Just did my maiden flight on the Edge 540. Love it.
For funjet / fun series flyer, this plane is a serious contender for speed and thrill.

Using Turnigy 4s 1800s 30c. Did not have landing gear. Hence i move it back slightly. Belly landed without issue.

My greatest worry was the CG. Noted all the comments earlier that manual was wrong and i can confirm that manual is wrong.
CG - I set it at range of 30-35 mm. Actual flight was closer to the 30 mm. Around 32 mm.

THROWS - MUST BE 50% for 1st flight !
I had throws at 45% dial in for elevator/rudder and ailerons with 50% expo.
Flight was uneventful with this setup.

It is an incredible plane. I fly my funjet ultra with 6s and i believe this plane can match the speed if you do some mods. Equipment was not hot on landing. I did not get PNF kit but used my own motor/esc. Servos came with kit and they seem to work ok. May consider upgrade if you doing really serious speeds above 120mphs/approx 200kmh

It gets fast really easy and i did not experience any "tip" stall on landing. I did what i did for funjet which is to glide in the landing.

What else can i say ? Details on plane are nice. Assembly was a breeze without use of any glue. Canopy magnets are strong. In fact too sticky. Reduce it by placing some tape. Battery bay allows users to do some different combination.

Oh yeah, one key downside is motor mount is a plastic thing. Does not look strong at all and i believe it will bent if you do have a nose in landing or bad one, it will bend or break and if you do serious speed, need to think of how to upgrade this. .This is something to improve on seriously. . I may do the firewall but because of the shape of Edge motor mount canopy, you need to stick it out and may need to do some wood work.

Dont buy if this your first plane. Also dont buy you havent got used to speed. This is not a beginner plane . But if you something that small which is easy to store n just for kicking it fast over the weekend, this thing is a blast to fly.

Originally Posted by chessgame

Oh yeah, one key downside is motor mount is a plastic thing. Does not look strong at all and i believe it will bent if you do have a nose in landing or bad one, it will bend or break and if you do serious speed, need to think of how to upgrade this. .This is something to improve on seriously. . I may do the firewall but because of the shape of Edge motor mount canopy, you need to stick it out and may need to do some wood work.

Your correct about the engine mount, its very fragile. Mine shattered in mishap on the ground. I would measure it up and make a template now if I were you. Could you measure yours and confirm for me that the mount legs are all an even 12mm in height, or is there some angle in the mount? Also I cant figure out why the firewall has a raised mount at the bottom offering up thrust? I've build a new alloy mount but havnt decided on the engine down thrust angle yet. Nice review. If you could post some mount detail it would be appreciated. My alloy mount weighs in at 14g compared to the stock mount at 4g.

Mick

Checked and my plastic mount is flat. No up/down thrust at all.
Do note i got the kit version not the PNF so i did up my own "motor" alignment to the cowl.

I didnt put any downthrust for my flight, but i do suggest putting a tiny notch down.

Your metal mount looks good ! Think i will upgrade mine soon.

Originally Posted by Bravo47

I had a maiden flight mishap at take off when I didnt tighten the elevator push rods tight enoungh. Anyway not to much damage, but i was curious whether there is an engine mount availlable? If not I guess i'll fabricate something. Parts availlability yet, or cross match with other aircraft?

Mick

Replacement parts should be in soon, maybe 1week or so.

Originally Posted by Bravo47

Your correct about the engine mount, its very fragile. Mine shattered in mishap on the ground. I would measure it up and make a template now if I were you. Could you measure yours and confirm for me that the mount legs are all an even 12mm in height, or is there some angle in the mount? Also I cant figure out why the firewall has a raised mount at the bottom offering up thrust? I've build a new alloy mount but havnt decided on the engine down thrust angle yet. Nice review. If you could post some mount detail it would be appreciated. My alloy mount weighs in at 14g compared to the stock mount at 4g.

Mick

The motor mount is designed to shear-off rather then crunch the firewall on a impact, replacement parts should be in soon, sorry for the wait.

Originally Posted by will3d4food

The motor mount is designed to shear-off rather then crunch the firewall on a impact, replacement parts should be in soon, sorry for the wait.

