A review I recently wrote about the RC Aerodyne Beechcraft Duke B60 EPO electric twin can be found here:

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show....php?t=1957722

Ironically, I had very little stick time on the model when one compares it to the time it took to compose the review, electing to give the maiden duties to my club's president. All I'd done was to circle it once around the pattern with the gear down which immediately allayed my fears of the thing.

This past Sunday morning prior to football fun was the time I'd decided to put some time on that airframe.

I had the two Mad Dog lipos from 2DogRC.com used for the maiden charged and ready. Once the wing was bolted in place and plugged in and after a quick check of the controls, it was off for a real flight.

One perfect takeoff later, it was up with the gear for nearly five minutes of smooth, scalelike flying.

I don't know why I was so intimidated by the model at first, but I'm here to tell you that any doubts I might have had about flying a big electric twin are utterly gone. Even the landing was as close to perfect as I could have hoped for, eliciting a few attaboys from the club members kicking it back in the pit area.

That was some of the most fun scale flight I've done in a long time. In fact, I can't wait to fly it again!

I had the pleasure a couple or so years ago to review the Yardbird RC Mini Su-30 pusher prop jet.

That little Depron ditty was one heck of a lot of fun.

Key word: Was.

Sadly, time and a few rough landings had taken their toll and I don't like flying glue bombs, something the Su-30 had devolved into, but all was not lost!

During the course of the review, I'd goofed the build after misinterpreting the manual. As a result, I wound up gluing the upper deck upside down across the bottom of the fuselage. I was able to rescue most of it with some cosmetic damage to the deck and more extensive damage to the sides of the fuselage.

Yardbird RC was kind enough to send me a new deck and a few other parts in order to properly complete the review, leaving me with nearly enough parts for a second model. Ken Young of Subsonic Planes now operates the company and I emailed Ken with a wish list of what I'd need to build a new plane, parts which he sold to me at a terrific price. I wound up needing new servos for which I paid full pop, an unexpected expense. No problem.

I used the original model as an assembly guide and before long, I had me a new/old Su-30! Even the slight cosmetic damage to the top of the deck was mostly hidden by the stickers and a Sharpie marker.

She flies like a dream and believe me, it's nice to have a Yardbird back in the hangar.

An ancient injury to one of the radials on the reborn HPQ1/T380 quadcopter was a lot worse than I thought it was.

The number two radial was loose and clearly somewhat fractured at the chassis plate; it's little more than a couple of CF tubes covered with unshrunken shrink wrap tubing.

And to think Rotor Concept wants nine hundred simoleons for the thing.

But I digress.

Thanks to a small eBay purchase from a US-based distributor, that radial is as good as new, frankly because it is new.

Genuine factory parts, low price.

When I took the old one off the model, I was amazed as to just how lunched those tubes were once I slid off the shrink wrap. I don't remember when it happened; I'm sure it was probably about the time the original ESC started spitting out IC chips like rotten teeth, causing a rather unexpected situation culminating in a sudden smack into an unyielding garage floor.

It was far, far worse than I had imagined. Not anymore, thank goodness.

I can only imagine what might have happened had the thing decided to turn itself into a tricopter during a flight!

Lesson learned!