E-Flite Ascent electric 1.4m glider

2004.01.09
2004.02.25 - updated

After reading many favorable comments on the RCGroups site and George Voss' review on the LiftZone I decided to buy one Ascent glider.

As per numerous posts on RCGroups I promptly replaced the stock prop with a Graupner CAM 6*3 folding prop. There's no need to replace the spinner, the original one can take the Graupner prop if you use a couple of washers to fill the void as the original props are slightly larger on the part the gets connected to the spinner.

I love transportable planes so I liked George Voss' idea of making the tail feathers removable but when I was starting to execute his idea I got stuck in a problem: the front bolt interpheres with the cables that run the pushrods! I was afraid of damaging the cables when drilling the hole but eventually I decided to try it out. The first hole I drilled did have this problem, but I used it to probe the cables inside and decided a second hole a little further back would be ok, and indeed it worked perfectly.

After postponing it a lot I finally finished building my Ascent:
- HS55 servos
- Berg*4 rx
- 8-cell KAN950 batteries (180g)

AUW 570g, too heavy but I gave it a try.

Maidened it on 2004.02.24 near the Pacaembu soccer stadium. At the time of this photo I was still a happy Ascent owner...

First flight: the stock 400 motor with the 6*3 prop has more than enough power to take it up; the plane is much much faster than I expected, I will have to remove some weight and a lighter battery seems the way to go. Luckily the place was wide enough to come to an almost safe landing: I tried to hand catch it, failed and landed a little futher ahead... no big deal.

Second flight, disaster: moments after hand launch, it nosed in the asphalt. Later the problem was diagnosed: the day before while test fitting everything I fixed the elevator pushrod screws too losely on the servo arm, and it slipped during flight... Well, well... I learned to recheck things before flying, and damages were less than I expected: broken prop and spinner, firewall went loose, motor seems ok, fuse cracked a little but is easily repairable, minor scratches on the wing, and that's all.

It will fly again.

2004.04.25 - Ascent reborn

After a long time I finally put the Ascent back together!

- used epoxi on the fuse cracks (the fg layer underneath was undamaged)
- glued the firewall back in place
- put some Oracover patches over the scratches on the wing
- new QRP Hyper 400 6V motor
- new spinner and Graupner 6*3 folder prop
- E-Tec 1200mAh 2S1P LiPo batteries
- removed all the plastic from inside and made a new plywood servo table, installed as far back as possible

To my surprise the usually front heavy Ascent came out tail heavy so I had to put the battery way to the front to get a CG at 7cm from the LE which is already further back then recommended (but then the directions usually suggest a very conservative CG).

AUW 445g (=15.7oz), now we're talking... I didn't like at all the way the Ascent flew at 570g, at this lighter weight it's a new plane, much slower, predictable, easy and relaxing flying, the way I like it. Test flights this morning under light rain so they were very quick flights, just to make sure everything was ok, but I liked the way it flew.

Something interesting to note is that when buying a new motor and prop for this plane I considered two alternatives:
- QRP Hyper 400 motor: 76g; Graupner 6*3 prop + spinner: 13g; total: 89g
- GWS-350 motor: 51g; MPJet MPJ-8007 4.1:1 gearbox: 18g; Graupner 9*5 prop + spinner: 20g; total: 89g

I thought I'd save weight with the geared 350 but no... the gb and larger prop made both setups weigh the same! I decided to go with the standard dd 400 setup and it worked very well. I think the geared 350 would work even better but my objective was low AUW even at the cost of some climb performance, after all this is a glider and the motor is there just to get to enough height to start chasing thermals.

My day ended with me very very eager to fly it again but the weather didn't cooperate... it rained all day!

2004.08.23 - Brushless AXI

Although the QRP 400 dd setup gave adequate performance I decided to change it to a brushless setup:

I got very happy with the results: saved a little weight (the larger prop is almost as heavier as the new motor is lighter), gliders like large props and the climb performance shows that: much more authority during the ascents, very silent operation.

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