MAAA Wingspan - Quarterly Magazine

23 FEBRUARY WING SPAN MAAALogo. PRODUCT REVIEW SEAGULL WESTLAND LYSANDER BY MIKE O’ REILLY The Westland Lysander first flew in June 1936, having been designed for the RAF as a co-operation aircraft, providing ar- tillery spotting, message dropping and other essential support missions. Good downward visibility, short take-off, landing capabilities and exceptional low speed characteristics, were a big part of the design brief. While the original plane had an alumini- umand welded steel frame fuselage, the Seagull 1/5th scale Westland Ly- sander III version ismade from lite ply and balsa wood. It is covered with ORA- COVER in an accurate andmatte scale colour scheme, based on a surviving Lysander in the Hendon Air Museum. Themodel is very nicely pre-fabricated and after gluing in place all the included epoxy horns for the flying sur- faces, all that’s left to do is install your radio gear and fit the engine or electric motor. We chose to go with a petrol (gasoline) engine- the OS GF40. With the large radial cowl of the Lysander, this was an easy fit mounted inverted and the tip of the standardmuffler, just peeks outside the cowl. The Seagull is set up with dual aileron servos, dual flap servos, dual elevator servos and then one each on rudder and throttle. It is a five channel model using eight servos. We went for a High Voltage installation and chose the new Dualsky DS8611 servos for ailerons, flaps and the throttle functions. Due to its ease of installation, themid-size JR NX3425 servo was chosen for the rudder and elevator. Be careful to set up the geometry of both ailerons, and ensure both flap servos are the same. Whilst you can adjust it inmost modern computer transmitters, it is easier to have it close fromamechanical stand point. We chose to use a Spektrum9 channel PowerSafe receiver, with two 2000mAh LiPO receiver packs providing power. You could set it up with a five channel receiver and three Y leads, but the use of individual servo channelsmakes fine tuningmuch easier. After assembling, we were ready to balance themodel and program the SpektrumDX18 radio. We had to add quite a bit of lead bolted to the firewall to achieve the recommended CG point. We highly recommend placing the receiver and ignition batteries as far forward as possible. For our first flight, the OS GF40 provided plenty of power. We had to hold quite a bit of up elevator tomaintain level flight. With full up trimdialled in, a few circuits were flown before the Lysander came in for a nice landing, with full landing flap deployed. The elevator trimwas adjusted on the ground and more downward flapmovement added to help slow down the Lysander on approach. The second test flight was better, but was exhibiting strong nose heavy behaviour. We landed again and started to remove the nose weight. By flight number five we had the Lysander dialled in really well, with elevator trims back to neutral. Where the instructions say to balance themodel 27mm for- ward of the leading edge (at the root), it should read 27mm behind the leading edge (at the root). We also added a lot of aileron to rud- der mixing to help the turns and get the landing flap deflection down to 80 degrees. Lastly, we swapped the 18 x 10 wooden prop for an 18 x 8 to help lower the landing speed. With these simple changes, the end result was a really nice flying, three-metre scalemodel that exhibits all the characteristics of its full-sized counterpart.

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