Global Freestyle 3D ARF
02-27-2002, 03:43 PM
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Global Freestyle 3D ARF
The Global Freestyle 3D ARF was my first ARF I have ever owned, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the kit. I was looking for a fun fly type airplane that I could quickly finish and get in the air to enjoy our unusually mild winter here in East Tennessee. I had a Tower Fun .51 that just became too worn out to fly anymore and wanted something to fill this hole in my fleet and to possibly learn to 3D better.
I choose the Freestyle 3D because I had a Magnum .75 2-stroke sitting un-used on my bench and the Freestyle had a little bigger wing (700 square inches verses 600 for a lot of others) than some of the other .40-.50 funflys out there. I figure the couple of extra square inches of wing would help out with the extra weight of the .75 over the recommended .46. I am glad I used the .75 because I needed the additional nose weight. From what I have seen, I think mine was unusually tail heavy without the engine when compared to most of the others out there. So all-in-all it worked out to balance perfectly.
The kit was well built. I added a couple of drops of glue here and there to the formers I could get to, but I don't think it really needed it. I added two small triangle pieces to strengthen the firewall and have not had any problems with it coming loose. The rest went together unmodified from the instructions.
The plane went together fast, took about two weekends and a couple of week nights in between, working off and on to get it flying. I used a pencil tip on my soldering iron to cut back the covering where the tail expoxies in instead of an exacto knife. The wing joint and tail joints are all very tight and precise. Everything came out straight and true with little or no effort needed on my part.
I used all of the include hardware. Some of it seemed a little cheap, but truthfully I haven't had any problems with anything failing yet. The worst part was getting my servos in the fuselage since it is a bit tight. The pull/pull cables for the rudder run right over the top of the elevator and throttle servos. I had to raise the rudder servo by adding a shim under the servo mount tabs to keep the cables from rubbing on the other servos. You can't raise it too much though because it will begin to rub on the wing mount block. It was a tight fit for the sevos and associated stuff, but managable with a little thinking and tinkering.
I used Hitec 605 servos for the ailerons (because I had two spares) and I used some 77oz FMA servos for the rudder and elevator. I haven't had a problem with any of the servos. They push the huge control surfaces like they should for 3D flying. I've had no flutter problems even when I didn't back out of the throttle right away when heading down hill in a hurry. I did add a couple of extra CA type hinges here and there, but this was just because I have had a problem with some types of CA hinges cracking when they were flown a lot.
Everything else goes together really nice. I used some masking tape to hold the canopy in place while the glue RC-56 dried and it pulled some of the paint off the canopy. One nice thing about the kit is it includes a really nice fiberglass cowl and a clear plastic dummy cowl. You use the dummy cowl to figure out where you need to cut your holes in the good cowl. This might be a standard thing with ARFs now, but I really appreciated this little extra.
The covering is some type of monocote/ultracote style covering, not sticky back shelf paper. The quality of the covering was as good as I could have done, no permenent wrinkles and all the trim matched up. There were a coupld of wrinkles that I removed with my heat gun and so far none of the edges have started to peel up.
Flying it has been a blast. It is very stable when slowed down and is very aerobatic and wild when you want it to be. I am using it to learn 3D flying better, it might not be the best at that, but so far it has greatly improved my abilities. The Magnum .75 seems to be a perfect match for hovering too. I have a lot of extra power for accelerating out of a hover.
The only real gripe I have with this thing is the main aluminum gear legs. They are pretty flimsy and weak, mine lasted long enough to get the thing in the air once. I had my rudder way to sensitive for the first takeoff and did a couple of violent S-turns down the runway. This was enough to mangle the gear. I could have bent them back into place and used them some more, but I replaced them with a set of gear off my crashed .40 sized GP Extra 300. These were almost a direct replacement and have worked excellent ever since. The stock gear would work fine now that I know how to keep this straight down the runway, but would probably start to pancake if you do some elevator/harrier style landings.
