Okay getting back to the redo of my Viper Jet setup. I went ahead and did just about the sloppiest intake duct reinforcement job EVER. I never actually had a problem with my intake ducts collapsing (even at 9kw) but it seems lots of people have had this issue (which is why the ducts appear to come reinforced from the JTM now) so I went ahead and did it anyway while I had it all apart. I had some carbon flat rod laying around so I went ahead and Hysoled 4" sections in place with a brush. I was going to use some regular epoxy resin (which would have come out much cleaner) but the stuff I had on the shelf was so old and unusable I just ended up using the Hysol which I had plenty of.

Because I moved to all electric gear and brakes and added lighting to the wings I had to create a new wiring harness with 8 pin MPX connectors (which are great for things like this). That white shrink wrapped control board is actually a home built lighting controller consisting of arduino on a breadboard which trigger some mosfets. It was built for me by a club member who got interested in the project when I reached out for some advice on building a lighting controller.

As you can see it is quite a rat nest of wires now coming out of the fuselage. (3 tail servos, 4 wing servos, 2 retracts, 2 brakes, gear door servo, throttle going to esc, etc). If there was ever an example of why you need and want Sbus in a complex Jet I can't think of better one. If I were to build this Jet again I would either use Sbus servos and/or decoders to greatly simply the wiring. FrSky now makes the https://www.frsky-rc.com/product/sd1/ which is a very cool little board allowing you to convert any PWM servo into an Sbus servo.

If you look at the top of the fuselage you can see the mounts I built for my speed controller. It was actually designed around my Hacker Spin 220 but I built an adapter plate out of 1/16" sheet of 6061 aluminum that allows me to bolt my CC HV160 into it and reuse the mount. What you do is slide the plate into those hooks and then bolt it into the stand offs. It places the ESC right over the batteries minimizing the distance form the battery to the ESC. I'll be installing the ESC next so I'll show some more pictures of how it works.\

I also have a Demon Cortex Pro gyro on order and I'll be installing that shortly as well.

Getter done Kal. I saw this fly at BITW years ago.

Mark

Battery tray and ESC installed. You can see how the ESC slides and bolts into place and the aluminum mounting plate that I fabricated. I also mounted a small cooling fan I had laying around over the ESC to add some airflow. I am just finishing up the radio plate with the Cortex Pro gyro aligned and mounted and will post pictures of that soon.

Originally Posted by BILLYDSRC

If you raise your nose strut 2mm or 3mm it will rotate so much better! I have had over 400+ flights on mine and my nose wheel was worn down so much it was taking 2x longer to rotate. I put a bigger wheel on it and now it almost rotates on its own.

Billy do you take off with any flaps? If so how much?

Okay radio tray and all equipment installed. This pretty much wraps up my redo. Just need to throw in some batteries and play with the CG. I put her on the scale minus the main propulsion batteries and she came in at a portly 18 pounds 4.9 ounces or 8.305kg. So with the addition of a 4 pound (1.8kg) flight pack she'll come in over 22 pounds. This is the same weight I was on the old 14S setup.

So it looks like the addition of Electric brakes, Electron ER40's, A 2S lipo to run the Electrons, a lighting controller, a Cortex gyro and all that extra wing reinforcement added about 626 grams or 1.38 pounds.

I don't I have tried and it never made take-off any shorter.

Originally Posted by Z06kal

Billy do you take off with any flaps? If so how much?

Quick question - does anyone know if Andy is still producing these models - tried to contact him via Email but having problems getting through (email delivery failure)?

CRX turbines is now selling the JTM jet line

Andy's email is andyjtm-rc.com that's the one I have, but the handle address is ([email protected]) that email will be answered by Cathy who also works for Feibao.

BillyD - on your JTM Viper Jets 1.7. Where is the recommended CG?