Parkzone Spitfire MKIIB Review
05-04-2007, 10:15 AM
#1
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Posts: 551
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Parkzone Spitfire MKIIB Review
My Parkzone MKIIB Spitfire Review
Let me start by saying that whilst I'm relatively new to RC warbirds, I've been tinkering with RC parkflyers for about three years, and now consider myself a reasonably competent RC pilot. I started out like a lot of people here on the forums, primarily with Hobbyzone and Parkzone RTF kits. I'm fully self-taught but I gained most of my RC knowledge through interaction with the guys over at http://www.rchobbyhub.com/ It's been a valuable source of useful information.
My first attempt at a warbird was the GWS Pico Tiger Moth which I still fly regularly and it's been faultless, but about 9 months ago I bought a Wattage Stuka ARF which I promptly demolished on it's maiden flight...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O6gnVyojFk
...I bought another one and shifted the electronics over but I was so distressed about the loss of the first one that it took me another 6 months before I grew the kahoonas to maiden it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgO04cPkpb0
Whilst the Stuka flew OK, I quickly grew tired of building ARF kits that seemed to fly differently every time I flew them, so when Parkzone released the P-51 Mustang, FW-190 Focke Wulf and now the Spitfire MKIIB, I decided that I'd give the Parkzone RTF Spitfire a chance. Man, am I glad I did!!
Out of the box the wing screws in place with three small metal screws with washers. I had to push through the plastic wing film with the included screw-driver to get the screws to engage but once in place the wing fit was very solid.
***Note*** The aileron servo lead needs to be plugged in before the wing goes on!!
A nice touch with the Spitfire is that Parkzone have moved away from their crappy 5 wire servos in favour of the industry standard 3 wire servos with standard JR plugs. The ESC/RX unit and TX has 6 channels and will work with an external brushless ESC if you wish to upgrade later. Very nice touch!!
I belive that both the P-51 and FW-190 still use the older 5 wire servos and combined ESC/RX unit used in the earlier Parkzone planes.
The elevator simply slides through the pre-cut opening in the fuselage and is secured top and bottom with four small pieces of adhesive tape. The control horn snaps in place and is secured with a rubber stopper. About 40 minutes later with the stock 9 cell 1000Mah NiMh flight pack fully charged I was ready to take to the sky!!
I fired up the geared brushed 480 spinning the stock 10 x 8 prop and a friend hand launched it for me so I could keep both thumbs on the sticks, and guess what happened... NO TORQUE ROLL!!! NO TIP-STALL!!! Just a strong 30 degree climb-out on high-rates untill I reached approximately 50 meters. The plane tracked perfectly without the need for any trim adjustment. Nice!! I then turned to the right which seemed a bit twitchy so I switched back to low rates which seemed to have plenty of throw and calmed the controls down a bit while I got used to the controls.
Did a couple of circuits of the park to get the feel for the plane and went back to high rates to try some basic aerobatics. Loops were very tight or very large with plenty of power to pull over the top of both. She does a very nice victory roll that's quite scale and once again there was plenty of power to hold inverted flight. I got over 10 minutes out of the stock NiMh flight pack and brought her in for a perfect belly landing back on low rates. After charging the pack I only put around 600 Mah back into the pack so the flight time from the stock pack should get close to 15 minutes with some throttle control.
I swapped the flight pack out for a 3S 1550Mah 20/30C LiPo and connected it with the included adaptor plug. I re-programmed the ESC using the easy to follow instructions to set the low voltage cut-out level for 3S LiPo's. Another nice touch!! The difference in performance was quite noticeable with what I would estimate to be a 15-20% increase in power over the stock pack. I brought it back down after another 15 minutes in the air, and having admired the scale looks on low fly-bys the LiPo accepted about 950 Mah during the charge cycle, so I'd estimate that 25 minute flights would be achievable with this pack.
All in all this plane rocks!! Incredible scale details and teriffic flight performance. You couldn't ask for anything more from an RTF kit. It's packed with features and also includes Parkzone's patented X-Port compatibility. Just like the box says, everything you need is in the box, even the TX batteries, but best of all is the flight performance.
If you want to fly instead of building you can't go wrong with the Parkzone Spitfire MKIIB
Cheers!!
