I have been thinking about getting a <font face="arial, helvetica" size="2">Shunda (same guys which make the wild hawk)</font> 2009 SD Model 3 Channel Condor EPP Foam Pusher Remote Controlled Bobcat Jet 100% Ready to Fly Super Durable, http://www.nitroplanes.com/new20sdmoco4.html for a while and I finnaly made up my mind to buy this plane and it turns out to be better then expected although the foam hinges need reinforcements (I used duct tape which worked nicely and easily) and it's not good to fly in 15+mph winds for a newbie. If there was no wind, I think it would have been much much easier to fly. It's too light and the motor is not strong enough to fight those winds/gusts which tossed it like the light weight foamie it is. It went together very nicely though and quickly. It took the impact of my mistake of flying in heavy winds very nicely as well (it broke the rear wheel off which went back on quickly with just a bit of gorilla glue as well as the elevator which went back on with some duct tape; the stock hinge is a bit of a joke. It's just a thin peice of foam which I knew would break off quickly). I'd recommend it as a plane for someone getting use to ailerons. I can't wait to fly it tomorrow.

Only one thing is off, the website said it is epp foam and the instructions/manual says it is epo foam. I'm not sure what the difference is to be honest but it seems like pretty strong stuff.

I'll post some pics tomorrow, it really is nicer then I though it would be.

You might want to reconsider the liberal use of duct tape.
Duct Tape is heavy and can throw off your balance, plus make your plane harder to fly.
Clear packing tape is much lighter, plenty strong and looks nicer as well.

I changed it to clear reinforced packing tape but Iquestion how much heavier it is to be honest (Ijust have the silver normal one, not gorilla tape which is significantly heavier and thicker then the others), it does look better but it cost me 10 bucks from home depot.

Iwas doing some testing on my plane trying to get it to take off in no wind, rolling on the street/asphalt and although the plane speed up and starting going pretty quick on the ground, it didn't ever realy wanna take off. It wasn't until later when there were a few gusts of wind where it would catch the wind a bit and then pull up and come off the ground (Idon't like this because too much wind and it's hard to fight the wind). The stock motor is a380 Motor, Weight of plane:15.52 oz, Battery: Ni-MH 8.4V 600mAH. When Ihand launch this plane it will fly but I'd like to have it get off the ground on its own. Does anyone know how fast this motor runs rpm wise? Should I try changing the prop? Can this motor take higher batteries without burning itself out? Should Iconsider changing it up to a outboard brushless motor+esc+li-poly batteries+new prop?


Right now I'm looking for something to do as my plane is some what dead, Iaccidently ripped off the antenna wire going to the receiverand I gotta some how find another receiver. When you take apart the plane, one should note that the antenna is really attached to the wing and the transmitter is attached to the wing as well with double sided sticky tape. When you pull off the receiver, you might rip off the antenna like Idid so watch out for that... Doh, slap forhead...

I did a few more tests today and was suprised to find out a few things. I weighed the plane and indeed it is 15oz but the battery is 4more oz... Iwanted to see about how much foward thrust was comming out of the prop so I put my scale sideways and had the plane nose in to it at full throttle and it showed about 4oz. Not quite sure if this is accurate or if this tells me any real useful information. Do those numbers seem right? I saw on http://www.graysonhobby.com/catalog/...roducts_id=414 after watching a few of ********.com (dave powers) videos that this motor seems to put out "<font face="Times New Roman" size="2">On a 6x4 expect close to 24oz of thrust at 19,000 + RPM at only 23Amps!"</font>. If that is true, that should let me be able to take off from a rolling ground start because as of right now, it doesn't seem remotely possible without a huge gust of wind but then after it takes off a bit, the wind will catch the plane and toss it to the side which sucks. On all the flight simulators I have played/trained with, none of the planes ever seemed this underpowered so it's a bit of a trip for me and I'll have to figure out how to get use to the whirly bird/discus launch the plane. On Dave Power's video with that motor on his modified wildhawk, it seems to be able to take off by itself without any landing gear which seems very impressive considering the wildhawk weights <font size="+0"><font face="arial, helvetica" size="2">1.27lb and has a larger battery: Ni-MH 8.4V 1300mAH</font></font>.


Do most ready to fly prop planes need to be hand launched?

WOW, $10, I get clear packing tape from the dollar store for $1.

Hawaii=everything very expensive...

I saw the regular clear packing tape for about 3 bucks but there was a scotch extreme tape which is reinforced (it says it has a 130lb/inch tensile strenght) for 10 bucks so I went with that.

As with larger Bobcat / Falcon type planes, this one has the same quirks as the larger plane.

The problem is that the plane sits somewhat level on the ground.

