The next plane that I wanted to convert was a Vladimir Supra. I did not plan on getting a Supra but when a nice one with a bit of history (it competed in a F3J world championship before) became available I grabbed it at once!
This is what she looked like when I got her.
Interestingly this plane came with a powerpod, a commercial unit that uses a Powerline 1020 motor! It is fixed to the plane using the two normal wing mounting bolts.
I got her going quickly with the powerpod, only had to install a receiver (FR Sky X8R) and replace an Airtronics servo that burned out while testing on the bench!
Flying her with the powerpod proved to be fun but it was not a great solution. Firstly the pod added about 385g and some drag, but far worse the motor that was mounted so high caused a HUGE pitch down when the motor was started. It was so bad that you need full up elevator to control it and when launching, with the plane slow, it more than once almost dived into the ground!
The plane flew well though, even at about 2.1kg I knew I was going to like the plane so the job to convert it to a decent F5J plane with the engine in the nose was started
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Ready for the first flight with the powerpod.
Back after the first flight, she flies well but the launches were scary!
I had to replace the rudder and elevator servos with smaller units to make space for the ESC and the battery. Turned out it was not such a huge job.
The plane received the same power setup a the Xplorer, A 3S 1300mah battery, PowerLine 1025 motor swinging a RFM 16x8.5 slim prop.
Since the laminated firewall I made, consisting of 2 layers of 1.6mm plywood and 3 layers of heavy fiber glass, for the Xplorer, worked so well I did the same for this plane.
The plane was a bit nose heavy in the F3J configuration so I also wanted to move the CoG a bit back. A full day in the workshop saw her ready for a test flight! The good news was that the plane now only weighed 1755g, and the CoG was just where I wanted it!
Ready for the test flight with the motor in the nose.
Back on the ground!
The first test flight proved that all was well and that the plane flew really well! At 1755g she can make use of really weak lift like I encountered early on the day of the test flight. Later in the day when the wind picked up to about 10 kts she was still fine!
The Powerline motor can launch this plane just about vertically (around 12 m/s), more than enough power.
I really like this plane, I liked her so much that I did 18 flights in the first flying session!
Hello Rudi,
ReplyDeleteI am planning to make the same conversion you did. Can you post some details about your setup and where you have put the components in the fuselage?