Beware! Xtreme Composite Edge 540 2X2
Today I witness a Xtreme Composite Edge 540 2X2 crashed due to snap of wing tube midflight less than 4 minutes of its life!
For those interested, the long story....
One of my buddy got a 2X2 Edge, "Fantasy Orange" back in March. He had another friend who's build skill is meticulous to build it. We all share the same workshop so I was there all though the building of the plane. The woe started right after opening of the box....First there was NO instructions manual! Then, when the builder took fuselage out, as he saw there are quit some dust cling onto it he cleaned it with window spray, only to find orange color on the cloth at just one wipe! Isn't the plane supposed to be "paint on mold" and was "fuel proof"? Shock to know this, we tried a drop of fuel on the elevator part, and volia the paint started to fade! So, the builder had to fuel proof all parts by spraying Dupont clearcoat on... Then, the contol horns are another joke, so the builder changed all that to Dubro ones. The servo tray was in balsa, that the builder substitute that into a carbon plate. A YS 160 Dingo is used to power the plane, all things used in the plane are new. All through the build, I heard the builder continue swearing, but he took time and after over 8 month of building, the plane finally take to the air today.
The wind was calm, skies are blue, great day for test flight. The engine went through 2 tanks on the ground to break in, then up in the air late afternoon. My buddy trim it, and after less than 8 banks, one loop, 4 rolls, and on a straight line (Not even a dive) the left wing all of a sudden snapped midair, the plane with only the right wing rolling into a thick bush. We searched for 2 hours in the bush, still could not find the remains. Tomorrow we will go back and search again, in hopes that the wreakage would tell us what's wrong during flight.
All present at the field felt sad and disgusted to see such a nice looking plane end its life this way. The plane is supposed to be a 3D capable, and could take 50cc engine, but looking at this plane its just too much hot air.