I had the exact same issue, I have since reinforced the wing tips, ailerons and elevator with 3m glass reinforced tape. The surfaces no longer flex in normal conditions and made the drift a tone more stable. Nice video pawel for letting the masses know it’s flaw.🙂
@@maxun1 If this bunch of Mickey Mouse of self-proclaimed "experts" read the freakin' manual would help a lot: It clearly states the planes maximum speed and other considerations to fly it... @t bottom right corner. It's funny how people are just good enough to make a living criticizing other people's hard work...
@@maxun1 that of cause is natural human behaviour searching or hunting for the max and not reading a manual and taking care of the limits mentioned. I do not fly fast, as always 120 km/h is enough.
You must be new to fixed wing. :-) Wing flutter can happen to lots of planes. Stiffening the wing with carbon spars (or adding more spars than the original design) can help significantly.
That absolutely can help, if wing stiffness is the weak link. If control rod stiffness is the weak link, or aileron stiffness, or servo torque, then stiffening the wing doesn't get you much.
To me, it was obvious that this model is a slow flyer. It has thin long wings ! you need a bit more speed, you get the 250 from the same company. It has sturdy wings with a big spar in the middle. The goal of the Drift is to rise and GLIDE or low throttle while keeping low weight. you don't do TOP GUN stuff with a glider.
I used Gorilla shipping tape (thicker, tougher and wider - it says on the box) and that has firmed up the wings considerably as well as providing leading edge ding protection.
It’s true however I also think the control surfaces lock with the high air speed. I just did the same thing but without a dropped wing. It would not pull out at all so I think I am going to put a reversible esc so in the event the craft does get to fast it can be quickly slowed down even in a dive.
If for whatever reason (control or wing flutter by violating DNE airspeed)) you pitch down in a steep dive and if iNav is engaged then the roll estimate becomes invalid - what is the roll angle when in a vertical dive? The result will be either hard over ailerons (spiral dive) or just oscillating ailerons. If the altitude hold is engaged then the throttle may go high as it tries to climb accelerating the descent! A fix to iNav suggested by me last year was to keep ailerons neutral if the pitch angle is higher than some value. If iNav was not engaged in this case you simply went too fast and the very first move should have been to close the throttle and after that let the aircraft do its own thing. Trust me am also an engineer.
gke I think this is a problem in inav, not the models wings. I’ve had this happen before using inav as well. You can save it by switching to manual mode, but you have to be very fast/lucky
I suspected that with my Radian Pro once that seemed to roll right as it picked up speed. To prove my theory, I mounted a Mobius under the wing at the root looking towards the tip and I could see the tip twist with the front end down significantly with speed. The solution is to wrap fiber packing tape diagonally in such a way that it resists the front edge of the tip twisting down.
Pawel, I think there is a clue in the name - it’s not called a Tornado or a Hurricane. But it’s a good lesson for the rest of us; thanks for sharing. Mine arrived with one wingtip bent up and the other one down, also the tail surfaces have been glued onto the boom slightly out of square. Since it has been out of the box a while the tips have straightened themselves. Based on your experience I am going to add some carbon strip to stiffen the outer wing elements and I think I can see how to adjust the boom. Otherwise, it is quite a jewel the way it is made.
I ordered the Drift with Kopilot and their own FPV. It doesn't have telemetry so won't be able to see speed. Does the Kopilot limit speed in stabilize mode to protect against overspeed?
i have seen this happen before on a different model that dived into the ground after a dive that would not recover from under power. it turned out to be weak servos that could not flex the surfaces in the speed it was going. i have not seen a drift before but it may be worth checking the servo strength and the surface flex under load? only a possible other avenue to check.
2:00 how is it possible with this small Motor Incrice The Speed to So Fast? But why incrising the speed after lost controll? This light plane should decrese its speed of the reason of drag. Idk if my aeronautics knwoelege is broken. What if I add hard angle flaperons to break fast?
On my big EPP Multiplex Glider the same thing happens when you go full throttle. It just rolls until it gets slower, while having no way on stopping the roll. Seems common for rc gliders, at least for that I owned.
