Fox Glider with Funfighter Motor.

...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...

Flying the Firstar EDF

...on a sunny Saturday afternoon

Beautiful weekend weather begged for some flying, so I headed down to the paddock with the Firstar EDF conversion. The first flight of this has been on a cold & overcast morning, so this afternoon would be an opportunity to try out the big FPv plane in some sunny weather.

With the straight-shooting EDF unit, the flight characteristics are much more aligned with its close cousin, the phoenix 2000 glider, making it a real pleasure to fly. And today enjoying having a bit of fun cruising it around the open space of the paddocks.

Whilst EDF's are known energy hogs, the Forstar flies so much better and truer that I still think the overall performance and duration can't be worse than with that huge prop tower and negative thrust line. This still has to be tested when I get some proper FPV flying done, but even just punting the Firstar around is so much more fun now...

Firstar V2. 70mm EDF Conversion.

...flies and sounds better

The flight performance of the Firstar has been very disappointing, mainly I think because of the effect of the negative thrust angle which effectively just increases the wing loading.

So, like I'd long considered with the Floater Jet but never actually did, I've replaced the pusher prop with a low-mounted 70mm EDF installed directly on the body mount used for the stock motor tower with large cable tie straps screwed in place.

The EDF is rated at about 1.2kg thrust, far more than required, so I'm only running it at 60% speed on a 3000 4S lipo, which is more than adequate. In conjunction I've also replaced the stock 30A ESC with a 50A unit.

The thrust line of the EDF is virtually through the centre of lift on the wing, and this shows on launch with the V2 flying straight and then beginning to climb as the speed climbs, in stark contrast to its behavior with the tall pusher prop where it always nosed in and was reluctant to climb.

The much sleeker form, with the tower and foam shroud, means that it's also faster through the air, if required, and glides very well. And, if you needed more benefits, it also sounds brilliant...