EBasil

Well, we've had terrible experience with the Firebird Freedom, and I'm hoping to find out it's a fluke. My Dad's got a PZ Super Dec that we gave him recently, which was our first experience with more than one channel R/C flight. We've got a number of great flights and a few crashes on the Super Dec, with no trouble flying off hand-lanuches, etc...

So, my Dad bought the Freedom so we'd have another plane to fly on a different channel and based on some hobby shop suggestion that she'd be even easier to fly than the Super Dec. We put her together, spent careful time perfectly trimming the elevators on the v-tail, ran her through a cell-cycle on the ground and then went out to fly with fresh batteries. The Freedom, launched harder by hand than needed for the lighter Super Dec, acted like it needed more power, even with the motor on full throttle. It would heel over. So, I through her harder and we got her about 50 yards out before it rose into a porpoise (from over input...), the ACT cut-in and the plane honked over and augered-in. So, we turned off the ACT, gave it another good toss, got her about 50 yards out and had a helluva time controlling her...leading to an auger-in that snapped the carbon fiber center beam in half, dented a wing and puked the battery out the nose. With all that wingspan, the darn thing ought to glide and fly great, but ours seems underpowered and unstable as all get out.

So, off to Smith Bros. on Reseda Blvd we went, leaving with some carbon-fiber ribbon to reinforce the wings, a new carbon spar and a new set of wing/tail pieces. I've reinforced the wing and v-tail, retrimmed everything, put her back together and yet we're totally sketched on this darn thing. It's harder to fly than the "intermediate" plane that PZ says the Super Dec is. Demoralizing. []

Gryphon

After someone put my battery (with one extra cell on it) in their freedom, they had a much better time flying. That's all I can say personally.

My brother had all kinds of complaints flying other people's Freedom (weak, ...), but when he got to fly their Freedom with an extra cell, he stopped complaining and was real happy.

Just remember you now have "Aileron" type action. Banking side to side. Takes a while to get used to but that would end up being your favorite way to fly a plane; Ailerons & Elevator.

Do not give it big inputs, be smooth, think ahead of time. It is not the most manuverable, especially not with the included battery and slow flight speeds.

Note: the original charger may not be rated for the number of cells if you buy a battery with an extra cell on it. You may need a new charger. Would be well worth the price.

I am not the expert on this plane, so I like to hear from other people.

"Freedom experts": please chime in......

Gryphon

EBasil

What frustrates me is that this plane is sold RTF for Beginners. It's not RTF. It's RTCrash, RTRepair, RTCrash, and is harder to fly than a more "advanced" plane like the high-wing RTF's from the same company.

tims880

Well I just bought one off ebay for $40.00 could not pass it up. I am maidening this plane in the morning. Its kinda a big plane, I was worried about the 480 not being enough motor. I have a 480 in my challenger. Much smaller plane. I really like the control wires and the fact of no rubber bands!!!

polarys425

i too have bought several of these off ebay for $42-$46. i haven't seen where they are all that hard to fly. i do however have a G3 flight simulator, so i know that helped some. the most important things for beginners, is NO WIND, and to get some altitude. altitude will allow you time to recover should you need too. in addition to the Freedom, i have a Challenger, and an Extreme. they're all alot of fun.

EBasil

Which plane do you reccomend from RealFlight G3 to use for stick-feel/practical application to the Crashbird Freedom? er, I mean the Firebird...

polarys425

I'm not sure that i can narrow it down to any one plane on G3. I think just the over all stick time on the simulator carries over to even the Freedom. Sure you still need to get a feel for it once your flying the actual plane, but its a whole lot easier. When i first started on the G3, the hardest thing was 180 degree turns, and remembering to move the stick the opposite way when flying towards yourself. Once you have mastered those two things, it gets alot easier.

Even with all that, i still crash from some, just not as hard. I did however get to far away this evening, and managed to get too low. At that point i couldn't easily tell the orientation of the plane and crashed hard into a tree. I totally expected to find it in pieces, much to my suprise though, there wasnt any damage at all.

JoeFriday

Ok. Let me start by saying that I am just starting out. And, it has been a somewhat painful but enjoyable experience so far. That leads me to this post.