Pawel, I have had two different planes crash in the same manner using my Kopilot in balance mode, they both pitched down and rolled to the right in an uncontrollable/unrecoverable spiral. The first plane I thought it was a tip stall and that perhaps the problem was due to a lack of air speed. I fitted the same KoPilot to a trainer that I have flown for years without incident. After flying well and checking trims in manual mode I switched it over to balance and all seemed ok for a few minutes until unpredictably it dived and spiralling right unrecoverably into the ground. Quite disappointed in myself for crashing a plane I have never crashed I went home and I glued it back together and checked over every thing. I reduced the pots considerably and went back to fly. This time with a lot more altitude I tested balance mode again. All was ok for a minute or so, maybe more then the same thing occurred. This time i was able to switch to manual mode and recover before the ground caught up to me and land safely. I am using a older FrSky R9 receiver and SBUS cable to the KoPilot. I will run through all the calibrations again but apart from that I am at a bit of a loss with this. I appreciate what your proposing in this video but I wonder if there is something else amiss here?
Could be a few different things. First thing I'd check is if the prop is out-of-balance or the motor shaft is bent. Stabs can get overwhelmed by vibration. I've got an OMPHobby S720 with the plastic motor adapter warped. 20m at full throttle and down she goes! ;-)
Thanks for the video, I will be brilliant if we could have on iNav an alert when going over / below a certain speed. I had "spiral deaths" with both my Nano Talon and Talon GT due to low speeds and the models could not cover from these stalls...
I always laminate foam wings with thin foil. Mainly for the dirt protection and for minimizing crash injuries, but as a side effect they are less flexing in the air. The laminate works better then wing spars in that aspect. And specially when there are no carbon spars inside ;-)
Exactly what happened to me two days ago, I was using the two blade propeller with 3s battery and full throttle under windy conditions ! Then Damn it was flying out of control, I tried to switch to return to home mode, it did climb a bit but soon dived into ground! I also think the Ali servos aren’t strong enough for windy conditions , especially the Ali control surface are much bigger than the Ele control surface. Even during the normal condition I had experience some strange moment of the Ali servos and sometime not responsive
It's a Chuck Glider with a motor on TBH...It's not a model I would even consider buying...Here in the UK the average wind speed is probably around 8 to 12 mph...Way too much for this flimsy little plane.
Jak chcesz latać szybko przenieś środek ciężkości bardziej w przód by nie wpadał w korkociąg. To samo jak masz skrzydła o dużej powierzchni np jak zeta fx-61w tym przypadku przy niższej prędkości na nawrotach i dużym wietrze wpada w korkociąg. Dosyć dużo modeli ma z tym problem nawet tak popularny model jak sonicmodell ar+ 900, czy jak wspomniałem zeta fx-61, czy nawet skywalker x5 . Każdy model w locie trzeba sprawdzić i dopasować do stabilności/prędkości/zużycia akku czyli w/g producenta środek ciężkości to małe zużycie ale słabsza stabilność na mocniejszych podmuchach oraz przy większych prędkościach idąc w przód ze środkiem masz większe zużycie akku do utrzymania wysokości ale większe prędkości i odporność na wiatr. Ale też idąc do przodu ze środkiem ciężkości trzeba znaleźć moment by np przy lądowaniu nie miał za dużych prędkości. Często jest to tylko 0.5-1cm w przód niewiele a jednak.
I think its stall, but you right its not designe for fly fast because its glider 😀 And if you turn in slow speed its will be stall to, and watch out on windy day
Manual: Do not fly above 50km/h Me who got it above 100km/h (and almost crashed it): Good to know... It dived pretty well, but as soon as I pulled up, it just started to roll to the left. No idea how I managed to save it.
Mark is the inav guy of the inav fixed wing group, right ? They ususally talk on sunday evenings ... My Drift is ordered and shipped but did not arrive so I hope to prevent the Drift from that with the reinforced tape. But what is causing the plane to get out of control. Maybe Andrew Newton with all his cameras from all angels will find out what is causing this behaviour that others did not recognice like painless 360 who have had a pre-production model weeks earlier in house for testing.
