[wingtipper]

purchased one of these off AARON , for a very cheap $35 .
i have to say they are a piece of JUNK . however i'm not complaining , its the way they come from factory .
anyhow . a few mods were necessary which i recommend before flight ready , what i did was change the ailerons as the ones on the plane were warped . i glued 2 pinned hinges on the underside of each aileron , and ran hinhge tape along the middle of each new balsa aileron .
i also made a dowel keeper plate out of ply to keep the wing secured and glued it on . the foam fuselage just isnt enough to gaurantee the wings wont rip off .
with this plane you have to remove the wing everytime you want to change the battery , i'd rather keep the wing fitted , so i used a soldering iron to burn neat holes into the fuselage at the top , entering the canopy , and placed the receiver and battery in the canopy .
this serves 2 purposes , one it keeps the servos inside clear , and 2ndly the wing can stay on when you change the battery .
the wing servo control rods are rubbish , i upgraded them to thicker rods to stop flex , the long elevon and rudder thin guage control rods flex like hell . so i stuck a piece of balsa between them and zapped together , which fixed the flex .
the elevon hinge was too stiff , i disconnected the control rod and bent it 90 degrees multiple times and reconnected , then it was ok .
aaron was unfortunate that the esc was shot on the origional purchase , but ordered and through in a better one with the sale of the plane .
however this was a mongral to change as it was hardwired ( soldered to the motor , i didnt bother with plugs on the new one and simply soldered thatone in also as room is an issue with these planes .
its ready for a fly , just need to paint the wings for orientation purposes mand work out the CG .

AS YOU CAN SEE , most of these mods need to be done IN MY OPINION , if ordering one be prepared for these mods before hand .
pics and maiden flight report to come .

[wingtipper]

WELL HERE IS A PIC AND A MAIDEN FLIGHT REPORT .


you will note that i have doubled up on the elevator depron , this i think is necessary as the stock depron is very flimsy , but the truth is i painted the elevator too with solvent acrylic and it just ate it away so i quickly cut to shape some depron and glued it over the top before it fell off . LOL .
Anyhow i had to add about 60 grams of weight to the nose to get the correct CG .
maiden flight had a few troubles as they always do , the main being ramping up throttle produced the moter to suddenly stop if done too quickly , so i spent some time ressting the ESC timing to high and we were then ok .
i took off on 60% aileron with 15% exp . and 45% elevator with 10% exp . this worked out perfect . full throws forget it . this is a sport model .
nice slippage cutting through the air on turns but drops a little in height , dosile when slow , and agile when fast , it is a stayer in the air and if you throttle off it will stall without warning , i found it hard to fly low as it is hard to keep at a constent altitude .
there are 2 ways to land , for me anyhow . that is a long approach with plenty of landing strip to find the stall point off the ground , or fly it in . the later being the harder as it is hard to fly it low . however 3 landings were safe , it can take a little heavy landing but the nose wheel is flimsy . i'm just re enforcing that now .
pleny of mods required before this little buaety can become a nice plane . but it's getting there . 1300mah 3s is good for atleast 6 minutes .

[Steven]

Oh, that is a pretty little thing. Love a nice prop plane that's out of the normal. Looking forward to seeing it at the field.

[gbanger]

Well done Frank, looks like your on top of that little sucker.

[wingtipper]

hated this model . i retired it and threw it out , as i thought it was a waste of ESC ,WHEELS , AND RECEIVER USE . It flew horrible and would not maintain any sort of flight charactoristic . the amount of modding i di to improvbe it still was not enough , it needed pretty much a complete redesign and rebuild before a maiden . which just simply isnt worth it .
best thing for this bird was the bin .
a nice PNF S'BACH HK MODEL might replace it i think .

[secant0give]

I'd be reluctant to get an Sbach unless you get a bigish one, I'd reckon the wings are too tapered to fly nicely in the smaller sizes. My little yellow edge 540 is a bit like that. It's the kind of model that if you stall it and hold on elevator it will drop straight into a spin.

[wingtipper]

Hi jason the pnf sbach i was looking at is 1400 wingspan 42 size EPO model its $129 from the int warehouse , however postage is $125 . A bit off putting . An edf panther f9 is on the cards too as eell as the sbach , but i might look at somerhing else other than the sbach EPO

[secant0give]

Have a look at these

http://superandcheaper.com.au/view_product.asp?id=1231 $139 + $15 shipping

http://superandcheaper.com.au/view_product.asp?id=864 $177 + $15 shipping

http://superandcheaper.com.au/view_product.asp?id=1230 $155 + $15 shipping

[wingtipper]

Nice planes i like the extra 260 . However i have 2 balsa arf planes . I wont some expendable foam pnf models