Just ordered an E-flite Electrajet.....does anybody have any experience with this plane? What type of battery should I use? What type of servos? I'm thinking of using the Hitec HS-55, are these too small? Any input would be appreciated!!

Mike

Mike:
I think the MAN Backyard
Flyer mag. did a roadtest on this plane. If I recall with the gear
reduced motor that it was not a skyburner. Maybe 20 mph max.

For the servos, I wouldn't pay the price for the 55's but get the
HS 50's instead or the Cirrus 21 or 25. Plus, use 8 cell pack min.
Too many times the planes are underpowered and they just
wallow around on the verg of stall. Run your pack down after
first chg. (without flying) not full throttle though. Now recharge
and this will give better power and duration. Every time I go out
the first flight stinks until the pack gets warmed up.

Oh -- forgot about the fuel. Get a good Sanyo 600 AE 8 cell pk.
or as I did by going to WalMart in the stereo dept. and bought
the 720mah AAA NiMH batteries and made up a 9 cell pack. On
the NiMH cells, you need one more cell than nicads to get the same oomph.

Randy

Randy,
Thanks for the info....I'm sort of new to this electric thing...I recently bought a Wattage Mini-Max that I've been flying and it's lots of fun, but I'm still not very experienced in electrics....
What exactly is an "AE" battery pack that you mentioned?

Mike

Mike:
That is what's so great about these forums like ezone & universe
. Read,study, ask questions and learn from experience of others.
I had been into RC electrics since '78' but I've learned more in the
past 1 1/2 years reading ezone. Back to your quest. about AE. --
the hot rod of flight packs were the 500 or 600 AR's The letters
denote both size and rating to take in charge and dump rate.
You have AAA, AA, A , 4/5 C. When you look-up a battery sales
chart like from Tower, you will see AU, AE etc. Maybe someone
with tech. info can answer this better than I.

Randy

I own an electrajet and i use an 8 cell 700mah sanyo battery pack. the electrajet has tons better climb performance with a 9x6 prop. I just tried this the other day and it climbs almost twice as fast! After all that i couldnt stop there, so I put one more cell on my pack and it gave it a really good boost in speed and climb rate, but it shortened the flights by a minuet or so. Most of my flights lasted for about five min. with just 8 cells. today I taped a smoke bomb left over from the fourth to the vertical tail and it put on a show for about ten seconds before it ran out of smoke, but it was really cool!

Ansley... is it a lot better with 9 cells, I just ordered 24 1100mah cells to make 3 packs for my electrajet but I may go with 9 cell packs instead if it's a lot better, I was flying mine with an 8 cell 500ar pack and thought the performance and duration was very poor...found that I had a dead cell in my pack so I'm glad to know that it will fly better with my new packs.

What type of radio should I get for the electrajet?

A Simple Hitec Focus 3 will work fine.

I own a electrajet and have to say that it is one of the best planes that I have ever flown. Very stable and hard to stall make it simple to pinpoint landings and with the recommended 9.6 volt 700 mah battery pack it will top out at about 20 mph (plenty fast in my book). I would recommend buying the JR Quattro with the mini servos. The slots under the electrajet wings are actually prefitted for the small JR servos (per manual).

I have about 2 hours logged on my electrajet so far and I just ordered another one today as a backup plane. With every flight I am still amazed at the crispness and turning ability of the electrajet. It also has a nice whistling sound and looks great in the air.

I would recommend this plane to anyone as I love to fly mine. Just waiting till the weather breaks so I can get back out!

-jetdavis

Ugly plane, great flyer. I painted mine cub yellow (Lock Haven Orange?). As for the radio, get the Hitec laser 4 with the two hs 55 servoes, and small Rx, 114.00 from Tower. It has all the features you need, and a fourth channel.

Jetts

That's my EJ in the video 2 posts down. The winds where about 10MPH with 15MPH gusts. Everything is stock w/ 8 Cells. The plane is a good flyer but i prefer my Projeti.

