Originally Posted by Crist Rigotti

Very nice airplane, you did a great job putting it together. Is it me or is the prop on backwards?

Crist,
Thanks for your comments and sorry for the late response. I could not imagine there would be such a debate around it. I was not able to tell just by looking at the pictures either, so I wanted to get back to the plane and double check before answering. I would not be surprised if it was backwards, because I was experimenting with different props just before the pictures were taken, but the prop is indeed installed correctly in this case. The combination of their unusual shape, high pitch (I had a 8x7 on the pictures) and low quality pics were really misleading. I love those props by the way (TGS Sport from Hobbyking) - very efficient and amazingly quiet.

Originally Posted by Dimitris76

Luiz,
what did you use to glue these magnets in the foam.
On my Polish EPP bird I have tried both with CA and UHU Pornd on the first try the magnets ripped themselves straight out of the foam...
Is there a special technique?
Dimitris

I usually sand the magnets and pre-drill the foam with their shape before gluing it with CA. Epoxy or even the glue that comes with the kit will also work. Then I hold them in place for a minute so that the CA sets with the magnet perfectly leveled with the foam surface. This way you have the glue adhering to the botton, border and a bit bleeds on top of the magnet, holding it nicely.
Cheers,

Originally Posted by LFLoTiTo

Crist,
Thanks for your comments and sorry for the late response. I could not imagine there would be such a debate around it. I was not able to tell just by looking at the pictures either, so I wanted to get back to the plane and double check before answering. I would not be surprised if it was backwards, because I was experimenting with different props just before the pictures were taken, but the prop is indeed installed correctly in this case. The combination of their unusual shape, high pitch (I had a 8x7 on the pictures) and low quality pics were really misleading. I love those props by the way (TGS Sport from Hobbyking) - very efficient and amazingly quiet.


I usually sand the magnets and pre-drill the foam with their shape before gluing it with CA. Epoxy or even the glue that comes with the kit will also work. Then I hold them in place for a minute so that the CA sets with the magnet perfectly leveled with the foam surface. This way you have the glue adhering to the botton, border and a bit bleeds on top of the magnet, holding it nicely.
Cheers,

Thanks for the clarification. I've used those props before and I really like them too.

Received my skywalker belly pan today. It took just two days to get here. Great service Hooks. Thanks.

Regards

Fergus.

Nice Fergus, what style pan did you go for?.



Cheers, kev.

Here's mine, took me a while to work around some of the bad design choices on the manufacturer's behalf, but she is done and ready for maiden.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1262099

Cheers,

Sander.

Sander, awesome work!

I have a few stupid questions before I start building mine.

1. What kind of glue should I use to glue the fuse, wings, etc? Medium CA? Epoxy?
2. How hard is to mod the wing section in order to screw the wings instead of using the elastic bands?
3. The CF rods that are in the wings should be glued with Epoxy?
4. The motor mount should also be glued with Epoxy?

Thanks for helping !

Originally Posted by metalfred

Sander, awesome work!

I have a few stupid questions before I start building mine.

1. What kind of glue should I use to glue the fuse, wings, etc? Medium CA? Epoxy?
2. How hard is to mod the wing section in order to screw the wings instead of using the elastic bands?
3. The CF rods that are in the wings should be glued with Epoxy?
4. The motor mount should also be glued with Epoxy?

Thanks for helping !

1. CA, epoxy won't hold on EPO. Roughen up the surfaces with fine grit sandpaper and degrease with aceton/alcohol before glueing,

2. Not very but you need to cut the wing sections straight and true, I use a long thick Stanley blade with a 90-degree jig for this. Jig is placed on the wing, blade moves along and cuts into the foam. Takes about 20 cuts to get through the wing, obviously going in deeper and deeper with each cut.

3. CA, the strips that is, the wingspars are not glued.

4. CA as well, see 1.

Cheers,

Sander.

Thanks Sander!

Nice one Sander !

I still use the rubber bands on the wings. It actually saved the plane on its first crash. the bands popped out and the plane was lying on the grass after a nice spiral of death. no damage

It really flies well. I agree with you on the nose, it need to be longer. I also use 2 4000 3s batteries so that a total of 8000mah. I guess near 1h continuous flight but if the plane was lighter it would cruise slower and would be picking up the thermals like a pro !

Shame... just a bit of a shame. the plane is to pristine now, but once it gets bashed a bit, I will be elongating the nose with balsa...

