What Mods to make to your Wild Hawk

Hello all,

Once you've played with your Wild Hawk and have become comfortable flying it, you can get the bug to take your Wild Hawk to the next level.  With this in mind, these are the mods I would recommend, and have made, to my Wild Hawk.

Here are the mods that I recommend and the order that I would make them.

First mod: Fix those tail hinges

I originally thought of putting this in with what I would do with a new plane out of the box, but decided it was too much of an upgrade to include there.  What I propose here is to cut the movable rudder and elevator surfaces off and replace the factory foam hinges with tape hinges.  This is a little more complex than it sounds on the surface.  Once the parts are cut away, they need to have the old hinge surfaces trimmed up.  The elevator surfaces should have the plastic connector piece removed and then they should be reconnected with a bamboo or other dowel.  I recommend increasing the gap between the two surfaces (the gap for the lower portion of the rudder) by about 1/8 of an inch.  This will help to ensure that the rudder will have the most motion possible and not hit the elevator.  Now you can follow my hinge post on how to do the actual tape hinges.

Second mod: Update that battery

I really feel that the next mod it to replace the NiMH battery with an upgraded LiPo battery.  The energy density of new LiPo batteries is just too much to pass up.  For about the same weight you can almost double your mAH rating and run time.  This is done by checking out your favorite hobby supplier and seeing what LiPo options are available.  I recommend 1300mAH to 2200mAH, 3 cell (series connected cells), LiPo packs.  Most likely these new battery packs will not come with the same connector and you will need to replace the connector on the battery pack to match the speed controller, or replace the connector on the speed controller to match the battery pack.  This is easy enough to do if you know how to solder.  If you don't, find a friend or hobby shop person that can do this for you.  This new pack will also supply more voltage to your motor.  Your new 3 cell LiPo pack will provide 11 to 12 volts as apposed to the 8 to 10 volts of the NiMH pack.  This will give you more RPMs out of your motor and more thrust.  I think you will find this especially helpful during take off.  Some people have warned me about the possibility of burning out the stock brushed motor.  While this is possible, I have not noticed any issues with this and have been pretty harsh on mine.

I did a pretty severe mod to make sure that my battery fit the way I wanted it to.  I actually cut off the top of the nose and used a soldering iron to melt the foam until the battery fit snug.  Then I hot glued the top of the nose back on.



Third mod: Cut in some ailerons

I feel that this is an interesting mod because it can be done before upgrading your transmitter and receiver to more channels.  As I found out, it's actually just as easy (if not easier) to fly with just elevator and ailerons as it is with elevator and rudder.  I detailed my aileron mod in this post.


Fourth mod: Upgrade your radio

The fourth mod that I would suggest is to upgrade your radio to a 6 channel radio.  I would go beyond a four channel radio (which would be enough for all the controls needed on this plane) only because I really feel that 6 channels is the minimum for a really useful radio setup.  This is probably the easiest mod that you can make to this plane.  The hardest part is deciding what radio you will upgrade to.  I purchased the least expensive 6 channel 2.4GHz radio that I could find because I wanted the benefits of 2.4GHz (small antenna and spread spectrum technology) and I'm a cheep Dutchman.  My cheep radio is not the easiest to use, but has not let me down.

So this mod is as simple as replacing the stock receiver with your new one.  You will need test and make sure that you get the servos plugged into the correct locations and make sure that you get the polarity right.








