fastmachine

thanks for advise...

fastmachine

thanks for advise,

topgun600

My Feedback: (41)

I have recently built a KEECAT and im so unhappy with a few items first the instruction booklet is a joke, just grainy pictures, no text, no info on where to place anything, so if you are not a builder you get lost real quick. The covering is garbage the minute you try to take out the wrinkles with a iron or a heat gun it turns into a ball,had to redue the entire plane in monokote,the fact that the rear servos wires are exspose and dont not run inside the elevator leaving you to have to tape them down like a profile plane,the canopy is pree built making it hard to add anything to that area to cover all the radio gear.The parts i did like are, the laser cut wood is nice and they did give you a decent hardwere kit, the retracts are just ok, cheap is a good word for the qaulity,no ajustment to tieghten the retract up and since the nose gear rotate 90 deg and is steerable makes it that you cant replace them with better qaulity but after all it is a 200 dollar arf i put a magnum 91 two stroke on her and using six 36 in servo extenstions will be doing the first flight next week will keep you post on how it flies

LDM

My Feedback: (15)

wow I guess I am better off buying the cheap nitro models version?

fastmachine

looking forward to hear how it goes for you,

Crazy4Flight

My Feedback: (540)

Well the covering on the nitro planes is just as bad.

Landing gear is too soft bend very easy.

has the same NON-lingual manual.

but a fun plane to fly

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

Built a Keecat with a O. S. Max 61 FX. I thought the kit was a bargain for the money. As far as the instruction manuel goes, I thought it was ok. You don't really need a lot of instructions to build something this simple. It mostly just plugs together. Its not a trainer or a first airplane.I do have two real concerns with the instructions. First, the fuel tank is shown mounted backwards, which for someone that has built pusher planes before, is pretty obvious, but if this is your first pusher, watch out. The second concern is the location of the CG. I flew mine today and I have to tell you that it has to be wrong! The plane flew really tail heavy and I was very lucky to get it back un-damaged. Its hard to figure the correct CG because of the swept wing and the flying fuselage. I had mine balanced 5 mm forward of where it is shown in the instructions. It balanced there with no weight added, so I was happy until I flew it. I would like to hear where others balanced out. The nose wheel steering works better if you use a ball jont on the servo arm instead of the captive wire thing that comes with the kit. Use a radio mix to stop the nose wheel steeting in the up position.

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

topgun600,
Have you flown yours yet?

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

Oh yeah! There is one other mistake that I noticed in the Keecat instruction book. The nose wheel wire coil is shown faceing the front of the plane instead of back.

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

Used the following site to calculate the CG on the Keecat. My calculations say move it 45 mm forward from where the instructions say it should be! I believe this to be true. This was a big problem with the Bobcat also. Can it be in the translation?!!

http://jef.raskincenter.org/publishe...nce_point.html

topgun600

My Feedback: (41)

flyboy, I have not yet flown the plane and I will use that set up on the CG thankyou

TURBOMC

My Feedback: (7)

I have about 30 flights on my Keecat. It has an OS 91 and currently swinging a cut down 14 x 7 3 blade master airscrew. I cut it down to 11.75 inch diameter (5 & 7/8: on each blade) and then precision balanced it. I tried the 16 x 10 3 blade master airscrew but it gave me significantly lower max RPM. None of the 2 bladed pushers I tried were close to the perfomance of the 3 blades. It has a max level flight speed of about 80 mph. It's attractive in flight with the gear up and the thick short blade gives it a real mean sound. I put a standard high torque servo on the nose gear so I could control the end points. If the nose gear retract is allowed to go full stroke it will "go-over-center" and fold up on grass fields or rough landings. Limit the end points to just short of full stroke. The small screws and nuts that go through the sides of the retracts should be taken out and have loctite applied to them and reinstalled as all of mine loosened up or came out. One incident locked one main up so I had to put them all up and belly land. Luckily no damage though. I had to use a servo reverser on the nose gear steering servo as it wanted to go the opposite way the rudders go. I don't understand how flyboy99 uses a mix to stop the nose gear from steering in the up position without the mix also making the rudders inoperative. Perhaps he can explain how he does it because it would help a lot. Well that's all for now.