LOL my friend, is a small plane no a racer, and what you experience may be was flutter in the flight surfaces, and yes it will crash and in balsa model will disintegrate the airplane in the air.
i've had my drift up to 70mph ewithout any issues... in a strong wing.... laminate the wings or put tape on them and they're fine :D you would be able to get out of the spin IF you had a rudder :D
plastic laminate (like for documents) or disser -style oblique packing tape on the outboard wings = better torsional stability oh, and don't fly it too fast
It seems to be a problem with their wings I got zohd dart sub 250 on the maiden flight while in auto launch mode it went straight up turned and slammed into the ground tearing off the entire nose $160 gone in 2 seconds never even got it to fly once gonna try to repair it and try again
P-S ... this is so much not a big deal ... After much real world verification 1) ensure factory spars are glued in the full length 2) add 1" (imperial) of 3M overlapping the front edge within 1/2 " of tip. This will create a u-beam adding to wing structure. ZOHD aircraft engineers have really created great platform.
The most disappointing thing that ZOHD did not place carbon rods correctly There're always 2 places where it breaks - motor mount, and tip of nose Why they did not reinforce motor mount ? WHY?! And did not use rods all the way to the tip of the nose ?
I guess this is the phenomenon called 'flutter' in aviation terms. Will usually affect control surfaces first, but the Drift wingtips are probably thin enough to be vulnerable. One thing, though: be sure to distinguish between ground speed and airspeed. Ground speed is what the ground based pilot perceives, and what GPS based OSD reports, but that is totally irrelevant to this phenomenon. Air speed is the only thing to watch. Your high downwind speed reading should not necessarily be a problem per se; your subsequent descent was probably the culprit, as it increased airspeed. Your airframe is only concerned with the mass of air it flies through; how the ground moves in relation to that mass of air does not matter at all. The 50 kph limit is good advice, it's called 'red line speed' in full scale aviation - but one should always remind people that only airspeed matters. It is a widespread misconception in the RC community that the ground somehow affects a model in the air, probably because the ground is their own reference point. Understandable, but often very misleading.
@@carnagefpv8256 Sure, we wrote VNE, but we said 'redline' verbally. Things may have changed in recent years. But aerodynamics are still as unforgiving as ever ...
The first thing you never should do: Buy a ZOHD Drift. The best FPV plane for slow and fast flights (depending on the engine) is the Multiplex Easy Star. Cut a small flap for the FC on the underside, DJI Fpv Air unit on top and 3s inside - the perfect plane! No cheap foam from China.
I had the exact same issue, I have since reinforced the wing tips, ailerons and elevator with 3m glass reinforced tape.
The surfaces no longer flex in normal conditions and made the drift a tone more stable.
Nice video pawel for letting the masses know it’s flaw.🙂
yeah, I will either laminate or put extra carbon into the wings. Or just fly slower :)
Airplane is not flaw, is the user, you want a ferrari out of a Hyundai.
@@maxun1 If this bunch of Mickey Mouse of self-proclaimed "experts" read the freakin' manual would help a lot: It clearly states the planes maximum speed and other considerations to fly it... @t bottom right corner. It's funny how people are just good enough to make a living criticizing other people's hard work...
@@oreateam6579 you are 100% correct
@@maxun1 that of cause is natural human behaviour searching or hunting for the max and not reading a manual and taking care of the limits mentioned.
I do not fly fast, as always 120 km/h is enough.
Damn, there go my plans to fit a pulsejet to one :-)
That's a bummer...
lmao
You must be new to fixed wing. :-) Wing flutter can happen to lots of planes. Stiffening the wing with carbon spars (or adding more spars than the original design) can help significantly.
100% correct.
That absolutely can help, if wing stiffness is the weak link. If control rod stiffness is the weak link, or aileron stiffness, or servo torque, then stiffening the wing doesn't get you much.
Thank you Pawel, buying one of these so I'll inset a bit more carbon into the wings. :)
To me, it was obvious that this model is a slow flyer. It has thin long wings ! you need a bit more speed, you get the 250 from the same company. It has sturdy wings with a big spar in the middle. The goal of the Drift is to rise and GLIDE or low throttle while keeping low weight. you don't do TOP GUN stuff with a glider.