On 6/15 I found pictures of this plane on this net, and the idea about his antenna… I did some digging and found the plane for sale at BEVRC, in hindsight this was lucky.
Thinking it was going to be a cheep EPS plane I bought 2, to get the free shipping, and started planning on glassing most of it. Of cores, it would need better spars, stronger belly and general beefing up… most planes bought from “china” need lots of work to let them fly more the one time.
That’s when I came to RC Groups and found this thread. I have now read the whole thread. The drama is great!!
First it was bad foam then a bad wing, then the builder showed up and made things right. Then we had bad packing, and slow customs, “fat guys” sitting on planes I guess. (I love that). Now we have people doing mods and other people making parts to make the plane better. And still more people asking what motor and prop to run. LOL.
Thank you, everyone that bought this plane ahead of me. All of the info is great.
Starting from the beginning of the thread and reading all of it is a great idea…not only for the information but as entertainment.

I love “china foam planes”, I have several, all different shapes and sizes. But there are things I expect when buying them.
1. The plane is going to need beefing-up! Experience will show you where.
2. Making the plane “durable” is going to cost 1/2 as much as the plane.
2. Its going to take 2 weeks + to get here. (Minnesota, USA)
3. The box is going to look like Hell when it gets here.
4. I am very happy to get most if not all of the parts.
5. Hope there are many pictures on-line because the instructions will not be good.
6. This is my hobby… solving the problems with the plane is part of it.

I am now waiting for my planes (EPO), motors, controllers, batteries, cf sticks, and fg cloth to come. I see some late nights in my future. ;-)

Later,
Gundy

Alright, just had the maiden flight half an hour ago and it was underwhelming. After trimming it out and rechecking CG twice these are my observations:

1) Worse glide angle than a pizzabox even in strong headwind, i.e. proverbial flying brick.
2) Tail section moves violently in the prop wash.
3) Tracking is bad with the motor on (prop wash) and acceptable with it off.
4) Tail shakes and vibrates in the wind and/or prop wash.
5) Needs at least 1/2 throttle to gain some altitude.
6) Feels like the tail section will just rip off in a steep dive.

All in all this was a classic case of time and money wasted, anybody want a fully built and tested Skywalker for a fair price?

Cheers,

Sander.

Sorry to hear about that. Just for the heck of it, try it with less weight. I already knew about the CG issue and picked a light motor and mounted everything else as far forward as I could and get it balanced with 5000 mah in the nose.

I have noticed the tail moving from the prop wash but it only seems to be an issue at high throttle and I didn't notice any bad effects in flight at any speed.

I really like this plane but then again i don't have a huge amount of experience with other FPV planes so maybe it is just that I don't know what I am missing.

I will pay closer attention on my next flight but my first day at the field with it was pretty good. Now I know it isn't very slow compared to some of the other choices like the Solution or Heptad but I understand they aren't very good when the wind picks up.

Any ideas if you can make any changes to make it better? I wonder if you got another set of wings and made it a biplane??

Anyway, I would buy it from you if shipping wasn't an issue. You did a nice job on the build!

Skywalker Maiden (0 min 52 sec)

BOY sounds like I am in for some work when mine gets here...

biggest problem sounds like the T-tail.. how about making it a normal low tail? that should remove some of these issues with prop wash...

worst case scenario.... twin boom? or twin engine...

Originally Posted by ssassen

Alright, just had the maiden flight half an hour ago and it was underwhelming. After trimming it out and rechecking CG twice these are my observations:

1) Worse glide angle than a pizzabox even in strong headwind, i.e. proverbial flying brick.
2) Tail section moves violently in the prop wash.
3) Tracking is bad with the motor on (prop wash) and acceptable with it off.
4) Tail shakes and vibrates in the wind and/or prop wash.
5) Needs at least 1/2 throttle to gain some altitude.
6) Feels like the tail section will just rip off in a steep dive.

All in all this was a classic case of time and money wasted, anybody want a fully built and tested Skywalker for a fair price?

Cheers,

Sander.

Sander, you are a smart guy. Surely you realise you have simply overloaded the plane.

I'm sure it would fly like a brick when it weighs the same amount.

I did a test with mine a while back, with 2x 3S5000mah packs, and it was just too heavy. It required twice the power to sustain height as it did with a single pack.

I came to the conclusion that there was no advantage in going over about 6000mah.

Have you tried flying it with one 4400mah pack? Try flying with an AUW of about 1.5kg. It really does fly very well. I think after about 1.6kg things start getting worse.

As for the tail. Totally agree. Its flimsy as hell. But I think if you lighten the plane, you will need less power/speed, which in turn will put less strain on the tail.

I think the best fix for the tail would be to redesign it with a low horizontal stab, and get rid of the T tail altogether.

A closing thought. If you really want to lift 2kg, have you considered extending the wings? Although by the time you do that it may well have been money/time better spent on a different model.

Originally Posted by techspy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLZeyt06A50

man that's a rocket.. too fast for my kind of fpv... same as mine and others, this plane to be balance becomes too fast.