AJ Laser 230z 73

SO.. You buy 1,800 dollars worth of computer parts, shock gasp, what! Then you backup everything on a perfectly working 3TB hard drive and proceed to tear your computer down except the case and power supply and blow it out really good and set everything on the table to start installing your new parts. BUT you think gosh I'm going to take that 3TB drive in the bedroom where the file server is and put it in my USB 3.0 docking station and make sure everything is ready to copy back to the new system when it's done. You turn the docking station on, the hard drive spins up and makes a very strong seeking noise like going from the beginning to the end of the surface trying to find something and then stops. Then after about 15 seconds it does that again, and again, and again. So feeling kind of empty you turn the docking station off and try another 3TB drive, identical drive mind you, and it works perfectly. So you go, ha must have been a fluke so you put the drive that everything is backed up on back in the docking station and turn it on and the drive spins up and makes the odd seeking sound every 15 seconds again. So now you're in a panic because you have everything on that drive, EVERYTHING! So out of desperation you go to Best Buy, the only place in this town to buy anything and a small one at that and get the only one they have a Thermaltake Duet USB 3.0 docking station which has two hard drive slots. After you get home you say a prayer and turn it on with the good drive and it works, so you turn it off and add the backup drive in the second slot and turn it on and it spins up and works okay too. Your heart is much better now and you make sure all the data is there and it is, so now life is good again. But let me tell you that's a sinking feeling because I had everything backed up on that drive. And why oh why did two identical drives not work in the Old Thermaltake single dock station but work in the new Dual Dock station? But it does, so I took some time and backed up all the important stuff on the second 3TB hard drive just in-case. So that was my scare that took me some time to get through and slowed me down on my upgrade. So I started back on it today but didn't get all the hardware finished so I'll finish it up tomorrow and start installing everything again. Now that was not fun!
 
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I bought a HP Laptop for $229 a couple of days ago... it runs RF7.5 not great but that is not what I bought that lappy for. It was for use in my business where I don't want or need a power machine.
 
12oclockhigh said:
I bought a HP Laptop for $229 a couple of days ago... it runs RF7.5 not great but that is not what I bought that lappy for. It was for use in my business where I don't want or need a power machine.
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Yeah this is the first time I've spent so much money to build a system. But I was celebrating my 69th birthday so I went nuts, got a couple of parts that were pretty expensive but I just wanted them. Like the new M.2 SSD for 320 bucks that I could have done without but I wanted to see how fast a 2,500 MB read speed would make a system. Man my old Samsung is 500 and it's fast. Then I could have done without the 4TB RAID 1 too but I wanted all that space for our home file server. So I could have spent 600 less for sure. But I'm finally getting it together and it will be really nice, and at 69 probably my last go around for a powerful system.
 
I think there's a conspiracy to keep me from getting my upgrade finished. I was just starting to finish the cable management when I decided I wanted to fully populate the USB ports on the back of the computer. The motherboard has two extra connectors for USB ports, one for USB 2 and one for USB 3 but it didn't come with the special cables needed to connect them to the back slots of the case. They make special cables for USB 2 and USB 3 that has a motherboard connector on one end and a slot plate on the other end with two USB connectors. So I found them on Newegg and ordered them the other day but they won't be in until the end of next week. So I decided to shelve the build for a bit longer so I can have everything finished when I put it under the desk and connect everything and start installing stuff. Boy for some reason things keep getting in my way. If I didn't live so far from Dallas I could get the parts locally but now days I just order everything from Newegg and wait for it. Ha at this rate it'll be obsolete before I get it finished. But it is starting to look good I'm just one of those guys that prefer waiting to get it right the first time, don't want to tear it apart once I put it together.

But I did decide to install RF 7.5 on our file server so I'd have something to play with I should have done that right away but I didn't think it would be so long to get the upgrade finished. The file server is a Core 2 Duo E8600 3.3 Ghz with 8 GB of RAM and a Geforce GT 640 with 2 GB RAM video card, and it runs RF 7.5 really well. I did have to turn off shadows on 3d fields with lots of trees to get high frame rates but everything else is all the way up. So RF 7.5 just doesn't take that much of a system to run really well. The GT 640 isn't that much of a 3D card but it's in the file server and this is the only time I've actually used it for more than desktop duties. But it is nice to be able to fly again. Ha.. I've actually went back and flew some of the built-in planes to see what they're like again, after you start modeling you pretty much give up anything but what you're working on. Anyway I thought I'd drop in and let you know I'm just slow, but I'll get there. I looking forward to do some benchmarks on my new system and chart them so I can compare my old and new systems. I'll upload the charts when I do that so you can see the difference too. Of course I'm talking about RF-X (I know wrong forum).
 
After I installed RF 7.5 on the file server I started playing around a lot and decided to import the first beta I created before tearing my system down and do some work on the physics. I just finished so I think I'll upload it here in case some of you want to play with it. I adjusted the planes weight so it's in-line with what the specs say for a Gas engine version and set the CG, hi and low throws, and hi and low expo settings according to the manual. I used the minimum settings for the throws and expo and the maximum setting for the CG and it seems to fly pretty well to me. I'll let BrokeDad comment on the level flight but I tried to make it fly level at full throttle. Of course you have to be careful you're really flying level when you test that and I fly the sod farm field and try to get a plane to fly level across the width of the field at full throttle.

