01 03 10 12:26 - StarLight

More than a year has passed since the last post here. This time was spent combining various wings, fuselages and tails together, until I settled on StarLight by Karel Koudelka. Nice wingspan, AG profiles, and most important, very long nose, which enabled me to put together a very lightweight but still powerful motor setup:

It consists of hand wound cobra speed drive (4x1.12Y), which was demonstrated as being capable of handling 1.7kW on a record setting funjet. Paired with a 4.2:1 gearbox and 6S 1Ah 40C lipos, it delivers a comfortable 1kW, turning 13x11 prop. There's enough energy for 5 10-second climbs, which is almost enough for a whole day of flying :)

Check also the video of our first training in 2010.

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29 07 08 10:26 - What we fly II.

Palo from Rivamodels took a bit of time to collect model info from the competitors in Nitra. Here's the table he compiled.

There are some interesting observations to be made. Model weight, for example. While it was normal for the model to weight over 2kg just last year, this year models over 2kg stand out. There are even some as light as 1kg. Among motors the popular choice seems to be Mega 22/30/1, maybe because of the 12V limitations the Slovaks have. Also AXI 2826 seems like a good choice for lighter models, as one doesn't have a need for a gearbox. The batteries also tend to gravitate towards 3-4S lipo setups, either LiPo or LiFe (A123).

It will be interesting to observe the trends in the next year or two, to see where the technology is heading.

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15 04 08 20:20 - Vision "++"

I started 2008 season with brand new plane, altough that wasn't my initial plan. I got the chance to grab one used Vision "plus" cheaply, built especially light for F3J competitions. I had an ArtHobby fuselage at home that was planed for some other project that turned out to fit Vision's wings perfectly. Also the length was right, only the seat for the Vtail had to be built. I took the setup from the stork: Mega 16/25/2, Kontronik 5.2:1 gearbox, Jazz 80, 6S FlightPower EVO30 2000 lipos, 13x8 for training, 14x9-14x12 for competitions. With that components the fuselage is the same weight as the F3J fuselage empty, so the ready to fly weight is about the same as for the F3J version. That's why I nicknamed it Vision ++ :)

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03 04 07 21:17 - What do we fly

There's an interesting table being assembled from all actual F5J pilots in Slovenian Cup on our forum. It covers all the basic information about the models we fly and the motors and batteries that power them, along with the results from the first competition and pilots' comments about their models.

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11 04 06 00:30 - My Stork 2E

I'm currently flying with Stork 2 pro E in the slovenian cup. It's a beautiful model ... It has carbon midsection and fiberglas endsection wings, which is a compromise between weight and strenght. I've chosen the setup to be as light as possible while still offering nice performance. Flying it gets tricky with CG moved as far back as comfortably possible and requires constant attention of the pilot. The model itself is a bit lazy on the roll. (more)

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