Pauls turbine Hawk.

Pauls Hawk was maidened this evening after the control liners had all left.

those that were there last Sunday would have seen the failed attempts she didn't want to get up to speed or rotate.

it took several fairly nerve racking attempts and shes defo not stable on Yaw on the ground run! would be interested to hear your thoughts on this. it has to be "flown" to keep her straight as she picks up speed.

The new bigger thrust tube, a whole boat load of flap and pushing the CG back got her off the ground. once she was up she flew nicely, plenty of power, docile handling at slow speeds with the flaps down, easy to land.

that is one maiden im very glad is out of the way!

lessons learnt, factory CG of this model is miles too far forward, it takes quite a push on the fin to get the nose up and in the air even towards the end of the flight it was still not showing any signs of finding the sweet spot.

We have video but you cant see much other than take off and landing and for some reason there is an impressive amount of swearing!

Ade

Adrian asks

not stable on Yaw on the ground run! would be interested to hear your thoughts on this

Rudder is pretty ineffective without prop wash until a bit of speed is available so most jet competitors who are looking for good marks in realism and want to nail the runway centreline on their take-off run have a gyro on the nosewheel steering servo.

David

Ade, get the video up!
Which hawk kit is it?

thanks David,

reading around the forums it seems a contentious issue. Do you know if they use rate mode or heading hold?

Ade

Ade asked

Do you know if they use rate mode or heading hold?

To the best of my knowledge heading hold is the setting used.

My comments re competition related to my area of expertise, the Jet World Masters, where gyros are, and have always been, widely used by consent.

There was certainly contention in F4C in which the use of gyros had been prohibited but, since this rule had been flagrantly ignored for some time (ie competitors were cheating), the prohibition was abandoned by a proposal at the 2014 Plenary for adoption in January 2015 by a revision to the FAI Sporting code.

yeh the F3C lot tried to ban gyros too when the flybarless stuff started appearing.

amazingly in theory a flybar is actually superior to a flybarless gyro for the hovering stuff as flybars account for wind where the gyros don't.

thanks for the info. Im a bit concerned about getting the nosewheel centred for landing so plan is to set it up for Heading hold for take off and rate mode for landing, its not really needed for the landing.