Hitec Weekenders
Clevises on the aileron servos (above left) make adjustments easy. Adhesive tape secures the drop tank (above center) in its pocket, and the servo wire fits nicely through the notch in the tank “foot”. The very nicely detailed plug-in gear
(above right) are pretty secure and the wire pretty beefy for grass fields. Both the elevator and the rudder servos nest (below left) in the wing saddle bay, while the ESC (below right) and the battery reside in the nose.
position. On the P-51, the battery was placed about midway in the compartment. The P-51 manual will specify the position of the clevises in the elevator and rudder horns, but in the Zipper that’s all preset. As backup, some dual rate (70%) was set up in the Aurora 9 transmitter used for both planes.
Let’s take the Zipper first. Since it has the looks of a racer, it has no landing gear. Its wing is very, very thin, but still thick enough to house the 9-gram aileron servos. These were hooked together with a Y con-
nector. It would seem that this plane would fly at warp speed and whip your eyeballs out of their sockets. Not the case. It does have some speed, but it’s so lightweight it can slow down appreciably and be pretty relax- ing to fly. Thayer Syme was visiting and while I manned the camera, he got the chance to fly both planes. The Zipper is hand launch only and with neutral trims and about two-thirds throttle Thayer had the plane into the air with steady ease. No problem. The elevator at full throw was a little sensitive and the dual rate
tamed that easily and it behaved quite nice- ly. Hardly any trim was necessary. Ailerons at either rate were quite responsive but not twitchy and the roll rate wasn’t a blur. Inside loops were no sweat, and inverted
flight was okay except that with haze from a sunny day over deep snow cover, the Zipper could disappear from time to time especially when it turned in toward you. At full throttle the Zipper wanted to climb, and could have used some down trim. So for most of what was easily a 9-minute flight with reserves the plane flew between a quarter and two-
Ready to roll, even though it’s 15 degrees with 15 inches of snow around it (above left). That big 4-blade prop isn’t for display. It pulls the Mustang(above
50
right) very nicely in flight and the model proved rock stable and nicely responsive. The steerable tail wheel is a real asset and helps ground track.
MARCH 2014
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