I did a nose dive into the ground that was fast enough to crease the plastic and shove the engine forward in the cowling. It was quite a site with parts flying. Actually, I was very surprised that the plane did not completely disintegrate at the speed that it hit the ground, and after seeing this, I would say that this is a pretty durable plane.

Now to the tips. I was able to push the motor back and it probably would have flown, but I chose to replace the complete chassis for $20 to make sure she was completely airworthy. I would say that after going through the process, it was not overly difficult but it would have been helpful to have a few hints.

• You will need a very fine wire to thread the antenna back through the tail. I had a roll of basic copper wire that I stripped down and used one of the strands. It worked perfectly to pull the antenna back through the tail.
• Pay close attention to how the ACT sensors are connected to the circuit board. I did, and I was glad that I did. They will need to be disconnected when you remove the board from the chassis.
• The wires for the tail will have to slide back through the housing when you pull the board out. Don’t forget to thread them back through the tail guides when you put the board back in the new chassis or you will be installing the board multiple times.
• And here’s my favorite. You get new styrofoam for the battery cradle and there is a definite trick to get it into the chassis. Take the rear piece of styrofoam, and tilt it upward at a 90 degree angle. Push the top of the chassis down toward the bottom of the chassis(wheels off) to make the battery opening wider. Now you will have enough room to work the styrofoam into the opening and tilt it level. After that, you just pop in the piece that fits in the nose.

The time to do a swap the first time was around an hour +. I am sure (I hope I don’t have to) if I had to do it again, it would go much faster. So, if you do happen to bang up your Freedom as severely as I did, don’t be afraid to do a chassis swap and save the extra $40 that it would cost for the chassis and board set-up. It really isn’t that bad and it gets you even more familiar with the plane.

packyj

Ebasil, without much input that I've read here I have to say it does sound like too much input. As has been suggested, think ahead, no wind (NO WIND), and get altitude before trying to turn. The box really isn't lying when they say to use 600 ft of space as it eats up space pretty quickly. Leave ACT off as it leads to more crashes than it prevents. Fly smart and let the plane do the work. It actually does glide very well if you aren't putting too much input into it. Throttle back once you get a good distance in the air. As my brother says "three mistakes" high. So more or less high enough to roll it over, dive it down roll it over again and get it straightened out before it hits the ground.... that's pretty high.

EBasil

Thanks, Packy. We will put that bird up again...I put too much time laminating the wings & tail with graphite ribbon and blueprinting it back after our crash damage. It's going to be hard to find enough room in our local parks to get it high enough (presuming it gets that far), though, and that's where we're still frustrated: the Super Dec flies easier, better and more safely in less space. I still feel like this plane is not even close to a "beginner" level when it's so much harder to fly than the "intermediate" Super Decathlon.

EBasil

How about a hotter motor? I know about the Venom 370 for the Park Zone Super Dec and Cub...is there a hotter-wind of the 400 motors used in the bigger planes? Is that size used in RC cars?

Mr.Pibb

After having a FF for a few months now, I'd like to give my review of the plane and some things I've learned over the past few months.

First, let me say that this my my first RC airplane, so I am a total newbie. That said here's what I think so far:

ACT: A waste of time and can actually cause crashes if it tries to recover and you don't want it to.

Overall: When everything is set up properly the plane flies pretty well. It can easily do loops and some pretty good maneuvers for the types of controls. I already wish I had elevators and a rudder, though...but in all good time I guess. The problem is when something isn't set up quite right. This plane seems to have a very narrow operating band, anything outside of that and it becomes horribly unstable.

