just bought my cargo at Hobby People, love the look of the plane with its 4 speed 400 motors! Just wondering if anyone else on the board has the plane. I have read on the net that people are gearing the motor so you can take off from the grass. I want to know more about gear ratio etc and where I can buy.
thanks

Yup I've got one - see picture in my Avatar. It's great but it needs a LOT of space to be flown so I wouldn't describe it as a "parkflyer". I just used the standard direct drive motors and on 8 cells RC2400 it has plenty of "get up and go". Very majestic in the air and will do some reasonable looking aerobatics 9maybe a bit out of character!)

Cliff

Cliff,
thanks for the response, what kind of paint did you use? I have some Tamiya acrylic paint, should be ok on the foam right?
if you can, could you please send me some pics of your cargo?
thanks
Marc

Nice flying plane, 9cells made it fly good on stock motors. Trexler tires pumped with air gave it the correct ground handling too

f242,

Sorry but I don't have any pictures available right now (Santa's bringing me a digi cam I think so hopefully this situation will change!).

As for paint, yup I used acrylic's which work fine on the foam.

Cliff

you dont need the gear drives mine is dd and it takes of from grass and clims at 45+ im flying with 8 cells 3000mh nimh and a jeti 500 esc flys great i also yous air brakes/flapes it really slowes down but freaking floats you do need a big place to fly thow not any park i know..any where you could fly a 40 plane thats my 2c

Hello,

I only just joined today...

I used Tamiya paint and painted her silver with a blue tail, I also made a couple of BOAC logos for the tail.....I will work out how to post pictures and post a couple of my cargo...

Its a fantastic model. I have fitted the geared props, she sounds lovely on a low fly past.

Did anyone else have trouble with the C/G... I had to put 6 oz. of lead in the nose to get her to balance....

I have tried dropping a couple of things from the hold. One of the nicest is an Apollo command module toy on a parachute.

I have programmed flaps into my radio but this is a very slippery model, and does not slow down to quickly...She floats on and on....

Happy Flying.

Regards.

-Tim

Here's a pic of mine in the air. After seeing what a big difference it made on my landing gear modded Twin Star, I am going to gear this one too. I am going to try the DD gws 7x3 prop for spd 400 first, but I will probably go for the GWS EPS 350 with ratio A and 8x4 props. They have slight overlap, but with the recessed pylons, it's not a problem. I'd rather have 60 + ounces of thrust instead of 32. You can throttle way back and really increase the flight time.

For the Cargo, I presume all motors turn the same (CCW from the front). Has anyone experimented with reversing the turn of motors on one side, so as to negate all torque effects?
Is it possible to obtain gear units that reverse the rotation, and are matched to units that keep rotation the same?

Mac

I never geared mine and am not going to either. I found what I think is the best standard prop for a Spd 400, it's the GWS 7x3.5 DD prop. This plane struggled and needed an occasional hand launch at the sod farm I fly at from every other prop I found to be sucessful for spd 400. These 7x3.5's cut down the length of runway needed in the grass in half or better. It also has a noticeably longer flight time and can be throttled back much farther to stay up.
The most important mod that has been found and is now mentioned in the instructions is to angle the front of the motors down if your radio can't mix down elevator with throttle advancement. Not doing this can VERY easily result in a crash. Right after take-off, the plane shoots straight up almost uncontrolably and then stalls. Mine almost fell on it's tail, but the nose fell just at the last second and I spent the next 3 minutes trying to get it on the ground without crashing. My radio doesn't have this type mixing so I had to angle my motors, I used 3 layers of 2 sided foam tape cut into different sizes. They are flush with the front of the motor but look like steps on the back side, this gives a ramp effect. Still needs just a slight amount of trim adjustment, but I have never seen a plane that doesn't change with throttle changes. Along with the tape, the motors are also glued with Foamsafe CA.
These props worked so well that I changed all my spd400 planes over to them.
In regards to eliminating torque effect, there are unfortunately not too many options, but the torque on this plane isn't even noticeable with it's overpowering tailfin and 5 lb flight weight.

Thanks for very useful info, especially regarding down-angling the motors. This climbing tendency is present in motorized gliders, also. Back to reversing the motors, it's good to know that on this model it is not necessary. On some others it might be very useful. Of course, if you reverse the motor, then you need to find pusher props.

Yeah, I have a feeling it's on the way with all the multi-motor electrics coming out. Several planes I can think of right off the top are the Multiplex Twin jet, Twin Star and Sonic Liner, Great Planes and GWS DC-3, EAM and GWS C-130. Manufacturers of electric props will be turning out electric pusher props of all varieties that match the tractor props they are already producing. I know those little Firebird Outlaws come with them, otherwise, I have only seen 1 matched set of props for electrics that are available for countering torque. They are 10x4.7 so thats way to big for this plane, would be fine for a geared twin star.

Ive been looking to buy one of these planes but i cant find it anywhere. Wher did you guys get them?

Tower hobbies, Hobby people, maybe dymond.

$162 thats a lot of money. Is there anywhere you can get cheaper ones?

Unfotunately no, there is no place to readily buy this item for cheaper. I thought I was lucky enough to get mine from ebay for 120.00. However shipping was ridiculous, not really because of weight, but because of size. The box for this item is very large and gets tagged with a girth penalty. I ended up paying about 155.00 anyway and it was damaged when it arrived with no replacement parts available yet. It's probably best to buy from Tower or similar for this reason, the price of the item has the real shipping cost worked in and with the specials they run usually end up covering the 7.00 + dollars they charge for shipping. If it arrives damaged, they usually take care of it too.