ICON A5
That keeper on the clevis is important (above left). It keeps the clevis firmly closed so it doesn’t interfere with travel. Note the panel for access to
About the only fussing is connecting the pushrods to their respective servo arms and control horns. The manual makes this pret- ty clear on page 9 as to which holes to use for the factory settings. Takes any mystery and frustration away from this. About the only thing to do carefully is the elevator pushrod attachment. That’s the short pushrod with a Z-bend in it. The Z-bend goes in the elevator horn as in- dicated in the manual. The clevis goes to the servo arm. There’s a small elastic clevis keeper that slides over the clevis. It must be used. If not, the clevis will remain partially open and won’t be able to move partially in and out of the cutout for the servo arm. That interferes with the pushrod travel. And while on the subject of pushrods, the
only other pushrod to really install is the nose wheel steering. That pushrod is the long one. Since I was eager to get the ICON on Tillson Lake for its maiden flight I figured this pushrod would have to be installed every time the switch was made to the fixed gear, and then taken off when the ICON goes back to the aquatic side of its personality. Not so. The pushrod and its servo arm can
be installed and adjusted right at the start and left in place when the plane is cavorting on the waves. One of the pictures will show
the servo. The bolt-on gear is pretty substantial (above right). However, a hard landing on one flight broke some of the thin plastic disks.
that it goes through a cavity underneath the battery platform and doesn’t interfere with anything. The one other major item that has to be addressed, though really not major at all is putting the 3-blade prop on. With the motor already installed it’s a simple matter of slid- ing the collet on the motor shaft, sliding on the thrust washer, the spinner backplate, then tightening the screw and finally press- ing the spinner over the backplate. About the only way to screw this up is putting on the prop backwards. I did that, thinking that as a pusher prop it should be the opposite of a tractor prop. The motor still turns counterclockwise even though it’s re- versed. Well, despite being wrong, the setup still produced plenty of thrust to get the plane off the water and fly it around. After reversing the prop and flying again the dif- ference didn’t seem very noticeable. So the prop should go on the shaft with camber side of the airfoil facing forward. At this point the ICON A5 is ready to take
to the waves or the runway. But there was one final item, an option that’s a neat little accessory. Some small LED landing lights can be easily installed in the two lens at the very front of the fuselage. ParkZone sent two sets, one a clear light, the other a blue
tinted light. I chose the blue because it added a little more color to an already col- orful model. It was a simple matter of pulling a small rubber plug behind each lens, pushing the LED bulbs in and then re- placing the rubber plug. The bulbs have an interface with them that simply plugs into an unused channel on the receiver. This works even with a 4-channel transmitter, but extra channels allow the on-off feature. So, it’s ready to go. How does it perform?
Very nicely. Despite its unorthodox looks the plane is really pretty docile. The manu- al provides the throws for both high and low rates, but I found I was comfortable with high rates all around. Low rates were set at 75% for the elevator and rudder. For the ailerons the low rate was 67%. Rudder is the only low rate I used and it was primarily for subdued steering on the paved runway where the land flights were made. First flight of the model was off the water
as I said earlier. I set a conservative flight time of 4 minutes on the timer of my JR 9503 transmitter. That was to allow some experi- mentation with taxiing on the water and in case the plane landed a distance from shore. That would allow enough battery to taxi back. The model ICON doesn’t have a water rud- der which brings up the question about how
All three gear are installed (above left). The mains bolt into plastic plates in the sponsons, and the nose goes into a tube, keyed for the servo arm on its top. E-
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flite’s optional light set, with adapter, for the headlight/landing light lens (above right) can be turned on and off using a separate channel.
FEBRUARY 2012
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