Got a chance to maiden my recently purchased, for $900, RTF EF 88" Yak with DA-50 this afternoon!
Took my buddy @yakattack with me so I wouldn't be solo.
The ol' DA cranked right up, but as I was slowly throttling up it quit. Uh oh!
After Justin cranking it for 10 minutes, I took my turn. We could get it to pop when choked, could get it to stumble through a few cycles off choke.
Pulled the canopy and the cowl. Went over the tank and lines. Had an extra plug but no wrench. Drove over to my nearby buddies' house to borrow a deep well 14 mm wrench to pull the plug. It was dark brown so we went ahead and replaced it.
Still no luck. Propped the thing until both our right arms were about to fall off.
After farting around for well over 1 1/2 hours I finally noticed that as Justin was moving the throttle stick I could hear the throttle servo moving but the carb arm wasn't!
Turns out the initial run up rattled the servo arm screw loose and the arm off the servo.
DOH!
Seated the arm, tightened the screw down, lo-and-behold, engine started on 6th crank.
Did a range test motor off and a range test motor running. Good to go!
Warmed it up, adjusted throttle end points and away we go.
Plane required significant amounts of up trim :-(
Got it trimmed out, flew a couple of laps. Tried some harriers, way up high and then passed the sticks to Justin.
He flys it a bit, comes by and does an aileron roll. He remarks that the ailerons are not nearly as responsive as his EF 88" yak. As he makes a pass back the other way he sees the left aileron's servo arm and pushrod hanging down. Thank goodness he's young and has good corrective lenses!
He brings her in and lands her pretty as a peach, especially considering he has only one working aileron!
Moral of this story, locktite all you servo screws!
Luckily the plane survived the remaiden.
Now off to the shop to go over every servo and apply that locktite. Gotta be ready for the beautiful flying weather here in GA tomorrow!
BJ Swope