I'm real close to putting a Jetjoe JJ-1200 (12.5 lbs thrust) turbine on it. The cost of the complete outfit is about $1400 brand new with the accessory pack, autostart, ecu, fuel tanks etc. The thrust desired was derived from looking at Bob Violets King Cat that weighs 26 lbs and recommends a thrust range of 19 to 35 lbs of thrust. That means that max recommended thrust is 1.34 times the weight of the plane. My Keecat with the JJ-1200 will weigh about 9.6 lbs. That times 1.34 equals 12.8 lbs of thrust and as mentioned above the JJ-1200 has 12.5 lbs of thrust (www.jetjoe.com). I'll let you know if I go ahead with the turbine project.

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

turbomc86,
I'll be glad to share the mixing to stop nose wheel steering when the gear is up! I'm assming that you are using a mix to have the nose wheel steering servo move with the rudder servos and that it is set to always on. If this is true, that's all you have to do, is take a another mix and mix the percentages the same as the first, but in the opposite direction. i.e., if the nose wheel steering mix was +100, you would do the second mix to -100 and have this mix active when the gear switch is thrown. The two mixes cancel each other out when the gear switch is thrown and the servo does not move. You can go one step further and on the second mix give the offset a value and this will park the steering servo in whatever position that you like until you put the gear back down. This can be used to turn the nose wheel to go into the wheel well. I should also add that I filled the long slot on the nose wheel steerer that is there to allow the nose wheel steering arm to move when the gear is up but it is not needed after you do the above mix and makes the streeing much more accurate. remember to use a ball jont on the steering servo arm. Now I need something from you. Where does your model balance?

TURBOMC

My Feedback: (7)

That is the coolest use of mixes I've ever heard of. I will start on it tonight. I have severe CRS so I'll recheck the CG tonight and follow up on this forum but I am a tad tail heavy right now so it needs to be moved forward a bit.

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

Turbomc,
What kind of radio are you using? The steering servo needs to be on its own channel. The reason that I mention this is because you said that you needed a reverser to change direction of the streeing servo. If it were on a seperate channel you could have just used a negative mix instead of a positive mix and it would go in the opposite direction.

TURBOMC

My Feedback: (7)

Yeah I gathered that from your first reply. I hadn't even thought of solving that problem with a mix so I used the servo reverser. Wish I had thought of it. I suppose that you could also use a mix for dual elevator servos if the radio your using doesn't provide for it.

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

Sure, do it all the time. Just set the travel adjustment of the 2nd servo to zero in both directons. That way no switch or knob can work that servo. Then mix that servo to the primary control servo. It depends on the radio and on which mix your using, if it will trim along with the primary servo.

TURBOMC

My Feedback: (7)

My CG is approx 8.5" from the trailing edge of the wing measured against the fuselage. It will probably end up around 8.75 to 9.0 when I get it perfectly balanced but as I said I'm very close to dropping the dime on a turbine for it which is .37 lbs heavier than the OS 91 w/ muffler so that will probably move even further foreward.

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

Thanks,

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

Turbomc,
I looked at the jetjoe site. That looks really interesting. Good luck to you if you decide to go that route. I set my CG at about 9 inches forward of the trailing edge. I'll give it a try when the weather here clears.
flyboy99

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

Flew the Keecat again today with about 10 ounces of lead in the nose. This moved the CG forward about 45 mm from where it is shown on the back cover of the instruction booklet. It flew docile and predicable with the CG here. I would recommend this for a first flight.

patzane

I have a bobcat but have a friend who wants this. Just checking out reviews for him

mcdonald77

Can someone post some pictures of the tailboom assemblies? I want to see how the elevator and rudder servos mount.

thanks, Jason

flyboy99

My Feedback: (1)

Here are the pictures of the tail booms that were requested. The bracing wires were my idea to hold the elevator servo wire in a secure fashion without blocking the down elevator.

mcdonald77

its a shame they couldn't make the elevator piece a little thicker to hide the servo. Its a good looking fuse, then you see all the servo wires. Still might buy one though.

flyboy99- thanks for the pics

Jason