FanFacts W
elcome back! I hope that the weather has been nice to you and that you’ve been flying to the point of exhaustion! Unfortu-
nately, for me, we have been in super hot and super windy conditions—which, of course, are always 90 degrees to the runway! Fortunately, my little hand launched Electrifly F-20 Tigershark (reviewed in these pages in the November 2011 issue) continues to fly great! I had reported in the review about how tough it is, and ... err ... I’ve had to up the ante on that statement. For an extremely simple to assemble foamy, it looks great, flies great and can keep up with most things in the pattern. Not only does the plane fly well, the Elec-
trifly series of batteries have been holding up quite well, and even with the heat we have had here this summer, the batteries come down following a six-minute flight only “good-and-warm”—unlike several other brands I have used. ’Nuff said, other than try it (the plane and/or the batteries) and you’ll like it! Also seen at the field were Horizon’s orig-
inal Habu and their Habu-32. The “original” foam version just works, and works and works, and the larger ’32 version flies like a jet should—taxi out, take off, suck the gear up until it’s time to land and then taxi back. It will be interesting to see if Horizon’s new version of the Habu (foam construction, but ready for optional electric retracts and flaps like its big brother has) can equal the longevity of the original. David Plummer is still getting his latest creation—a 1⁄6 scale B-47E—dialed in, and he sent a photo of one of them taking the other for a walk around the cul-de-sac. With an 87-inch wingspan (with 6.6 square feet of area!), which is augmented with working Fowler flaps, it takes 13 servos to make things work. Powered by six HET-70mm fan units and six HET speed controls using the electrons from three 4S 5000 mAh packs, this scratchbuilt beauty really shows the
PHOTO: ROD HART
Rod Hart caught Greg’s Electrify F-20 climbing out after a low pass. An inexpensive, hand launched foamy with a moderately priced battery makes for a lot of fun at the field.
lines of (in my estimation) one of the most beautiful planes to fly. With over 10 pounds of static thrust, the performance should be very scale-like for this 22.75-pound beauty. I’ve been mentioning Andy Zaner’s 144-
inch, twin edf T-38 for the last few months, and the reports just keep getting better. He has been playing with “keychain” cameras, to capture flight information as he goes through the flight-testing regime, and well... sometimes it is just better to be lucky, rather than good, which he was, in capturing his third flight. The sound and presence of this big beast is unbelievable, and as you hear the Doppler-shift of the two Stumax fans passing over the microphone, I believe you will do as I did and say out loud WOW! This amazing video can be found at:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1SS2cD69wAI Not only can I tell you about the video, I can tease you with a pair of screen shots from the camera. I really love the look of the gear com- ing up; it makes me feel like I’m just off the departure end of the runway, but more im-
PHOTO: FRANK FANELLI
portantly, I really wish I had that dry lake bed for test flights! Moving on to the smaller version of the
T-38 Talon, the Wowplanes version
www.wowplanes.com is coming closer and closer to release, and at 81 inches long, (1:6.5 scale) it allows for good detail to be added and the weight to be kept down with its Styrofoam construction and strategic plastic parts. Fahim Ahmed, CEO, CFO, chief designer, builder and shop cleaner-upper (lots of hats to wear in a one-man company) has been hard at work getting things designed, modified and out to the forum. Several neat ways to do things have been
talked about in the thread—one of the neat things that can occur online—on RC Groups at
http://tinyurl.com/6s9xbrg. One of the neatest things for me in this thread is the use of hotwire-cut white Styrofoam® which, with selective reinforcements and correct surface covering, produces a strong, light structure, and which augments the informa- tion found in Keith Sparks’ Building with Foam book (available from this magazine).
by greg moore You can reach Greg Moore via e-mail at
jetflyr@comcast.net
PHOTO: DAVID PLUMMER
David Plummer sent a photo of him and his B-47 (above) going for a stroll around his home’s cul-de-sac. Still having the bugs ironed out, this scratchbuilt beauty tracks and steers well, in spite of its bicycle undercarriage. The business end of a Stumax fan (at right) shows its nicely swept and curved blades, with the very small tip-gap. As an engineer, Stuart Maxwell understands mass flow, and he certainly figured out a nice sounding way to harness maximum energy with his fan units.
28 OCTOBER 2012
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