Okay what to know about the beta. The fuselage has some spots on the front sides of the canopy that are flat looking and the cowl hasn't been shaped or the holes cut in, and the smoothing groups aren't perfect and you'll see that mostly on the end of the ailerons. I don't have access to 3ds now so I can't fix anything but once I get my new system going I will. So this is an early beta but all the basics are there and shouldn't change so the flight characteristics should be pretty much fixed as far as the physical shape of the plane is concerned. So comment on anything you like I always like to gather information as I go.
 

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Thanks for sharing the Beta. Nice Xmas Eve present. Hanukkah also begins tonight.
Don't forget to fly the Santa Sleigh and Reindeer some today :)

Edit: I upped the tail wheel braking percent and lowered the main gear percent to keep it from nosing over.
 
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BrokeDad said:
Thanks for sharing the Beta. Nice Xmas Eve present. Hanukkah also begins tonight.
Don't forget to fly the Santa Sleigh and Reindeer some today :)

Edit: I upped the tail wheel braking percent and lowered the main gear percent to keep it from nosing over.
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What did you set them to I'll change it here.
 
technoid said:
What did you set them to I'll change it here.
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I lowered the front mains to 30 and increased the stearing rear wheel to 75. It was nosing over on hard stops. Of course I added -0.2 degrees to the incidence at root of the horizontal stabilizer like always as well. I know you like your models dropping a little at a full speed pass but I like mine level to rising a bit.

I've been enjoying the Pegaso photo field today. Try it if you haven't. It has nice runways and also the circles for us heli guys doing autorotation's.

I just got another mini VBar for my second Oxy 3 in the mail. Now all I need to buy is a motor and I will have one regular 255 and a stretch 285.
I still will never fly as good as Jonas. I'm just learning inverted circuits now. Tic Tocs, funnels, etc etc will be months later after I master this step.
 
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BrokeDad said:
I lowered the front mains to 30 and increased the stearing rear wheel to 75. It was nosing over on hard stops. Of course I added -0.2 degrees to the incidence at root of the horizontal stabilizer like always as well. I know you like your models dropping a little at a full speed pass but I like mine level to rising a bit.

I've been enjoying the Pegaso photo field today. Try it if you haven't. It has nice runways and also the circles for us heli guys doing autorotation's.

I just got another mini VBar for my second Oxy 3 in the mail. Now all I need to buy is a motor and I will have one regular 255 and a stretch 285.
I still will never fly as good as Jonas. I'm just learning inverted circuits now. Tic Tocs, funnels, etc etc will be months later after I master this step.
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Thanks I added that to my physics here too. I just checked out Pegaso on the swap page looking at the preview image and it looks very nice and for a heli guy it's probably great. But I've always flown at simple grass fields so I always use the Sod Farm airfield built-in the RF 7.5. Ha.. I'll share a little secret if you don't laugh at me. I edited the field and got rid of the wind sock and also went around the edge of the field and deleted the collision information so I can come in as low as I want and not hit anything. The field where I live is a lot like that, just an open field you can easily fly from. Man I used to make a low pass and run right into that wind sock so it had to go. To me it was in a really dumb place. I also created two other versions of the Sod Farm field. One where the pilot is in the middle of the runway looking at the back of the plane and another with the pilot at the standard place but wider and longer for flying my Jets. So when I say I use that field all the time I really mean it. Unless I fly a float plane of course. I never thought I'd care for float flying but Doug fly's float planes so I created one for him a long time again and started liking it. I hope they get some cool places to fly float planes in RF-X. It's hard to believe it didn't have any at release.
 
Bummer I was hoping my final parts would come in today. Oh well hopefully tomorrow I'd like to get it finished.
 
I got tired of waiting for my parts to come in so I decided to install 3ds on the file server and do a bit of work on the Laser. I had already found a top view and finished that but I still needed to do the side view. So I looked around and found a side view someone created and used that to finish the side view. So here's a picture of what it looks like now. I still need to tweak the cowl a bit and add the intake holes but it's coming along.
 

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BrokeDad said:
Maybe a tiny bit of forward angle to the landing gear spars ?
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Do you mean a little more forward angle, there is some there. Here's a picture of the real one it does have a tiny bit more I'll add some.
 

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Okay here you go. I moved the wheel forward a little bit trying to match the picture in my previous post of the real one and also reduced the overall size of the wheel pants by 5 percent and then reduced the height of them 5 more percent. Then I rotated them a little trying to match the picture in my previous post. They may not be perfect but I'll go with them the way they are.
 

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BrokeDad said:
Looks better. I'm just trying to give the feedback you want. Good job !
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No problem I like feedback I just knew the wheel pants didn't look exactly like the real plane but didn't want to mess with them anymore. But it does look better with the gear moved forward a bit. Thanks!
 
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