If your plane seems to not be flying well, here are the things that I have found that can make it unstable:
[ul][*] Transmitter batteries are low: Even if the transmitter says it has enough juice, if the batteries are a little low it can make the plane fly erratically. The plane will twitch and hop around and generally not respond the way you would expect it to. Always make sure your transmitter batteries are on properly[*] Tail adjustment: If the tail is not adjusted properly, or is damaged allowing it to bend a little, the plane behaves almost exactly as it does if the transmitter batteries are low. It will stall easily and often pull hard to one side. During "extreme" maneuvering it will stall to one side (this seems to be when the tail is tipped "forward" too much). It also makes the plane more unstable in wind conditions.[*] Motor cowling damaged or motor not aligned. After a few crashes I was having all sorts of problems keeping the plane in the air. It was very sluggish and just didn't want to climb. It also was unstable, any little thing would send it tipping over to one side quickly. It turns out that the cowling holding the motor was damaged and the motor was tipped toward the front of the plane more than it was supposed to be. Note that this type of damage might have damaged your motor too. Since getting a new airframe (empty, I moved all the electronics to the new one) I noticed that the plane handled OK but it still seemed slower. Well...the motor failed today so I think there was some internal damage.[*] Main wings "twisted". After putting some new wings on my plane, I noticed it pulling hard to one side even though the tail seemed to be adjusted properly. I was looking at the plane from the rear and noticed that the angle of incidence of one wing was far steeper than the other wing, even though they were both mounted properly. Switching one of them out with a matching wing helped. The quality control of the wings is pretty pitiful if you ask me.
[/ul]

Batteries:
The battery that came with the plane are decent, but the charger stinks. It gets often gets false peaks and doesn't fully charge the batteries. These type of batteries are a bear to keep !QUOT!fresh!QUOT! anyway, you really have to charge them right before you are going to use them if at all possible. I purchased a couple 1100mah batteries from batteryspace and they performed good as well. I've heard that getting 9.6V battery packs will improve your performance, so I purchased two packs and a recommended charger from all-battery. I wasn't particularly impressed with what I got. The batteries themselves seem OK, but the polarity was backward on the connector even though they recommend these batteries for firebird airplanes. This might have accelerated the failure of my current motor/electronics since I hooked it up for a few seconds with the polarity backward before I realized what was going on. (the motor was showing signs of failing already, so the reverse polarity on the battery might not have had anything to do with it). Anyway, if you order the batteries from them double check the polarity. Also, the "recommended" charger doesn't have the right connectors! The darned thing has a FEMALE mini Tamiya just like the battery. Had I been more observant I might have caught this ahead of time, but they are the ones that recommend the charger to go with the batteries!

Anyway, from what I can tell the plane does perform better with the 9.6V batteries, and the small amount of extra weight doesn't seem to affect it.


For Beginners?
I think not. This plane moves way too fast and is way too touchy. A neighbor of mine is probably close to giving up because he's had so many problems getting his flying without crashes. For me, this plane has been a money pit. extra wings, fuselages, batteries, chargers have put the cost of operation of this plane through the roof. It gets tossed around too easily by wind. When you are beginner landings are a bear because of the speed. If you are having problems, stick it out, you'll get the feel for it eventually.

This plane DOES have some serious range, though. So much so that you can/will lose sight of it before it goes out of range. Trust me, I've done it. Luckily I had a camera on it and was able to fly it remotely for a while till I could find it again. Here's a horribly over compressed video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...22128965795744

Here's another video looking back for a short flight:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...99789225884879

Note that I no longer use the stock tail. I made my own from corrugated plastic. It holds up better and performs better. At some point I may try to scan the tail so folks can use it as a template.

I hope this helps folks looking at (or using) this plane!

Tim

tims880

Im not a beguinner I fly a modded challenger and a stryker. I stated before I got one off ebay becuase it was cheap. I took it out to fly the other day and I was not going to use the ACT. But my buddy kept on lets see what this ACT can do. So I threw her up with a 8 cell battery. At first I was very impressesd with the speed. I flew a few basic laps and then tried to do a loop with the ACT on. Bad bad mistake. It completely spazed out and fell out of the sky. Destroyed the tail(go figure). But I liked the plane, making a new tail out of coroplast and gonna fly her again. This time with the ACT OFF!!!!! I agree she is too fast for a first time flyer.

archibaldpaul

Hey guys,
need your help please !
I am changing the prop of my firebird freedom which is now on 2.4ghz ! and 3S ! she flies so fast !
what prop should I use ? (not the original hobby zone plastic bad prop ! it slides after some flights !)
Do you know the dimensions I should use ?
-and where to buy it ?
- like a reverse pitch,6.5 x 3 or 6X4: would they work ?
Thanks a lot for your help !
Jacques