Official Freewing F/A-18C Hornet 90mm EDF Thread

[e4dragongunner]

Excellent Thanks Brother! Hopefully more will be available soon!

[Radar-Guy]

RG, Kudos on the design, no insult intended. I was researching the wheels and thought the oval openings were an optical based on a bump in the wheel radius. I could not find your original STL file so I simply zipped the one I had. Could be what I see is a nose gear wheel and not the mains. No offense intended, Sir. I typically tinker with all designs somewhat with resizing, additions, deletions. I am certainly not criticizing. Most of my stuff is based on the OEM model and not scaled from actual, as you, DirtyDee, Apmech1 and others do. I am not that good, believe me. Looking forward to your releases. Best, LB

LB,
I‘m neither feeling insulted nor offended. I was really just wondering if I got something wrong! OK, no further action required.

[bill34207]

Happy to report a successful maiden plus two more flights for the F/A18-C today. The maiden was "interesting" to say the least. Looking at the video, the Soloshot camera was seeing the model a lot better than my eyes were in the gray skies of this morning. It also needed quite a bit of left aileron trim for some reason so will check into that a little later. To make things even better, the flaps failed to deploy so my landing at the end was a bit hot and long. Strange, we walked down to the model and I flipped the flap switch back to off and they cycled and started working again. Something else I need to look into after I finish recovering from today. Being there from around 7:30 this morning til noon has pretty much killed me for the rest of the day. (at least I got the video's processed) ;)

https://youtu.be/KJoFkYUX5VM

Dan Ribar was kind enough to operate my good Sony camera for the 2nd flight and he did well with it. The skies were a little better this time around because I could actually see the model pretty well and the flaps even worked for this landing.

https://youtu.be/dzg6RfLXuqg

Third flight was back to the Soloshot 3 and I wound up cutting a couple of minutes of gray sky out of the video since the Soloshot went into lets just scan the heavens with no target mode. The main thing I wanted from this video was the landing anyways since it was my best of the day.

https://youtu.be/X0wJ9xrNHS4

[JLambCWU]

Does anyone have the freewing 90mm F16 as well as this F18? How do they compare? And as I already have the RC geeks centre burner would it look good to add it to the F16 in addition to its built in ring of LED after burners. Or would it look crap?

RC Geek centerburner is the way to go! Have both ring and centerburner in this video. My Thunderbird is just the center burner.

https://youtu.be/zCVnN1CJzZo

Looks good in the Hornet too.

[Elbee]

Happy to report a successful maiden...

Bill, Congrats and great livery. Best, LB

[Carlbrainiac]

RC Geek centerburner is the way to go! Have both ring and centerburner in this video. My Thunderbird is just the center burner.

https://youtu.be/zCVnN1CJzZo

Looks good in the Hornet too.

That was a stunning video. Great work. And yup it is the rc geeks centre burner I have and that does look fantastic.

Just out of interest was that flying on the stock out runner set up on 6s? Or did you opt for the high power in runner or something else? People have said it's under powered but that certainly didnt look under powered.

[Evan D]

6S is not underpowered. The F-18 flies very well. Of course a inrunner or 8S is faster but 6S has to be 120 easy.

[JLambCWU]

That was a stunning video. Great work. And yup it is the rc geeks centre burner I have and that does look fantastic.

Just out of interest was that flying on the stock out runner set up on 6s? Or did you opt for the high power in runner or something else? People have said it's under powered but that certainly didnt look under powered.

That is the 1680kv inrunner. I’m running the 1835 inrunner on my Thunderbird. You can see it on my YouTube channel at AZ Jet Fest when I went down to show off some of Motions products.

The 1835kv inrunner makes the F-16 a beast on 6S with a 70C Roaring Top 5500mah in it.

Subsequently, and to keep this topic on the F-18. The 1835 inrunner makes the F-18 a beast as well. A little bit faster than stock and a lot more vertical.

Im running the Freewing 1835 inrunner in my 90mm SkySword and F-22 as well, and the performance increase is worth every penny.

Can see these on my videos here

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmOmmYD-3iSznBSKJJEc-vQ

https://www.motionrc.com/collections/edf-power-systems/products/freewing-90mm-12-blade-edf-6s-power-system-w-4068-1835kv-inrunner-motor

[Hopetofly1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wscE...qtqekrk0h00410 Flight from today.

[JLambCWU]

Something for Alpha...

[TPS]

I flew my F-18 today and all went well - lots of power from my Jetfan 90mm with the HET 2250kv motor. After I parked the jet on the table, the right flap started to ratchet without any inputs - I'm glad it didn't happen in the air. I replaced both flap servos from an A-4 and all is well. The stab servos I replaced with servos from the F-15. Great flying plane and will continue flying it tomorrow.

[fredmdbud]

Flew today with no issues, spent a good amount of time mitigating any causes of interference:

• Mounted BEC to one side of fuselage ceiling with servo tape
• Ran as much cable under the battery tray as possible
• Mounted main receiver on opposite wall from BEC, ran satellite antenna out to the nose wheel well, 90-deg (orthogonal) to receiver antenna
• If needed, additional shielding from BEC using aluminum foil/tape on a wood/cardboard plate to tape over the BEC

[RCjetdude]

A quick rough fit of the tanks. Trying to get a sense of size and shape. Painted the struts and inner gear doors white as well as the main door closure arms. I do not expect to fly it with all three tanks as they are intended more for display but we shall see.

