Hey all,
I am a begginer just starting out as you might know from my last post. After hard thought and talking to some people that are in a local club I desided to go with the Firebird XL. My question is I live in Fort Collins Colorado and that puts me over 5000 feet above sea level. Will my firebird be able to fly ok at this altitude? The people at the LHS said they couldent get theres to take off from the ground on a very hot day over black pavment and it was hard to fly it over the same pavment on the same day with a push start. How much harder will the higher altitude make it to fly?...also for after I have flown it for a week or so I found out how to make it fly harder but also make it turn quicker and more like a normal r/c plane. Any thoughts on what i should do to make my FB fly better at my location and also do you think a begginer like my self can fly the FB at this altitude. Thanx

The altitude shouldn't be a problem if you change the prop. You'll nedd something with more pitch to make up for the thinner air.

Brad
<a href="http://litestick.rcplanet.com">The LiteStick Forum</a>

Can you fit a bigger prop on the FB?

VWTechie is exactly right - ideally you need a prop the same diameter but with about 25 or 30% more pitch. Diameter doesn't help much. Of course, it doesn't look like you could do that anyway, looking at firebirdxl.com.

What prop comes with the airplane? It looks like a direct drive speed 400 type motor, and NOT the ubiquitous push-on Gunther prop, so there are some choices.

One more encouragement for me to write that "flying at high altitude" article for the Ezone I'm thinkin' about. But the bottom line is more pitch or a lower gear ratio. In your case, it looks to be direct drive, the only choice is more pitch.