opjose

I was indeed worried about the reliability of the ESC which is why I purposely went with the 60A esc, that is really overkill for the engine. The low cost offset the upgrade.

I've had many dozens of flights with the model and never any problems with the ESC.

The ESC has a full range of programmable parameters, including but not limited to

Cutoff voltage
Braking
Cutoff behaviour (e.g. power reduction or complete shutdown of engine power)
Motor timing
Automatic/Manual Voltage levels
etc., etc.

Re: C.G.

I originally placed the batteries as pictured about midway where the original battery would be, about 1/4 further back than in the picture, so that the C.G. would be unchanged.

Since this combo is actually LIGHTER than the originally provided motor/batter equipment, this caused the plane to nose up in flight, but still be controllable.

I ended up moving the batteries forward until they are about 1/2" back from the firewall.

This gave me the proper performance/balance.

I have a non-visible piece of velcro on the bottom of both batteries. There is another in the battery tray right at the juncture to the main fuselage.

That permits me to adjust the batteries back and forth as I see fit. Once they are in place I hold them there with the provided velcro strap.

This works well.

I doubt the plane would balance properly with only one 3S pack though.


The plane required NO "neuralization of nose down" down thrust after the mod.

Remember that additional DOWN THRUST is used to counteract DOWNWARD PITCHING of the plane when you pull off the throttle.

It is not, as many newbie RC's mistakenly assume, used to counteract nose up or nose down tendancies in flight. (that is done by adjusting either tail incidence, weight or elevator zero points/trim). Rather downthrust is used to adjust for differences in attitude when the plane goes from high to low/no power.

If you are flying a plane, level at 70% throttle and it's all trimmed out for this, then you notice that when you quickly pull off power the plane pitches UP, you need MORE "UP" thrust in the plane.

That is, the engine when it is under power, is pulling the plane down, so you must counteract this with more up thrust so that the plane initially remains level in flight until it starts slowing down towards stall speeds.

Likewise the reverse is true. This is counter-intuitive.

The idea is to get the under power behaviour identical to how the plane behaves when it still has speed but no power.

And yea I pretty much duplicated the original angles too...

I used a t-square, protractor and metal ruler to make sure that things were exactly the same.