July 14th: the longest flight ever ?

[Ber60]

1h45 and a light drizzle

[Drivinfast247]

Can't stop 'em!

[burnoutboy]

Go baby GO!

[Ber60]

Official flighttime 1h46m22sec

[comatosed]

Awesome, nice one guys!

That is one strange looking heli, what blades are those?

[sutty]

Well done chaps. I await the details with interest.

Cheers

Sutty

[Ber60]

It is a modified eco8 with wooden blades without covering

[SEBBY]

Or landing skids it seems

[ragge1]

well done guys

[jperkosk]

Now waiting for official detailed photos and setup data

[Tomstoy2]

WOW!!!! EXCELLENT!!!!!!

If it was to be broken, I knew you guys could do it! An exceptional effort. Long may the new record stand.
Proud of you guys!!!

[sutty]

Originally Posted by jperkosk

Now waiting for official detailed photos and setup data

Yeah, me too, and hopefully to answer some questions about why you did what. For example, as Jerry mentioned, it is Flybarred, and yet I thought I had read that FBL was about 15% more energy efficient, but obviously you would have known that, considered it, and dismissed it. Perhaps it simply isn't true, which would be interesting in itself.

Why wood, and why no covering, etc. Instinctively I would have thought carbon would be better, smoother, more efficient, etc, but obviously again you will have considered all such things, you are the world record holders, and I want to know how any why.

Did you hear that, world record holders, how good does that sound.

Fantastic guys, simply awesome. Well done again.

Can't believe I know some world record holders.

Cheers

Sutty

[redbird300]

Thank you all guys. I am extremely tired after hovering this (indeed) very sluggish heli for such a long time. And the champaign afterwards didn't help either, lol. So you'll forgive me for resting a bit now, I'll post more later on, like tomorrow or so.

A few details already:

The heli is in fact a stretched and modified kit, making for a 550 size. Yes, not larger, to keep the weight extremely low. It uses a plastic frame, and it is not a well known brand at all. It's a model that isn't been used commonly anymore since several years, a Ikarus ECO8. It uses a plastic frame, and was never intended for 3D flight, even not simple inverted flight. There's no negative pitch on the head in the stock setup. Total weight without batteries is slightly above 700 grams, both blades and everything else included ! A typical 550 without the lipo weighs around 2 kilograms, so we're almost at a third of that weight. In fact, with al our batteries, we're just over 2 kg. Assymmetrical, very light wooden blades, running 1000 to 1100 RPM. We didn't use the covering, too heavy, Erwin simply waxed them for protection and smoothhness. Carbon assymmetrical Spinblades are way too heavy, been there, done that. 25Ah of (very weak in terms of discharge rate) batteries in total. No high currents of course, and we're only needing 3S lipo packs to run the whole thing efficiently. These are Tx packs in fact ! Which makes for a smaller motor and controller. It's running in governor mode, to maintain the necessary headspeed to keep it in the air until the end, when the voltage starts to drop. No canopy, boom struts, skids, horizontal fin, and other unnecessary parts, lol. A very low tail reduction to save energy, barely enough to keep the tail stable in a hover or a slow piro. FBL doesn't add much advantage at these low speeds, there's very little drag as it is, drag is exponential to speed, we didn't even try that to be honest. And so on...

[ragge1]

get yourself a glass of cognac and some of those nice Belgium beers and we'll be hearing from you tomorrow Raf

[jperkosk]

Your effort is officially recognized and as such we'll give you until tomorrow 6:00am to rest and come up with all technical data

[Tomstoy2]

Hope you guys don't mind, but I posted your new WORLD RECORD over at a different forum I attend for mrc's in celebration of your amazing feat!

My apologies if you were trying to keep this on the down low!

[redbird300]

Originally Posted by Tomstoy2

Hope you guys don't mind, but I posted your new WORLD RECORD over at a different forum I attend for mrc's in celebration of your amazing feat!

My apologies if you were trying to keep this on the down low!

Found it, buddy.
https://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=440996

Of course we don't mind, thx.

[redbird300]

When the stopwatches and other timekeeping devices were stopped at this point...



... something weird happened:



A few moments later, everybody was covered in champaign .... by me, lol.
I couldn't help it.

[DT75]

Hovering for nearly two hours sounds incredibly boring...

But that is why you are a World Record Holder, and I'm not.



How come this thread's under "Belt CP"..?

[x3mperformance]

Congratulations.
Very interesting project and choise and layout of the bird.

Nicely done boyz.