Is it possible Boeing designed the Drift?
It was your shirt....the Drift,s receiver was jammed by the rays coming off it🤔😉🤭
Could not hear you over the shirt😂😂👍
You will see more of this (and other of the style) shirt :)
@@FPVUniversity loved it brother 👍
I used Gorilla shipping tape (thicker, tougher and wider - it says on the box) and that has firmed up the wings considerably as well as providing leading edge ding protection.
It’s true however I also think the control surfaces lock with the high air speed. I just did the same thing but without a dropped wing. It would not pull out at all so I think I am going to put a reversible esc so in the event the craft does get to fast it can be quickly slowed down even in a dive.
If for whatever reason (control or wing flutter by violating DNE airspeed)) you pitch down in a steep dive and if iNav is engaged then the roll estimate becomes invalid - what is the roll angle when in a vertical dive? The result will be either hard over ailerons (spiral dive) or just oscillating ailerons. If the altitude hold is engaged then the throttle may go high as it tries to climb accelerating the descent! A fix to iNav suggested by me last year was to keep ailerons neutral if the pitch angle is higher than some value. If iNav was not engaged in this case you simply went too fast and the very first move should have been to close the throttle and after that let the aircraft do its own thing. Trust me am also an engineer.
gke I think this is a problem in inav, not the models wings. I’ve had this happen before using inav as well. You can save it by switching to manual mode, but you have to be very fast/lucky
I suspected that with my Radian Pro once that seemed to roll right as it picked up speed. To prove my theory, I mounted a Mobius under the wing at the root looking towards the tip and I could see the tip twist with the front end down significantly with speed. The solution is to wrap fiber packing tape diagonally in such a way that it resists the front edge of the tip twisting down.
Pawel, I think there is a clue in the name - it’s not called a Tornado or a Hurricane. But it’s a good lesson for the rest of us; thanks for sharing. Mine arrived with one wingtip bent up and the other one down, also the tail surfaces have been glued onto the boom slightly out of square. Since it has been out of the box a while the tips have straightened themselves. Based on your experience I am going to add some carbon strip to stiffen the outer wing elements and I think I can see how to adjust the boom. Otherwise, it is quite a jewel the way it is made.
Please post here if and how you fix the out of square tail surface, mine is the same.
I ordered the Drift with Kopilot and their own FPV. It doesn't have telemetry so won't be able to see speed. Does the Kopilot limit speed in stabilize mode to protect against overspeed?
i have seen this happen before on a different model that dived into the ground after a dive that would not recover from under power. it turned out to be weak servos that could not flex the surfaces in the speed it was going. i have not seen a drift before but it may be worth checking the servo strength and the surface flex under load? only a possible other avenue to check.
LOL yes servo power is a big issue.
You’re right! Zohd didn’t put on a strong servo on the drift
similar with the nanogoblin except the VNe is more like 120kph. double he Drift it seems. I have ruined servos going over the limit on the ng
Hello, is it possible to build in inav a speed limit, so the motor will decrease speed if a set limit is hit?
Hell no, what about you learn to flight and know you limits, is common sense.
2:00 how is it possible with this small Motor Incrice The Speed to So Fast? But why incrising the speed after lost controll? This light plane should decrese its speed of the reason of drag. Idk if my aeronautics knwoelege is broken.
What if I add hard angle flaperons to break fast?
On my big EPP Multiplex Glider the same thing happens when you go full throttle.
It just rolls until it gets slower, while having no way on stopping the roll.
Seems common for rc gliders, at least for that I owned.
I just ordered one of these today thank you for this information I definitely would have tried flying it fast
Pawel,
I have had two different planes crash in the same manner using my Kopilot in balance mode, they both pitched down and rolled to the right in an uncontrollable/unrecoverable spiral. The first plane I thought it was a tip stall and that perhaps the problem was due to a lack of air speed. I fitted the same KoPilot to a trainer that I have flown for years without incident. After flying well and checking trims in manual mode I switched it over to balance and all seemed ok for a few minutes until unpredictably it dived and spiralling right unrecoverably into the ground. Quite disappointed in myself for crashing a plane I have never crashed I went home and I glued it back together and checked over every thing. I reduced the pots considerably and went back to fly. This time with a lot more altitude I tested balance mode again. All was ok for a minute or so, maybe more then the same thing occurred. This time i was able to switch to manual mode and recover before the ground caught up to me and land safely.
