Spirt Elite for relative novice

[rcarlin]

My local hobby shop has a Spirt Elite ARF for $100. So I'm thinking about this for my first full house ship. I'm a relative novice, so I was curious as to what advice some of you experts may have. I have seen a lot of take about mods to reduce the weight, but I'm likely to be flying at more of a slope site than a thermal site, so I'm wondeing if the mods are as critical.
Also, I'm curious as to what radio/server/receiver combinations people are using in this.

Thanks

Bob

[Hostage-46]

Bob,

To me this model is an excellent Full House trainer. I have one, it was given to me as a gift and served it's purpose as transition ship. I flew it for a few months then moved on. Nice little ship with mediocre performance compared to other full house ships, but for $100 it serves it's purpose.

As a fullhouse trainer this ship will give you more complexity which I think is the point. This is a low risk way to learn how to setup and fly a computer radio.

I have a Futaba 9C Heli version (very important for glider pilots) from Servo city. Excellent radio for like $250, perfect for a guy moving into more complicated stuff. You can use really any rec/servo combination from there.

I've owned 4 Spirits over the last 15 years. They are great models! However the Elite does not perform that much better then the good old RES version.

I made this transition to full house gliders after establishing myself as a competent intermediate pilot, able to completely control the model and find lift with regularity.

When I decided to get into more sophisticated ships, i.e. invest more time and money, I happened to have the Elite kit on the shelf, I thought it would be a good transition bird so I dropped the servos in and took it to the field.

For a few weeks I flew locally at my field off the highstart. It fly’s just like a Sprit should, no complaints. I invested a lot of time and dialed it in very nicely. It was a nice platform to learn how to mix and fly a computer radio.

Then I joined a club and started to hang out with guys who play at a whole different level. They taught me how to winch and let me hang out with them. I continued to fly and found life to be generally enjoyable as the new guy.

Then it happened, Gary says, “ever fly one of these?” And gives me a few minutes of stick time on his moldie that is flying 3 times as far away and twice as high as I've ever flown a model. After I spill out of the thermal he goes, "watch this", and hits the reflex, zooms back upwind, and rejoins the thermal with the other guys.

I ordered my Compulsion that night!

The point is, the Elite served it’s purpose in my transition to flying full house. It taught me about radio setup and served as a point of reference against more high performance models.

Mine now it sits on a shelf, and compared to my Compulsion, it flies like a plastic garbage bag:), I’ll take it to the slope I guess.

Soon I'll have the guts to show up at a contest! But I have my work cut out for me, it's amazing how well contest guys fly...


Dan in Dallas

[rcarlin]

Dan,
Thanks for that - very useful. I think you have my situation pegged perfectly. I have JR 783 radio, which I'm using on simpler (setup wise) aircraft that need some kind of mixing, like a Zagi and a Starling. So this will be the ship for me the really learn the radio as much as anything else.

Regards
Bob

[Hostage-46]

Bob,

A few more things to consider ....

When selecting radio gear for this ship I recommend you think ahead. By that I mean you'll want servos that you can use in your next ship, i.e. HS-85's or whatever flavor you use.

On the other hand, if you have some extra servos lying around, no worries as the weight is not much of an issue.

Finally, I did the pull pull setup on the ship and was able to reduce lots of weight. The stock setup is absolutely ugly.

Cheers
Dan

[ace-shooter]

I am also a new glider flyer and flew my Spirit Elite for the first time this past Monday. Obviously not in the same class as the more advanced 3 meter aircraft but it is great to learn on. My second flying day was Thursday and I caught my first thermal. The Spirit indicated the lift and flew a tight circle while gaining about 200 feet. Got a 9 or 10 minute flight out of it. Launches have been with a winch system and the Spirit handles it well. I have found a small stress crack in the fuselage just aft of the wing saddle. Just where we hold it during the winch launch. The fuselage is very thin here and needs a little "beefing" up. I am having a blast with it and also have two DLG's on the bench. They will let me fly when the winch is not available and don't require as large of a flying area.

Good Luck and Have Fun
Larry