The rear mounted prop, tends to push the nose down at runup.

This causes the plane to have a negative angle of attack, which in turn means it will run and run and run w/o lifting off.

If it does achieve enough speed, it will then shoot up like a rocket, though usually it may not.

What you need to do is to adjust the gear so that the plane sits nose higher than the tail, giving the wings a positive AOA.

Wow great info; I have been doing some gliding testing where I toss it on to a soft surface and it seems like it wants to fly/glide quite readily. I have also been holding the plane while playing with the elevator while having the motor running and it seems like it pitchs the plane up and down with quite a bit of command so getting off the ground via a rolling start got even more confusing for me. I never even considered this new (to me) info to be the reason why it's not taking off from the ground and it really makes sense now that Ithink about it. I guess this only comes with experience. Hmmm gotta figure out how to raise that front wheel now...

ooo I just found this video on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBdP27O1mvU

If you watch from 35seconds to 1 minute, thats what my plane looks like ha. Still working on raising that front end up.

Here are some pics of the mod Idid to raise the front end, Ibasically took a coat hanger, cut it up, bent it up in to the correct shape, grinded it down so that it wouldfit in the stock slot forthe stock wheel,and duct taped the stock front wheel to it which is actually fairly stable. Yeah Iknow it looks a bit jacked but its just to test out to see if this even makes a difference in the angle of attack like opjose suggest me to change. with this setup, I can easily change the angle high enough so that the rear actually drags on the ground to being lower then stock (idk why I would wanna do that, perhaps for a lowrider look? haha ). In anycase, I'm having high hopes for this. One other thing Inoticed is that the motor and prop are more horizontal now as they actually use to be angled downward while taxing on flat ground on the stock setup which may have been contributing to why my plane was not taking off. Inever noticed this till opjose mentioned it in theprevious postand I found it to be true. I guess it helps give lift during flight but its not good when your trying to take off from the ground. Now the question is what angle should I set it at so that the wings have the most lift? wikipedia says most planes have it at 15degrees and anything above this with put it into a stall angle. Damn it, I wish my reciever worked so that I could go out and test this new mod out.

More pics of some damage the wheels and elevators took after my first crash and more pics of right after I assembled it out of the box. I fixed the rear wheels with gorilla glue and I used the reinforced packing tape for the elevator. Now both are stronger then stock I believe. I still can't believe they used just thinner foam to make the hindges for both the elevators as well as the ailerons. Seriously, could they not spend the little bit of money on some tape at least. The F-16 has real metal little hindges which are pretty cool.

15 degrees is excessive, and likely to cause problems.

You only want 2-4 degrees of positive AOA at most.

Bending the rear gear back is not a good idea, as it makes the plane more difficult to rotate.

You need to decrease the length of the rear gear a bit by cutting and bending.

Could you please explain what the "rear gear back" is? I'm assuming it is the rear landing gear.

You appeared to have angled the rear ( wing mounted ) landing gear backward, to change the angle of attack.

The problem with this is you are effectively changing the point where the plane rotates with respect to the C.G. as the nose tries to come up.

This is like putting a big weight on the nose just before takeoff, but removing it once in flight.

So it is not a good idea.

It is better to either shorten or bend the wires themselves a bit.

Typically we use a "V" bend to shorten piano wires when used in linkages, etc.

You may be able to do the same to the rear landing gear wire.

I'd use a wire bending tool to get this right and matched on both landing gear wires.

At worst you can go to a LHS and grab similiar piano wire and bend a new set of rear landing gear.

I left the stock rear wheels where they were and have not touched them at all. I assure you they are straight and perpendicular to the plane (should I move them closer to the Center of gravity?). Iwanted to make sure just incase I changed to another prop, there would be ground clearance as well plus it was much easier to do it this way. What I did was modify the front wheel so that it is attached to a coat hanger which is bent foward to get the front of the plane up (you might notice how long it is, it some stock the same lenght as the rear wheel wires). After I find the right angle/hight for it I will bend the front wire straight and cut it to size and then permantly attach it to the front landing gear. It may look like the rear wheels are bent but I assure you they are straight. They probally look like that because of the extreme angle the plane is at for photo purposes.


P.S. What is LHS. Ihave seen this acronym before but have yet to figure out what it stands for.

LHS- Local Hobby Store.

Your extension for the front wheel appears to be a bit extreme. As was said above you only want a few degrees of positive angle of attack. I don't think that front wheel will stay in place twith that long of a wire stretching it out in front of the plane. I t looks like it will want to swing around to the rear of the plane pretty quickly, or at best cause the plane to verr right or left during a takeoff roll. Any extension you add to the front wheel needs to be in line with the original position of the front wheel. You probably only need to add a 1/2" or so to the the front landing gear to get the plane to take off. This could be done by switching to a larger diameter wheel.

