Originally Posted by
Doug Kaiser
I took my Alpha 40 up for it's first flight last night. Went pretty good. The Alpha 40 is heavier than my electrics (my electrics are not very big) the extra weight mostly translated to a longer take-off. In air, flight was pretty much the same. There was a slight difference in the throttle. Electrics seem to have an instant throttle up whereas there was a very slight delay with the glow. Now, that slight delay could have been attributed to the weight. Of course, the Alpha 40 is a trainer, so the flight envelope was not quite the same as some of my electrics.
You've already discovered that glows usually are heavier. And why.
I usually try to get students to at least consider glow early on. If they seem to be into the hobby for flying, they'll wind up being able to fly more days with glow. Why? Glow trainers (like yours) are usually heavy enough to deal with more wind than the e-trainers most newbies wind up choosing.
And the idea that electric is more affordable breaks down when you try to put LiPos in e-models that compare size for size. 55"-60" span .46-.55 engine models is where the glow market starts. A gallon of glow at $17 will run that sucker for a month or so. And that sucker won't get blown downwind most days we have to fly.
Hey, I got a couple of "60 size" electrics that have no more problems in wind than my glow models. Only problem is their flight time sucks unless they're loaded down with a couple of 5000mAh batteries in parallel that cost around $100 each. To get decent power, is where the $100 came from.
Hope the glow works out for you. There are pretty good reasons to make it work for most of us.