Todd Clarke
P.S. There is a small amount of the maiden flight, amongst others, in this 5 minute compilation video over here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpKijA3MXVM
Let me start by saying that whilst I'm relatively new to RC warbirds, I've been tinkering with RC parkflyers for about three years, and now consider myself a reasonably competent RC pilot. I started out like a lot of people here on the forums, primarily with Hobbyzone and Parkzone RTF kits. I'm fully self-taught but I gained most of my RC knowledge through interaction with the guys over at http://www.rchobbyhub.com/ It's been a valuable source of useful information.
My first attempt at a warbird was the GWS Pico Tiger Moth which I still fly regularly and it's been faultless, but about 9 months ago I bought a Wattage Stuka ARF which I promptly demolished on it's maiden flight...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O6gnVyojFk
...I bought another one and shifted the electronics over but I was so distressed about the loss of the first one that it took me another 6 months before I grew the kahoonas to maiden it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgO04cPkpb0
Whilst the Stuka flew OK, I quickly grew tired of building ARF kits that seemed to fly differently every time I flew them, so when Parkzone released the P-51 Mustang, FW-190 Focke Wulf and now the Spitfire MKIIB, I decided that I'd give the Parkzone RTF Spitfire a chance. Man, am I glad I did!!
Out of the box the wing screws in place with three small metal screws with washers. I had to push through the plastic wing film with the included screw-driver to get the screws to engage but once in place the wing fit was very solid.
***Note*** The aileron servo lead needs to be plugged in before the wing goes on!!
A nice touch with the Spitfire is that Parkzone have moved away from their crappy 5 wire servos in favour of the industry standard 3 wire servos with standard JR plugs. The ESC/RX unit and TX has 6 channels and will work with an external brushless ESC if you wish to upgrade later. Very nice touch!!
I belive that both the P-51 and FW-190 still use the older 5 wire servos and combined ESC/RX unit used in the earlier Parkzone planes.
The elevator simply slides through the pre-cut opening in the fuselage and is secured top and bottom with four small pieces of adhesive tape. The control horn snaps in place and is secured with a rubber stopper. About 40 minutes later with the stock 9 cell 1000Mah NiMh flight pack fully charged I was ready to take to the sky!!
I fired up the geared brushed 480 spinning the stock 10 x 8 prop and a friend hand launched it for me so I could keep both thumbs on the sticks, and guess what happened... NO TORQUE ROLL!!! NO TIP-STALL!!! Just a strong 30 degree climb-out on high-rates untill I reached approximately 50 meters. The plane tracked perfectly without the need for any trim adjustment. Nice!! I then turned to the right which seemed a bit twitchy so I switched back to low rates which seemed to have plenty of throw and calmed the controls down a bit while I got used to the controls.
Did a couple of circuits of the park to get the feel for the plane and went back to high rates to try some basic aerobatics. Loops were very tight or very large with plenty of power to pull over the top of both. She does a very nice victory roll that's quite scale and once again there was plenty of power to hold inverted flight. I got over 10 minutes out of the stock NiMh flight pack and brought her in for a perfect belly landing back on low rates. After charging the pack I only put around 600 Mah back into the pack so the flight time from the stock pack should get close to 15 minutes with some throttle control.
I swapped the flight pack out for a 3S 1550Mah 20/30C LiPo and connected it with the included adaptor plug. I re-programmed the ESC using the easy to follow instructions to set the low voltage cut-out level for 3S LiPo's. Another nice touch!! The difference in performance was quite noticeable with what I would estimate to be a 15-20% increase in power over the stock pack. I brought it back down after another 15 minutes in the air, and having admired the scale looks on low fly-bys the LiPo accepted about 950 Mah during the charge cycle, so I'd estimate that 25 minute flights would be achievable with this pack.
All in all this plane rocks!! Incredible scale details and teriffic flight performance. You couldn't ask for anything more from an RTF kit. It's packed with features and also includes Parkzone's patented X-Port compatibility. Just like the box says, everything you need is in the box, even the TX batteries, but best of all is the flight performance.
If you want to fly instead of building you can't go wrong with the Parkzone Spitfire MKIIB
Cheers!!
Todd Clarke
P.S. There is a small amount of the maiden flight, amongst others, in this 5 minute compilation video over here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpKijA3MXVM
