Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

The Super Reaper is almost the perfect first jet. It's inexpensive, quick building, gentle flying, and easily powered with a small turbine. So what's the "almost" part? You practically have to shoot it down. It's a floater. With a medium size turbine, it will maintain level flight at idle. It's so hard to get on the ground Mick Reeves recommends shutting down the turbine for the first few flights. Not a great option!

Legendary RC flyer Joe Weizer decided to build a Super Reaper as his first jet. Knowing it would be a bear to land, he came up with this ingenious split-flap speedbrake mod. It operates with only one servo, the secret is to run the control horn of the top flap through a slot in the bottom flap. When one side of the servo arm pulls, the other side pushes, thus opening the speedbrake.

How does it work? Incredibly well! There is no trim change whatsoever, the jet just starts descending. By varying the deployment, your approach becomes very precise. I personally watched Joe, at age 85, set the bird down repeatedly on a 600 foot grass strip, usually touching down in the same spot every time with room to spare. No floating and no shutting down the turbine! I flew the jet myself, and it is awesome. It's a dream to fly and easy as pie to land.

I ran this mod by Mick Reeves. He thought it was pretty neat. Whether it finds its way into future Super Reapers remains to be seen.

Joe Weizer really loved helping out new guys in our hobby. He's no longer with us, but I believe this mod will be a tremendous help to guys getting starting in jets. Joe would have liked that.

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Amazing innovation! Thanks for sharing...sounds like a simple mod and might work on other aircraft as well.

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Check out the photo. Just got it to upload.

The ailerons are only half span on the Super Reaper, so you convert the inner part of the trailing edge to the split flap.

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Very cool!! A friend of mine had one as his first jet and he would sometimes kill the engine on final so he could land it.

I would love to see a picture of the control setup.

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Here's the linkage setup.

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Here's the link. The new version is the MK II. Pretty nice looking jet.

Price for the kit is a whopping $377.00!

http://www.mickreevesmodels.co.uk/~m...per/reaper.htm

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

very slick.

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

The thought just occurred to me, why hasn't anyone just clipped the wings on this jet? The wingspan is a whopping 70 inches. It's got more lift than it needs. Why not just lop a few inches off each wingtip? It might help immensely with the floating problem.

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

I did not put elevators on my canards, but got hold of a pair of canards from the Rookie II these I made into fully deflecting 85deg air brakes as per the Rookie, work excellently for slow landings especially with reflexed ailerons, which bring the thing down without floating.

Mike

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

There are a number of ways to add drag to a Super Reaper as outlined in Mick Reeves instructions. Not to take anything away from your technique, but what I really like about the split flap is how it leaves all the other flight controls intact. Located at the trailing edge, it adds drag at the perfect place. There is no trim change.

The Super Reaper, unlike the Hotspot, is designed to fly with zero reflex. The Hotspot is a bizarre combination of delta and flying wing, but the Super Reaper is a delta with canard elevators, like a MIG 21 only with the elevator in front. Pretty much a regular airplane. That's why it uses ailerons and not elevons. I would personally get a little squeamish using reflex and flat-plating those canards but I guess it works! It says a lot about the airplane when you can seemingly do all kinds of stuff to it and it still flies, and flies well!

For $377 bucks the Super Reaper is the steal of the century, especially since you can power it with a 12lb turbine. You don't need $200 servos or fancy power boxes. I wish I had known all this when I was getting started, my first jet experience would have been a lot less stressful. When the Hotspot first came out, it was advertised as a "jet trainer." Yeah, right! Far from it, the Hotspot is a handful and the learning curve pretty steep, especially in the approach and landing department! The Super Reaper; on the other hand, is a real Sunday flyer. I liken it to flying something like a Kaos, it's that docile.

I would recommend the Super Reaper to anyone as the perfect first jet, especially if they put some sort of drag device on it. I like the split-flap idea which is surprisingly easy to do, but as you have revealed there are other ways that work and work well!

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Quite so, many ways to skin a cat, if someone is envisaging building one of these, one piece of advice is to move the aileron servos closer to the TE you then don't need the mass balance weights on the tips of the ailerons to prevent flutter, it was mostly caused by the long pushrods, I understan where M.R. was coming from putting them where he did, but I don't think he envisaged the overpowering that most jets are prone to get these days.

