Just bought a Magic Extra: installing a Rossi 53 with pipe and 9Z radio. Anyone have some suggestions/mods or fixes before building this plane.

Is factory linkages ok?....should they be changed?

I've read about the lack of right thrust, so I will make sure it has 3deg.

Seems to be a nice plane...we will see.

I'm not the best builder but I'll tell you some of the problems I've had.The motor mount and firewall were miss drilled and so was the landing gear.The hole in the firewall for the fuel tank is very low which means the half tank fuel level is well below the carb and I'm not sure how much this will effect the engine.I flew a friends magic the other day and it flys great.I hope to make my first flight this weekend.Good luck---Mike

I put mine in the air two weeks ago. 10 flights on a new 46FX and I've been happy so far.

I used all the factory hardware and it's fine.

Due to a poor layout job on my part, I ended up with 2° of un-intended right thrust. Glad I did, the thing flies great

With regards to the tank, take a good look at it as the stopper hole is vertically off center. This will give you two options...

The only mods from stock on mine:
Hitec HS-81 for throttle
Hitec HS-225s on Rudder,Elev
5-cell 720 NiMHs Rec Pac
Kevlar flying wires on tail surfaces
Sealed the control surfaces, red Oracoat is pretty close.

Although over-kill, I also 'tied' the fuselage together under the belly-pan. Each corner of the fuse was reinforced with lite-ply/carbon sandwich. The belly-pan has a addition 1/4" square frame wrapped with carbon/kevlar tow. Once the wing is in place, the joints are bridged with landing gear straps. We fly from a rough grass field and I like to land tail wheel first, which is kinda hard on the fuse...

Good luck and have fun!

Terry

I'm almost done with my Magic Extra, no probs putting togethor yet. I'm planning on going with the OS 46FX, will prob start with the 11X6 prop and make changes to the prop to get what I want.

How did the balance go using the OS 46; had to add weight to nose/tail etc. I saw where some where putting their battery and rcvr in foam under the cockpit and moving it around to get CG, but they had bigger motors.

Let me know.

I finished building the Magic Extra today and it seemed to go pretty good. I had to do major modifications to the motor mount in order to get the Rossi 53 in with 2.5 degrees right thrust. I belt sanded the back of the mount 2.5 degrees and sanded off the outboard side of the right mount.

It balances with no battery pack at 4.7" behind the leading edge.
I have not decided if I am using the mini pipe or muffled tuned pipe.

It will be overpowered either way, just the muffled pipe I can tune it for very quick throttle response, and it's quiet. It is a lot heavier than the mini pipe though.

I put 5 more flights on mine today after shifting the battery back some. It was behind the front wing saddle former, now it's behind the middle wing saddle former and about 4.5" on the balance point. It greatly helped the inverted flight, now it only needs a little 'push'. But still doesn't spin quite like I want it to. Currently the receiver is under the wing mount plate and I think I'll swap places with the battery to see what happens. I tached the 46FX w/UltraThrust on 15% today and got 13900rpm on a 12x4 APC. Couldn't be happier...

Terry G Phillips