Great 1st jet/wing type plane. Very Stable:

Another great thing about the electrajet is that it is very simple to repair. I crashed mine the very first flight because I flew it in a too small of an area. The plane broke into about 4 pieces and I had it fixed and flying wonderfully the next morning.

Does anyone know if there is a video camera small and lite enough to put in the cockpit area of the electrajet? The plane flies so stable that you could capture some great video.

-jetdavis

any vido of it anywere?!

Electrajet Video

WOW she`s a beaut! ty (is that 1 stock?)

It is stock as far as I know. It is not my video. I found it on the web. The note says it is flyin in a 10 MPH wind. Clearly the pilot knows what he is doing.

I checked out the NiHM batteries at Wally World today and see they also sell 1750 mAh cells. Anyone out there have any experience with them?

Fly SMALL, Have A BALL

I just converted my Electra jet to brushless direct drive this week.
Mega 16/15/8 using 9.6 Hecell 1000ma packs. Speed picked up 50% but duration increased by better than 75%. 6 mins. of great performance with 2 mins left to tool around and another min to set up the landing. I belive there my might be a little more to be had as i am rotating 3 new packs thru the bird and they each only have around 4 flights and it takes a several cycles to get these packs up to full capacity. My last flite today with a warm pack was at a tick over 10 mins but there wasn't any left for a go around. The best i could do with 600AE's and the gear box was around 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 mins., tops, and the last couple of minites was lackluster performance.
I want to try a 9 and a ten cell pack and will report back.
I might have gotten a mega with less turns but I was concerned with the duration. But I think i can trade a couple of mins to pickup some more performance.
I also removed the bottom skid and epoxied a 3/16 dia. wood dowel from front to back along the bottom to put back in the rigidity. The plane performs better (to me) without the foam skid, especially in a dive, I felt the skid was acting like an airbrake. plus now the plane slides a little when it lands rather than burrowing the nose with the skid in place.
I read some other post that guys were having some handling problems. This thing needs no more than 1/4 inch up/down elevator throw to do anything that needs to be done and will fly well on less. More elevator will only make it way too responsive.
On the other hand, run as much airelon as you are comfortable with
Always launch into wind, otherwise it will nose in. If there is no wind then give it several clicks of up elevator trim before you launch, then once its up on step you can trim it back level. Taking some elses advice i programmed in some up trim on my landing switch and click it on just before launch and then off after gaining a few feet of altitude. What damage i have done to mine has been nose in launchs.

take care
z123

I have 6 and 7 cell 900 mhr packs from my aerobird. 3 next to 3 or 3 next to 4. Will they fit in an electrojet or do I have to use flat packs?

Mine is in transit. I thought that the plane calls for 6 or 7 cell packs. Was I mistaken?

Hello well I have been toying with the electric plane Idea, mainly so I can go out in the back yard and get some stick time. Anyway after reading the post and finding a good deal I chose the electrajet.


Looks to have a stable slow flight but still buzz around pretty good. I am an experienced glow flyer so this really just a toy to buzz around the neighborhood with.


Anyway the reason for this post is, are the flight packs in these using an AA or AAA battery configuration? I found lots of AA 1800-2000 nimh cells on ebay that I could build some packs with.

But before I order some cells to make the packs for the plane (that hasn't come in yet just purchased today) I need to know what type it takes guess I could go for the 2/3A cells as well.

Anyway anybody that has one of these let me know what you are using or have found to be the best setup.

You look to be pretty well reherased on the electrajet what is a 9.6 Hecall is that the manifactor? Are they AA,AAA or somthing else like 2/3A?

Thanks

Unless you have a large totally open back yard 2 acres plus, I would not recommend the electrajet and I would not recommend it for flying in streets among houses. It will be too fast and too hard to control.

If you already bought it, you will need to launch and get it way up in the air right away. As long a you are high enough, you should be OK.

Something like a GWS Tigermoth or a Slow Sitck might be better.

With electrics, weight is everything. 1800s may be oK if you are going to fly fast, but for slow flight, stay with the 600 mAh packs. Maybe 800s. The heavier it is the faster it will need to fly.

