Kinda my first experience as well.

I think you have to pull a lot of up elevator because the CG would tend to have it fly horizontal like a plane. It should fly in a high alpha state like a pizza box flyer.

I had better success hand tossing it horizontally, but it was a very short flight as I was in my living room and no room to experiment.

Too much torque may be a problem. Probably correctable by moving the battery further towards the outside.

 

Thanks Flash, thanks Mark. Yeah, I'll mess with it tomorrow. Slight chance weather will let me fly it on Saturday (normal fly day for me) it is supposed to snow between now and then. I see NJ is going to catch it worse than we will. This would be a wild machine with enough lights on it!

Chuck
...somewhere in Indiana...

 

Hey guys I have some video of my NiteOwl that may help with your flights and trimming. I flew mine with elevons and rudder which added aileron input, but elevator and rudder were the same as originally designed with this setup. My battery was in the same position as shown in my photos in the my earlier post. Once I was trimmed up I could turn the throttle off and the NiteOwl would glide with a very slight dipping stall.

 

Finally got a chance to fly my nightowl today.

Amazingly rugged little guy! Finding the right battery placement was a bit touchy, but I finally located the sweet spot and had it flying very controllably.

I had taken a video camera and planned to capture the flight on tape, but as luck would have it, I had removed the smart card from the camera to use in my laptop and it refused to record video to tape without it.

I was about to bring it in for a hovercraft landing when the battery decided it was tired and I just could not pull up enough to make a graceful landing, but I am sure with a full charge it would have been a piece of cake.

I can't believe I brought it home in one piece, nothing cracked or broke at all! And this is 2mm Depron!

Tomorrow is another indoor day, but at a much smaller facility. Not sure I have enough room there to fly it. There are tables everywhere and the flying area is about the size of a dance floor. But I will take the camera (this time with the memory stick in it) and try to get video if I do end up flying it.

 

Video finally available... Had a blast flying this one today. I just need a handful of batteries for it. By the time I was ready to land, there was not enough battery left to pull up into the hover.

 

To all...I completed my NiteOWL. Too nasty out to fly so that will have to wait. I got to looking at this thing after it was done and decided it looked like the machine they used in the movie TWISTER to chase tornados. So...naturally, I named it "Dorothy". I'll get a couple of photos when it flies! In the event it gets airborne and comes back a mess, I will have to conclude it indeed found a tornado!

Chuck