I know that I've talked about this before, but I can't make up my mind on which to purchase as a second plane. It's really up to the Kaos or Sonic. The Kaos is a better looking plane, in my opinion, and the guy at my club who helped me get into the air has one, and it flies beautifully. I'm pretty sure he has a .46 on it and he has unlimited vertical. I'm starting to get bored with the Tower 40, and I'm itching to put another plane together. Please suggest any other good sport planes! Thanks


Todays gonna be a great day at the field. Two gallons of fuel, two tx's and rx.s charged up and ready to go ! 54 degrees and sunny. 5-10 mph. Couldn't ask for a better day!

Of the two you listed I would go with the Kaos. The Kaos design has been with us forever, and there's a reason why. It's a great flying plane. It's probably the second best flying sport plane ever made (with the Ultra Sport being first, IMHO). If you get the Kaos I can pretty much assure you that you'll have it forever because you'll fall in love with the way it flies.

Ken

I have only heard good things about the Kaos

I had a Uproar and it is rock solid as well and a very nice flyer, spindly landing gear however, and its cheap at under $100.00

Richard

For $100 planes i went with the Hanger 9 Twist with a TT PRO.46, it's a blast and has tons of power with this setup.

Thanks, guys. I'm going to go with the Kaos. I want to do a custom cover job. All alumninum? I don't know, that might just look abusrd. Plane dumb (no punn).


I made leaps and bounds in my flying today. Practiced rudder flying A LOT . Used full rudder to land in a pretty gnarly crosswind, and worked on my flat turns. I noticed that I was flying at full throttle the entire time all three times I was up. What's it called when you do the following?: Full down/left or right aileron + full left/right rudder?

Let me step in here and offer a bit of advise from my experience. Stay away from a covering scheme of all aluminun on a plane like this. Why?? Because it will be next to impossible to see it in the air. The Kaos has very clean lines to start with and the aluminum color will blend right into the sky. I had this happen on a Bridi Dirty Birdy. I flew 3 flights and took the plane home and recovered it in red and yellow.

Ken

Okay, thanks for the advice. I am sort of confused here. I am looking to buy the Tower Kaos. Who else manufactures this plane?

In an ARF form the only place you can get one is from Great Planes in a 40 size.
[link]http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXZT80&P=ML[/link]

But [link=http://www.bridiairplanes.com/]Bridi Airplanes[/link] has several Kaos kits available as well.

Ken

Ken,
I am thinking about building the big dirty birdy as next winters project. How did you like yours?
Any pics?

Okay, cool. The one from Tower is what I was looking at. Thanks, Ken!

To be honest with you I can't honestly remember much about it. I recovered it and after about a month I had somebody offer to buy it, so I sold it. It just doesn't stand out in my mind other than the problem I had when it was covered in a silver/aluminum covering scheme. Sorry.

Ken

Hey, Ken, as long as you're here, would you mind explaining the advantages of dual ailerons and how they work with the receiver etc.

Do you mean dual servos on the ailerons??

Ken

Oh, right. DUH.

That's what I thought you meant but wanted to be sure. Ok, let's see what we can cover. First of all, many people today think that the only way to have a good flying plane is to use dual aileron servos, but that's not always true. In fact, several of the best flying planes that I've flown use only one aileron servo. Those would be the Great Planes Ultra Sport (40 and 60) (probably one of the best flying planes ever made), Great Planes Ultimate 40, and many of the 60 sized Kaos planes. In the past when servos were expensive they used a single servo to save money, but that doesn't mean that it's not effective. IMHO this would boil down to "If it ain't broke don't fix it". What I mean that in these cases where the planes were designed to fly on a single servo there really isn't much need to change it.

So why would you want to have dual aileron servos? Several thoughts jump to mind. In precision aerobatic planes it helps because the control throws from dual servos are crisper and quicker. Shorter pushrods from servo to control horns allows for less flex. Also, a blown or malfunctioning servo won't kill the plane because there is another servo on the other wing. So yes dual aileron servos do add performance to a plane, but as I said above not all planes need dual servos.

Ok, hooking up dual servos. A lot of people think that they need two channels for servos and in most cases this would be incorrect. A lot of people want to try to run flaperons to try to get slower landings. IMHO flaperons are about the biggest waste, and can be dangerous as well. A lot of times when flaperons are deployed the plane become more prone to tip stalls, and on a landing that usually spells a crashed plane. So if just running plain ailerons with dual servos you only need one channel on your radio, simply use a Y-harness to hook up both servos to the one channel.

Now keep in mind that all of these recommendations are geared towards those that are getting started in the hobby, or are on their 2nd or 3rd plane. For more advanced pilots a lot of this might now apply.

Does this answer you questions??

Ken

Yes, great. Thanks! One more quetion, though. When using a Y-harness, how does the reciever know to make one aileron go one way, and the other the other way? I'm probably missing some very simple explantion here, but I' m asking it anyway. Thanks again! I really appreciate all of your help.

When you hook up two servos with a Y-harness both servos move the same direction. So if you picture (see attached diagram) the setup on a single aileron servo you will see that one aileron is attached to each side of the servo control arm. When one side goes up the other side goes down, and vice versa. Now move to two aileron servos. Remember that they will move in the same direction. When you hook up your aileron pushrods they will be hooked up identically (both on the outside of the servo, or both on the inside of the servo). So when both servos move one side will still go up and the other side will still go down.

Hope this helps

Ken

And that's the obvious solution I was thinking of! Thanks again.