Quote from Colin Watkins on December 6, 2019, 7:34 pm

Around mid September I had a disappointing flying session with my Easy Street. It was on its third flight if I remember rightly. It flies quickly so I was being pretty careful.

I was going down wind on a wide circuit when the Easy Street simply spun out of the sky and headed at high speed towards the ground, which it hit with an thump which was easily heard even though it was in the next field.

I'd been going through a bad patch with flying so my first thought was that I had done something silly. My next thought was that there might have been a technical issue with the Easystreet. Whichever it was, the few seconds of panic before it hit the floor probably didn't help.

With help from fellow flyers we picked up the pieces and I dumped it in the far corner of my cellar, which is where I do my model building.

Given that I had previously lost my Phoenix and was waiting for a replacement, the only model left for me to fly was the VersaWing that Scott had kindly made for me some time ago. I actually flew it quite a lot over the next few weeks.

Eventually I got around to rebuilding the EasyStreet. It was a big job! Everything from the wings forward needed to be replaced. It has taken some time.

Eventually, towards the end of November, it got to a stage where I could install the rudder and elevator servos. I connected a receiver and  started to centralise the control surfaces using the Taranis. everything went well until I noticed that although I had centralised the rudder, it somehow had moved to the hard left position. I moved the rudder control on the Taranis - but nothing happened! The elevator worked properly, so it wasn't loss of signal - the rudder just stayed hard left. I moved the rudder control with a bit more enthusiasm - rocking it quite quickly, as if that would make any difference! Suddenly the rudder centralised itself and control was resumed! I kept moving the rudder control and everything seemed fine. But then - the rudder suddenly moved to full left and stuck there!

I played the 'rudder' game for some time and gradually realised that there was an intermittent connection problem between the joystick and the electronics inside the Taranis! Was is that that caused the Easy Street to crash? The Easy Street certainly wouldn't take kindly to full left rudder!

But - I had been using the Taranis quite a lot since then! Why hadn't I noticed the problem recently? Well - I had been flying the VersaWing which doesn't have a rudder, so a rudder problem wouldn't be apparent!

I have taken the Taranis apart and cleaned all the connections and the problem seems to have improved. Mind you - I've lost a bit of confidence in it, especially as the push buttons on the left are playing up since I put it back together.

So, with the Taranis playing up, I've decided to buy something else. Mel helped with his WhatsApp message about the Jumper T16. That's the one I've bought! Possibly more about that later!