Flight Report: Sukhoi 31

It's been way, way too long since the last blog post. I've got a lot of new stuff backlogged in my mind to post about so I'll throw them up soon.

2 weeks ago I made the maiden flight of my new electric Hyperion Sukhoi 31 25e. I ran it with 3s A123 and an 11x7 prop with a bphobbies motor. In this configuration it only pulled about 240 watts at max throttle, which made it fly, but not well.

I bought another A123 cell and put together a series connector so I can hook my 3s and 1s packs together to make a 4s pack. I also soldered a Castle Creations UBEC to the series connector and cut the red wire on my CC Thunderbird 54 speed controller to disable its onboard BEC.

The result is great. With 4s it's pulling the 350 watts I wanted it to, it's weighted better (was a little tail heavy before), and it flies awesome. It has a tendency to tip-stall so I need to practice my landings. Right now I'm coming in too hot.