After four years we had another air show at Helsinki downtown shore / marina area. As the last event was just spectacular with Red Arrows participating, I simply couldn't miss this opportunity. This time the largest aerobatic group participating was France's Patrouille de France with eight Alpha Jet training jets.

What is also really interesting is the excellent participation of jet fighters. This is largely due to Finnish Air Force's final steps in the selection process to replace current, ageing, F-18C Hornet fleet. As the decision should come out in the end of '21 I guess this is the last time for next ~30 years, that we'll see such amount of jet fighters flying display shows. It's not very easy to see Jas Gripen, Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon and Lockheed Martin F-35 in a same event doing aerobatics. And not to forget the Finnish Air Force Hornet, with it's spectacular aerobatic show.

It's worth noting that the F-35 participating was an Italian F-35 coming directly from Nato base in Estonia participating in quick reaction forces that are responsible for intercepting and identifying Russian aircraft over the Baltic sea - a task that Finnish Hornets often also perform. Based on this fact the F-35 pilot put up quite nice show.

And to top it all, a good roar of WW2 radial engines.

Check the full gallery including some short video clips if you're interested!
(The one with Finnish Air Force legacy hornet with duration of 47 seconds is worth seeing)

After my unlucky experiment with scratch build 1m MiniExtra I just wanted a fuss free plane that could be put together quickly. Based on my previously good experiences with Skywing 38" planes and the fact that I had most of the electronics available already I ordered a new Skywing 38" ARS300. It's a PP foam hybrid build and as such can be just viewed as a new iteration to the old EPP based ones. Actually these planes have been available already for couple of years, but this is my first hands on experience with PP foam plane.

Plane arrived double boxed and as can expect from double boxed product everything was fine inside. The quality of the ARF also seems to be outstanding. Supplied hardware is of good quality, the build of the plane itself seems solid and just what we have used to expect from these 38" builds.

I put the parts directly to scale:
Fuse: 139g
Wing: 130g
Battery (1000mAh 3S): 99g
Servos: 4 x 13g = 52g
Servo extension wires: ~10g
Propeller: ~20g
ESC: 54g
Motor: 94g (including x-mount, prop adapter etc)
Receiver: ~20g
Other hardware etc.: ~30g
Estimated AUW: ~648g (22.9oz)

In my opinion Skywing has managed to build really solid and light fuse & wing. Also the supplied hardware seemed to be of good quality. It came with 2mm ball links and push rods for all the linkages. The plane itself comes with SFGs and wheel pants. Canopy is locked in place with two magnets and the fuse is hybrid build of ply, carbon fiber, PP foam and tough styrox kind of foam.

What a strange year this was, fortunately we were able to fly in Finland all the time and only thing slowing us down was the weather which wasn't most optimal all the time. I also managed to get some projects done!

2020
- 1,2 Corsair build (WIP)
- 1m MiniEdge (RIP)
- 2m glider repair project
- Pilot-RC 88" Yak-55M wing repairs

2019
- Goldwing (ARF brand) SBach 300 90E V2 Build & Review
- Pilot-RC 88" Yak-55M full rebuild
- QQ Pitts Python fix & recovering

And if interested, please review my older projects!

In addition to above project I was able to build my 70" ESM F8F Bearcat. However, haven't written anything down on that build yet. Let's see if I will revise it next year. Also some new projects are incoming...

Happy New Year!!!

I had noted a long time ago that Arm1s Extra seemed to be easy build and at least on paper looked as a good flier. As I had sold my 38" Skywing Edge last winter I was short of smaller plane to fly on the nearby farm field (using asphalt walkway as runway there). And as weather get worse and worse, I decided to build a replacement from all the parts I had laying around.

I'm still waiting for the maiden, so can't comment yet on the flight performance, but the build was quite fun & rewarding. Check full 1m MiniExtra story!

Yet another repair project. An old 2m RET glider that my friend gave to me for repairs. This plane has been neglected for a long time, but at least wing seems pretty ok.

The plan is to rip all covering off, do necessary wood repairs, full recovering and put modern electronics in the plane. And yeah, canopy has been lost so need to build one.

Originally plane has been designed for brushed (heavy) setup, so I probably need to put motor in front of firewall to reach CG.