So, basically I have to say I like this plane and feel it was worth the $180 street price they are asking. Might not be the best thing out there, but I like mine a lot. I am still a kit/scratch builder at heart, but I won't be so quick to pass up a good looking ARF in the future if I need something in the air quickly.
Feel free to email me if you have any questions. Thanks, -Scott-
I choose the Freestyle 3D because I had a Magnum .75 2-stroke sitting un-used on my bench and the Freestyle had a little bigger wing (700 square inches verses 600 for a lot of others) than some of the other .40-.50 funflys out there. I figure the couple of extra square inches of wing would help out with the extra weight of the .75 over the recommended .46. I am glad I used the .75 because I needed the additional nose weight. From what I have seen, I think mine was unusually tail heavy without the engine when compared to most of the others out there. So all-in-all it worked out to balance perfectly.
The kit was well built. I added a couple of drops of glue here and there to the formers I could get to, but I don't think it really needed it. I added two small triangle pieces to strengthen the firewall and have not had any problems with it coming loose. The rest went together unmodified from the instructions.
The plane went together fast, took about two weekends and a couple of week nights in between, working off and on to get it flying. I used a pencil tip on my soldering iron to cut back the covering where the tail expoxies in instead of an exacto knife. The wing joint and tail joints are all very tight and precise. Everything came out straight and true with little or no effort needed on my part.
I used all of the include hardware. Some of it seemed a little cheap, but truthfully I haven't had any problems with anything failing yet. The worst part was getting my servos in the fuselage since it is a bit tight. The pull/pull cables for the rudder run right over the top of the elevator and throttle servos. I had to raise the rudder servo by adding a shim under the servo mount tabs to keep the cables from rubbing on the other servos. You can't raise it too much though because it will begin to rub on the wing mount block. It was a tight fit for the sevos and associated stuff, but managable with a little thinking and tinkering.
I used Hitec 605 servos for the ailerons (because I had two spares) and I used some 77oz FMA servos for the rudder and elevator. I haven't had a problem with any of the servos. They push the huge control surfaces like they should for 3D flying. I've had no flutter problems even when I didn't back out of the throttle right away when heading down hill in a hurry. I did add a couple of extra CA type hinges here and there, but this was just because I have had a problem with some types of CA hinges cracking when they were flown a lot.
Everything else goes together really nice. I used some masking tape to hold the canopy in place while the glue RC-56 dried and it pulled some of the paint off the canopy. One nice thing about the kit is it includes a really nice fiberglass cowl and a clear plastic dummy cowl. You use the dummy cowl to figure out where you need to cut your holes in the good cowl. This might be a standard thing with ARFs now, but I really appreciated this little extra.
The covering is some type of monocote/ultracote style covering, not sticky back shelf paper. The quality of the covering was as good as I could have done, no permenent wrinkles and all the trim matched up. There were a coupld of wrinkles that I removed with my heat gun and so far none of the edges have started to peel up.
Flying it has been a blast. It is very stable when slowed down and is very aerobatic and wild when you want it to be. I am using it to learn 3D flying better, it might not be the best at that, but so far it has greatly improved my abilities. The Magnum .75 seems to be a perfect match for hovering too. I have a lot of extra power for accelerating out of a hover.
The only real gripe I have with this thing is the main aluminum gear legs. They are pretty flimsy and weak, mine lasted long enough to get the thing in the air once. I had my rudder way to sensitive for the first takeoff and did a couple of violent S-turns down the runway. This was enough to mangle the gear. I could have bent them back into place and used them some more, but I replaced them with a set of gear off my crashed .40 sized GP Extra 300. These were almost a direct replacement and have worked excellent ever since. The stock gear would work fine now that I know how to keep this straight down the runway, but would probably start to pancake if you do some elevator/harrier style landings.
So, basically I have to say I like this plane and feel it was worth the $180 street price they are asking. Might not be the best thing out there, but I like mine a lot. I am still a kit/scratch builder at heart, but I won't be so quick to pass up a good looking ARF in the future if I need something in the air quickly.
Feel free to email me if you have any questions. Thanks, -Scott-
