Long-EZ 2400

As some of you may know I purchased this weird looking model late Summer 2016. It was an empty air frame, never been flown but had some hangar damage. Originally fitted with an ASP 160 twin four stroke. Having no oil residue and the fact that the exhaust cut outs in the cowl were incomplete I guess the Guy lost interest due to the amount of mods needed in reality to get this thing flying. My plan was to drop an ASP180 four stroke in (ex Super Chipmunk).

Back in last Autumn the 180 was fitted and the fuel tank fitted in the new position the previous owner had created. The manual instructions (if you can call some monochrome pictures a manual) show the tank facing backwards into the firewall. That is no good! The clunk under model acceleration and normal flight patterns would be pushed back most of the time. Anyway everything was plumbed in with tank in the new position. 16x10 three blade prop fitted and start up. Engine ran okay but idle was awful. It was not the engine because it was perfect in the Chipmunk. Played around for a while but no joy. Now I am losing interest.

Anyway to cut long story short, got fed up of it cluttering up my hangar so decided to go in another direction so to speak. Electric! Clean and simple set up.

With the ability to fit the two power 4000maH (1040kgs) Lipos up front the model's supplied ballast weight in the nose of 534 gram can now get lost. Replaced by two Life receiver packs (104 grams) now just make the model slightly nose heavy. A tray was made up from lite-ply for the ESC to sit on in the fuselage for easy access to USB fly lead for programming if needed.

Over the past few days I have retro fitted an X plate with stand-offs. Fitted a 6374 SK3 192Kv motor controlled by an AeroStar 120 amp ESC Opto and at present running it on 10 cells, 4000maH, Saturday afternoon with clamp meter in position I ran her up using the 16x10 3 blade Windsor CCW prop. 58 amps WOT so I calculate the input power to prop drive at around 2430 watts (3.2 ihp)

Now to do some tidying up and minor fiddly bits and modify the wing bolt fittings.

PhilF51 wrote: With the ability to fit the two power 4000maH (1040kgs) Lipos up front ....

Phil, you're going to need some hefty weight in the tail to counter balance that nose weight

I will rephrase the term "up front". It actual fact the power packs are inline with the stabiliser. Then right at the front the receiver packs (208 grams) all in all just balances that 1 kilo+ lump hanging out at the rear.

Next job is to make mounting blocks for the nose cone. Followed by fitting the Seacraft 6mm wing bolts when they turn up.

I hope that I'm wrong Phil, but that prop looks as if it's on the wrong way round. Also, now you've gone electric you didn't need to go to all that trouble to buy a pusher prop when you only had to swap over a couple of wires.

C'est la vie!

Strangely enough David I thought that myself. But as I have three 16 inch pushers all the way from California not including customs duty and VAT, I might as well use them.