. I used a Genesis 25c 1800 mah 11.1 volt lipo. I used hot-glued spruce strips to beef up the nose section and a Spectrum AR 600 receiver and a DX5E transmitter. The long part of the antenna wire got taped to the side of the fuselage, below the canopy. I used spruce to create a stronger front canopy latch, enlarged the ventilation holes, reinforced the wing leading edges with wide packing tape, used hot glue to hold the wings in place, and applied wide outdoor duct tape along the fuselage bottom. I can report that this plane is an excellent flyer! It flew fast and tracked well in 15mph gusts. It wanted to climb so bad that it needed a lot of down trim to keep it in sight. I used low rates on the controls and still found it very responsive. It flew so well, I took my EZ Hawk from Nitroplanes and added 1/2 inch to each aileron, reflexing that part down about 5 degrees, to get that undercamber. Now I find that I can launch this plane at half throttle and it goes straight ahead, with little tendency to nose in. It is much easier to control in wind, climbs much better, and lands very slowly, almost as though it had flaps. I am really pleased with these planes!

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