I am using a older FrSky R9 receiver and SBUS cable to the KoPilot. I will run through all the calibrations again but apart from that I am at a bit of a loss with this. I appreciate what your proposing in this video but I wonder if there is something else amiss here?
Could be a few different things. First thing I'd check is if the prop is out-of-balance or the motor shaft is bent. Stabs can get overwhelmed by vibration. I've got an OMPHobby S720 with the plastic motor adapter warped. 20m at full throttle and down she goes! ;-)
Ive added x4 carbon flats to the wings. Its far more stable now.
Thanks for the video, I will be brilliant if we could have on iNav an alert when going over / below a certain speed.
I had "spiral deaths" with both my Nano Talon and Talon GT due to low speeds and the models could not cover from these stalls...
Same Condition, 95kmh max speed, no issues ... but had enforced wingtips and wings with tape and glassfiber tape before it was in the air ...
I always laminate foam wings with thin foil. Mainly for the dirt protection and for minimizing crash injuries, but as a side effect they are less flexing in the air. The laminate works better then wing spars in that aspect. And specially when there are no carbon spars inside ;-)
Exactly what happened to me two days ago, I was using the two blade propeller with 3s battery and full throttle under windy conditions ! Then Damn it was flying out of control, I tried to switch to return to home mode, it did climb a bit but soon dived into ground! I also think the Ali servos aren’t strong enough for windy conditions , especially the Ali control surface are much bigger than the Ele control surface. Even during the normal condition I had experience some strange moment of the Ali servos and sometime not responsive
Pawel, many thanks for your vid - I had the same and could'nt explane it myself! Now it's clearer ;) THX!!!
Oh, is that why its called a "Drift" not a Thunder-Couger-Falcon-Bird?
This recently happened to my FPV Raptor V2. Luckily the Matek f722 saved it 3 feet from the ground and it landed perfectly
And it happened to me twice, i recovered it by slamming flaps to land.
wing flutter aint a new phenomenon
Install a flat spar on edge in the wing. Fix it for several hundred kph..
It's a Chuck Glider with a motor on TBH...It's not a model I would even consider buying...Here in the UK the average wind speed is probably around 8 to 12 mph...Way too much for this flimsy little plane.
thanks pawelote!
It’s very difficult to recover from a spin without a rudder too.
Jak chcesz latać szybko przenieś środek ciężkości bardziej w przód by nie wpadał w korkociąg. To samo jak masz skrzydła o dużej powierzchni np jak zeta fx-61w tym przypadku przy niższej prędkości na nawrotach i dużym wietrze wpada w korkociąg. Dosyć dużo modeli ma z tym problem nawet tak popularny model jak sonicmodell ar+ 900, czy jak wspomniałem zeta fx-61, czy nawet skywalker x5 . Każdy model w locie trzeba sprawdzić i dopasować do stabilności/prędkości/zużycia akku czyli w/g producenta środek ciężkości to małe zużycie ale słabsza stabilność na mocniejszych podmuchach oraz przy większych prędkościach idąc w przód ze środkiem masz większe zużycie akku do utrzymania wysokości ale większe prędkości i odporność na wiatr. Ale też idąc do przodu ze środkiem ciężkości trzeba znaleźć moment by np przy lądowaniu nie miał za dużych prędkości. Często jest to tylko 0.5-1cm w przód niewiele a jednak.
Maybe laminate the wing tips would help.
How about stifening the wings!!? it should be easy to make it more harder with some work!?
Great video as always
Thanks again!
I think its stall, but you right its not designe for fly fast because its glider 😀
And if you turn in slow speed its will be stall to, and watch out on windy day
Manual: Do not fly above 50km/h
Me who got it above 100km/h (and almost crashed it): Good to know...
It dived pretty well, but as soon as I pulled up, it just started to roll to the left. No idea how I managed to save it.
