twinturbostang

Yeah, It'll do cobra maneuvers with the appropriate power system. Sounds like you're on top of that though. As for max speed, I'm not sure how fast it is. My buddy's is OK, but not super fast. The wing and fuse are pretty thick, so there may be a bit of drag, even though it's a nice streamline shape.

Speaking of speed, I was out at lunch flying my 'Cat. I drag raced a friend's GWS ME-109 and smoked him. Now that may not sound like much of a feat at first. But... he's got a 3 cell 2100 lipo pack pushing a Mega 4 turn and 6x4E prop. He's also completely covered the plane in packing tape, and it has no landing gear at all on it (belly land only). The plane has a very small cross section on the wing and fuse, and with the packing tape, it's very slippery. So... it's real FAST. But mine was fastER. He's bummed out about it now. Haha

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

Hehehe PWNED! Reminds me of last weekend, my buddy had just recently acquired an extra mini by fliton, he was telling me how stiff and strong it was and how well it flew, until he felt my airfoilz and saw it fly... The poor guy had a massive in flight wing failure on his fliton pulling a high g maneuver! It was totaled, we burned it's remains... However i got NO satisfaction from this "victory" on the contrary, i was more upset than he was, it broke my heart! That's why i gave him the raven. We put it together with my airframe mods and his power system. Now it's one of the most incredible aerobats we have ever seen! MUCH better than his fliton in all disciplines... Now THAT made me feel good!

As for the jet; it sounds exactly like what i'm looking for, the su-27 that is. Like i mentioned previously, i'm not looking for extreme speed. Anything over 50mph will be just gravy... I think i read somewhere the pitch speed of a little screamers parkjet is between 70 and 85mph depending on prop selection, i realize that the limit will be aerodynamic drag and not pitch speed but 60mph would be enough to make a jet that size satisfying to fly. If i really have an itch to scratch i bust out the graupner nemesis... thing has a 17 3/4 inch wingspan, sub 3oz and like i said before 50mph level flight (might actually be more than that i'm being conservative because i never clocked it) Needless to say you need to be wide awake to fly this thing!


The extra is fully ready to go now, all the loose ends have been dealt with down to the radio setup. The nice thing about building the same plane twice is you allready know what works best for it. Hope i don't get a bad surprise... I am maidening it as soon as the rain stops and it's daylight out. windy or not she's going up! The good thing about having backup planes is youre much less nervous about mishaps, if you foul-up you just change the model selection on your tx and fly out your frustration!

Hey have you seen the King E by reds hangar one? Looks very similar to the aerocat by design, i considered it for a while after seeing how incredibly well the miss hangar one performs, take a peek;

[link=http://www.teamsteadfast.com/store/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=3&ccSID-285e73f64c04744fc5f33ff68f529742=cf3bccd4fc3656f43 a0100539ca46312]king E[/link]

twinturbostang

Cool little plane! Bet that thing is hard to keep up with. I've got a Pocket Combat Wing from EdgeRC that is quite the handfull to fly also. It's a flying wing with a 20" wingspan. Weighs about 6oz. I ran it with a Fiegao inrunner until the motor leads frayed and it stopped running. I've got a single CD-rom motor in there now. Speed is OK, but I need to wind it hotter to get some more out of it. A buddy has one that's on crack! He's got some super duper CD-ROM motor in it with a crazy wind. That thing is just slightly slower than my other friend's ME-109, which probably puts it at about 60mph. Here's a link to the combat wing... http://www.edgerc.com/pcw.htm

Yes, I think I've seen it before. Personally, I think the AeroCat looks much better. The King E looks too "boxy" and more like it was put together in somebody's basement, rather than a professional product. I was very impressed with the AeroCat kit. High quality components, everything fit PERFECT, pre-printed graphics, and I can tell a lot of engineering went into the design. Flies good too! In case you haven't seen their website... www.modelaero.com

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

the feigao 12mm inrunner 5400kv (something like that) is what i have on my nemesis it's the longer of the two. I fly it on 2 cell 300mah 20c packs with a 4x3 graupner cam speed, draws about 5A wot, i I tried a 3x3 also, draws a bit less. Doing low passes with that thing wot is fun but i paid the price a couple of weeks ago... slammed it's belly on the ground at top speed. I rebuilt it but haven't flown it since, waiting for parts. I don't really like the feigao to tell you the truth, it gets the job done but it grunts a lousy tune doing it, feels real rough compared to the inrunners i have only used in rc cars before. Hard to describe it's like it's out of ballance before you put a prop on it.