Thanks for the update, but I inspected the stock mount before this aircraft was ever airborne and did not like the durability the engine mount much. The impact that broke my mount should have only broken the propellor. If I hit the ground nose in, I dont think the crumple rate of that engine mount will savage the firewall. Anyway I'm not complaining as I think you've done good things with this aircraft. One thing though that I'm interested in ideas on is the means of clamping the two ELEV rods together at the servo arm. Its hard to grip the mount as you tighten onto the rods. The reason mine hit the gutter is that the rods slipped through the locking point(my fault). Luckily the ELEV slipped into a down position minimising the damage. An up position would have been nasty. Anyway its all fixed and I'm just waiting on a propeller. I added a gyro to the ELEV channel as well after reading about some tip stall events. Nice looking aircraft that just needs those spares in stock

Originally Posted by chessgame

Checked and my plastic mount is flat. No up/down thrust at all.
Do note i got the kit version not the PNF so i did up my own "motor" alignment to the cowl.

I didnt put any downthrust for my flight, but i do suggest putting a tiny notch down.

Your metal mount looks good ! Think i will upgrade mine soon.

Thanks for the reply Chessgame. My firewall has two raised sections which move my mount a few deg right which I accept as normal, but they also send it up whick I dont like. That is why I was curious about the stock mount leg lengths. See pic below.

Mick

Flying this soon. Appreciate all the helpful comments.

Rather than using the included aileron servo Y-cable I put one aileron servo on the aux channel and configured the Spectrum transmitter for flaperons with the flap settings at 0%, -40% and -80% and a 3 second cycle time. Hopefully "flaps 2" will lower the stall speed appreciably on final. As a low wing it will pitch down on flap extension so I'll probably add some up elevator if I manage to keep from crashing long enough to figure it out.

If the HK site weight and wing area numbers are accurate then the Edge weighs the same as a Bixler but with a kind of stunning 1/3rd the wing area, yielding a 77% higher stall speed. And the noted problems with stall recovery due to low dihedral and high wing loading.

The negativity is a bit depressing because I already ordered another one (This will be my highest performance plane so far so I think I'll be acquainting it with epoxy or worse in the near future. With the long lead times it's comforting knowing another one is coming). At $83 plus shipping, it seems like you get a lot for your money.

From what I read when setting up my gliders I got the idea that full wing flaperons will create a worse tip stall problem than before. Anyway please post your outcome.

I finally got to maiden my Edge540 this afternoon right on sunset. I followed forum advise and setup with 50rates and 60% expo on AILE and ELEV. I fitted a CopterX GY240 on AILE with "18" gain. The battery was a Turnigy 1600mah 4s and the CG at 32mm from the LE as per forum advise. The take off was a little longer than I expected, but I guess thats due to the high wing loading. Once airborne after all I had read I was expecting a wild ride, but to my delight it was a pleasure to fly and much less nerve racking that the 50mm EDF's I had flown. I flew a few figure eights before landing and reducing the gyro gain from its original starting point of 25 to 18 in order to lose a little wobble that happened as I increased throttle. The second flight was even smoother. The flight could be described as "follow your finger". I came in pretty hot for landing with tip stall comments from these forums in my mind and had two uneventfull landings that ended well down the runway. The entire flight was spent at either side of 50% throttle. I didnt want to push it hard as I was using a cut down 10x5 prop as I'm still waiting for spares. With the correct setup I think anybody that can fly twitchy little EDF's should find this aircraft a pleasure. After two short flights I'm one happy camper

Mick

ps- There was one mistake I made on an earlier maiden mishap where my ELEV rods slipped through the mount. You should make sure the two rods are laying flat side by side so they are in a firm lock down position. In my first attempt they were crossed over and I guess once I put power on for take off they slipped into a side by side position releasing the tension on the rods. I also found the only way to effectivly tighten the rods down was to use some curved plyers to grip the mount as I tightened the screws.

I've been thinking about the many tip stall complaints regarding this aircraft, and the things I read and what I saw yesterday did not seem to fit. Ok so on my second landing I kept the power on until the aircraft passed me and then i powered off thinking I was going to over shoot the landing and I was surprised at the length of the glide slope and it remained stable as it slowed until contact with the ground. There was no scary instability. Granted I did have a 10km/h headwind assisting my lift. Perhaps the AILE gyro did its job or perhaps the tip stall instability is instigated by torque roll due to this aircrafts high thrust ratio. I'm thinking this because only time my AILE's would get a gyro flutter would be as I increased throttle following the pass as I banking into the next turn of the figure eight. So the gyro was assisting me not by the usual fixed wing assist with wind gusts, but by combating torque as a helicopter tail rotor does. This brings to mind a couple of suggestions that may help those that have had a hard time with this aircraft. You could try fitting a gyro as I did which mounts neatly on a flat spot in the fuse about 30mm behind the canopy, or just try a smaller prop, or a prop the same length but with less pitch. Anyway I could be off track of course and completly wrong as I dont have enough air time on this aircraft yet to say anything conclusive. One other thing some people may have noted is that I'm using a 1600mah battery and Hobbyking reccomend an 1800mah to achieve the correct CG. Well the total weight of my alloy engine mount with screws, washers, nuts brings me back on par with the reccomended 1800mah battery.
Dont give up on this aircraft just yet guys

Hi Bravo47,

Good to hear on your successful flights.

