John Neale

Hi Allan I’ve built 3 Vulcans and on the first two I did the same as you have done, although I glued both the pin in the elevon and a slightly flattened piece of brass tube in the slave surface without any problem of restricted movement and the system worked well. As for the third that’s another story. I’ve used servos on each surface to operate independently, the inners as elevators and the outers as ailerons. The gear is removed and replaced by the packs, 2 x 3300 3S Zippy compacts in parallel. The motors have been upgraded and I have fitted a launching hook to the centre spine for bungee launching as I can only fly off grass now. Control authority is better although it does need rudder used with ailerons. Although un Vulcan like it also allows me to use crow braking for landing as otherwise it does float for a long way. Hope you enjoy the flying with yours.

Shouldn't think the retract unit has changed Allan. I used the HK units which seem to be the same as yours but I do recall creating more space at the wheel end. I also had to modify the area around the nose wheel steering linkage to ensure it didn't foul up during retraction. You reinforcement seems perfectly adequate. Keep going!

I think the recommended thickness originally was 160 micron acetate but having sampled some I settled for 240 micron thickness. The increase in weight is negligible and it has been perfectly satisfactory on my Vulcan, now nearly 5 years old. I have also used the same 240 micron on my new Hunter and JP. Good luck with the rest of the build

I'm in a situation as above. I ordered a replacement fuselage for my Vegas in July. I'm still waiting for the order although my Paypal account has already been debited for the required amount. I have sent emails to Horizon customer service but have not received any replies even though the payment was to Horizon Hobbies. It doesn't seem as though customer service exists.so is Horizon Hobby about to do a disappearing act? John

Hi Neil I think Craig is right regarding the CofG. Mine flies beautifully on a 3S 10blade fan set up taking off from tarmac in around 20 yards. However it is slightly tail heavy and on closing the throttles I get a nose up pitch which is a bit more than is needed for a perfect flare when landing. To counteract this I have mixed in 5% down elevon which only comes in when the throttles are closed. This keeps the nose rise under control making landings much easier because as commented on in previous posts this aeroplane glides for ever. It's great fun to fly though looking very realistic in the air. Enjoy yours. John

Martin, the part no. of the replacement edf unit is SKU 9107000193. Apologies for any confusion but it is a 10 bladed fan, not 11 as I previously stated. The replacement impellor is part no.107000132 and the impellor complete with nose cone is 107000131. The motor in the replacement edf unit has a longer body than the original spec so is obviously uprated with a different wind to give 4000kv. I doubt whether the original 4800kv motor would last very long with the extra load of the 10 blade impellor. As an aside, I had an outboard motor fail in flight, subsqently found to be due to an electrical fault (disconnection of one of the aforesaid 2mm motor connectors). To keep the aircraft flying straight required full rudder coupled with most of the aileron. The increased drag coupled with the loss of thrust meant i couuld not maintain height and I only had marginal directional control. If this happens to you, forget about trying to get back to the runway. If you have sufficient height, chop the power and glide into wind, landing straight ahead with the gear up and a belly flop. If you land on grass there should be no damage. So far my Nanotechs are holding up well. With the new setup at full power they ar only discharging at around 18C. As an alternative the Zippy compacts are a similar size and price so I really don't see the need for having to go to 4 cells. Time will tell!

I’ve followed this thread with interest as it mirrors my own experience although I have managed to get mine to fly. Like all the others mine came out a pound overweight but we now know we were on the button. However mine was also tail heavy and it was impossible to fly in that condition so I had no alternative but to add nose weight to bring the c of g to its correct position. Unfortunately it still wouldn’t climb away so I had to find some way to reduce this extra weight. Fortunately I am using Turnigy Nanotech cells which are slimmer than standard LiPos and I found it was possible to slide them through the two front spars so I opened up the underside of the battery bays and made a small box arrangement from balsa to support the front of each pack between the two ribs and the leading edge. This now enabled me to get both packs forward of the cg and this together with rearranging the routing of the power leads enabled me to remove all of the added weight. For good measure I also replaced the 2mm connectors on the motor and esc wires with 3.5 mm connectors and replaced the thrust tubes with 240 micron acetate sheet. Success! It now rotated and settled into a shallow climb but it was obvious it was underpowered as it required full power for most of the flight and it needed great care to avoid too high a nose attitude in turns. Total current draw was only 55 amps with 620 watts of power. I have now replaced the fan units with Dr Mad Thrust 4000kv 11 bladed units and the readings are 88 amps and 980 watts, a 60% increase in power. I’m not sure of the relationship between power and thrust but it certainly has a lot more urge. I haven’t had an opportunity to fly it in the new configuration yet but I am so confident that this is the answer that I have ordered another wood pack to put the experience I have gained with this into a pristine airframe. It’s a great design and it can be made to work so good luck to all you builders