And still I haven't identified what exact kit this has been. If anyone knows, please tell.

Update: Added teaser pics of the re-maiden ready plane.

In early August we had another flying gathering at Piikajärvi. Had a blast there and finally saw turbine Tucano flying.

Check the full gallery! At least worth to see the video where Tucano performs a crash landing with nose gear only partly extended. Fortunately the damage was quite limited and the bird was flying quickly again.

I also cracked my landing gear & had some aileron trouble. I already wrote a repair story on those.

One hard summer of flying gone with the Yak. Yak was my windy weather flyer and due to this it didn't go fully without incidents. I've had plenty of flying at Piikajärvi airfield and it has a paved runway - and this summer the wind always seemed to be strong side wide to the runway. Landing in the strong sidewind is somewhat challenge. You need to straighten the plane just at the right moment or the plane tends to jump sideways on main landing carriage which is really hard to carbon fiber landing gear.

Rewind a bit... The plane flies well and in early August I was at Piikajärvi once again and training my pop top timings - Yak differs quite a bit in this regards to my Extra. Started to have a bit too fun - until noticed whistling sound the plane made... A slow flyby and yeah, one aileron was flipping freely in the air. Fortunately one of those huge ailerons is more than enough to fly the plane!

Safe landing and it was evident that servo had pulled the horn & balsa out of aileron. Based on the damage, there wasn't quite enough of epoxy glue in the horn originally.

I've been way too lazy in blogging anything here. This has been one weird year so far, but we've managed to fly decently. Here's first batch: spring time bootcamp again at Piikajärvi airfield.

Check full gallery with videos, it's well worth it!

Some action shots of me flying my 95" 3DHS Extra during last autumn (2019) against some dark clouds. Typically these photos are rare finds as you just can't take pics of yourself flying .

Thanks Kevin Rowland for the photos!

I've been rebuilding a crashed Yak-55M as my main project of this year. The plane was rebuild with electric motor. Finally got it finalized and the plane flying. If interested, please go see the full story!

We made a weekend trip from Finland to Wings over Europe event in the north France to visit a bit bigger venue than our local events. Also wanted to see Jase Dussia flying live. No personal flying though, as we flew to Brussels and just took car rental to get to the Maubeuge airfield and couldn't carry any planes with us.

We arrived Friday evening just to catch some of the last demos and spent Saturday on the site. On Saturday the weather was rainy, but I think that helped Aerobertics sales as people kept drooling at the display planes and fortunately the weather allowed key demos to be flown.

I took plenty of pictures on site, please go see the full gallery!

The event had to be the biggest concentration of Extreme Flight planes in Europe at the time!

Finnish Aerobatics Championships were held this year at Malmi airport in Helsinki. And as it was pretty close to us we went to watch the Advanced class with my son for some time. Actually I haven't ever before seen real aerobatic flying in competition.There was also gathering of US muscle cars & sports cars at the same time.

Malmi airport was first airport in Helsinki, but now the city is trying to claim its land for building houses, despite the old airport buildings having historical value and the airport being the only place near Helsinki supporting flying training and recreational flying.

I took the opportunity to snap some photos of the activities... Please see full gallery & videos (DC3 takeoff etc) at Google Photos.

Back at first round of the national championships for the third time. I still competed in sport class as honestly I haven't had time to start learning more difficult programs and I still don't have a plane that would suit them. My 95" 3DHS Extra is great flying plane, but due to it's size and 12S battery it's not suited for higher classes (2m and 10S limitation).

Probably the most interesting thing was that Lassi Nurila was using his new plane in the competition. Lassi has been designing and building this plane through the winter and based on what I heard it will enter some kind of production (meaning it will be available for purchase!). When compared to Sebastiano Silvestri's three plane and Gernot's Pandora I prefer Lassi's plane streamlined look.

Lassi is still fine tuning the setup, so it's very interesting to see how this season and big competitions in Europe will go for him.

See full photo gallery on Google Photos.

The flying season has been officially started: on 19.4. I visited Piikajärvi Airfield and we had quite nice turnout of aerobatic planes. I got my 95" Extra dusted off with seven flights. The weather was pretty windy, but that seems to be the norm when more people gather together. Some pretty interesting planes were also present.