Mike

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

That's a good idea. I was wondering why they were on there.

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Mine from many years ago during the build stage. Sold it before completed. Had Robart retracts installed, and used a speed brake built into the upper hatch. This was one of the very early original versions.

An old thread on how I cut the gear and wheel bays and lined with ply.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_95...tm.htm#6465574

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Very nice! The Super Reaper is a pretty decent looking jet compared to some of the other stuff out there, especially when you consider the dirt cheap price.

I would very much like to fly the one I got from Joe Weizer, if I could only get that Simjet running right!

Here it is, also the older MK 1 model, along with the great man himself:

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Nice idea the split flaps... I will include it on mine...
Building it with a 120mm RCLander EDF... 6kg thrust...

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

Anyone considered taking 100mm off the Root of the wing, this would make it look a little more conventional, more like a Eurofighter?

Mike

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

That would be more work than clipping the tips. The wings are pre-built sheeted foam with aluminum wing-tubes installed. The root rib is light ply. I guess you could hack off a couple inches being careful not to saw through the wing tubes and just trace out a new rib.

If you look at country boy's photos you can see that clipping two or three inches off each wingtip would not look bad at all.

Either way would work, I guess it just depends on how much work you want to put into it.

I'm surprised no one has tried it yet.

I would love to hear Mick Reeves' take on that idea.

I think if I were to build one I would just keep it the way it is and put the split-flap speedbrake on it. That way you have the lift advantage of the big wing and the drag advantage of the speedbrake. Both helpful for short fields.

RE: Mod makes Super Reaper the perfect first jet
 

That's terrific! I can't wait to hear how it works out for you. Maybe between the two of us we can convince Mick to make it a permanent change to the airplane.

If you need any more photos let me know.

Good luck!

The magazine South African Modeller has an article about Super Reaper.
August / September 2011 and October / November 2011.
I've been trying to buy these magasin in Traplet Shop .Traple Shop does not sell the magasin South African Modeller to Norway .Does anyone have a copy them canTraple Shop does not sell to Norway send me email.


Excuse my bad English.

Regards
Sejenssen

I found this link perhaps an e-mail to them may give some results: http://www.sajets.co.za/

Mike

Split flaps on Super Reaper
 

Hi,
I know this is a long shot as this thread is old but as am building a Super Reaper i want to fit the split flap as described here.
Can someone inform me ,
With this set up ?
1 Are the Ailerons set up as Elevons or just Ailerons?
2 Are the split flaps just Flaps or are they elevators when they are not split?
3 Did you use the canards as elevators?
I hope this makes sense thanks for any replies.
Ray

Seven year old thread, however this is how I set mine up.
1. Just half span Ailerons, but be mindful that the servos should be much closer to the TE than shown on the plans, building as the plans with the very long pushrods they have been known to flutter with the inevitable consequences.
2. Did not use the split flaps, but bottom hinged the inboard half of the TE and used them as such, landing with crow set up, stops any tendency to float on.
3. Bought two CARF Rookie canards and used them as all flying elevators and brakes at about 70 degs.

Also did not have a conventional Under Carriage, nose wheel half exposed out of the front and two wheels on either side of the UC mount on the outside of the fuselage, needs good thrust to take off, I had a Merlin 90 in mine, made a good winter hack, until I got the Toki Duckty.

I built mine this time last year. I also read this thread, so, taking its advice, I built in the split spoiler. I built it as shown in the pictures above. I have not had a chance to maiden it yet.
It has the half span ailerons used as ailervators. The canards have elevators mixed to ailerons. I'm using a KT-85. Has electric retracts and brakes. I also mixed in rudder flaps on my brake slider.
John

Be careful on the maiden the elevator controls on a delta are sensitive when compared to a conventional airframe too much pitch control could end up with lots of oscillations on the take off, lots of expo to get a happy medium.

Quote from Dave Wilshire: "Twice the expo on roll than pitch (elevator) as always with deltas"

Thank you for the advice.
I will be sure to program in the exponential as I have not yet done so.
John