I just clipped 10” off my Zagi’s wing span. I’ll see how it does tomorrow. Anyone tried this?
-fish

You might want to hang on to your clippings... A friend of mine tried this and it moved the center or gravity too far forward to balance right. It didn't look that much faster....

I just did the same thing last night! Now is just screams!!! I can do five barrel rolls at one time in leval flight! I will post pictures once I get them!! I made the wings look just like the wedgie plane!!

Has anybody else done this and if so, do you have any pictures!!

Just flew it...
not much different.
First try had the CG too far back.(if you remove the tips of a swept wing you essentially move the CG backwards not forward)I moved the battery pack forward and lowered the throws and it settled down a bit. Roll rate is still high but not ridiculous. The speed doesn’t seem much better on mine either. The climb rate is a little better now.
Overall I’m not impressed.
-fish

fisher: did you cut out the middle or the wings?

Here are my pictures, notice the shape of the wing...is very pointy like the Wegie speed 400 plane! Its also all epp.









[This message has been edited by funflyer (edited 06-10-2001).]

Oh ya I almost forgot. My little plane above is only 34 inches wide!

I cut 5" off each tip.
-fish

I cut 14" out of the center section of my viper (zagi like slope soarer) yesterday, mainly cos the center section has had the snot beaten outa it. I put sub micro servos in it and all up weight of about 220 grams on some dodgy scales.

Flew it today 5-10 knot winds, was very smooth, climbed well & moderately fast, with an incredible roll rate! I'm going to try a speed 400 in it....

heres sum specs:


weight: 140 grams (airframe, rx & servos only)
wing area: 1742.5 cm2
Wing span 850mm
length 380mm

I got sum pics but i dont know how to post them - cutting & pasteing dont work! email me and i'll send them to ya's!

I did this last weekend... I first tried taking 1.75" on each wing tip.. made an awesome improvement.. would roll better, climb better and definitely faster... then I decided to take another 4.25" off each tip and boy was that a mistake... it flew like crap.. like AW said, I had to tape the batter where four of the eight batteries were hanging off the nose.. then it would fly actually slower than the original and it wasn't very stable..
I would say the ideal clipping is at 1.75" off each side...

I had very good luck clipping 6" off each wingtip of my old zagi. It flies and rolls faster and handles wind a little better. It does require a bit more speed to be stable though (yes..you gotta move the CG forward). I wouldnt have done it if I didnt have a "stock" zagi also. It was a nice change of pace. I say "was" becuase the shorter span zagi has been the test bed for my vectored thrust experiments. I havent updated the page since creating it, but here are pics of the 36" zagi: http://users2.ev1.net/~nbad/short_zagi.htm

Terry

This is from an earlier post I made:

"I took the Zagi's winglets off, cut three inches off each wing, and put the winglets back on. Now my Zagi was nose-heavy...what to do? Took the speed 400 out and installed a Dymond Max48--that extra ounce in the tail balanced things quite nicely. I stuck the Gunther prop back on.

Next day out at the flying field, I put in an 8x500AR pack and gave her the pizza toss. Faster level flight, much better climb, better rolls, climbing loops. Watch out for those tip stalls, though. My Zagi just moved up a notch or two on my "preferred airplane" list."

In summary, I'm happy with 3" off each wing and getting it to balance with a heavier motor--not sure how things would go with 5" removed.

Eric

If you clipped the tips I don’t see how you ended up nose heavy. removing wing area from behind the current CG will move the CG point forward and leave you tail heavy.
-fish

Fish,

Since the wingtips of the Zagi are behind the cg, when you remove them, you create a nose-heavy situation for the same desired cg point--8" aft of the nose. Adding the one-ounce heavier motor aft of the cg, re-balanced the airplane at the 8" point.