Hold off on your motor purchase, how does 21 grams, roughly 1500kv, capable of swinging a 7x4 on 3 cells at 15A sound? Well, hobby lobby is taking over distribution of little screamers motors. it's what i've been planing to use on the sukhoi since i first heard about this motor. (little screamers park jet version) It would probably be about perfect for your pocket combat wing, only 4 grams more than your feigao was

way back when selecting parts for my hydrofoam I wanted to get the purple peril motor, same size but slightly cooler wind than the pj version. But they were sold out constantly and were impossible to get your hands on. That thing would KILL on the uf extra under 13oz build


oh one question, what was your setup on the feigao (prop, cells, load at wot)

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

Well, i got a small window of opportunity to maiden today and i took it.

Weather said 5mph winds, completely overcast, forecast for the afternoon was for rain and higher wind, they were saying 10mph. Right on, So i take off in low wind.

I still have a couple of very minor precision adjustments to make but so far i have to say WOW! MUCH better than my mk1 IT is perfect at this weight but i don't think it's only the wing loading. Every control surface is so much tighter than on my first build it feels much larger than it is. Right on cue with the weather station's forcast the wind suddenly increased to 15mph and it started to drizzle slightly. Not because of the wind but because of the rain the maiden had to be cut short.

Level flight is awesome, stall speed is super super slow and this thing just won't tipstall like i've seen it do wich really helps it's level flight characteristics. (low wing+high cg+tipstall=twitchy and fast landing, i get it now) It's inverted flight characteristics are also better than ever, though this extra has allways been impressive in that department.

Knife edge: Excellent, i only got to that towards the end of the flight but managed to pull a ke loop that only rolled out (canopy down) when it had regained level flight at the bottom of the loop= nice inverted exit. Could have been the wind at this point. though i know it has some coupling.

Flat spin, didn't get to invert due to time constraints. but the uprights were nice.

this plane flies so nice inverted that i actually considered for a moment making it into a flying oddity;

mount a tailwheel on top of the rudder right on the axix, put the landing gear on top, in front of the canopy and setup the radio so rudder left is right, elevator up is down.

But i just decided to fly it inverted the old school way instead... I do want landing gear and steerable tail wheel though. I deliberately over hinged the rudder to provide strength to bear the load of a wheel.

Since the weather is crap i'm off to fabricate landing gear.

rcugolf

I have been following this thread for a couple weeks and have since got my kit. The build for me has gone pretty slow due to lack of time but I do what I can when I can. I would firstly like to thank you all for the wealth of information you have provided on this plane. As you know there really is not much information on the web about this kit and what there is of it is mostly not positive.
I followed along with the priority of being weight conscious as you have stressed in your threads. Although some of the components I'm using don't really contribute to that theme but none the less the ready to fly weight minus my battery (tp 1320) is 15.6 oz. The battery comes in at 3.09oz so thats an estimated 18.69oz rtf weight. List of components follows.

E-flite 450bl outrunner with fabricated motor mount.
gws 11x4.7 sf (perfect match to motor amp wise but not sure if a smaller prop will be mandatory, will find out).
3 hs55 servos.
4mm carbon fiber tube on the wing.
not using the plastic canopy.
du-bro#845 ez connectors drilled to size on the control rods at the servo arms.
bigger tail wheel, maxx products spoke wheel. black foam tire removed and the white plastic rim painted with krylon fusion black.
cowl painted black with the same krylon fusion black.
21st century microlite covering transparent red and black.

Maiden to follow soon I hope. Will post results when done but it may not be for some time. Feel free to leave feedback.

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

Wow, that is fairly heavy considering the lightening mods you have performed. That being said if you are an experienced pilot you can handle this thing at 25oz, it's just not going to glide.

I have tried it in all conditions; super heavy and over powered, moderate weight and power. And currently; minimum weight, and small 100-125w power system based more on pitch speed than thrust. (910mah pro lite 3s, 1300kv 30 gram outrunner, sub 13oz auw. I flew it on the 1320 today, still performed rock solid.

You should be allright, watch out for tip stalls, they are more frequent as the wing loading increases and their effect is more noticeable. The large slowfly props have a torque effect on these things and very low pitch speed, since this thing likes speed especially when loaded you might want to rethink one or more components of your power system. It will work, and you will get good vertical, but you could be making better use of those electrons. Try some props with a smaller diameter and longer pitch to compensate for your lower rpm's. (sub 900kv)

If you haven't made it that far reading the thread check out the last few posts on my part, we all learned a few things since this thread started. Now. it's lighter than ever, fast as ever and wow... Flew it in 25mph gusts today with no problems.

twinturbostang

Hi rcugolf. Looks good! The thing I would stress the most, is to build it strong. The control surfaces on this plane are HUGE, and you can really rip the plane apart if you try. So look for anything that may be weak, and beef it up.