[Rcfiddy1]

Ok, so some of us have been flying the Hornet for a few flights now. Has anyone else noticed that this bird will throw its ass around in a turn if airspeed gets too low? Almost like it’s going to throw you into a stall. I’m not talking slow speed flight maybe half throttle and too tight of a turn. My buddy buried his hornet because of this. Got a tail wind pushing him in a turn and she washed out. Today while flying with my two buddies and their l39s I had to slow down to let them catch up and while make a half throttle slow turn she washed out on me but I caught it and leveled off and push up the burners. No warning , no wing rock, just a ass swinging slight roll to right.

[DCORSAIR]

Ok, so some of us have been flying the Hornet for a few flights now. Has anyone else noticed that this bird will throw its ass around in a turn if airspeed gets too low? Almost like it’s going to throw you into a stall. I’m not talking slow speed flight maybe half throttle and too tight of a turn. My buddy buried his hornet because of this. Got a tail wind pushing him in a turn and she washed out. Today while flying with my two buddies and their l39s I had to slow down to let them catch up and while make a half throttle slow turn she washed out on me but I caught it and leveled off and push up the burners. No warning , no wing rock, just a ass swinging slight roll to right.

I find that the F-18 flies kind of weird to me, 34 flights now and I'am getting used to how it tracks and rolls, I know some guys are going to throw a fit when I say this, I flew the 90mm F-16 and the F-18 back to back to compare performance, well the F-16 will turn and burn circles around the F-18, F-16 won't stall or snap at anytime, the F-18 just doesn't track or turn as good to me, but it is fast, it goes vertical very well with the 1835kv unit in it, flies inverted better than the F-16. That is my opinion, but I like the F-18 enough to buy the gray one as well....

Take a look at my rotor and tell me what is missing, on the last flight on the F-18, I sucked in a piece of stiff wire about 5" long right when I was about to rotate, inbedded 6 blades into the foam and the others spit out the back, no other damage. This had nothing to do with the gremlins this time, but I am thinking this jet just has bad luck.

[fredmdbud]

Ok, so some of us have been flying the Hornet for a few flights now. Has anyone else noticed that this bird will throw its ass around in a turn if airspeed gets too low? Almost like it’s going to throw you into a stall. I’m not talking slow speed flight maybe half throttle and too tight of a turn. My buddy buried his hornet because of this. Got a tail wind pushing him in a turn and she washed out. Today while flying with my two buddies and their l39s I had to slow down to let them catch up and while make a half throttle slow turn she washed out on me but I caught it and leveled off and push up the burners. No warning , no wing rock, just a ass swinging slight roll to right.

The solution is not to get too slow, unless it's intentional (such as during landing)? I usually never go below half-throttle during flight, bumped up during turns (because the plane bleeds energy).

"Ass swing" seems to be characteristic as the CG gets closer to the center of pressure/lift - where do you set your CG?

Differential aileron seemed to have addressed this in earlier posts.

Or add a slight mix of aileron to the rudders.

[Rcfiddy1]

The solution is not to get too slow, unless it's intentional (such as during landing)? I usually never go below half-throttle during flight, bumped up during turns (because the plane bleeds energy).

"Ass swing" seems to be characteristic as the CG gets closer to the center of pressure/lift - where do you set your CG?

Differential aileron seemed to have addressed this in earlier posts.

Or add a slight mix of aileron to the rudders.

CoG is set per manual. When I say ass swing I don’t mean the ass swings right or left but what I mean is it feels as tho the elevator stabs are stalling and loosing airflow when banked and speed is slower than full throttle causing the tail to whip around like it’s got thrust vectoring.

[fredmdbud]

CoG is set per manual. When I say ass swing I don’t mean the ass swings right or left but what I mean is it feels as tho the elevator stabs are stalling and loosing airflow when banked and speed is slower than full throttle causing the tail to whip around like it’s got thrust vectoring.

That sounds to me like you are experiencing a high-alpha turn, getting close to the critical/stall angle. They do this at air shows when they do slow, tight turns in the "box". They power through it with more thrust.

[janmb]

Ok, so some of us have been flying the Hornet for a few flights now. Has anyone else noticed that this bird will throw its ass around in a turn if airspeed gets too low? Almost like it’s going to throw you into a stall. I’m not talking slow speed flight maybe half throttle and too tight of a turn. My buddy buried his hornet because of this. Got a tail wind pushing him in a turn and she washed out. Today while flying with my two buddies and their l39s I had to slow down to let them catch up and while make a half throttle slow turn she washed out on me but I caught it and leveled off and push up the burners. No warning , no wing rock, just a ass swinging slight roll to right.

At which cg? (nm)

Sounds like yet another nose heavy problem. In general, we are all brought up with the doctrine of how terrible tail heaviness is, and implicitly, nose heaviness being in some degree ok.

Please, please, please lose this misconception. All models, and jets in particular, fly really bad when nose heavy. Some jets even display outright nasty behavior when nose heavy. The SU-35 for example, being a brilliant airframe, will drop the inner wing and stoop really hard during turns if anywhere close to nose heavy.

In short, some models have every bit as much negative traits when nose heavy as tail.

[dlink72]

A brand new FW F-18 and the elevator servos are ratcheting. I tried two different receivers (Jeti System) and a servo tester - same results. Also the right flap moves on its own (ratcheting) without any control inputs. I tried a set of Hitech 82 servos hooked up to the elevator channel and they both work smoothly. Anyone else having these type of problems?
Thank you!

I have noticed the same issue on my f-14 and the f-18 as well. I initially thought it might be something to do with the full flying stab and maybe a counter weight issue. The F-18 elevator will jitter during movement and in some cases when I let go of the stick it will continue until I make a another control input. If I roll the plane on it's side it doesn't do it. I was about to dismiss it, but after catching up on this forum I will probably submit a ticket to MRC. It's not worth losing a plane if it's servo related.