Here's some flight data from todays adventure.

Pete (Forrest12) and I had a good few test flights this afternoon. I'll post the data here and Pete will fill you in with the other details later.

Check the attached Emeter log for the fine detail.

We had about 45 minutes of airtime and used about 5Amp all up. Prop is a folding 13 x 6.

With 12Amp of 4s batteries aboard, she cruises just under half throttle at 6Ah. I don't know what the AUW was but we carried a Zippy 8A 4s 30c, plus two Turnigy nano 2.2A 4s 90c (as ballast)

With the equivalent of about 20A of 4s batteries (we added more ballast) she cruised between 6A & 8A, we didn't get to test this for long periods of time as the light was failing.

The time between about 16 and 55 minutes on the chart is with 12A of 4S aboard, after 55 mins we had about 20A of 4S aboard, we added that extra 8A batteries of dead weight to see how she would launch. The hand launch was a bit sketchy (Yes there is video) and the wings looked flexed in normal cruise telling me we need to spar it up with more than 8Amp of battery onboard.

Large spikes on the graphs represent launches. Small spikes indicated increase power climbs whilst we got bored doing endless large circuits of our local football field.

We did a number of launches which pull an average of about 63 amps for climb out at what looked like 40 degrees of climb angle or more.

With 24 amp of batteries I'm guessing we will have 3hrs plus endurance on this configuration.

All in all, we had a lot of fun trying the different set-ups and I'm looking forward to our first super long range flight some time soon.

Matt

Ok Just got home
Matt and I went to fly the X8 with a bit more weight in it today.
Matt will post all the data on battery usage soon, also the video and photos of the last flight.
(EDIT , He already has)
We flew with 12.4 amps of 4s for about 35mins (note we didnt use all the battery) and i think averaged about 5 amps on straight and level flight! Pretty happy with that. Thats 1389g of 4s.
After seeing how nice she flew with that.
It was time!
We love pushing things!
we grabbed all available batterys in the car and threw them in.

Weights of batterys are as follows-

1x 4s 8000mah 869g ~flight battery
2x 4s 2200's mah 520g

1x3s 5000mah -------
2x3s 3000mah-------- combined weight 830g

Total battery weight 2219g

24 amps of 4s will weigh 2607g so another 400g and we've reached our goal.
We flew with the equivelent of 2x 4s 8000's and 1x 4s 4400mah.
So 20.4 amps.
Plane was hand lauched (Just) ,also landing was too easy!
stayed up no problems.

AUW was 4kg on the dot

Also the cuise speed was accurately taken with a Falcon DS Radar gun with 51Mph down wind and 31Mph up wind carring the 12.4amps of 4s. average of 41mph

Pete

Oh yeah
I havnt made any mods to the plane yet, Except using 4-40 control rods and sulivans clevises .

And i got her to flutter today, 3/4 throttle in a dive with a 12 knot headwind will do it with the stock spar config.


Pete

The only difference the headwind made was that it was looking a little slow so pete bumped up the throttle a little an put it in a very shallow dive.


We also used a radar to check the average of the upwind and downwind cruise speeds at about 5 meters off the deck and it was cruising at about 41mph.

Originally Posted by Forrest12

Oh yeah
I havnt made any mods to the plane yet, Except using 4-40 control rods and sulivans clevises .

And i got her to flutter today, 3/4 throttle in a dive with a 12 knot headwind will do it with the stock spar config.


Pete

Great review Roland!

So will Latitude38 be sporting an X8 at the OBC?

I'm very new to the hobby, so far with 15+ hours on RealFlight6 and lots of dreams. Ultimate goal is to do some 20+minutes FPV flights.

Before reading about the X-8, I was considering the Parkzone Radian for my needs ( that also include aerial photography, FPV videos, some gliding capabilities). Fitting a GoPro for wide angle image capture is really appealing on this design.

Would the x8 be "too advanced" for someone without previous experiences?

I am almost buying the cheapest rtf wing and saving the money for April, but I prefer to hear from more experienced pilots if this kit would be a waste of resources.

Thank you in advance for your time.

OK, here's two idiots having fun hand-launching (and almost crashing) a 4kg X8.

You can also see how floaty it still is at landing.

