Terbough Bob

My Feedback: (10)

All right, so I ordered the kit as well as a spare battery and the Sky Charger B6AC battery charger on Friday evening and it arrived shortly after noon today. It was packaged well, and other than a few scuffs and dings on the outer box, everything was as it should be. Once everything was unpacked and the directions were read, it took less than ten minutes to have a complete airplane sitting on the floor. Here's my thoughts...

1) Since there was no interaction between myself and NitroModels beyond my initial order, I can't speak of their customer service. I was provided an order # shortly after check out and a UPS tracking # Monday afternoon, both via email, and that was all the communication I feel I needed.

2) The proverbial round peg in a square hole is alive and well with this model- the wing joiner spar is round, but the receiver tubes in the wings are square. It's a tight fit, but I kind of laughed at the engineering (or lack thereof) behind this decision. However, the round wing joiner spar was dented in a few places and wasn't exactly straight. I haven't contacted NitroModels about this yet, so it's not an issue right now. Push comes to shove, I'll go find a similar tube locally for $5 and be done with it. For now, it'll fly with a little dihedral. On a somewhat related note, it's extremely difficult to get the wings to join up inside the fuselage and line the holes up to slide the vertical pegs down to hold the halves together and in the fuse. I'm not sure if this is related to the slightly bent spar, or if it's supposed to be like this and will "wear in" over time.

3) The manual states the CG should be 80mm back from the leading edge, but it actually falls at 64mm, which is right on the spar. The chord at the root is approximately 218mm, so at 80mm, that puts the CG at 37% if I'm guessing right. 64mm puts it at 29%, but I'd like to hear from the pros what they think about where the CG should be initially.

4) I did the zip tie mod to the wing pegs that Tony talks about in the promotional video, and will be doing the packing tape mod to the bottom of the fuselage and wing tips to prevent it from getting gouged like he says as well. Later on, I'll be adding flaps for some crow action and will use my Futaba T8UAF to do so.

5) It does come with a charger despite no mention of this on the website. I think this is a little misleading as you're given the option to buy a $55- $60 charger in the drop down menu, but there's no mention of one coming with the kit. I'm not too disappointed about this, because it is a really nice charger and since I'm a lipo noob, it will help me understand the ins and outs of charging them.

Bad stuff I've heard about this kit:

1) The servo gears strip out very easily.
2) The landing wheel falls out of its pocket.

I have yet to experience these failures, and will comment on them if/ when they happen.

All in all, I'm happy with it, and with the 6% off discount code I found online, I spent $290 and change for the plane, an extra 2200mAh 20C battery pack and the $60 Sky Charger. I can't wait to go fly.

Terbough Bob

My Feedback: (10)

Well, I flew it today, and it flew fantastic. It's my first foamie, my first electric plane, and my first glider. It's the largest plane I've ever flown, and is also the first hand launch plane I've had as well. Lots of firsts!

Once trimmed, it flew so smoothly and predictably, it reminded me of a .40 sized trainer slowed down to about 1/2 speed. I haven't added flaps yet, so the first landed ended up being accomplished on the 5th approach. It does not want to quit flying in even a 3- 5 MPH breeze. Rolls and loops can be done if you really want to, and the rudder has enough authority to slip it in for landing, which is how I got it down on the 5th approach.

I honestly can't say anything bad about how it flies. I'm used to more power, but it's not about that. I'm used to a faster roll rate, but it's not about that, either. What it is about is some relaxing time in a lawn chair with a cold brew on top of a mountain.

So, we all know what these things look like from the website, but here's the pictures a friend took.





First hand launch... I hope it works...


LOL... really? That was it? That's not hard at all!




This summer, I fully intend on bring it with me when I go camping up in those mountains...


Won't... stop... flying...


Going around AGAIN...


Finally got it back down safe and sound.


The only bad thing I can say about this plane is that it's size makes trees seem much, much further away. I'm now in the market for some foam- safe CA and packing tape. lol... Hey, it's part of flying, right? I can't wait to get out there again!

