MK Alliance CP

[lu wei yao]

That's true! Anyway, a beautiful plane deserves a beautiful maiden flight. Good luck!

Thanx!

[Tony]

Back in Singapore for the time being while the Uniquely Singapore and here 9 stablemates are being repaired/modified in the Phillipines. Now to get the Alliance for the flightline.

Anybody know what kind of deflections for this kind of plane. The kit does not come with any recommended/suggested settings for the moving surfaces at all. I don't want to end up with a plane I cannot control in the air. Yup, I will have dual rate set up but would like to be in the ballpark to begin with to prevent any surprises. Thanks.

[oldmanflying]

The workmanship of ur MK can only be describe as 'the-common-old-hokkien-saying'

"No-horse run"

Cant imagine me building this with such skills n patience...
All the best to ur maiden!!!!

[raghfrost]

good lord no one would ever know if it was a kit or an ARF

[Tony]

Being on hospitalisation leave for so long is a real drag. Spinal surgery is a real pain - figuratively and literally!

Now that I can sit up for a reasonable duration, thought it time to do something to this plane that has bothered me all along. I am using pull-pull for the rudder but the Hitec HS5245 digital servo does not seem to take kindly to the side loads and would hum along all the time ie. centering problem. Considering how much current these digital servos can suck, I thought it best to revert back to push-pull. Its kind of going backwards but with the push-pull, its following the plans as is.

Pull-pull before the modification.



After - now with push-pull





Can't resist a shot of the plumbing works for the YS63.

[Brandon Chng]

actually its not a centering problem. all hitec digital servos are like that, the buzzing only stops when the gears are worn in.

[Tony]

actually its not a centering problem. all hitec digital servos are like that, the buzzing only stops when the gears are worn in.

Ah so. I was about to go get a replacement servo as it is only one specific servo that exhibits this problem. The others are silent.

[Brandon Chng]

oh i see that servo is the only one on pull pull right? yup seems to be the case with the heli fliers too. its alright and will go away after awhile...

[Tony]

That is great news to hear that the hum will disappear eventually. My old school training - as we were all thought to do - was to work until the chattering is removed or replace the servo if that cannot be done. The chattering or its digital equivalent - humming, just means that the battery is being drained. Not a good thing.

I shall reinstal the servo and look forward to having it eventually stop humming. Thanks guys for the advice.

[Tony]

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. The Alliance CP got its maiden today. The YS decided to be uncooperative and refused to start or run until the resident YS expert cast his magic spell - well he took out the check valve and gave it a good blow - and it started up and ran perfectly.

Had a lot of help from Jason Cho who was the patient pit man all through the ordeal with the YS. The engine was tuned rich but we soon discovered that the engine idle was a little too high but decided to go ahead anyway as it was getting late. The plane did a cart wheel on the first take off run. Found out that the rudder was on reverse - duh! . Reversed the rudder and the second take off went without mishap.

The plane literally flew without the need for any trim. Well, not quite - it needed two clicks of up and it appears that I will probably need to add maybe 1 degree more down thrust. Now that I have got my faulty Robart Incidence metre replaced, I shall check out the decalage and add the downthrust if needed. Otherwise she flew straight as an arrow. With the YS, it did not take too much time to discover that she is way overpowered even with the engine running very rich. I may try out a larger diameter prop and reduce the pitch by a little to see if this will use the massive torque afforded by the YS63. Great engine if you can get over the added complication and idiosyncracies that comes with the performance this engine gives.

I could not get her to stall during the stall check as the engine idle was way too high and she would just climb when I fed in the up elevator. Not a good sign as this would just mean that I would have great difficult landing her when the time came for. Sure enough, it proved somewhat difficult to land as she came in real hot and getting her to flare was impossible. After umteenth attempts to land, I got her down as low as I could in the run in and just pushed her into the grass. Took a while for her to come to a stop. Thought that she would not at all. The landing strip is bordered by tall lalang so I knew that the plane would not be damaged if she ran out of runway.