Hand launching a 4kg X8 UAV (2 min 10 sec)

A couple of photos of the payload

Originally Posted by Anatomist

I'm very new to the hobby, so far with 15+ hours on RealFlight6 and lots of dreams. Ultimate goal is to do some 20+minutes FPV flights.

Before reading about the X-8, I was considering the Parkzone Radian for my needs ( that also include aerial photography, FPV videos, some gliding capabilities). Fitting a GoPro for wide angle image capture is really appealing on this design.

Would the x8 be "too advanced" for someone without previous experiences?

I am almost buying the cheapest rtf wing and saving the money for April, but I prefer to hear from more experienced pilots if this kit would be a waste of resources.

Thank you in advance for your time.

You've made a good start. The X8 is a good bird to end up as your flagship but it need some modification and a bit of tinkering especially if you've never setup a wing or delta before. Tbh if I were starting over with the knowledge I have, easy star 2 hands down. It's easy to setup. Reasonably priced and solid in most conditions (apologies for the plug in the X8 thread). But yeah I'd start there.

CJ

Originally Posted by Anatomist

I'm very new to the hobby, so far with 15+ hours on RealFlight6 and lots of dreams. Ultimate goal is to do some 20+minutes FPV flights.

Before reading about the X-8, I was considering the Parkzone Radian for my needs ( that also include aerial photography, FPV videos, some gliding capabilities). Fitting a GoPro for wide angle image capture is really appealing on this design.

Would the x8 be "too advanced" for someone without previous experiences?

I am almost buying the cheapest rtf wing and saving the money for April, but I prefer to hear from more experienced pilots if this kit would be a waste of resources.

Thank you in advance for your time.

I started with a Radian, great to fly with, terrible to configure for doing anything else. Tiny interior space etc. Let that one go

Consider the Skywalker first. Very easy to fly, with massive interior space (3 x Easystar / Bixler / etc). I have my digital camera flat looking through a hole in the belly for mapping.

Originally Posted by Psionic001

OK, here's two idiots having fun hand-launching (and almost crashing) a 4kg X8.

You can also see how floaty it still is at landing.

Hehe had a good laugh! Doesn't look like it's particularly difficult to hand-launch with 4kg, if you chuck it right

When you say "20 amps" you really mean 20 Ah? 3 hours - imagine that!!

Looks like you had fun, thanks for the brilliant info.

The rear finger pocket is below the CG (fuse is so thick), and a little rear, so when you give it a hard throw, you induce a pitch-up moment. Slow down the video and you'll see it.

Yes, I meant 20Ah of battery.

Originally Posted by heinduplessis

Hehe had a good laugh! Doesn't look like it's particularly difficult to hand-launch with 4kg, if you chuck it right

When you say "20 amps" you really mean 20 Ah? 3 hours - imagine that!!

Looks like you had fun, thanks for the brilliant info.

Originally Posted by Psionic001

The rear finger pocket is below the CG (fuse is so thick), and a little rear, so when you give it a hard throw, you induce a pitch-up moment. Slow down the video and you'll see it.

Yes, I meant 20Ah of battery.

With a 3s setup how much you can lift ? 2*8000 mAh ?

Originally Posted by Anatomist

I'm very new to the hobby, so far with 15+ hours on RealFlight6 and lots of dreams. Ultimate goal is to do some 20+minutes FPV flights.

Before reading about the X-8, I was considering the Parkzone Radian for my needs ( that also include aerial photography, FPV videos, some gliding capabilities). Fitting a GoPro for wide angle image capture is really appealing on this design.

Would the x8 be "too advanced" for someone without previous experiences?

I am almost buying the cheapest rtf wing and saving the money for April, but I prefer to hear from more experienced pilots if this kit would be a waste of resources.

Thank you in advance for your time.

I started with a Radian for fpv and it's been great, sorry, off X8 topic. If that's the direction you're going, hop on over to FPVLab and check out Crash's Radian blog. Lots of useful info for beginners and advanced alike. Now back to your X8 show!

http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread....ash%27s+radian

Superevan

Originally Posted by Psionic001

OK, here's two idiots having fun hand-launching (and almost crashing) a 4kg X8.

You can also see how floaty it still is at landing.

That launch could have been disasterous. I've hand launched planes straight into the ground so I'm not throwing stones. LOL Looks like a bungee might be something to look at.