Ihave tried it out by running along side the plane for a bit (my receiver is currently dead/dying and my TX/RX range is about 3 feet right now, trying to get a new one from john but he doesnt seem to be online)and indeed it did veer just a bit to the side butI bent it to the left just a bit by hand and now it tracks straight. To be honest it's working out better then I had expected. The wire is pretty stiff to be honest and Iknow its pretty extreme, I just wanted a full range of motion (I'm a newbie and have never tested AOA before. When I had first made this setup, I had no idea what it was or how much I needed to be honest). Its just for testing purposes like I mentioned before and it will get cut down to size. I'd get bigger wheels but idk how (to find which ones would fit)or where to find then to be honest. My LHSsucks and is super expensive (I'm in Hawaii and have to order everything from the mainland, even with the shipping costs it's much cheaper then what is available here and at least I can buy what I want).

I hooked my 11.1v 3s 1300 lipo up to my Condor tonight and the power increase was dramatic to say the least. I only tested it for a shortwhile though as I was worried about the stock esc unit handling that many amps and when I touched it, it was starting to get a bit warm (not hot, I only had it on for a few seconds at most). I pluged the stock battery back in and it still works fine although without that extra power, it seems horribly underpowered. I'd say it was at least a 50% increasein speed and more then double the amount of thrust compared to the stock setup at its fastest which made me really think that if Ihad this battery and a better esc and perhaps a better motor (perhaps brushless), this plane would really take off on its own. Akkk where is John/nitrostaff1, Ineed a new receiver so I can test my current change with raising the front end of the plane with the stock batteries to see if Ican get this baby off the ground on its own power. Perhaps one of you guys with more experience could let me knowhow Ican go about getting a new 27mhz receiver for my plane.Will any 27mhz receiver with my stock crystal in it work with my stock controller/transmitter or do you need a brand specific receiver to work with the stock transmitter?

It is not so much that the plane will veer right or left while you are running along beside it.
What the high AOA will do is cause the plane to leave the ground before it has enough speed for the control surfaces to work. That is considered a stall condition and will cause the plane to roll to the side and crash with no way to stop it.

I'll start off with a low angle and work my way up when ever I get the chance to actuallydo some testing...

bench testing with realflight


So tonight I figured out how to enter a few specs in to realflight G4 and what I found was fairly intresting as when I plug in the stock settings on to a bobcat which mimics this plane in weight, power, battery, dimentions, engine, prop size, and everything else I can think of... It doesn't fly or take off like the real thing...  Now I know that realflight isnt exactly real but it should give a fairly accurate theoritical about how a plane should fly given all the specs and its quite intersting to see that a simulated model of this plane in a perfect world would not fly with the stock settings...  Only when I swap out the prop to a 7X6E or put in a 3S 1500mah lipo with a 2200 brushless motor on the stock prop will it actually get off the ground and even then its fairly sloppy and behind all this you gotta remember this is what would be if in a perfect world with 0 wind and other perfect conditions where everything is working just right.  I gotta really wonder if this plane will ever really get off the ground on its own and fly around...

I can say that some of the cheaper ready to fly planes are terribly underpowered.
There was a long thread a while ago about a RTF A-10 that people where replacing the motors as soon as they got them because the stock motors would barely get the thing in the air.

To begin with a Bobcat is a bad analog of this plane.

Using it as a starting point will produce unrealistic results because of this.

It IS possible to adjust the model to mimic your plane, but there are MANY MANY nuances to doing so that you MUST understand.

Simply plugging in figures ( as most newbies seem to think suffices ) is not enough.

The physics scaling parameters effectively give you a smaller sized model of the larger plane, but not necessarily with a smaller model's characteristics.

To get the performance of a real smaller model you really need the physics at 100% scale ( not a reduce scale ) and then you need to adjust the weights, dimensions, mass, wing characteristics, etc. to the smaller model. This is NOT trivial.

In effect from the physics side you are starting from scatch.

This plane has more than enough power. He's just new to this, and a pusher is a bit more complicated for a newbie.

e.g. Newbies ( and even experienced RC Pilots ) don't know how important the AOA is to pusher planes.

The people with the A-10 were all too quick to change out the motors. This is and was unnecessary.

The problem is the provided battery packs often could not handle the loads, given the amount of time they sat around unused before delivery. An easy solution was to merely increase the voltage and capacity slightly. This fixed performance problems.

Unfortunately many (if not, it seems ALL) Asian designers opt for the minimums that will put an RC model in the air.

If you know this, and work around it, you get good results.