Banana Hobby has the V2. That's where I got mine. Shipping was fast and the plane arrived double boxed and in great shape. I too have heard horrible things about BH, but lately people have been reporting that things are OK. Maybe they are getting their act together. I can only speak to my experience. Hobby King also now sells the V2 Fox. They have it in the USA warehouse. It lists for about $133 US. If you don't see that price, just stay on the page for a minute or so, and you will get an offer for a lower price. Their photos are of the V1. They never changed them. They claim, however, that it is a V2.

Originally Posted by maguro

Banana Hobby has the V2. That's where I got mine. Shipping was fast and the plane arrived double boxed and in great shape. I too have heard horrible things about BH, but lately people have been reporting that things are OK. Maybe they are getting their act together. I can only speak to my experience. Hobby King also now sells the V2 Fox. They have it in the USA warehouse. It lists for about $133 US. If you don't see that price, just stay on the page for a minute or so, and you will get an offer for a lower price. Their photos are of the V1. They never changed them. They claim, however, that it is a V2.

It may very well be that HobbyKing is selling off their existing stock and once those are gone, they're gone. I hope HobbyKing is not going the same way as all other world sellers and continue to sell FMS products. The only Fox 2.32m part they still have stock is the prop.
I can get any plane shipped from HK home warehouse to me for less than what BH charges from the USA and it's almost guaranteed that the BH shipment will be assessed brokerage, duty and tax. So far, everything from HK has been released by customs without any charges. US sellers are bound by law to declare the full retail cost, including shipping whereas HK is much more "creative".

If you want FMS parts, then BH is just about the only game in town. I too hope that will change.

I took the Fox out yesterday in calm air, but almost no lift, and had a ball. I logged almost a half hour with about 5 climbs using an old 2200 battery. The CG was at 52-53mm. I was happy at how it could use light lift. I increasted aileron throw to 20mm and tried an aileron roll on a veak battery. It ended up doing a split S. Next time I gave it full throttle and a shallow dive before pitching up. I was rewarded with a beautify roll. Loops are easy, and of course so is a split S.

Winds today were 11 gusting to 21, but I gave it a try anyway. Two clicks of down trim were all that were required to penetrate the wind. The sun was out and amazingly I caught a great thermal. I shared it with a half dozen vultures and a hawk. I started getting a bit downwind, so I headed back up wind where I caught the thermal. Bad move. I couldn't find any decent lift. After a few more climbs and I entered the pattern and landed as smoothly as you please.


There was only so much foam I wanted to carve out of the fuselage, so after moving the battery back about 1 3/4 inches, I opted to add lead to the tail. I literally added 3 (7 gram) lead weights to the very back end of the fuse. It has sticky tape on the lead weights, and additional tape over them to make sure they don't go anywhere. That got the CG back just past 50mm. As others have noted 50-55 mm aft of the leading edge is the zone if you want to do any thermal flying. I mixed 23% down elevator at full throttle. Now the plane has almost no pitch up at any throttle setting.

Get the CG right, and the V2 Fox is a delight to fly. FMS has another winner as far as I'm concerned.

I too got my Fox V2 from Banana Hobby. No problems. Flies fine with CG at 50 MM. If need be, the 40 AMP ESC that came with it can be programed with a ZTW program card available from Altitude Hobbies.

Steveo0476 came up with this really neat way of installing the rudder mod without having to split the fuselage.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...postcount=1174

He was kind enough to send me a picture of the wire he used and it looked like motor winding magnet wire so I tried 3 strands of 24ga wire and it slipped through the tube without any problems. Since they are colored coded, hooking up won't be a problem.
First photo shows wires going into tube and second photo showing wires coming out in rudder.
Thanks Steve, you saved me a lot of work!

Some pictures of Steve's rudder mod that I'm putting on my FOX.
Using an exacto knife, I cut 1/2 way through the fuselage along an outline of a 900 servo. With a little prying the cut part popped out exposing the rudder wire tube.
The tube was cut off at the inlet to the servo cutout and the cavity under the servo was melted away to make room for the wires to coil up.
Getting the wires through the tube was a little tricky. The first time I tried it as a test they slipped right on through. This time, the wires kept getting hung up in the fuselage somewhere. To overcome this problem, I slipped the original rudder control wire back through the tube from the rudder side and ca'd a piece of strong thread to it. The other end of the thread was ca'd to the three wire bundle and after drying, was pulled through the tube.
Ready now for attaching wires to servo.

finally i got my order that i placed with banana hobbies so now i can continue working on the fox.
it was not that they took that long, is that i have been unable to pick it up from my address in detroit until now.
thanks to whoever referred them. it was so long ago that i forgot who he is.
i got all that i ordered, and came in good shape, so it was a good experience dealing with them.
exactly the opposite of what i went through with nitroplanes, that sent partial and delayed the rest until it was beyond paypal limit for a claim.

now, i have a question: the tubing for the wing (they called it 'pipe') is 27-1/2" long, weighs 64 gr, and measures 10mm od and 6.7mm id. is black on the outside, metal inside.
can anybody tell what metal is it? dural? and the outside coating?
i never had anything like it. all the joiners i have seen are either solid metal rods (steel, al, or dural), metal tubing, or carbon fiber tubing.

edit: looking closer and with better light, i realized that it is all some sort of plastic, not metal as i guessed earlier. grey. so maybe some sort of carbon fiber, that changed color from black to grey when machined. but why doesn't remain black? still, thick wall. thicker than anything i have seen before. i guess it's to handle the loads of this large, aerobatic plane.