Pilotwoody

Hi. Just got the Art-Tech Diamond D2500 glider last week. Looking at it in the box it appeared to be a pretty good quality model, and the design is very much like the Multiplex EasyGlider (only bigger) which I had flown before and liked. So I decided to spend the big bucks and get this "receiver only needed" monster. However when I got around to building the glider this week, good old "Made In China" lived up to it's reputation. Here it is in a nutshell.
I'm not sure if that Servo Slower is supposed to be included, but it wasn't in the box with my glider.
Out of the box the rudder clevis and one of the flap clevis were broken.
As mentioned by Bob below, attaching the wings to the fuselage is a painful experience (and my spar rod is not bent or dented). It's hard not to damage the foam wings with the amount of pressure that needs to be applied to slide them together. I still haven't managed to get one of the locking pins in!
One of the two screws used to hold the horizontal stab to the tail is bent and can not be used (try finding another one of those!).
To get the CG as specified in the manual with the battery they supply, the battery has to be put so far back you have to dig some foam out at the back of the cockpit.
With everything wired up on the bench, it looked (and sounded) like a few servos were struggling. (all the servos come pre-assembled). Within five minutes one of the Aileron servos stopped working, and on further testing I found the servo had blown. With the servo arm disconnected from the aileron I had to fight to manually move the aileron surface! Full sized servos would have a hard time moving that surface, let alone these 9 or 10 gram servos. The problem is a design issue with the foam hinge, it's far too thick to allow for easy movement. After checking all the other control surfaces I found the same issue with both ailerons and the elevator. I have since heard that other D2500's have had servos fail in flight.
I have ordered six new quality servos, and I'll do whatever is needed to get all the other bits working properly. I still like the design and I'm sure it will fly great, it's just so damn frustrating having to spend even more money and countless hours to get an RTF ....well RTF!

blvdbuzzard

With a lot of the live hinges on foam planes, I disconnect the link and flex the heck out of the joint to loosen it up for that tiny little servo to move.

I have been looking at this plane. I want to make it a non powered glider. Do you guys think if I moved a bunch of the radio gear around I could get it to balance with out the giant battery and motor up front? I could always just not use the motor too.


Buzz.

mikemscott

i just received two of these gliders love design and size. The only problem so far is bolts for stab would not thread into the vertical. finally got one to fit. Actually one of the glider bolts thread fine the other will have to tap one of them. not surprized about the servos probably going to add a hitec HS 55 to elevator.use a y connector and split elevator. What do you think? any suggestions on the wings before i tackle that issue. Mike, [email protected]

Pilotwoody

I have flown mine 6 times now, this glider flies very nice, great design, easy to launch yourself, easy and smooth to fly, tons of power when you need it. It's well worth investing a bit more cash and making some changes to ensure you don't have a failure in flight. On my second flight I was able to thermal up until I could barely see the glider, had to throw on full flaps and get it back down where I could see it.
Here's what I did with my glider:
Disconnected all the push rods and manually forced the hinges to free them up, I put fiber tape along the length of the aileron and flap hinges, because they cracked.
I didn't want to take a chance so I replaced all 6 servos with BlueBird metal gear. But if you free up all the surfaces, the servos that come with the glider would probably work forever (maybe!).
I don't think it's necessary to split the elevator, once you free up the hinge a single servo works fine.
Right out of the box I had a broken push rod clevis, I replaced them all with a stronger clevis.
While replacing the push rod clevis, one of the horns broke in half! So I replaced all the horns with larger horns.
The wings were very difficult to get together inside the fuselage, if you put the wings together outside of the fuselage you can see that the top and bottom surfaces do not line up. This is because of the plywood that was added to each wing (almost like it was an after thought). It's impossible to get rid of this "mis-alignment" but I sanded down each plywood surface to about 3/4 of what it was and the wings go together a bit easier. Now, after assembling the glider a bunch of times, the wings go on and the pins go in much easier, everything has loosened up just enough.
One of the long bolts that holds on the horizontal stab was bad, I had to buy another bolt to replace it.

wayne_ky

Greetings all.. Newbie here..