Once again MotionRC came through with flying colors! They used FedEx to ship (instead of UPS) and my Raptor arrived on Saturday instead of having to wait until Monday. Terrific company to deal with!
The Freewing Raptor is huge - much larger than I was expecting. The details are very nice and I was able to put her together in a little over an hour this morning. No glue!! Everything now is designed to be screwed together. It seems Freewing is moving towards this type of assembly to make changing airframe parts after a crash much easier. My Stinger also has this design and I really like the ease of assembly, and disassembly if needed. I was a little hesitant with the screws at first but after doing a tightening check as part of my preflight I've never had any issues with them coming loose. So I am comfortable with my new Raptor having this screw-on design.
I pulled the fan and checked all the motor/ESC connections, and also ran the fan up to check balance and direction of rotation. Had to go into the ESC to change the direction as it was blowing air out of the air intakes - can it fly backwards? lol I was pleasantly surprised that the fan was nicely balanced, I didn't need to do any tweaking at all. I did put the fan back into the plane so I could do a bit of taxiing around. It does have some power but I'm still not going to fly until I get my 4S power system in there.
I did take my mini Raptor and Thunderbird out to get a couple flights this morning. My son had a great time watching the jets fly, plus it wasn't too hot this morning so that was a plus. With my new Freewing Raptor and the mini Raptor and Thunderbird, my car is getting packed! When things cool down this fall I'll have to decide what to take with me once I get my long awaited Goblin 570 heli completed and finally flying. My Mustang is just too small to fit all these planes and the heli at one time!
My other issue is I've run out of receivers. I did mention that I was going to get a few Lemon Rx, but a little more researching found that the antenna's are very brittle and break easily, so I've scrapped that idea. I'll stick with my Spektrum receivers, there's always some for sale over at HF and RCG. Never thought I'd run out of receivers...hah!
I don't think I mentioned what ever happened to my F9F Panther...I decided to make it a static display model. It turned out to be a very difficult model to fly - the reviews were mixed and some did mention it was a hard model with some issues. I only had a handful of flights but each one usually resulted in a less than stellar landing and required the use of epoxy afterwards. So currently it is a non flying model that I gave to my son - I had to epoxy more parts after its last outing. Its alright as on those rare occasions you come across a plane that you just don't like to fly.
Here's a few pictures of my new Raptor side by side with my mini Raptor (I need to do the boiling water for the mini's nose as it had a rough maiden
)
I'll also be taking off the landing gear but for now they do look nice.
Mark
