rcpete347

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Hi all ,so how are we liking our Bobcats so far.
Any good or bad habits you'd like to share with us.
What do you think of the refex flaps ?
How about it's landing habits.
Thanks Rcpete

Helijet

I have a bunch of flights now on my 'Cat and I like it. It is very easy to fly....perhaps too easy. By that I mean, it would be easy for a pilot to get a bit too carried away and fly beyond his abilities. Don't get me wrong the bird will do everything you ask of it - it just does it with such ease. A real wolf in sheep's clothing. Point rolls great, vertical out of site, inverts well, loops straight and handles winds surprisingly well. Slow speed flight is amazing and the plane will actually warn you if you are getting close to a nasty stall - the wings begin to rock excessively. The down sides are in some conditions the wings will rock no matter what you do on landing. Controllable to the end but just a little annoying. I have used a little reflex ( 1/4 " ) on the ailerons coupled with ( 1/4 " ) down elevator for landing and the plane is very solid. BVM describes the technique well on his site and it is dead correct. Some extra power is needed to complete the pattern in this configuration but you can nail that landing within 100 ft everytime. Great for short fields. Another thing - I always lower my gear while making a turn now so as to avoid the balloning effect. Works really well. All in all a great package. My bird weighs a little over 18 lbs with a 500.

rcpete347

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My Bobcat

sirrom

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RCPete,
Helijet said it all. The plane flys wonderfully and really has only one bad tendency and that is the dutch roll effect on landing and when flying slow. If I had it to do over again I would build it like larry and vern kramer did and add flaps to it. Their bobcat flys rock solid and they cut the main gear doors down too almost 1/4 original size. Look at BV's website and you will see what theirs looks like.

Also, don't paint it almost all black, it gets hard to see really quick at a distance.

I have attached a pic of my bobcat.

patrick.

JohnVH

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Ive seen a couple fly and flew one for a brief period But they look and feel rock solid to me. I dont own one but would buy one if I could.

Here is Sandslx perfect bobcat!

jetjockey

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I have 15 flights on my BobCat with a JetCat 120 turned down to 20#. It weighs 20 1/2# dry and flies like a dream. I'm still sorting everything out, and hope to have lots of flights this weekend at our T-38 jet meet here in Lubbock. I put flaps on mine and am working to get everything sorted out and tweaked like I want. John Redman and I are going to try to reflex the ailerons and lower the flaps ala BVM's recommendations with mixed elevators. Should make a really sweet landing bird. I currently have 0 gyro gain gear up, and around 50% gain gear down, and have no wing rocking on landing so far - I am landing it a little hot yet, but will slow it down more as I get more familiar with it. So far, I REALLY like the machine and feel BV has a real winner here. So glad this experience is so much better than the one I had with the EFirebird!!

Regards, Les

Gordon Mc

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Hi Les,

I don't know that mine matches BV's recommendations, but I am now running reflex in my Bobcat (std, not XL). I originally ran flaperons per TonyF's excellent Bobcat setup doc, but once I removed the RAM 500 and installed the P120, there was so much residual thrust that the aircraft was reluctant to slow down for landing even with the flaperons deployed and the engine idled early on the downwind leg. That's when Chris (Huhn) suggested that we try the reflex. We just put in an arbitrary ammount (probably about 20 degrees up on the ailerons, at a guess), and kept the ratio of flaperon-to-elevator mix that I'd been previously running (but with reversed directions of course), and used that as a guess for the amount of down elevator needed. It turned out to be spot-on.

The reflex makes the aircraft fly much more nose high, thereby producing a lot of drag from the underside of the wing. As a rough indicator of the difference : the same landing circuits that simply would not slow the aircraft down when flaperons were used with the P120 at idle now require the engine to be at about 1/3 throttle for almost the entire approach. An additional benefit to this is that if you do have to do a go-around, the engine response from 1/3 upwards is much better than from idle upwards.

Note that the stall speed is a little higher with reflex, but not enough to make it an issue for me. YMMV.

For the first few landings I made with reflex, I made the approaches slightly too fast. I think what was happening was that I was conditioned (by my prior 60 or so flights on the aircraft while using flaperons) to having that combination of the nose-high attitude and the sink rate as indicating that the aircraft was very close to the stall, and so I was adding a touch more power when it was actually not needed. The aircraft wasn't feeling mushy, but I was probably still responding subconciously to the visual cues, without processing the fact that they now meant something different.

BTW, unless you are running a speed limiter, you might not want to advertise the thrust & weight you mentioned above, since it's actually higher than the .9 limit. Naturally, you just made a typo, right ? ;-)

Gordon

DavidR

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I have been flying a Bobcat since last year at Superman and have around 200 Bobcat flights. The last 75-80 have been with the reflex and it makes it really predictable to land. I have two reflex settings (1/8" Up and 1/4" up with the corresponding down trim in the elevator) I use the lower setting when the wind is higher and also as I am slowing down on my downwind leg. Mine does not seem to bobble as much on final as some but I have the gyro dialed to about 50-60 % with gear down and maybe 10-20% with gear up. I have tried every possible gyro setting in between 0 and 100% and this seems to work best on the plane. I have seen the Kramer's plane fly and it did not seem to do much different as far as slowing down with the flaps, it did not seem to raock the wings as much but I have not had that problem since getting the gyro "tuned" where I works well. Solid airplane capable of anything your thumbs can do!

David Reid

BTW mine has a P-120 set at full thrust but with a speed limiter to limit top speed. Exceptional vertical performance.