Well the good news is the ESC is now programmed correctly. It performs well, but IMHO is still a bit 'under-powered'. The first flight went very nicely, but the second...

I purchased this completely built from an estate sale. Well apparently the builder (or perhaps the seller?) didn't actually glue the horizontal stabs into the fuse! On my second flight one came loose and was flopping around! Luckily I was able to land using 1/2 of my elevator on the other stab. Upon further inspection both stabs were just friction fitted into the fuse.

The hard landing squished the front of the duct slightly. Looks like an easy fix with very little cosmetic damage.

I picked up a Hobby-Lobby (J-Power) A-7 this past weekend at an estate sale. It was 'receiver-ready', assembled w/ servos, fan, motor, esc and 4S 2200 lipo pack. After setting everything up and static testing the motor, things seemed fine.

But at the field it was another story. For some reason the motor did not run up to the full RPM at full throttle. I fiddled around with the radio settings, blipped the throttle, but no luck. For whatever reason I tossed it into the air anyway. It was the most scary hand launch I've seen in a while. I floundered around holding almost full up elevator for a while trying to keep the thing in the air. Just about the time I was ready to give up and land it, the fan/motor suddenly sped up! I found was still at full throttle, and this provided full 'flying speed'. But I was still getting an odd pulsation in the fan RPM. (You can hear all this quite clearly due to the loud sound of the ducted fan system.) The plane flew well, but seemed a tad under-powered. Landings were easy, the wing loading doesn't seem excessive.

After landing, I found the battery to be quite hot. Apparently flying full throttle for 6 or so minutes sucked it dry. I did a 2nd flight with another pack with exactly the same results.

My guess is one of the following; fan motor needs 'cleaning' and/or bearing lubrication, ESC is faulty, ESC is mis-programmed.

I'll try to contact Hobby-Lobby and/or J-Power to get some ideas on how to remedy things.

Sunday was a great day to be flying. Low winds, and no one at the field except me for the first few hours. I flew all four of my air-ready planes multiple times. So far the Helios is my current favorite. Flys like it is on rails. Still getting used to the Extra 260, which is very responsive.

Flew the 'Jimmy Bipe' that I won at the Electric-Fun-Fly last weekend. It flew very well, but on my 2nd landing I nosed it over and did some minor damage to the firewall. Nothing a little epoxy won't fix.

I didn't really get a chance to 'wring it out' but it seemed to have lots of speed and good climb out.

Jimmy Bipe Specs:

40" WS
2lb 10oz AUW
3 HS-81 servos
AR6100 receiver
3S 2200 mAH lipo pack
Turnigy AerodriveXp SK Series 35-36 910Kv / 310w motor
Pheonix 35 ESC
12x10 prop

My friend Rick showed up at the field later and flew his Brio 10, Formosa and Cap 232. It was an all electric morning... Fun times!

I had a great time at this weekend's MARCS Electric Fun-Fly event. Highly recommended event. Lots of very cool planes, well organized and plenty of nice people. Check marcswi.org for details.

The highlights were a 15' wingspan scratch built Jenny and a Bob Violet Electrojet. The Electrojet was flown by a professional demo pilot and it was pretty amazing stuff.

I even won a 40" WS built-up bipe in the pilot raffle! It is a Dymond "Jimmy" which is rather amusing since I was a "Jimmy" when I was a kid. I'll get it setup to fly ASAP. I'll be sure to fly it at next year's event (provided I don't crash it before it rolls around).

More photos at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jimokean...eat=directlink

I flew my Helios 63 today for the first time. I used the 15x8 prop.

The plane flew well with good authority. Very smooth and responsive. Plenty of power, it will go straight up as far as I'm willing to push it. I did some very basic manuevers on low rates and flew some circuits. The clouds were very low (about to rain) and the light was flat so I was having a bit of trouble with orientation. I held off on any serious stuff. Did several touch and goes and the plane lands very nicely.

The only trouble I had was getting decent 15" prop clearance on my grass field. I upped the wheels to 2 3/4" diameter which has helped quite a bit. I think I will adjust the tail gear to raise the nose a tad.

All in all, it is a very nice rig. I'm pretty happy with it so far.