Fifth mod: Upgrade your speed controller and motor

This is probably the most gratifying mod, as when it's done right, it can really boost your plane performance and enable you to do some really fun things.  The things you can do?  How about belly take offs without landing gear and vertical flights to high altitude. The biggest thing to take note of here is that this plane is limited on the size of the propeller that can be installed.  I've only been able to upgrade to a maximum 6 inch propeller.  This means that you will need to turn this propeller faster to get the extra thrust needed to be able to do the things I mentioned above.  So, the Kv rating of a motor becomes an important factor to keep in mind.  The Kv rating refers to the RPMs per volt rating of the motor.  I recommend 2200Kv brushless motor.  This is a bit high, but a 1400Kv motor, while certainly enough power, will not give the really fun performance we're looking for.  We also do not want a motor that is too small and so we will want to look for a motor that is rated in the 250 to 400 watt range.  This will ensure that the motor will handle the current and voltage without overheating.  Once your motor is selected, then you need to find a speed controller that will handle the current rating of the motor.  Also look for a speed controller that will be easy to program or need no programming, and has an adequate BEC to power your receiver and servos.  Depending on the pieces that you put together you may need to modify your power connectors at the battery or motor.  I was able to purchase my battery, ESC, and brushless motor from the same company (Turnegy) and so they all fit together without any changes needed.  Unless an in-runner brushless motor of the same diameter is found, you will be using and out-runner that will need special mounting.  I cut the motor nacelle back and added a wooden fire wall.  This was placed such that the propeller would be located in the same place as the original.  This post will show exactly what I did to upgrade my ESC and motor.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.  Please feel free to post comments, good or bad, and be sure to come back and check for future posts.

How to setup a brand new Wild Hawk

Hello all,

"Thinking out of the box"

There are people who have expressed an interest in how to best setup their Wild Hawk out of the box and there are those who complain that their Wild Hawk is a piece of crap and does not fly.  The information that both people need is the same.  There are several configuration updates of a stock Wild Hawk that are important to make it the good flying plane that people love.

This is what I would do to setup a brand new, out of the box, Wild Hawk:

Glue tail surfaces
While the double face tape used to secure the tail surfaces on the Wild Hawk is adequate and will hold the parts together for quite some time, it will come loose.  My recommendation is to just glue it up from the start and don't risk them coming loose in flight (yes, I have experienced this).

This shows the elevator flush with the end of the tail spar.

The first thing that needs to be done is to remove the double face tape.  If you skip this part, you risk your parts coming apart as your gluing will only be as strong as the tape.  Taking the tape off is not easy, but can be done with just your fingers.  Using tweezers would probably make this task much easier.  Now that all of the tape has been removed, its time to glue things up.  It's important to glue the elevator in first and them add on the rudder.  Take your time with this step and make sure the parts line up.  The elevator should line up at the tail end and not the front edge like it might seem.  If you don't line it up this way, you will risk the movable surfaces hitting they tail spar and not moving properly.

Re-position the battery

I don't know if it can be clearly seen in this photo, but the battery
us upside down.  It will be rotated counter clock wise and slid
forward as far as possible.

This modification require the removal of the foam ridge at the forward most edge of the battery.  This piece of foam it not that easy to remove but it can be done without too much trouble.  Once this is removed, the battery can be placed back in upside down and with the power wires still in the side cut out for them.  Since the Wild Hawk is notoriously tail heavy and does not have a proper center of gravity (CG), this is the minimum that must be done to make this plane flyable.  This does not resolve this plane's CG issues, but give you a good head start.

Don't install the landing gear
While you're learning, you will not need the landing gear.  Don't even bother installing them, they will just get in the way.  Just make sure that you are flying near a nice grassy area and learn to belly land your Wild Hawk there.


Tape up fuselage
This is an important step to help make sure that your Wild Hawk is as rugged as possible.  I have a whole post dedicated to this and it can be seen here: How to tape a Wild Hawk


Tape up wings
This is another important step as well in making sure that your Wild Hawk is as rugged as possible.  This step is also covered toward the end of the above blog post link.

Balance for CG
This is an important step in making sure that your Wild Hawk is as flyable as possible  I like my Wild Hawk leaning toward the nose heavy side and so I have my plane setup to balance at about 2 1/4 inches from the leading edge of the wing.  This is my CG and is just forward of the embedded wing spar.  A lot of people have theirs set for a CG of 2 1/2 to 3 inches from the leading edge.  This will require the addition of weight to the front of the plane.  I started by literally taping washers to the nose of my plane.  This worked fine and has worked fine for others that I know.  I decided to do something that I felt would be better and more permanent for mine.  What I did was to tape fishing split shot to my plane nose until the CG was right again.  Then I used my solder iron to melt some holes into the nose to hold the split shot.  When this was all in place, I used hot glue to secure it all.  I have a post here that shows how I did this: Weighted Question.  This post shows how I made a CG finder: CG Finder

Now your Wild Hawk should be very flyable and ruggedised.  If after all of this you are having issues flying this plane, the problems are not with the plane.

