FanFacts H
ello again, and welcome back! Hopefully your building projects are well underway, and major problems have been avoided!
I’m going to continue to electrify you (sor-
ry, I couldn’t resist!) with my local hobby shop owner’s Habu 32. Everyone (my club is not significantly into electrics) was voicing concerns that it would not fly at our 7000- foot field elevation, especially since another flier up the road keeps puffing Thunder- Power 5000 mAh, 65C packs in his and … and … and…. The maiden flight was (as predicted) a non-issue in getting her up and flying, and the three different packs he has tested have all been little more than warm after a flight. The stock setup just works! (and I think that the exclamation point says it all). Typically, the flights are of six minutes duration, with plenty of reserve, using a mixture of throt- tle settings. At first he was positive that the TP packs were putting out more energy, but a handy-dandy radar unit showed a whop- ping two mph difference, straddling the 110 mph mark, and neither brand has the ad- vantage. Depends on the day for which pack wins.
Some on the E-Zone have been participat-
ing in a speed challenge for the Habu 32, with classic speed-run stuff being done to get the speeds up into the 135 mph range. All I can say is that it’s a good thing they keep going to the vertical, because this little gem gets really small, really fast! With the stock motor, fan and ESC you get a delight- fully fun and well-constructed little jet, that flies (feels) like a much larger airplane. Dan used electric retracts from Shulman Avia- tion
www.shulmanaviation.com, and after a few teething problems they have things working nicely, using the stock Habu wheels. Definitely an airplane worth looking at if you are thinking about a nice e-jet. At the other pole of the electric jet scene
is Chris Susicke who has sent information on his NitroPlanes
www.nitroplanes.com Starfire EDF. Chris states that he bought this as a kind of “knock around” sport jet, since it was just over $100.00—shipped, and will fit into the trunk of his Challenger ful-
ly assembled (a plus in my book!) despite its 53- inch wingspan. Chris is keeping the cost down with a “101mm Easy Tiger Models
http://easytigermodels.com fan and Scorpi-
on 3026 1,900 Kv outrunner sucking amps from two 3S 5,000 mAh Li-Pos through a Turnigy 80-amp ESC. Overall a very inex- pensive setup for a jet this size.” The airplane comes with fixed gear—
bungee launching is an option—yet unfortu- nately retracts are not. Since we are all mod- elers here (right?) Chris reworked the air- frame for E-flite
www.e-fliterc.com electric retracts (.25–.46 size) and says they work great. He is using Hitec
www.hitecrcd.com HS-82MG, and two sub-micro servos (rud- der and nose steering) with the elevator and rudder servos moved to the rear to eliminate the long pushrods that were called for in the instructions. Power for the servos is from the BEC within the ESC (or, in English: the battery eliminator circuit within the elec-
tronic speed control) since Turnigy
www.turnigy.com ESCs are reported to have a very good and capable BEC. Chris flies his on 6S, and says that it has
good, comfortable flight characteristics with a speed in the 90–100 mph guess-timated range. Takeoff (and landing) weight is about seven pounds, and Chris says that it flies “exceptionally well for what it is” (an inex- pensive throw-around with non-existent in- take ducting) and that feels like a larger air- plane, with a very smooth and locked-in feel that gives about a seven-minute flight with plenty of reserve in the battery. After reading the note from Chris, I went
to the web (okay … three other threads and sites got perused first) and the NitroPlanes website and managed to convince Santa to drop one off at my house as he checked in with the good folks at NORAD, after all—it was only a one-half mile detour! My plans are to emulate Chris by installing retracts
by greg moore You can reach Greg Moore via e-mail at
jetflyr@comcast.net
PHOTOGRAPHY: GREG MOORE
Sitting on the ramp late in November (rare that we even get to fly this late in the year) the Habu 32’s size has nothing for reference. It could be 32 inches, or 87 inches in span, but we don’t know. Hint: look at the battery pack.
Ah-ha! A reference point, namely the 6S Thunder Power pack, tells us that the Habuairframe is optimized for function, which is to let the 89mm fan unit work well (above left)! Working well is what the stock setup does. With a 7 mph wind at our 7000-foot field elevation, this “positive rate” photo was taken after a 50–60
62
foot takeoff roll (above center). If we were to “Photoshop” the control horns out of the picture, you could not tell whether this were a 32-, or 87-inch airplane and, in the 15 mph and increasing wind that the flight was made in, it was as solid and stable as the “suggested” 87-inch model would have been (above right).
MARCH 2012
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