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

[Evan D]

Yes. And it can be taken a step farther and go into a flat, zero speed fall if you let it get too slow. I tried doing flat spins and it ends up in this zero speed flat fall, even with ailerons and rudders...Cool when you do it high but deadly if you do it low. You also have to be careful getting out of it, full throttle and ailerons and it starts doing a wild wing rock until it gets some airspeed.

Another odd thing is doing a tail slide gets it all weird. Hard to describe but very cool, and again make sure you have height when you do it.


Don't slow this plane down with out the wings being level. Don't apply full flaps until level on final. Don't give it much if any rudder when slow. I've settled on a CG at about 95mm.

30 flights on mine and all is good.

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.

[seaviper]

What Evan said...stay off the rudder when she is slow. If anything, reduce bank angle and add power in a slow turn.

During a slow turn in a jet, like the turn to final and the initial turn after takeoff, stay off the rudder for goodness sake. I would say that unless dealing with a good crosswind you should not ever have to use the rudder in a jet. Jets are not the place to go and show how well you learned to use the rudder. Save that for cubs and helicopters. That is for other types of birds. I have even heard of some "product demonstrators" mixing rudder into ailerons on jets....are you serious? An experienced pilot can do a lot of things that are not in the book and get away with it. But an inexperienced pilot should just stay off that rudder in a jet.

More rantage…..A slip is way healthier in a slow turn to final than a coordinated turn. In a stall, the bird will tend to roll where the rudder says. Most coordinated turns in RC are not coordinated. Rather they have too much rudder. So the bird will flip over more often than not. You can go try it. I might just do a video on this subject

Edit: I agree with JanmB on the nose heavy thing as well.

[mavincooper]

Oh Ok!
Here you go !

I beat you too it!!! If you have any questions on what I did feel free to ask Semper Fi

[e4dragongunner]

Love your work! I too love to paint! will for sure be using your efforts as a benchmark! The subtleness of the darker faded color under the main Maple Leaf makes it! :-), However you forgot to paint the gear white :-)...... Reminds me of a saying my dad had! " Cars NOT clean until you do the windows! " Yes Yes indeed Semper Fi!

[e4dragongunner]

So Boys! I am full caught up. There were some interesting conversations to say the least! LOL I am currently on vacation, however my hornet ( Gray PMP ) s sitting NIB in the garage, delivered yesterday.

My Take aways:

• Bypass blue box, Save (Gear and Lights)
• Ensure integrity of elevator mounts
• Replace Elevator servos. I have a couple of JR Digital 3421's I am dying to use.
• CG 5mm back from stock. ( My F-4 was was nose heavy at stock 190mm, Moving to 195. )

Using a 9411 on the elevator on my F4 and it ROCKS... Unfortunately you cant get any of these servos any more!

Jeti DS-16 enthusiast!!! Also running a MUI telemetry unit for battery capacity monitoring and Hobby eagle Gyros on all my Freewing Jets. )On the MUI alarms... I t set joker at 42% remaining and bingo at 37 or so. That gives me a go around and still landing by 20-25%

[flyAA]

Flights 4,5,6 and 7 this morning. Worked the CG back a few mm to probably around 90 and it’s flying really nice.

Im all stock with everything going through the blue box. No problems whatsoever.

I’m loving the airplane. Best part is it fits in my car fully assembled!

[Hardway]

I always smile at "bingo"... In civilian life that means "I WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Not so much when you are sucking fumes...…….. You can never have enough gas, unless you are on fire!!!!!!!!!!

[davegee]

I have all that in mine, have since I built it. Works well as long as you have the correct elevator mix.. good luck tomorrow.

We flew my F-18C with the latest mod to have the rudders toe in when the flaps are down. Took off flaps down light right crosswind, normal takeoff, didn't really see anything much different with the rudders toed-in. For landing, we had a 5 mph right crosswind. Shaq landed it beautifully, but said it felt a bit mushy on lateral (yaw) control in the flare and landing. I was just an observer today, but will take it out myself sometime next week for more testing. I'll probably restrict it to little or no crosswind landings until I get a better feel for how it performs for landings.

[AceMigKiller]

That's a really sweet mix!
Which radio are you running and would you mind sharing the file?

