sgilkey
Posts: 143
Joined: 2/27/2002 From: Shelby Township,
MI, USA Status: offline
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We had a great day last Sunday. We have had an unusual string of mild, dry weather, so the local combat boys, and my son Brian and I, met up at our club for some "pickup" combat with a Limited B format. This is the first time we have been able to fly at our club field this year. We had to fit heats in between the throngs of other club members wanting to fly, so it was just a few heats with a lot of smack talk in between. While we were waiting to fly combat, Brian took his new 1072 up for several demo flights. We had installed a Webra .25 and these were our first flights with that engine on the 1072. I had not yet balanced any APC 9x3s so we used an APC9.3x3. The performance was simply spectacular. The plane literally leapt out of my hand at launch. Brian was doing inside and outside moves and the plane never once hinted at a snap or any other sign of instability. He could lay it on its side and it would knife edge seemingly forever. Vertical and horizontal turns were tight and as continuous as you please with the abundant power. The ability of the plane to change directions in either pos or neg g situations was amazing to see. Several guys had been really interested and excited to watch the Limited B combat, but when the 1072 went up you could hear gasps, people were simply amazed. We offered test flights, I think folks were intimidated by the speed and noise of the plane and assumed it would be a handful to fly. Only one guy had the nerve to try it. This was ideal, as he has flown others of Brian's planes before and he generally doesn't like how sensitive/responsive Brian's planes are set up, yet and within 10 seconds he was yanking and banking. He was Oohing and Ahhing and exclaiming how stable and easy to fly the plane was. He was absolutely hooked, and proceeded to rave about the plane back in the pits. He says he plans to order three, hopefully he will. All I can say is, within seconds, he felt the plane was great and was perfectly comfortable with it. Once again, a great testament to the 1072 design! By the way, IMHO the Webra is almost too much power and the plane is too fast, I could not do anything but slash madly with a plane that fast. Brian likes the speed and he handles it better than I can, he can aquire targets and keep an eye on them while still handling a fast plane where i cannot. To me the FX is plenty of power and an excellent match for the plane, however get in a match with a bunch of Webra-powered planes and that might change. Didn't seem to hurt Eric to have "only" an FX at Paris, he won against some of the biggest names in combat with an FX on his 1072s!!! In my experience, a .32 with a stock muffler is about equivalent to a strong (i.e. OS FX) .25 on a pipe. So the .32 will make for very spirited performance! HOwever I agree with Montague that if you ever think you might want to compete with the plane, you should strongly consider getting .25s, as the maximum displacement for RCCA Open B class is .30, so a .32 won't be legal. Our first flights with our 1072s were with a box stock FX with a stock muffler and the performance was still very impressive, the plane is plenty fast with that combo and turns like crazy. You can always upgrade to a mousse can pipe for a big leap up in performance. Good luck and have fun!
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