Test flights with the Lithium Polymer batteries

Yesterday I had three flights with the new LiPoly batteries. There were problems:

• broke 2 sets of servo gears
• the cam trigger servo did not press on the trigger, only 9 lousy pictures

These problems have been solved.
To improve the servo situation, I exchanged the servo for the elevator, see first picture.
For the trigger servo, I glued some depron and plywood to the servo, so I can keep it better in position. The servo is held in place by a rubberband, and the 'camera case' has a big opening now to allow the servo to keep contact to the camera

The weather is tricky these days. In the morning there is no wind, but it is terribly foggy. Later in the day the fog is gone, but there were turbulent winds throwing the plane around, especially in the second flight location.

Battery power is great - there was more than enough thrust to fight the wind. This does not help much on landing, I had to go for several rounds until the wind eased up and allowed a smooth landing.
At full throttle, the controller keeps up with the 30Amps for about 30seconds, then does a thermal shutdown (just the motor, not the BEC). Cruising at quarter throttle works fine, half throttle is almost like full throttle with the 7cell Nicad I used before

With the heavier servo in the tail, I had to put the camera right in front on the nose. Without the camera the plane was tail heavy and hard to control.

Lithium Polymer battery test | Avoiding the fog