Thanks pawel
Mark is the inav guy of the inav fixed wing group, right ?
They ususally talk on sunday evenings ...
My Drift is ordered and shipped but did not arrive so I hope to prevent the Drift from that with the reinforced tape.
But what is causing the plane to get out of control. Maybe Andrew Newton with all his cameras from all angels will find out what is causing this behaviour that others did not recognice like painless 360 who have had a pre-production model weeks earlier in house for testing.
Yeap, that's him
Put fiberglass with epoxic glue on wings, vertical and horozont stabilizers
Not surprised since it’s a glider and not a acrobatic fast plane
Excellent and informative video!
LOL my friend, is a small plane no a racer, and what you experience may be was flutter in the flight surfaces, and yes it will crash and in balsa model will disintegrate the airplane in the air.
i've had my drift up to 70mph ewithout any issues... in a strong wing.... laminate the wings or put tape on them and they're fine :D you would be able to get out of the spin IF you had a rudder :D
plastic laminate (like for documents) or disser -style oblique packing tape on the outboard wings = better torsional stability
oh, and don't fly it too fast
It seems to be a problem with their wings I got zohd dart sub 250 on the maiden flight while in auto launch mode it went straight up turned and slammed into the ground tearing off the entire nose $160 gone in 2 seconds never even got it to fly once gonna try to repair it and try again
That has killed me🤣🤣 Auto launch mode on the maiden flight and smashed into the ground after 2 seconds
Thanks! "Wing"s the best). Especially SonicModell AR Wing 900, and 600 mini.
P-S ... this is so much not a big deal ... After much real world verification 1) ensure factory spars are glued in the full length 2) add 1" (imperial) of 3M overlapping the front edge within 1/2 " of tip. This will create a u-beam adding to wing structure. ZOHD aircraft engineers have really created great platform.
3m what? 3m is a company not a product. Why didn't the ZOHD aircraft engineers include this piece of 3m material from the factory?
The most disappointing thing that ZOHD did not place carbon rods correctly
There're always 2 places where it breaks - motor mount, and tip of nose
Why they did not reinforce motor mount ? WHY?!
And did not use rods all the way to the tip of the nose ?
I guess this is the phenomenon called 'flutter' in aviation terms. Will usually affect control surfaces first, but the Drift wingtips are probably thin enough to be vulnerable. One thing, though: be sure to distinguish between ground speed and airspeed. Ground speed is what the ground based pilot perceives, and what GPS based OSD reports, but that is totally irrelevant to this phenomenon. Air speed is the only thing to watch. Your high downwind speed reading should not necessarily be a problem per se; your subsequent descent was probably the culprit, as it increased airspeed. Your airframe is only concerned with the mass of air it flies through; how the ground moves in relation to that mass of air does not matter at all. The 50 kph limit is good advice, it's called 'red line speed' in full scale aviation - but one should always remind people that only airspeed matters. It is a widespread misconception in the RC community that the ground somehow affects a model in the air, probably because the ground is their own reference point. Understandable, but often very misleading.
You mean VNE? Never heard of redline speed.. lol
@@carnagefpv8256 Sure, we wrote VNE, but we said 'redline' verbally. Things may have changed in recent years. But aerodynamics are still as unforgiving as ever ...
Pretty interesting, Pawel! And that's a real shame. 😕
I hope you can fix it!
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
The first thing you never should do: Buy a ZOHD Drift. The best FPV plane for slow and fast flights (depending on the engine) is the Multiplex Easy Star. Cut a small flap for the FC on the underside, DJI Fpv Air unit on top and 3s inside - the perfect plane! No cheap foam from China.
Let it slowly DRIFT to the ground
I was debating getting this model....not anymore. hard pass.
50Km/h is really low. That's really a flaw.
Ummmmmm- that’s why it’s called a drift bro , wasn’t that enough to give you a hint ? This is the ONLY guy that’s complained about the drift LMAO
This is called exceeding VMax
50Km/h is really really low VMax tbh.
And old saying. Rtfm....
Should have watched this video before.... ask me why..:-)
I think I know
Everything slower than 250 km/ is boring.