Has anyone else got a comment to make about the quality of this kit? When it was first announced I was quite excited and really fancied one but in light of some remarks such as Robin's and Danny's I'm having second thoughts. Did they get one offs or are they all like this? My experience suggests that Hangar 9 generally sets the benchmark but this is pretty much the same price without what would appear to be the same quality. Will JP carry any spares back up if it is only a limited production run?   John

I have just acquired an old Purbeck Sailplanes 4 metre ASW27. It has been test flown only and is in perfect condition. it is my plan to convert it to electric and initial thoughs are using something like a geared Hacker B50L  or its equivalent running on 5 or 6 cells. Has anyone out there any experience of doing this or something very similar in size?  

The motor I have Rick is the  Micro rex220. It comes in 3 winds and I have the 1880 kv version. I believe it is the standard motor that Weston uk supply. For indoor flying the 3mm depron groove is the best. I had one once and it flew quite well. However it did need quite a bit of carbon bracing as the wings were very flexible. The 6mm version is really for 3S and outdoor use. Pity you didn't start with something else. You would have had much better siuccess 

i use a Micro Rex on some of my shockies and find it a great little motor. However auw is the key to performance and 180g should be the top limit for good arobatic performance and prop hang with good pull out. I use 350mah 2S 20C packs, 6amp esc with 8x4.3 prop. My experience with cheapo 20g motors is they don't do what they say on the label!. 800mah packs are far too heavy. Don't know exactly what current I draw, but I doubt it is more than 5 amps max as I expect 10 min flights from a full pack. You may well have to go the 3S route with the weight your Groove is. However keep the pack capacity as low as you can. Certainly no more than 400mah .

Hi Folks I've just got a DSX 9 after having owned nothing but Futaba for the last 35 years I find the JR logic hard to come to terms with. I'm trying to program my electric soarer with a 4 servo wing using 3 flight modes (speed, cruise, thermal) whilst retaining the motor on the normal throttle stick and using the left hand flap lever for flaps and via a switch to add ailerons for full crow braking. The reason I'm going this way is because this is the protocol I've been using for a considerable time as a normal procedure and I don't want to change it to avoid confusion. However the first snag I 've come up against is the fact that I can get no respose from the motor whatever combinations I try. The manual recommends following a programming guide for 6 servo sailplanes following the glider section of the manual but I can find no further reference to this. Am I missing something?  John

Earlier on this year we formed a new club that was going to use a site 1.8 miles from a slope soaring venue so we carried out range checks to see if there was likely to be any chance of a conflict. Using a FF9 transmitting on ppm from the top of the hill to my model the full 1.8 miles away( 9500ft) I was amazed to hear that I had full control over the model evem though it was impossible to see where it was. Air to air would probably have been even greater. The model was equipped with a schultz receiver. Co-incidentally this last weekend I had a model using an indoor receiver go out of range at no more than 100 metres so clearly there is a vast difference in reception strengths for different receivers. This range can also differ between receivers of a similar type from the same manufacturer so only by carrying out a full range check of the equipment you are using will you get full reassurance of the range you can expect.

+Hi Eric I've got a Reftec tx and rx in excellent condition. I haven't used it in ages due to the rx size. I also have some spare xtals. All are surplus as I can't see me using it again. Reckon 2.4 is the way to go eventually.