After I had 3 flights and 3 crashes with my Alpha from BH, I decided I'd had enough with that airframe. I took at the components out and started looking for a good replacement. I cam across this little beauty at
bphobbies.com. The price was right, $45 and shipping was only $25, since I ordered a J-10 and an A-4 from them at the same time. Planes came quick from NJ to UT, only 4 days. No damage and the plane was in perfect condition.
Assembly was fast and relatively easy. Couple things done differently. The steerable nose gear and rudder where hooked together by a screw locking thing but were in this tiny compartment in the top of the plane behind the cockpit. I had to squeeze two servos in there and get it all hook up. Not really the easiest thing in the world, but it works.
Since I'm going 4s on this plane, I also had to cut out the back of the battery box to slide the 4s 2200mh battery as far back as she would go. She's still a little nose heavy according to the manual's COG, but she flies perfect in my eyes. Rest of assembly went really easy. The landing gear on the nose comes pre-installed, but the wings just push up and in with friction to hold them in, it works but I put some hot glue in there just in case.
The motor from my Alpha is a 4300kv motor with 2.3mm shaft so it fit the Freewing EDF perfectly. Now I've got a random 2.3mm 64mm edf, all the motors I usually buy have 3mm or 3.17mm shafts, I guess I may be buying a 2.3 mm shaft Cyclone power motor from
RC-Castle.com for some future project. I'm thinking the
Freewing T-38 from pbhobbies.com.
So, it flies great. Super easy to fly. Not as fast as I would have liked, especially since it is 4s. But I can overlook that since it is so much fun to fly! VERY easy landings. It just glides right in. I think this might be the easiest EDF I have to fly, my Rafale might be a close 2nd.
Here's a video of the 2nd flight from yesterday.
-swps