Hello, and welcome back to Scale Me Down, and to part 4 of this VQ Models Twin
Otter that we've put on floats. Please remember to like and subscribe to
support the channel. It's test flying day ! Today we're
going to conduct a range check now she's up on her floats, and then initially
we're going to try her off the grass. Let's see how she performs.
I started with a thorough range check from 30 paces.
She needed a bit of help getting going as the grass was quite dry and therefore
a bit "grippy".
However, once airborne and trimmed, she flew well.
I went on to test the stall which apart from the additional drag was unaffected
by the floats.
But then, disaster struck when one of the propellers fell off !
Let's take a closer look at that.
By throttling back a little, and lowering the nose, I wrestled it back to the
landing strip. I got it down, but I busted the floats a
bit.
When I got them back to the workshop most of the damage was inside the floats,
so I cut some neat holes and then spliced the broken bits with some lolly
sticks and epoxy.
Then after some sanding, glassing, priming etc, we were ready to try again.
Here we are on a perfect day, and all the repairs are done and I think I've
solved the problem as now the propellers are fitted with nylock nuts so they
shouldn't come undone again. Sadly most of the damage was internal on
the floats as you saw, so we had to cut holes in them all it's all put back
together now we'll try it on the water surface and hopefully this time be less
exciting !
As the water surface is calm and glassy we will taxi out and make some ripples to
help it unstick a little better.
Also checking to avoid the local air traffic !
We'll just get her trimmed out.
Did you see that ? Let's take a closer look. The number 2 motor shut down for
some reason.
At the time I thought it was a glitch with the radio gear - I thought it'd be
prudent to land anyway.
Safely down, and I checked to see that the propellers were still tight - which
they were - so I decided it must be the radio gear and I relocated the receiver
aerials and conducted another range check, before trying again.
The switchable water rudders and reverse thrust are really useful features for
retrieving the model.
It meant that we didn't need our rescue boat - "HMS Most Leaky" on this occasion !
We got some really nice flights with her, although we did get one or two other
glitches during the day.
I'm not sure if the glitches are caused by the radio receiver aerials being
blanked, or whether it's just the speed
controllers going into auto current or auto temperature shutdown, or perhaps
it's those capacitors we put on the speed controller power leads.
But in any case, we had a brilliant day and she was really fun to fly. It was
really nice to see this De-Havilland Twin Otter in her natural element.
That's a bit better ! There's still a few teething troubles to sort out,
particularly with the radio signal, but we'll sort that next time.
I hope you enjoyed that, I certainly did. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you
next time.