...back with avengeance The little Fox glider is a beautiful flier, however mine has always suffered from motor vibration. Even the addition of a supplementary firewall didn't make much difference, so the little Fox was eventually consigned to hang on the wall whilst I decided what to do.
Help came in the form of the forced retirement of the Radjet, and I transplanted the Funfighter motor I'd installed there into the Fox. To complement this I'm using a 1500 4S Zippy compact battery, lightweight enough not to tax the speedy motor but large enough to provide generous flight times for the sleek Fox. The result is speedy, the slippery Fox now genuinely fast and very quiet, the Funfighter motor providing it with landscape-traversing speed and generous, although not unlimited, vertical climb. So all in all a simple and very successful transplant, the Fox glider flying with the Radjet's heart...
...blackbird of noisiness The SR71 is a Parkjets design, one of those "stickplanes" which combine simple construction with characteristic design cues that define the aircraft. I chose to do the 125% version, giving a wingspan of 840mm and a length of 1250 and making it quite an impressive aircraft.
I chose to power the Blackbird with a funfighter motor I'd liberated from my old Rarebear. This motor is a little under-specced for a plane this size, yet it managed to give the SR71 a decent turn of speed nonetheless. I was going to use a 1500 4S lipo but, unable to get CoG sorted, opted for a heavier 2200 4S to balance things out.
My main concern approaching launch was not it's flight characteristics which, being a large delta promised to be benign, but the proximity of the handhold to the propellor! Fortunately this concern was unfounded, and the SR71 took to the skies beautifully stably. As the Blackbird accelerated away, it became apparent that this is a very noisy plane, even noisier than the Radjet with the same motor...
...back to the future The Phoenix 2000 was the very first RC plane I purchased, and so this is very much a back-to-the-future episode for me. The Phoenix 2000 is, as it was back then, a very well build and affordable RC plane. It has a sturdy plastic moulded fuselage, which it shares with its sibling the Phoenix 1600, which comes complete with plywood battery tray and rear servo deck. The fuselage comes with the rear control rods pre-installed and, on PNF versions, the servos installed and connected.
The wings are good-quality EPO with moulded-in reinforcements, and a carbon joiner rod is supplied as well. There's also a sleek moulded plastic canopy which clips onto the fuselage. The wings have substantial ailerons, with servos installed on the PNF package, although control rods have to be fitted yourself. There's provision for flaps including moulded recess for servo and linkages included - you just need to cut the flap free where they're moulded to the wing. The kit comes with a folding prop and spinner with collet adapter, and there's a fixed nosecone in case you just want this as a pure glider. So the Phoenix 2000 comes highly recommended as a high-quality entry-level glider, sturdily constructed yet elegant and capable in the air...