It was an eventful day and its been a long time since I have maidened my own plane. I had always had my trusty test pilot - Julien - for this until I switched to JR and can no longer transfer my programming into his transmitter anymore (I fly mode two so cannot just hand my TX to anyone to fly unless they fly mode two too). So with knees still knocking, I went to collect the plane from the end of the landing strip and with a sigh of relief, killed the engine manually.

Loved the plane, Tracks very solidly. On the next flights, I'll look forward to learning the potential of this plane. Overall, it was an enjoyable build. There are a few things I would not do the same if I were to build this kit again. I have the MK Synergy kit and its almost identical to the Alliance CP save for some adjustments to the wing so will apply what I have learned from this plane to the Synergy when I do get to build it. Am now looking forward to flying this bird.

Unfortunately, I did not have the benefit of a camera or a videography like Steven around so there are no videos or photos of the maiden to add. I hope to correct this the next time I fly this plane.

[Brandon Chng]

nice to hear it went well. how is to fly a plane on mode 2 compared to mode 1? where in the world is it common to fly planes using mode2?

[Tony]

nice to hear it went well. how is to fly a plane on mode 2 compared to mode 1? where in the world is it common to fly planes using mode2?

Actually, most of the rest of the world flies mode 2. If I am not wrong, mode 1 is mostly flown in Japan and here in Singapore/Malaysia. I have never been to a flying club in HK but perhaps they fly mode 1. Where I have lived before in the US, UK, Australia and Europe, mode 2 is the norm.

[Jcho]

Tony,

Congrat! Very nice and stable plane. Powerful engine with unlimited vertical up (Your plane is really light)


Cheers

[Tony]

For those who are thinking of building this kit, following are the changes I would make if I were to build this kit again:

a. The plane turned out to be way tail heavy. Had I known this, I would have planned to install the battery and receiver up front in the nose rather than follow the plan which shows these items installed in the rear of the plane. I had to do some last minute cramming of the batteries and receiver up in the nose and still had to add 4 ozs of lead in the nose to balance her out.

b. The rudder (as shown in the plans) uses a push-pull arrangement. This is perfectly adequate and I'd not waste my time with a pull-pull arrangement. It may give a slight improvement but is probably not worth the added complication. If I were to use the pull-pull, I would install it before I sheeted the turtle deck and the bottom decking. This will make it much easier to do the installation instead of having to fish for the cable in the dark (requires much patience).

c. I don't like the MK soft mounts. They allow the engine to vibrate way too much during idle. Its actually quite shocking to see how much movement there is. I'm not sure how the rubber elements are going to wear over time. Also, the soft mounts are expensive!!!! I would do away with the soft mounts altogether and just bolt the engine directly onto the beams (with the appropriate spacer).

d. I would use the MK elevator yoke (optional extra) again despite its cost. The elevator movementsa are rock solid and positive throughout the movement range. Using twin clevises connected to a single pushrod never worked for me as they tend to cause uneven elevator movement.

e. I would strengthen the landing gear mount. There is lots of space in that area to allow this.

Well, thats it. I don't think you will be disappointed by this kit. It flies like its on rails and I am looking forward to going the whole hog with her once I have sorted out the idle and complete the trimming out.

[Tony]

I am most defininitely going to get rid of the MK softmount. Its probably causing some of the idle problems as the engine is really rocking about at idle and this is affecting the throttle. Also, I'd have to enlarge the holes on the fibreglass cowling to allow for the movement of the engine at idle. Its quite a tight fit and the amount of movement at idle is going to cause the cylinder and other parts of the engine to knock into parts of the cowling.

A 3 mm space is required on the beams before the engine is mounted (minus the softmount) so that the thrust line will not be affected.

I'm going to take the engine it out and bench run it to give it the remaining half hour of running in it should have received. This should sort out the settings and give a more reliable idle. The other YS63 I have (which has an hour of running in time) idles very reliably. On this one, the low needle settings are a bit off. With a few more flights now, the engine starts much more easily now.

Thes YS engines needs much more TLC than other engines but the reward is gobs of power on tap.