That's been my experience too, with the excellent Hobbico Customer Service.

Here are my power figures for those of you who are curious, or planning on motor replacements:

3S 2200 mAh 20C Flightmax battery (a bit old, but still OK)

Static Power figures for Stock Motor, ESC, and Prop

Vinitial: 12.46 V (fully charged battery)

10.89 Volts (under load)
19.64 Amps
215 Watts

Half throttle figures: 4.5 Amps, 55 Watts. A floater!

Weight: Stock Airframe: 48.5 oz = 1375g
Weight with Battery (AUW): 54.4 oz = 1542g = 3.4 lbs

Watts per pound: 215W/3.4 lbs = 63.2 W/lb

Wing Area: 566 sq in (36.5 sq dm) = 3.93 sq ft (36.5 sq dm)
Wing Loading with 2200mAh 3S battery: 13.8 oz/sq ft (42.2 g/sq dm)

Originally Posted by gulio

I do it w/ a bad shoulder even. I also get kinda nervous when I fly this plane because it's my biggest and heaviest one. I do fine every time (until it time to land, lol)

Thanks Gulio

Originally Posted by Rightfly

This post could be named “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” after one of Clint Eastwood’s movies. With all the reports of motor failure and ESC wires being damaged by the rotating body of the outrunner. I decided to remove the cowl to inspect for problems and also to remove the nose gear to straighten the landing gear wire.

After carefully working the glue loose in the seam between the fuse and the cowl I tried working the cowl off. I was under the impression that once the glued seams were loosened it should slip right off. Well a lot of wiggling and pulling it did come, off along with the nose of the plane.

For the "The Ugly", see the attached picture.


I contacted Air Support at Hobbico and explained to them what I had done and they asked for a couple pictures which I emailed. In the meantime I found a link to an instruction sheet that actually requires you to split the cowl in three places and break it off in pieces. Is this how everyone else gets their cowls off?

See PDF Tech Notice 3 from the Sensei RxR page:

http://manuals.hobbico.com/hca/hcaa2535-2536-tech2.pdf

Don’t worry about the url referring to tech2 – the url’s on their page appear to be cross linked.

The “Good” came the next day when I received an email from Air Support at Hobbico advising me they were sending out a new fuse to me soon. This is what I call good customer service and I wanted everyone to know about that. Some companies never get a handle on customer service and we rightfully complain. When a company responds promptly with a very fair solution to a problem they should be recognized.

It was more of a customer error, mine, that caused the problem to begin with. But, in my opinion, they do have an unusual cowl design in the Sensei and that might be the “Bad”. Other than that I think the plane is great and I discovered the ESC wires were properly attached to the motor mount keeping the wires away from any rubbing action.

All in all, Hobbico, owners of Flyzone, is a company that backs their products with good customer service.

that is exactly what happened to me as well.
i just hot glued it back on after i changed out the motor.

Originally Posted by Rightfly

Is this how everyone else gets their cowls off?

First of all I was so sorry to read about your unlucky experience.

In photo #1 there is my cowl, looking from outside:


In photo #2 there is the inside of the cowl.


In photo #3 i have pointed out the zones with presence of adhesive material.
- (1) Bi-adhesive tape
- (2) White silicone
- (3) Foam inserts glued with silicone


As indicated in some italian forums, (and I have experienced this one) the best method is to cut following the junction, with a cutter having the knife long no more than 5mm (0.2 inches).
After this, using a lot of patience, attention and leisurely, insert a thin, flat screwdriver in the junction in order to raise a few the cowl from the underlying structure, detaching in this way the adhesive material.
During such operations you mast gently but firmly move and try to pull out the cowl.
The zones showed in photo #3 can help you to know where are the points to persist.

Great information Condor.

I did find glue, probably silicone type, in the areas you indicate in picture #3. The only difference I found was in the area numbered as 3. There were three glue lines in the longitudal direction instead of across. Your tip of using lots of patience, attention leisurely is absolutely correct. This was probably one of my big failures in removing the cowl.

Hopefully, Sensei or U Can Fly owners will read and follow your instructions if they need to remove the cowl.

In my communication to the Hobbico support group, I suggested including one spare cowl with each new plane and make them available for purchase. That would go a long ways to making me happy following their removal instructions. Probably wouldn't cost them more then 25 cents.

Good Flying. Looking forward to more videos over the Italian country side.

Roger

Originally Posted by Rightfly

This was probably one of my big failures in removing the cowl.

I think that's also matter of luck. The foam is a material that is light, strong, but it dont' notice before to snap itself. Probably in the future you will try the same operation hundreds of time without problems.
I hope that my little experience wil be useful for all peope involved in a similar case.

Originally Posted by Rightfly

In my communication to the Hobbico support group, I suggested including one spare cowl with each new plane and make them available for purchase. That would go a long ways to making me happy following their removal instructions. Probably wouldn't cost them more then 25 cents.

