Bling Landing Gear

I've been bogged down with so much work the past week I've almost had no time to work on the Yak.

One of the stuff I managed to get done though is drilling the mounting holes on the carbon fibre landing gear which I'm going to use in place of the original aluminium ones. I've weighed them some time back, and found that both carbon fibre LGs were still lighter than one side of the aluminium ones.





If anything, they look so much sexier than the stock ones.

Signing off,
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Yak 54, Work in Progress

The rate of progress for the Yak 54 may seem so slow it seems as if I have not been doing anything. Quite the contrary. It has come a very long way since I opened the box the very first time. Here's a brief progress report so far:

Cooling hole for Dualsky Voltage Regulator

I've scratched my head for sometime before I made the decision for the placement of the voltage regulator. Ideally the regulator has to have ample cooling. And I am loathe to put the regulator all the way up in the cowl as that would mean I have to increase the length of the wire from the regulator to the receiver (RX), TWICE over. Since both wires have to be plugged in for it to pump the max amount of juice to power the servos.

In the end, I cut a rectangular hole at the bottom of the fuse. The voltage regulator can now be close enough to the RX without any extension wires and the heat sinks can be exposed to moving air, further facilitating the cooling of the regulator. I do hope it works though.

"Blinged" Battery Tray

The Yak 54 being a Nitro powered plane, does not have any battery trays built into the fuselage. So I had to fabricate one. I wanted a rigid one without adding to much weight. This brief to myself was closely followed and I made a battery tray from balsa sticks (which made up the frame) and some carbon fibre plate to get the whole structure very rigid. I added some cooling holes for the battery and this should reduce the overall weight of the battery tray too. The carbon fibre also adds some nice "Bling" to the insides. Pimpin my plane man!!

Once You Go Yellow and Black, You'll Never Look Back

Hellboy profile on left wing (WIP)

Well I was supposed to finish this plane in the same week as the local premiere of the Hellboy II movie but it was not to be. Nonetheless, I love Mike Mignola's art in his comics and this is just my version of fan art. :)

Well that's the progress so far, not bad right (hehe not shy). I will update more as I progress with the build. Hope it's soon.

Signing off,

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Completion of the High Power Shunt for the Yak 54

It has been some time since I've done anything to complete the Yak 54. Projects have been coming in, and I have not had time to really put my head down and get the plane up and running.

It's been so long since I worked on the Yak, that I managed to trash three perfectly good planes. All rx-related problems. Sigh, it's one thing to crash by flying too low while showing off, it's another when it's totally out of your hands. I've gotta find a way to avoid all this shit, Fasst. :)

My new foldable plane!

Ok. Since I've already completed the plug for the shunt, it's time for me to complete the whole thing. The other part of the shunt will be on the red power lead of the ESC. The shunt will basically not let power flow to the ESC when the plug is out. Thus rendering the ESC un-armed and safe to handle the plane to the flight area.

A few things I took not of was the length of wire used on the plug side. So when I did extensions to the ESC power leads, I made sure both the red and black wires are as similar in length as possible. I'm not sure if any difference in length will have an adverse effect, but I'd rather not find out.





Soldering the gold connectors to the wires is more or less standard stuff. And this is how the shunt looks.

Next up, more work on the fuselage.

Signing off,
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The big plane project: Putting together the high-power shunt

OK, I got really bored cutting out wood from the airframe and re-covering it so I decided to get some of the electronics on the plane done instead. This time around I'll be putting together the high power shunt, a safety feature.

What's a shunt you may ask? In short, it's a plug. It'll be located on the live (red) wire on the ESC. So when the shunt is not plugged in, there won't be a closed circuit and the motor will not be able to power up. The shunt will enable you to power the receiver and all the servos while having all the batteries connected without powering up your motor until you're ready at the flight line. Once ready, just plug the shunt in, let the motor power up and you're good to go.

Before I did any soldering, I did a simple mod on my clamp. This clamp has been a faithful servant in holding up my wires, dean plugs and gold connecters while I soldered away. Recently I read that metal clamps actually draw heat away from the stuff that you're soldering while holding it down. This may cause cold solder joints and basically making it difficult to get the object to the right temperature. I understood then why it was a PITA to solder anything metallic. Some balsa wood I saved from the Yak 54 proved to be exactly what this mod needed. I cut a small piece, glued it to the metal clamps with medium CA and in two minutes I'm done.

Less than 2 minutes work

I'm not so sure if it was just me, but I did find it so much easier to solder the deans onto my Rx pack. This simple mod really works, and to whoever who reads my blog (I dunno if there really is anybody): DO IT. 2 minutes is all you need.

OK, back to the shunt. The main component on the shunt is the AstroFlight Zero Loss connecter. I had originally planned to use Deans connecters, but since the current spikes might go up to around 80-90amps, I do not want the shunt to be the weak point in this setup. I figured this will be the best bang for my buck.



I'll just be working on the male part of the connecter for this post. The female part will come into play in the later stages while soldering stuff on the ESC. Stuff for the job: 1. Astroflight Zero Loss connecter (just the male part) 2. 14 AWG wire (black) and 3. soldering tools.


Firstly, I measured out around 4.5cm worth of wire for the plug. I took note of this so that I can have similar length extension wires on both the red and black leads of the ESC.


I then prepped the gold connectors and wire and soldered them together. The important thing to take note on this step is to get the wire and the gold connecter soldered as straight as possible. Or else, it'll be impossible to pull it through the plug. Once I'm done letting the solder joint cool, I pulled it through the plug and worked on the other side. I soldered the other side of the wire while it's in the plug and once that was done, mission accomplished.

Ta Da!!!

Fast, simple work all in the name of safety.

Signing Off,
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The big plane project: Glow to electric conversion of the Phoenix Models Yak 54

It's been a while since I have built any plane and this next undertaking is the biggest project ever for me. Having seen the Phoenix Models Yak 54 in action at Ave 5 and Civil Defence Field, I'm sold that this plane flies really well. And for the price, it's a bargain. I've only seen the guys fly the Yak 54 glow-powered. I on the other hand, will be attempting an electric conversion. The easy part will be electrifying it, the difficult part is to get it to perform as well if not better than the glow counterparts. That is a challenge I'm taking with my stride. A huge ass electric plane; BEST!

First on the to do list; remove current covering and replace with a new scheme. I'm not really a big fan of the original scheme as it make the plane look like an oversized toy. The orange, red, blue and white is a no go. Pity, it was so close to looking very scale except the orange spoiled it. I'm also hoping that by re-covering the plane with a not-so-nitro-resistant covering, I can actually save some weight too. Another reason is that I need to remove some wood on the plane and I have to re-cover it anyways. By removing the covering I will also get access to hard to reach places in the fuselage to stiffen it up with some carbon.

Removing all the excess wood was somewhat a relaxing experience. Though contest balsa weighed closed to naught, every gram saved will help to reduce the overall weight of the plane. Generally an electric conversion will usually be a tad heavier than its nitro counterparts. So wherever I can save a little weight I will.

Check out the "Before" and "After" pictures. The fuselage, especially, is beginning to look like Swiss cheese. Mmmmm, taste-tay!

Fuselage

"Before"

"After"

Wings

Marking out the areas where some wood will be removed from the formers.

Check out the lightening holes. I think the plane could have saved a shitload of weight if there weren't too many doublers. But it was originally designed for nitro.

Well, that's all for now. It's gonna be a massive project for me. So I reckon there'll be more posts for this build.

Signing Off,
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