• Pulse XT 25e Maiden

    After what feels like quite a long wait for the new canopy, I’ve managed to get over to Northwick Park to maiden the Pulse. Lovely October afternoon, a little breeze, almost no clouds in the sky with glorious sunshine. Perfect conditions!

    I put 3 packs through her, all completely uneventful, which is how I like it. I tried a few gentle aerobatic manoeuvres and she had ample power to pull round a loops without even using full throttle. I’m now pleased I didn’t bother putting the bigger motor and 4s setup in her.

    I had thought about rigging up the ailerons as flaperons, but now I’ve seen how she handles at low speed I’m not going to bother. The stall showed itself with a very slight mushing around, no worrying wing drops thankfully! And landing with just under idle power meant she just floated on and on.

    I’ve updated the page for the Pulse which is here. I’ll update that with any significant updates!


  • Flight log

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    I’m going to experiment with writing flight logs.  This will probably evolve over time as I think of things I’d like to capture.

    Today I went out with the Blade 450, put four batteries through it in the snow (!). Despite being 1-2C outside the batteries performed well, giving 6 mins each and when returning home and checking they were all showing 35-40% left in them.

    Mostly I was practising hovering, moving to side on hovering. I’ve wound the expo up to 40% on Aileron and Elevator, seems to help me with keeping it stable. Doing circuits I find it seems to get away with me as I turn it around to come back long the edge of the circuit, gaining speed which I have difficulty bleeding off.  Good session though!

    Cell balance was as follows:

    <th>
      V Max-Min
    </th>
    
    <td>
      0.03
    </td>
    
    <td>
      0.02
    </td>
    
    <td>
      0.09
    </td>
    
    <td>
      0.011
    </td>
    

    Trying out the parallel charge lead for the first time, I find one of the connectors is duff, most likely my soldering at the join. A shame I didn’t know this before I wrapped it all in heat shrink!