As usual, thanks for stopping by my blog and please post comments, good or bad.  Be sure to come back and check for future posts.

New Wheels for the Old Bird

Hello all,

As you know, if you have been keeping up on my posts, that I have been trying to get used to using the landing gear on my Wild Hawk.  In using the landing gear, I have noticed that the wheels do not work very well on the rough surfaces that I have as runways.  My Dad's place has a lot of grass, dirt, and gravel.  While my landings have been successful on these surfaces, the wheels really plow in the gravel and dirt and catch on the grass.

So I decided to change the wheel size in the hopes that it will help ease landings and take offs.  Because I did not want to wait, I went down to a local hobby shop and purchased a nice pair of 2 1/2 inch diameter wheels.  They are light weight plastic rims with foam tires and almost as light weight as the original ones are.  At least they do not seem to weigh that much more.

Carefully twisting off retainer

Comparing old and new wheels

It did not require too much effort with a pair of needle nose pliers to take the retainers off of the axles.  I did take care to not damage them as I did not have anything readily available to replace them if the would not go back on.

Close up view

How it looks on the plane

The new wheels had slightly smaller axle holes and so I needed to do some reaming and working on them to get them to go on.  They go on alright now, but they only just barely spin without too much effort.  This should have gone better, but I could not find the needed drill size in my tool box. I could have used some sand paper on the axle, but I couldn't find that either.  Oh well, close enough.

Now it's of to some test flights, or take off and landings.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and please post comments, good or bad.  Be sure to come back and check for future posts.

Motor Mods

Hello all, I discovered that my new Wild Hawk motor is not performing as well as I expected.  I wondered why and after some research I found that others who had made similar modifications also upped the prop size from the stock 5x5 to 6x4 to 6x5.  So, that is my next update.

Ok, ok, I know that the Turnigy 2628/10 1400Kvm motor is a bit under speed for this modification, but for now, its what I've got.

Needs 2 or 3 more mm

Others were successfully using these props on their Wild Hawks so I did not think it would be a big deal and picked up a few of the size I mentioned above.  I tried to install one of these 6" diameter props but, it hit the tail boom on my plane, so I needed an explanation of what I had done wrong and a solution.

After some correspondence with Fishbonez and NJSwede, they said it should have fit, but if it's only a few mm, I could just cut out the foam.  So back to take a look at things.

After looking at my situation, I decided that I should be able to move the screw holes for my motor up enough to create the needed clearance.  After unbolting the motor, this is the view I had showing the alignment marks I used to locate the original mounting holes.

New holes marked and drilled

Ready to mark the new holes

 I added these lines to help layout the new holes directly above those that are already there.  It looked like I should be able to safely move the holes straight up about 6mm.  I marked them out and pilot drilled them with a 1/16" drill bit.

It fits!

Just enough clearance

  Fitting on the motor shows that the clearance is just right.  This is probably closer to the shaft location of the original motor than my original modified location.  This would explain why this prop did not work before but does now.

Original motor location, face view

New location. You can see the old holes

 I like this solution because it was a lot easier than another option I was considering (building a new firewall to add on on top of this one) and I did not have to remove any foam for clearance.  Removing foam for clearance might have actually been the easiest solution, but I've had bad experiences with doing this before on another plane and so I really did not want to do this again.

Now I'm ready to test out those larger props and see if I get any more performance over the old 5x5 prop without burning up the motor or speed controller.  I'll post again with the results.

UPDATE:

The 7" has much broader blades

I really like these APC electric props

I have since flown this configuration and found that this APC 6x5 prop, while much better than stock, was not performing as I had hoped.  I have since taken a 7x5 and cut it down to 6" in diameter and carefully trimmed and re-balanced.  As these APV props have a much broader blase mid section they grab much more air than others.  Most other props have the same blade width for a series of props and the only thing that changes is the length.

I now have all the power that I need and am seeing the performance of this torqueie 1400KV outrunner.  I have also tried this with an 8x4 and with similar results.  See my Wild Hawk vs Wind post for how well this configuration did.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and please post comments, good or bad.  Be sure to come back and check for future posts.