Eflite Extra 300 initial maiden, trim, and fam training

I got to maiden Jack W’s new Eflite Extra at Odessa Fl after a WPMPA club meeting. The 300 is popular with at least 3 other club members in our 100 member club. I know that some aluminum motor mounts have caused vibration and have failed leading to replacement. The music wire landing gear can get bent and I have retrofitted the 300 with a Dubro 40-60 nylon gear legs. This gear does not break or bend and can be screwed or bolted further forward to reduce nose over damage while moving on the surface. most likely Horizon will discontinue the 300 and fix the design adding a 637T for telemetry. Cost will increase but it will be worth it in my opinion.

Jack wanted to preserve the nice fragile stock prop from such nose over damage so replaced it with an APC plastic 13/6.5 prop. On run up on a 4S she caused severe vibration. The factory spinner was removed and this helped but the prop was removed and rebalanced. This still caused vibration. Luckily Manny came to Jacks aid with a brand new 13/4 APC still in the package. The bore was reamed out enough to easily clear the shaft adapter and the largest plastic ring was pressed into place. This took away all vibration (no balancing required using the ring) however when the nice looking plastic backplate and spinner was added the vibration returned. So the maiden was completed with out the spinner and backplate. Jack’s Wattmeter measured 45 A , 670 W on a 3600 4S Venom and 31 A 334 W on a Venom 3200 3 S. We got 8 min of buddy box training on 4S. No hovering just 5 full power climbs for stall and spin training with SAFE On.

Takeoff was done with Self Level Off and about 8 clicks of up elevator was required for hands off flight at mid (59%) throttle. Self Level was turned on with the DX9 B0/B1 switch and max pitch and bank angles were verified at + 85 and 60 degrees respectfully. With full power and full up elevator the 300 rolls left and right with full aileron inputs, The factory gains on the BNF AR636 are perfect and with SAFE Off (B2 switch) the 300 is fully aerobatic with no stabilization other than AS3X which tmitigates invisible wind shear effects.

Jack has been flying a Valiant 1.3 so we continued with his DX 8 and my DX9. I exported my 300 file on to his 32 GB SD card. then imported it into his DX8. High rates of 100 and 40 Expo were tried but 60% rates and 40% felt better. An aileron to rudder mix onG1/2 of 50% reduced pilot workload for “fam” flight. I demonstrated stall behavior with throttle off and full up elevator. The 300 will eventually slow and start to porpoise with the 3600 4 S but not roll left or right unless forced to. When full aileron and rudder are used the 300 spins left or right at about 1 revolution/second and when sticks are released she returns wings and pitch level in about 3 seconds with SAFE still on. Powe On spins were not done. What this means is that you never have to turn SAFE off to do a classic and attention getting spin maneuver! Eflite and Horizon have the perfect classic aerobatic design worked out just right. Now things can change with different throws and CG but flown with stock settings IAW the manual the 300 is 90 out of 100 points. The weak aluminum motor mount and the flimsy wire landing gear and vibration being the problems. She is heavier and harder to pick up with one hand compared to the smaller less expensive 1.3 Valiant. However the top battery hatch is easy and you can keep your battery meter connected to check remaining capacity. We got 8 minutes with 15% remaining on the 4S 3600 Venom. More time should be available with the 3200 3S flying a similar fam flight. The 300 would be perfect if the $99 637 T were installed with the same gain settings. Then pressing the I button could give you voltage under load or at rest to aid in flight time calculation. Putting the lipos at rest with 3.7 to 3.8 volts/cell keep my packs in great shape and power consistent. I have recently gone to the 1300-1800 Graphene 3 and 4 S packs for batteries. Used as a single or with a parallel adapter (2600-3600 mah) works for most of my models.