Case in point, I crashed mine today. This is probably the worst crash I've had with it. Yeah, I've had a stabilizer rip off, or the wing crack. But this time the fuse broke in half. Got her up in the air, did a couple of patterns, gave full throttle down wind and the friggin wing decided to part company. It was a typical crash at that point... wing floated down like a feather, and the fuselage turned into an arrow and lawn darted in the field. The fuse is not totalled though. It broke in half just forward of the canopy. It was pretty much a clean break with minimal compression of the foam. So it should glue back together fairly well. Only other damage to the airframe was the end of the left elevator snapped. Easy fix though. The aileron servo vaporized though. Have no idea where it went. I'm sure the lawn mower's will find it though! But, that gives me a good excuse to now ditch the crappy Futaba S3108 servo in favor of something better. I really hated those servos. Yeah, they may be lightweight. But not very precise, control horns are rather wimpy, and there's tons of slop in it.

As far as the cause of the crash, it was partly my fault, and partly design error. The rear wing mount failed. The wing pulled right through the hold down screw. The plastic reinforcer that is supplied is way too thin and flexes. That's the design error part. It used to have a washer on it though, but apparently that disapeared. That's the pilot/builder error part. lol I think a combination of both things finally caused it to fail. I will be reinforcing the area with, of course, a new washer, but also with a square of 1/8" ply. That should hopefully hold it together.

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

that's the exact failure my friend has with his overweight build. mine is glued all around, no hardware. the plane is basically one piece now, if something fails that won't be it... i double dog dare you to try and in-flight damage mine

stang, time to try the D47's!

you should also do the pull pull rudder and pushrod/tube elevator setup + dual aileron servos while you are at it, slop free and rock solid!

twinturbostang

Hehe, bring it down to Maryland and I'm sure I can make it fail! I've found just about every failure mode on my Extra!

I've got two of them on the plane (elev, rud).

If I end up crashing it beyond repair, I'll build another one and incorporate every single thing we've learned here in the new bird. Dual aileron servos for sure, as well as plenty of carbon fiber reinforcing right from the get go.

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

i doubt you could get mine to break in it's current configuration is what i mean to say, add weight and i'm no longer guaranteeing anything. 50g's times zero weight = zero force to break parts. They don't even need to be strong! (but they are)

This is ideal for this plane, just to give you an idea, my motor mount consist of 4 ply's of 3mm depron sandwiched with a fine layer of gorilla glue, the top layer has 4 corners cut out and replaced by small 3mm thick pieces of aircraft ply to screw the motor in. then 4 small cf rods go in a hole drilled through all layers of depron and comes in contact the wood pieces, they are secured there and onto the firewall using the same method i used last via gorilla glue. strong enough for a mini funtana, light enough for a shocky...


I am testing a motor for the su-27. While i wait for the parkjet motor to become available i am searching for a motor to fly it on. I have a castle creations 6800kv inrunner (cm-2068) I managed to fit it into a gearbox that gives a 5.16:1 ratio. I tried a 6x3 cam slim and it pulls 13A Might be a little slow with that pitch but sure has a good deal of thrust.

then i slapped on a 7x5E apc and floored it, the pack was maybe 75% charged and it was pulling 20A on the nose, it seemed to be making really really good power. I think i might just fly that one using extreme throttle moderation and find a way to deflect air onto the motor. The motor is rated at 15A continuous and 20A short bursts.

I figure if i ease into the throttle and accelerate gradually the prop will never load up that high in the air.

Stang has your friend done anything to improve the aerodynamics? I plan on sanding the leading and trailing edges of everything on the plane, also the underside, been thinking about covering some of the holes in a streamlined fashion. I bought some self adhesive covering to experiment with that. At the very least i will cover just the leading edge of the wings and control surfaces with some strips.

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

Check this out, i added a bit of weight.

Didn't get the chance to fly it off water yet or had toss test fly either, i'll let you know, should be interesting.

rcugolf

Aflipz, Yea the components (heavy reciever/heavy connectors heavy outrunner etc) killed the weight loss but over all I'm glad I did or it would have been even hevier than it already is. As far as the prop size/pitch goes I will take your advice on it. My flying buddy grilled me on the prop size issue too but my stubbornness just didnt want to hear it. So are you thinking of stock size/pitch 9x6 for that low kv outrunner? I refuse to go gearbox, been there done that . Also, please see a mental health specialist as soon as possible. What are you thinking man? FLOATS? Seriously though I like off the wall out of the box thinking. Good job. Keep us posted. I bet the first few landings on the water with those floats sure are going to curl your short hairs. Would mine!