Today was a great day for flying! We had a steady breeze in the morning but by the afternoon it had dropped to a warm but not too hard breeze. I took my fox out and it was a blast to fly. I used 2 2600 mah #s Lipos in a little hour of soaring. Used the motor just to get altitutde and then just searched around looking for lift, at one point I worked my way over to a large flock of crows that were just riding out the wind and I picked up such a stong thermal that the plane just about shot straight up. Trying to get ready for my Mystique maiden later on this week.

Originally Posted by xviper

I have done what I once said I would NEVER do again -- buy anything from Banana Hobby. After they gooned me years ago on a helicopter purchase, I have been one of the most vehement detractors of BH.
I broke one of my Fox wings. BH seems to the the ONLY place where I can buy a wing set. Since their "understanding" with FMS, nobody in the whole wide world sells new stock on FMS planes, especially parts. Nitroplanes has them listed as "Airfield" but has not had stock on anything to do with Fox Gliders for some time.
I have just initiated an "experiment" and made a small purchase from BH to see what happens. Wing set cost 20 bucks. Shipping to Canada cost 30 bucks.
I shall report back once (or if) my purchase is completed. Bananaphiles (and there are a limited few) will either love me or hate me when the time comes. I won't pull any punches but I will also give credit where credit's due.

Update on my Banana Hobby experience.....
Oct. 16 ......... order placed
Oct. 17 ......... contacted by BH to say the wings they have, sustained some minor damage and would I accept them if they glued the broken bits. They sent pictures. Not wanting to replace broken wings with another set of broken wings, I said "No", unless they were willing to give me a reduced price for the broken ones shipped. They responded to say they will send unbroken wings instead.
Oct. 18 ......... Wings shipped, with tracking number.
Oct. 30 ......... Wings arrived at my door.

I documented by video, the condition of the box and the whole unpackaging process, just in case. They sent the wing set in a big box that was meant for a complete plane. No damage. I can better understand the high price of shipping now.
I must admit that some of my faith in BH has been restored. I still can't say what would have happened if there was a problem after opening the box. In the old days, I would not have put it past them to just ship me the broken wings without hesitation, then leave me to fight with them for compensation.
I may just give them more of my business.

As for the wings, since I'm going to have to mess with them to install the servos, etc, I'm going to install a set of HobbyKing airbrakes into them. I've got them laying around anyway, so why not. I put a set on my X8 wing and they work wonderfully. On the Fox Glider, they should act like throwing out an anchor. I was going to cut a section of the ailerons as flaps, but I don't like the way flaps make a plane balloon up like on a couple of my other planes. I had programmed in spoilerons on the old Fox wings, but that caused the plane to drop too much when deployed and it didn't really slow the thing down all that much. Airbrakes work so much better.

Hi, xviper.

I'm glad you had a good experience with BH. The whole online world is a case of buyer beware. I'm not so sure that I like their policy of hanging on to broken bits of foam that probably cost them a buck or two.

Speaking of air brakes: have you seen the new HK servoless alloy air brakes? I don't even have anything that needs air brakes and I'm still tempted to pick up a pair just because they look so cool.

Originally Posted by peterlngh

Hi, xviper.

I'm glad you had a good experience with BH. The whole online world is a case of buyer beware. I'm not so sure that I like their policy of hanging on to broken bits of foam that probably cost them a buck or two.

Speaking of air brakes: have you seen the new HK servoless alloy air brakes? I don't even have anything that needs air brakes and I'm still tempted to pick up a pair just because they look so cool.

I saw them when they were first introduced. I'd love to have those servoless ones. It would make for a much simpler installation. However, I can't seem to find them anymore on the HobbyKing site. They may have removed them from the inventory. I have the red ones that need servos:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...idProduct=8576

I have them already mounted in my X8. If you find the servoless ones, please post up a link to them. Thanks.
The link they provide in this YouTube vid leads to a non-specific page.

HobbyKing Daily - Servoless Airbrakes (1 min 38 sec)

Here's the link. It looks like the first two reviewers received one faulty unit each. Good ol' HK quality control strikes again. It's a pity. I realize that their mission is to undercut everyone, no matter what, but I think most of us would gladly pay a bit more to ensure they don't ship out defective products. I hope that the air brakes prove popular and they get the QC issues fixed because they look like a fantastic solution to adding air brakes. As always, it's a case of buyer beware.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...ight_Pair.html

Originally Posted by peterlngh

Here's the link. It looks like the first two reviewers received one faulty unit each. Good ol' HK quality control strikes again. It's a pity. I realize that their mission is to undercut everyone, no matter what, but I think most of us would gladly pay a bit more to ensure they don't ship out defective products. I hope that the air brakes prove popular and they get the QC issues fixed because they look like a fantastic solution to adding air brakes. As always, it's a case of buyer beware.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...ight_Pair.html

Thanks. I see they call them "spoilers".

I also found these:
http://www.espritmodel.com/airplanes...-spoilers.aspx
A bit pricey for a relatively cheap glider like the Fox. I already have the red plastic ones and lots of cheap servos laying around. I'll wait for a more upscale model before buying the expensive spoilers. I might get a set of the cheap HK ones as a space filler in my next order. If they work, great. If not, well ..... not much I've bought from HK has turned out to be a dud, so I won't feel too bad.

Yeah. I've had good luck with HK too but I like others to do the beta testing on new items! I probably wouldn't put $30.00 spoilers on a $100.00 foamy myself but I might consider them if I decide to resurrect my old Sagitta or use them on a future scale project.