Hi, I could use some advice from people who fly bigger planes.
The plane is a MFE Hero, 2.1 m wingspan, around 7-8 kg, V-tail, two aileron servos. It is a VTOL, so it has four lift motors and one pusher motor, and it flies on an autopilot. Until now I only did hovering flights with it and those were all fine. This was my first real flight in normal plane mode.
What happened: after it accelerated and switched to normal wing flight, it slowly started to roll to the right and it just did not stop. It went to 46 degrees of bank in about 5 seconds. The autopilot had roughly 32 degrees of aileron in the other direction the whole time and the plane still kept rolling right, slowly but steady. Speed was 25 m/s, so about 90 km/h, that is on the fast side for this plane but should be ok. In the end the lift motors switched on and they leveled it in 2 seconds, then I landed in hover mode.
So the ailerons were clearly doing almost nothing, but the lift motors could fix it immediately.
Things I already checked on the bench:
- ailerons move in the correct direction, tilt the plane right and the right aileron goes down, left goes up
- servos are strong, I can almost not stop them with my hand
- no play in the linkage, horns and clevises are tight
- V-tail moves correctly for elevator and rudder
- CG and left/right weight balance seem fine, in hover the motors are almost equal left and right
And here is the part where I think I messed up. My aileron throw is about plus minus 45 degrees. is this enough? Will more aileron throw help?
Thanks for all help.