I totally agree with you. For example, on the E-Flite Apprentice the cowl is fixed by two screws, making it easy to remove. But on Sensei, in my opinion, if it's no possible to use same method originally, the better thing is to sell a spare for few cents as you said.
In this manner the user can broke the old cowl and replace it with the new one without worries and risk of further damages.

Originally Posted by Rightfly

Good Flying. Looking forward to more videos over the Italian country side.

Thank you Roger. Good flying to you!
(But only if you promise me to make the same thing about
your flies over your wonderful country!)

Renato

Originally Posted by nioa

215 Watts
Half throttle figures: 4.5 Amps, 55 Watts. A floater!

I agreed with your explanation and, if you want, you can higlight your results from the point of view of the drive efficiency, because in the market there are hundreds of motors, each with the proper electrical efficiency.
There are motors that have an 85% max efficiency and other that reveal a less valuable value of 70%.
- The first problem is that a motor factory not always declares this value.
- The second problem is the electical power wasted in heat into the motor.
To choice a motor with a high efficiency means the possibility to fit a larger propeller mantaining the same current or the possibility to increase the flying time.
In order to have an idea of the possible behaviour of a motor, and related LiPo, Esc, reduction gear (if present) and propeller, I use the following freeware standalone program:

- Drive Calculator -

This nice program uses a large database of motors, battery, reduction gears, Escs and propellers, updated online frequently and automatically.
A great number of those objects are measured "live", so every calculation can be done in a manner nearest possible to the real conditions.
This program calculate the Wide Open Throttle (WOT) parameters as flying time, speed, static thrust. Furthermore show graphs and a has a lot of useful functions.

Last but not least: in my opinion any software can't totally simulates a real conditions. It's undoubtedly an appreciate aid but it's always better to verify the results with a suitable instrumentation.

went flying today with on board crappy cam-new hd cam will be here this week.
temp was about 35-40 f.
very sunny,low winds.
my sensei has a 480 bl motor and original ESC.
i really like this plane alot.

senseifly. (7 min 15 sec)

Originally Posted by gulio

I do it w/ a bad shoulder even. I also get kinda nervous when I fly this plane because it's my biggest and heaviest one. I do fine every time (until it time to land, lol)

I found this hand-launching video of the Sensei

Flyzone Sensei (3rd Flight) (6 min 48 sec)

Originally Posted by Batman6583

I found this hand-launching video of the Sensei

I would not recommend anyone to hand launch this large foam model. Even if it can be done per the Video depicted but, there is no information as to the power system being used within this Video.

Happy Landings!
Carlos

Originally Posted by PittSpecial

I would not recommend anyone to hand launch this large foam model. Even if it can be done per the Video depicted but, there is no information as to the power system being used within this Video.

Happy Landings!
Carlos

Thanks

Check it out! Comes with Battery, Transmitter, Receiver the works!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hobbico-FlyZ...item256a4c67c1

It probably won't be much of a bargain by the time end of auction rolls around. Serious bids don't usually roll in on Ebay until about that time. Current high bidder may have already set it up so he automatically outbids all bids made up to a certain dollar amount. Auction owner could even use a shill to bid the price up where he wants it to be?

Originally Posted by proweddingphotos

It probably won't be much of a bargain by the time end of auction rolls around. Serious bids don't usually roll in on Ebay until about that time. Current high bidder may have already set it up so he automatically outbids all bids made up to a certain dollar amount. Auction owner could even use a shill to bid the price up where he wants it to be?

Hey, I have bought from this Virtual Store and they are located very close to the same location as HH so, go and deduced your own thoughts on who is the owner of this Virtual Store known as Hobb-E-Mart.

I have bought from them and no one bids up anything.

I look for bids that end at 2:00am Pacific so, everyone falls asleep at the keyboard and I take aim.

There is just no need to come here and assume so many things from my simple good news on a potential good deal....if you don't like, just pass it by and move on.

Thanks!

I had been thinking about making a new fuse for my Sensei out of stronger, more crash resistant EPP foam, but now I am starting to lean towards the idea of covering my current fuse with light weight fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin to strengthen it.

I think any added weight would be well worth having a fuse that doesn't split apart on impact with the ground so easily and drastically as my current fuse did on it's last crash.

Any thoughts about which would be better? Is EPP a lot heavier than the foam that the Sensei is make out of? Would I gain the added weight no matter which way I went? I'm thinking that fiberglassing the fuse with cloth and resin would be a lot easier to do in the long run.

If I fiberglass it, at least the angle of incidence for the control surfaces would still be dead on, whereas, if I made a fuse out of EPP the angle of incidence might be less than perfect. I've built free flight planes from scratch using full scale plans years ago; but without full size plans to work off of, it would probably be difficult to get it absolutely perfect with the EPP foam.