Hi there !

I was looking for an electric powered plane, not too small, not too big - to be easy to store and to carry in a little car, looking like a real plane and with a light weight to be "3D capable".

After some searches on the Web, i found the FMS / RocHobby MXs 1100mm
The indicated specs was :
Wing span : 1100mm
Length : 1080 mm
Wing Area : 30.8 dmē
Wing load : 35.7 g/dmē (i.e. the same as a fiber glass slope glider !)

The plane looks very great and seems to be designed to be feeded with 2200mAh 3S Li-po battery - Cool, they are very affordable and i already have plenty of them !

As i promised to some of you in another thread that was talking about that plane, This is a complete Review of the FMS / RocHobby 1100mm MXS 3D airplane

Last Friday, DHL delivered a huge card box.

Lets have a look on what's in !

Let's have a look on the fuselage and the power plant.


The Brushless seems to be a 3536 1250Kv ; the ESC is a 40A and the 2 blade propeller size is : 11 x 5.5

Let's have a look on the plane's manual.

It's a - more or less - 15 pages paper book.

Clear and well done, it seems to contain all the informations needed to correctly assemble and set the plane.

The plane's assembly :

Well.... Assembling this plane can be resumed by two words : EASY, FAST.

I brought the first part out of the box last monday at 23h15 and the plane was 100% assembled at 23h45 !

All the parts are very well done and all the parts fits perfectly the ones with the others.

I started with the fuselage :

1 - i took the smaller of the two carbon tubes and slid it into the fiberglass tube reinforcement located at the rear of the fuselage. This carbon tube is used as a spar for the horizontal stabilizer.
2- Just had to slide the two half rear stabilizers on the carbon tube. Junction of the elevators is made automaticaly by two plastic parts that followed suit the one in the other (simply clever !)

All the parts fits perfectly.

3 - A small screw is used to fix each half-stabilizer to a support flooded in the rear of the fuselage.
4 - i added the elevator push rod and linked it to the elevators

That's all for the tail plane !

The Landing gear is very light weight and is fixed on the fuselage with 3 screws
The wheels are made of foam and are very light weight too.

The wings :
As for the stabilizers, i just had to slide the carbon tube into its fiberglass craddle that is flooded into the fuselage under the cockpit, then to slid each half-wing on the carbon tube that is used as a second spar (there is also a plywood spar in each half wing) - paying attention to pass each aileron servo's wire in the hole that allows them to rejoin the radio compartment.

Each half wing is fixed to the fuselage by 2 screws.

You can now stick the vortex generator on the wing tips (i didn't use them for the maiden)

That's all, the plane is built !!

Now you just have to set the control throws and the CoG before to go to fly !

I really like the way that plane is designed : As the stabilizers, as the wings are removable, you still can store the plane into his genuine cardboard box !

(pictures will come soon)

Test flights :

For the first flight i set the control throws"as indicated in the user manual" for the "low rates".
For the "high rates" my ailerons control throw was set on +/- 35mm instead of +/- 20mm and at "max" (with travel adjust set on 125% at the TX) for the rudder.
I used a 3S 2250mAh 60c Nanotech lipo pushed as forward as possible in the compartment.

Less than 10m after i started to increase the throttle, the plane was airborne.
I was in low rate with 35% of exponential on elevator, 45% on rudder and 30% on ailerons.

The planes was tail heavy and very touchy on both the pitch and roll axis and the power was here but... it's not impressive...

I decided to land the plane and move forward the CoG.

The first landing needed to keep some airspeed and throttle because the plane was very touchy and when the speed decreased the nose raised dangerously while the right wing tried to fall.

Second flight :
I added something like 30g of weight in the plane's nose and returned on the runway.

The take off was longer and as soon as the plane was in the air i could see that its behavior was much better.

As I had a smooth response on all the axis, i decided to switch on the "high rates".

The plane behavior was much better with a more forward CoG - no doubt.

Loopings and rolls was very easy and can be sharply piloted but... if, for sure, the engine provide enough power to climb verticaly (ratio power/weight may is probably around 1:1), and to perform classic pattern aerobatics, in my humble opinion, it's not enough powerful with a 3S lipo to perform 3D as we can see on the advertising video from FMS

For exemple, I tested flying Knife edge and even at full throttle, rudder control throw at max and using a travel adjust set at 125% on the rudder servo, the plane don't stop sinking...

I also tried to torque roll the plane but here again, it seems that the plane suffered a lack of power.

The engine need time to accelerate and it need near than 90% of throttle just to climb verticaly...

So... i'm a bit desapointed for now because i was thinking that this plane could be the "good size" 3D i was looking for....

I will try to buy a 4S 2200 mAh lipo (if the plane / ESC can handle it) or probably better, i will try the plane with another brand 3S 2200mAh lipos to be sure that my 2250mAh 3S 60c nanotech are not faulty (i already had some problem with some 4S nanotech that died after 4 or 5 flights in a year... )

Anyway, that plane is a very good plane to perform pattern aerobatics.

Here is a short Video adited from the maiden flight :

Maiden flight of my MXS 1100mm (4 min 31 sec)

Notice that the total flight time was something like 6 or 7 minutes, with throttle often pushed over the 75%.

To be continued ...
The plane is easy to land

19th April EDIT :

I flight tested the MXS with a couple of brand new Zippy 2200mAh 3S 40c lipo batteries :

Now i can say : THAT PLANE REALLY ROCKS !!!

MXS 3D - flight test (4 min 30 sec)

Becareful it could be THE perfect plane to improve our 3D skill !!!

Good subject, kind of middle size between 38" and 48" planes. Interested to hear flight report. Appreciate your effort!

Please weight the empty plane.

How much did you pay for it including shipping? Did you order it from Gearbest?

Hi late !

Thanks for your nice comment, i hope you will enjoy the review and the plane !
Yes the plane came from gearbest.

The plane's price is around $124 + shippping cost that vary a lot depending of your country.
For the moment, the shipping is rather low for our American friends (less than $10 i guess but is still very high for European customers with a horrible $78... )

I'm sure that this product will be available soon in the EU warehouse and will allows a much friendly shipping price ...

Have a nice evening

Pascal

Also waiting on flight test. Thanks for your work .

Now for the hard part.

I still have to assemble the plane but i think it will be rather fast to do because it seems to be a very high quality kit.

The most difficult will be to wait the wind to slow down... it blows above 80km/h since last monday... :-(

Have a nice night !

Hello,

I am from Germany and have the MXS since january. To fly this plane is real fun.

For European buyers, you can look at modellhobby.de
The price in Germany is 159€.

Greetings
Florian

Welcome Florian! I'm still looking into this plane, but waiting for some video by a regular hobbyist instead of a competition pilot.
I'm also interested in how it performs in 10-15mph(16-24kph) wind, so hopefully Dreamcatcher gets better weather soon.

Hi
I maidened mine this morning.
I will post a video of the maiden flight soon.

Stay tuned...

I really love this type of plane. EPO foam, 3D and a great size.

Some little update today in the firsts posts

More to come very soon (pictures and the video of the maiden flight that is currently uploading)

To be continued...