Twinturbomustang, Thanks for the kind words and sorry to hear about your gravity issues. I know exactly the parts your speaking of that contributed to your wing failure. I added just a dab of hot glue to both the top and bottom piece during assembly for that very concern (again adding weight but I felt the added strength was necessary).

I'll rescan the thread but going to ask anyways. Where are you guys starting your CG? As It is right now mines at the 70mm mark at the root and thats with the battery as far forward as it can go.

Thanks for both your time and kind words.

twinturbostang

aflipz: No, he has not done anything to the aerodynamics.... other than a little bit of repair epoxy here and there. Apparently, the inverted stall characteristics are quite a bit different! lol Too bad he found that out 10 feet off the deck.

Oh and I concur. Floats belong on a Cessna, not an aerobatic sport plane!

rcugolf: I prefer the CG around 70-72 mm. I've had it back at 75 and it was a bit twitchy. Much harder to land also. It's amazing, but just a few millimeters is quite different in terms of how it flies.

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

Ok, first of all. No need to see my therapist, i took my meds, in fact i just got my monthly supply and to save time i took em all at once! hehe

Second' floats belong on anything subsonic! Had i put them on the su-27 now i'd understand. But i find it actually looks good with the floats. I'm sure it'll be a charm to fly and land too, don't forget with all this i still have an auw of about 15oz and a power to weight ratio of over 1:1

I saw this video just the other day on rcgroups of a guy with a cessna doing rolling circles with floats, if he can do that with a cessna immagine what this thing will do!

I immagine finally the harriers will be easier upright than inverted due to the change in cg height, should fly like a trainer... Anywhoo i'm not scared of that thing at all as it is and they are removable, I actually got them for winter flying since summer is pretty much over. They will be a lot of fun in the snow too. 15$ experiment and 2h to put it together i figure it's worth the trouble.

Have you ever taken of an landed on water? Probably not cuz you'd be singing a different song.

I think i'll take a better pic and send it to ultrafly to see if they post it. They'll probably delete it in hopes that it doesn't give anyone else my crazy idea!


Peace!

twinturbostang

Ahh, maybe that's the problem!

Well, give it a shot. I figured the floats would totally kill the performance. Which basically defeats the purpose of flying this plane. It may loop ok. But I would bet money that rolls will be pretty ugly, or at least a LOT slower. Think of the mass distribution and the moment arm created by all that mass so far away from the CG. And knife edge is going to have a lot of roll coupling (to the belly most likely).

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

http://media.putfile.com/New-modified-Estarter


That looks like fun, but mine will be funner i promise


Oh, and when i remove them to replace with just traditionnal landing gear the only extra part is a gws landing gear socket and the adhesive (gorilla glue) used to set it in place, on top of that the piece is on the cg point. Ballances real nice too.

aflipz

My Feedback: (10)

Ok, funness confirmed.

It's awesome, you should see my inverted flatspins, funny to look at, super fun to fly. My power to weight sucks now, no climbout at all. Takes a really long run to lift off when the water is smooth too, would be better if slightly choppy.

I have the cg where i normally have it but it allways wants to climb off throttle for some reason. I need to check my thrust angle at same cg without the floats and if it's allright like that it means i gotta remove a little incidence on the floats.

Most of my landings were just incredible, in another i dropped a wing in the drink and it went about 2/3 way down, the floats (and the solid core foam wing) have so much buoyancy that it leveled right back up , i let the water drip off and flew again.

Robby368

Did you leave the spinner off during flight? I don't know what kind of aerodynamic difference it makes, but that's definitley a good way to save wieght. I haven't weighed mine yet, but I'm sure it's around the 22 ounce mark.

twinturbostang

Mine has never had the spinner on it. I also don't have the landing gear (hand launch, belly land). And I have carbon fiber pushrods, etc. So it started out pretty light. I have a few crash repairs in it now though, and all of them are due to airframe failure. Like I mentioned in your message thread, this plane can do some violent manuevers if you're not careful. That coupled with the brushless motor results in failure of various airframe components. So I have additional carbon fiber spars in the stabilizer and wing. I'm just now re-building it after the last "incident". This time around, I decided to glue the wing directly onto the fuselage, like aflipz did with his second Extra. I'm not going to tolerate another wing departure! lol

acdcrocks4

has anyone tried the wierd plane sitting on my counter