Hi all,
Received my SP140 today, through international courier. I was worried about damage in transit but fortunately everything looks OK. I could see how it could get beat up if handled badly but I was lucky.
Great work Zach and Paul, I’m impressed you have been able to productionize this. Some aspects look like they would give you some trouble, in terms of tolerance and repeatability. Only difficulty I had was plugging the bottom of the hoop into the frame, it’s pretty tight! And I’m not sure if I have a reserve container?
Motor fired up first time, haven’t checked the charger and BMS stuff yet but yeah pretty much ready to fly out of the box, impressive.
It’ll be a while before I can fly it so I have plenty of time to set up with a hang test and do some ground testing based on the discussions here about battery run time and what happens at end of discharge.
Yep some of the tolerances are pretty tight, I like to put in the bottom of the hoop (where it connects to the frame legs) first because sometimes I have to wiggle it a bit before connecting the top to the other sections.
Hopefully you get some nice weather and can fly soon! Where in the UK are you?
Cheers, I’m in Scotland north of Edinburgh. I have been doing paragliding and probably need to switch up to a proper paramotor wing. We will get some nice cold, calm days in winter, but at the moment it’s all wind and rain…
Finished the assembly - added the prop, the connector shells and gave the battery a full charge. Seems that the charger decides end of charge based on voltage - fair enough.
I wanted to do a run-down test to get a benchmark for a new battery, so I braced the frame against a couple of beams across my barn door, and held the throttle at 40A.
The % display was actually pretty accurate, started showing 94%, immediately dropped to 68% under load but hit 1% just before the BMS cut the battery off. I think under variable power, in flight, it will be a bit different but good to be going on with.
Hi Evan,
I think I got the first UK SP140 in North Hampshire… it arrived bashed about by UPS so the frame was knackered. Zack sent me a new frame which vanished in transit somewhere around Heathrow, so he sent another which arrived intact… Had a deal of interest when I went to Borechasers, but what with Covid & other issues I haven’t flown it yet - have had trouble getting it to hang right as I’m only 74Kg - see other posts on moving the battery etc… I’d be interested to see how you get on… Cheers!
Wow, that looks much better than mine I was hanging back by a good 20 degrees.
I wonder if your swing arms are shorter - any chance you could measure the distance from the highest point of the swing arm to the bolt on the frame?
Cheers!
Have you thought about adding weight in the under seat storage of the harness? I’m not sure how much you can safely put in the storage area but maybe you could sew in some Velcro straps. I know it’s not the most ideal thing to do but unless you change out your motor mounts and swingarms I don’t see any other way for you to get closer to 15°. Of course, going to the 1/2 hour battery is another option.
I fly with a Steerable large Beamer Reserve in a flight deck bag with instruments. I have this clipped into the shackles at the front of the swingarms. Adds weight way out front to kind of balance some of battery weight out. You might try that. The reserve bridles then hook into the beeners with soft links and extensions.
Thanks yes - I’ve been exploring the idea of moving the battery to under the seat (some others have done this) - this lowers the CofG, but makes a big difference to the hang angle. The other thought was to pack out the bottom cross bar where the Harness connects to the frame - this pushes the pilot away from the bottom of the frame / pushes the frame to a vertical position - it only needs ~1" or so…