On the tipstall issue, i agree with you that I dont have much issue as well. I suspect it is due to the "throws" set too high and when u come in for the landing, and u move the throws as opposed to gliding it in, you get a tip stall.

Ok... now that all that over, time to set some serious speed competition on this plane. ha ha.... I feel that this baby can really fly especially with an reinforced motor mount !

Originally Posted by chessgame

Ok... now that all that over, time to set some serious speed competition on this plane. ha ha.... I feel that this baby can really fly especially with an reinforced motor mount !

I'm going to be out of town for few days, but if all goes well I will be hoping to put this baby into a powered dive the weekend after next with GPS logger on board, weather permitting. I've read its a 100mph aircraft so it should exceed my Zephyr and Vampire which fit into the 80mph area. Theres also a few Funjets and a Stinger at our club that will be hard to beat. I'm also looking forward to doing a rolling start with a pair of Cougers at our club with my Vampire. This little Edge550 though should go in as the dark horse. Hopfully it wont see some of the mishaps that befell my poor Radjet R.I.P. hehe

Hi. This is my third plane, and first with wheels. I'm a private pilot, have tens of hours of sim time, maybe 20 in a Bixler, 10 in a souped-up Skyfun, and, now, 40 minutes in the Edge.

First flight was yesterday morning. I followed others' advice and used a 1800 mAh 4S shoved as far forward as it will go. I left the travels at 100% but set in differential at 70% on all axes, with fallback switches to 40% and 0%. I took off from pavement and flew for about five minutes. It seemed a little twitchy on ailerons but by keeping the corrections small, it was fine.

Fearing the dreaded tip stall I came in way too hot, bounced, and on the second touch the wheel pants grabbed the pavement (as documented in this thread) and it flipped over.

No damage, though, so I bent the wheels straight and tried again, but I hit it with too much power and I don't think the wheels were tracking well enough (should have done some taxi testing), so it flipped over and shredded the prop.

Yesterday evening I replaced the prop and broke the gear off on the first takeoff run (I didn't steer it straight enough and then tried to lift off as it rolled off the pavement instead of either steering or aborting the takeoff.) No further damage so I opted to fly with a hand-throw.

My buddy threw it terribly and I thought it was lost. (I told him to throw it hard but he didn't.) Anyway I saved it, got it up, did some rolls, loops, immelmans, upside-down flying, brought it in much slower and it was still fine.

Flew a second time and flew again this morning without serious incident. I'm still landing too fast, or if this is going to be the landing speed I'm going to need the wheels. I want to get it up high and see how slow it can go before it stalls.

Also flew the Skyfun and the Bixler with some really nice and low slow flying. I'm toying with DIYing some landing gear on the Bixler as a way to gain skill with wheels.

Chessgame and Bravo47, I'm with you guys... so far, I don't understand the complaints. I think it flies great and if you've flown a fast plane before you should be able to fly this thing no problem.

Re: tip-stall-and-spin behavior. A little more background on that. This happened to me on an outing when I was still experimenting with CG. The tip-stall-and-spin occurred when I was testing the stall while flying with a CG of 37mm...i.e., almost back to the range given in the manual. Which as I said, is too far aft.

And then on a later outing...which was my second-to-last flight with the plane (before the "designed-to-break" motor mount carried out it's designed function and broke -- inflight!)...I tested the stall once more. But on that second stall test, I was flying with the more forward CG of 28mm -- which I had decided after many flights was a good CG for the plane. On that flight, the stall was normal/docile. The nose dropped, and the wings remained essentially level. And no spin. I did it twice...same both times. So like I said before, the CG range given in the manual is too far aft. Don't go anywhere NEAR that CG.

Buying and flying this plane was an experience in being a "guinea pig." They really should put more effort into better design, testing, and properly documenting these things, before they rush them to release.