So, I previously wrecked my Libelle pretty hard, tearing both the wings and the nose cone in half. I’ve now repaired both of those using Gorilla Glue, which worked excellently. The glue foams up, so there is still some excess here and there that I haven’t sanded off yet.
I’m happy to say that it’s now back in the air!
I’ve been flying it until the battery runs flat for the past three days, and having a blast. My discus technique is slowly improving, though I’m still doing poorly compared to those I see on YouTube. I might take a video one day and get your guys’ suggestions. I haven’t found a thermal at my flying field yet, I might start hunting further abroad.
I’m now running proper flaperon mixes on my Taranis to give me Thermal and Landing modes according to the deflections specified in the excellent included manual, so my landings can now be much more gentle.
I noticed that since I re-glued the wings, their angle is offset compared to the tailplane, which obviously is not a good thing. One of the plastic mounts snapped in half when the wing did, so there’s not as much holding them in alignment any more. For the moment, I’m just going with the flow and flying counter-clockwise circuits to match the craft’s bias.
I managed to lose the carbon fibre launch peg, so I replaced it with a section of cheap paintbrush handle, which happened to be tapered so I could find a precise fit from halfway down the brush :).
Hi Nicholas!
I spent quite some time with the libelle last summer. I had no prior experience with gliders and dlg’s. The first couple of launches were really bad but i after some weekends i figured out a technique which i found was pretty OK. All in all lots of fun 🙂
I also lost the carbon launch pegs more than once and my first major crash was because the battery flew off due to the weak canopy magnets.
I also liked the whole programming aspect with my taranis and to see what you can achieve with opentx.
This year I’m all into multirotors 😉
Regards, Alex
My launches are much better now, I figured out that I wasn’t letting my arm lag behind me as I spun around, which meant that I couldn’t add the snap of bringing my arm forward at the end of the spin.
I now attach the battery to the pod by wrapping parcel tape over the battery and around the entire outside of the pod (making it follow the foam contour around the top edge so that the lid can still fit securely). It holds it so much more securely than hot glue or CA ever did.