Thanks guess I need some battery 101 do 1800's weigh more then 600's? My thought was AA compared to say AAA would be were the weight is different from a few photos I have seen with the electrajet battery compartment open it's looks like it basically has a TX pack from a radio which I know is AA's but that's from a photo and I got to thinking well maybe it's AAA's just looks the same in the photo.

I live out in the semi-country we all have 5 acres lots here but mine has a lot of tree coverage and I only have two good openings that are about 100 feet square that that is tree free to small area for my glows but I was thinking an electric with a good climb rate and slow landing speed would be the perfect. Most of the post’s I have read on the electrajet seem to be really happy with it, hope I didn't waste my money on another crappy electric!

BTW I still have a slow stick it's the GWS one and it is the biggest piece of junk, in fact turned me off the electric idea for awhile, talk about cheap the wings are made of thin foam and I mean thin with wood sticks glued to the ends to hold them on. The setup is two hs55 and a great planes ESC and a hitec 555 rec. The maiden flight was I charged the batteries and gave it toss went about 20 feet turned into the ground and broke the plastic gear box has been hanging on wall ever since.

The slow stick is built very light with very low wing loading. Low wing loading allows it to fly very slowly.

Glow planes, even trainers often fly 40 MPH+. That would be a fairly fast electric. That would be pushing the park flyer definition.

My Aerobird moves at about 25 MPH top apeed, uses a 6 or 7 cell pack of 900mAh 2/3 AA cells. The whole plane weighs 16 oz with a 42" wing span. Loading is about 12oz/sq foot of wing. Sort of medium for a park flyer.

The Tiger moth and the slow stick are probably under 6 OZ wing loading. Of course that means they can't take wind. To a Tiger Moth, 5 MPH is strong wind and 10 MPH is like a hurricane.

My Aerobird handles 10 MPH winds OK, but not for a beginner.

Typical glow trainiers are probably in the 30-45 oz range with wing loadings in the 15-20 oz/sq ft wing loading. Better in wind, but need more speed to stay in the air.

Typically battery capacity runs with weight. So an eight cell 900 mAh pack will be 75-125% heavier than an 8 cell 450 mAh pack. However it imparts no more power to the motor, just more duration. Of course if you have to fly faster to support the weight, you use up some of that duration flying faster.

So if the plane calls for a 600 mAh pack that probably weighs 4-5 oz and you put in an 1800 mAh pack that probaly weighs 11-14 ozs, that is a big weight difference in a plane that weighs about 20 ounces. About 30-50% of the weight of the plane is the difference in the weight of the packs. That is a lot, so you have to fly faster to stay in the air with the extra weight.

This is true of any plane, but because electrics tend to be lighter, the difference is more pronounced. It would be like taking your .40 trainer at 36 ozs and adding enough fuel to increase the weight of the plane by 50%. and expecting the same flight characteristics.

I hope this is helpful.

Electric 101.

I am no expert on battery types but the Hecells are supposed to be able to take the higher discharge rates we might demand of the bigger prop/more power/more speed that i wanted out of the electrajet with the Mega 16/15/8 brushless motor. My packs are the 2/3A cells and I purchased them from www.Edogflight.com. I am sure there are other places to buy these cells but i have received good service so far from these folks. Bought some ten cell sticks and the performance was even better than the eights but at the expense of 1-1/2 to 2 minites less run time. max time is now 5 to to 6 mins. There is also a large difference in the vertical performance when going from the APC 8 x 6 to the APC 9 x 6.
the plane will climb out at a very good angle of attack and can gain several hundred feet of altitude in just a few seconds. The APC 9 x 7.5 is a bit faster and seems to climb even better but endurance really suffers as the performance goes away after just 3 mins of run time and while the motor and controller feel nice and cool the pack itself is warmer than when running the 9x6
With the 8 cell packs the 8x6 gives the best all around performance and the 9x6 with the ten cell is an even perkier combo.

take care
z-123