Luke,

Thanks for the continued enthusiastic comments regarding the High Society.

Having got quite a lot of stick time on this model, the Funtana Pro and watched the two Capiches at the RCM&E freestyle last year. Based on this, in my own mind, I have ‘positioned’ the Capiche 140ex between them.

The High Society is basically a pattern plane at heart modified to do what I call artistic aerobatics, rather than 3D. Whilst it can be flown at a walking pace, the model loves speed and with the merest hit of power it is rapidly eating up sky – not the best for 3D. Precision aerobatics are lurvely….

I think the Funtana Pro is really a 3D machine. The only aspect of it that lets it down in my opinion is the knife-edge flight envelope[]. The knife-edge of the new Pro version is a big improvement over the older ‘S’ design but KE loops for example are a bit large. I am going to try sealing the rudder hinge gap and shifting the CofG a bit to look for KE flight improvements but I think they will be limited.

Even taking the KE of the Funtana into account I think it is amongst the three, the out-and-out 3D machine. It flys about sooo slowly with that big wing and has bags of 3D performance. Precision is OK but certainly no-where near F3A standards.

In contrast to the above two models my memories of the Capiche 140ex are as follows:

It seems quite precise
It will artistic-aero/3D rather well
It looks like it flys very light
It looks like is has an almost stopped, to medium speed flight envelope
It appears to be a well-sorted design in terms of the aerodynamics
It can be fitted out with a number of set-ups, making it accessible to a smaller wallet
It looks nice…

In particular I can remember being very impressed with the KE performance of the Capiches that Ali and The Boy were flying at the RCM&E event. Certainly it appeared to be substantially better than the Funtana, though I will wait until I fly a C140 before I make a final judgement on that.

Basically, from what I have seen, I think that the Capiche 140ex is positioned in the area between the pattern (High Society type) and out-and-out 3D (Funtana type) models. I think the gap in the positioning between the Funtana and the C140 is smaller than the gap between the C140 and the High Society, mainly due to the Funtana’s ‘slack’ KE.

From what I have seen the C140 does everything well enough that you could take it to a mixture of different competition events (other than perhaps pure pattern) and stand a very good chance of finishing right up there. I think it looks like a particularly good artistic aerobatics model.

On that basis I think it probably represents perhaps one of the best purchases out there for anyone who is only able to fund one 2m model, or who wants an aeroplane that they can perform a good ‘mix’ of flying styles with. As an all round proposition it looks quite hard to beat, unless you start shelling out some serious cash.

I have purchased a kit for the C140. Hopefully I am not going to have to wait too long for a YS160DZ to power it.

Regards,

Bill.