During our winter holiday I visited Finnish Air Force Museum in Tikkakoski (central Finland) with my son after several years. This place is worth the visit as the planes are well displayed and there's some unique planes, too.

Some highlights:
- Brewster Buffalo (BW-372)
- Bristol Blenheim IV
- Messerschmitt Bf 109G
- Mig-21 (ouside, cockpit inside)
- Saab Draken

See all photos!

I'm a lot overdue with this...

I started to drool at 3DHS 95" Extra 330SC as soon as first info of it surfaced on Internet. And I basically ordered one as soon as they were available in Europe.

The first items I received were motor & prop. On this build I went with Dualsky GA6000.8 motor and got carbon fiber 24x10 prop (electric, lightened) and matching spinner from Meijzlik. I will use my existing Savox 1270 servos the plane. Couple of them have seen a bit of use, but basically there are as new.

The plane arrived quickly and without shipping damage, everything was really well packaged. Upon unpacking I immediately noticed that the quality of the finish on this plane is top notch.

The plane assembly went without trouble, let the pictures speak for themselves....Continue Reading

Just enjoying nice summer evening with my Extreme Flight 70" Extra 300 EXP. Video footage taken from different perspectives during 2017 on several flights, but I managed only now to compile it into a full video. This is nothing extra special, but haven't seen too many onboard videos from aerobatics planes lately.

3D flying & onboard video - Extreme Flight 70" Extra 300 EXP (4 min 43 sec)

Setup flown on the video:

Extreme Flight 70" Extra 300 EXP
- Dualsky XM6350EA-9 motor
- Castle Creations Phoenix Edge 100 ESC
- 3 x Turnigy 1268HV digital servos
- 2 x Hitec 7245MH digital servos (elevator)
- Turnigy Nanotech 5000mAh 6S LiPo main battery
- Turnigy Nanotech 1000mAh 2S LiPo receiver battery
- Spektrum DX9 transmitter, Spektrum AR9110 receiver
(sold the plane early summer 2018)

Seems like I've done quite many build / rebuild projects during last couple of years. This is just a small index of those projects I had energy to write about.

2018
- Rebuilding Electrifly Ultimate Bipe EP 3D

2017
- Elevator repair on Sebart Katana S 50E

2016
- Scratch build 34" Messerchmitt BF-110
- Rewinding some smaller size brushless motors
- Extreme Flight 48" Yak-54 EXP resurrection
- Extreme Flight 70" Extra 300 EXP fuselage repair
- 3DHS 47" Velox overhaul

2015
- Pilot-RC 87" Yak-54 rebuild
- Scratch build Ki-61 Tony
- Scratch build depron Polaris

May has been exceptionally warm here in Finland and that has meant good flying opportunities for hobbyist. During weekend I visited Piikajärvi airfield where local flying club was spending their bootcamp. The location turned out to be great, there was plenty of space for both full size airplane / sailplane activity and RC flying. They also had nice club house etc. The place is certainly worth visiting again!

I flew my new Extreme Flight / 3DHS 95" Extra 330SC and old 70" Extra EXP there. Weather was somewhat gusty, but bigger planes didn't seem to be too much affected by it.

Took plenty of pics. View full gallery here.

Once again I needed myself a winter / spring project. This time I found an abused Electrify Ultimate 3D bipe. This is a quite small and old bird. Due to small size I felt it's quite fine practice project for both wood repair & covering job.

Covering on the bird was in really bad shape and the plane had seen some flight damage. Maybe stuck in tree or something like that. Cowl is a bit busted and both wings / ailerons have some damage. Also fuse has cracked wood here and there.

My plan is to strip all covering off, fix the structural faults and then cover the plane with a new scheme. The challenge here is mostly caused by the fact that top wing is glued and not easily removable, I'll need to do some heavy hacking to get it off. The cowl will also need some fiber glassing, spackling and painting. Fortunately the canopy is in good shape.

The plane came with motor and servos, but without ESC. Servos are Futaba S3114s while motor is Rimfire 35-30 1250kV. I plan to test the servos thoroughly and use them if they work. Maybe just switch a stronger & newer servo for elevator.

This will be a bit slow repair as I'm not in a hurry with it and have some other projects ongoing, too.

Old thread on this specific model @RCGroups.