[Ron1950]

hey Mavin that's one pretty airplane...they paint it red to find it in the snow aah! when I was a atc in Louisville ky i always cleared air canada to toronto via the derby city 1 departure then as filed aaa! sometimes they laughed sometimes not lol

[janmb]

I would say that unless dealing with a good crosswind you should not ever have to use the rudder in a jet.

I respectfully shall have to disagree :D

I agree on the general idea of being careful in the low speed end of the envelope for sure, especially while learning to know the model properly, but in general, low bank, rudder based turns is exactly what you want to do to avoid disaster in that regard.

Level wings having much lower stall speed that banked wings is just as true for a jet as a cub. But as with anything, controls should be careful and fed in smoothly, not jerked on and off. Also worth remembering that dual rudders are insanely effective and in general needs much, much less throw than you normally would.

Besides, even if doing only high speed, high bank turns, given a correct cg you should still be required to constantly adjust your attitude during that turn using *drumroll* rudder. A correctly balanced jet will, and should, sag its tail during high bank turns if left unassisted.

Just like when flying helicopters, the pilot decides the attitude of a plane in all dimensions at all times - not the plane.

[janmb]

So Boys! I am full caught up. There were some interesting conversations to say the least! LOL I am currently on vacation, however my hornet ( Gray PMP ) s sitting NIB in the garage, delivered yesterday.

My Take aways:

• Bypass blue box, Save (Gear and Lights)
• Ensure integrity of elevator mounts
• Replace Elevator servos. I have a couple of JR Digital 3421's I am dying to use.
• CG 5mm back from stock. ( My F-4 was was nose heavy at stock 190mm, Moving to 195. )

Using a 9411 on the elevator on my F4 and it ROCKS... Unfortunately you cant get any of these servos any more!

Jeti DS-16 enthusiast!!! Also running a MUI telemetry unit for battery capacity monitoring and Hobby eagle Gyros on all my Freewing Jets. )On the MUI alarms... I t set joker at 42% remaining and bingo at 37 or so. That gives me a go around and still landing by 20-25%

Jeti ftw! Love MUI telemetry as well - especially on EDFs!

Word of warning on the Hobby Eagle though. I have over 100 flights on one myself, and it is a fine littly gyro at affordable price, but there has unfortunately been some issues you should be aware of. In short, ALWAYS check gyro directions during every single pre-flight check. Someone on this forum a couple months back had a unit that simply wouldn't store setup correctly at all (correct procedure was confirmed by video). And worse, a friend of mine lost a model when the aileron direction reverted to factory defaults on flight 4 of the day. 3 flights no problem at all, on the 4th, the aileron compensation was wrong. No tuning what so ever in the meantime, only swapped batteries.

[mavincooper]

hey Mavin that's one pretty airplane...they paint it red to find it in the snow aah! when I was a atc in Louisville ky i always cleared air canada to toronto via the derby city 1 departure then as filed aaa! sometimes they laughed sometimes not lol

Thats really funny and Thank you

[mavincooper]

Love your work! I too love to paint! will for sure be using your efforts as a benchmark! The subtleness of the darker faded color under the main Maple Leaf makes it! :-), However you forgot to paint the gear white :-)...... Reminds me of a saying my dad had! " Cars NOT clean until you do the windows! " Yes Yes indeed Semper Fi!

No didnt forget did it this weekend those were early pics and Thanks

[Ron1950]

are the orange maple leafs outlines paint? I always pull the tape off and am luckey if I don't pull paint and foam and everything else off the plane...

[Lcacing]

I've been thinking about the two crashes I had on the BA F18, after testing everything, I found the ECB bad. I posted a video a few days ago to whow the ECB was functioning erratically. It got my thinking, power was distributed from the BEC > RX > ECB > servos. When the box malfunctioned all servos stopped working, the plane I installed the ECB on to test never had signal problems, plus I was only 5 feet away, soTX to RX signal could not be the problem. If the problem in the ECB is due to power failure, maybe a ground or short inside the ECB, that would cause all servos to stop functioning and unless the ECB can stop back flow of power to the RX, it could also be affected.

If that is the case, it would make sence why even though the elevators and ailerons were bypassed, I still lost control and crashed the first time. Second crash all was left stock, same result. There is always talk about bypassing the ECB but keeping the retracts and ligths plugged in, but if my unproven theory makes any sence, if both the RX and ECB still share a common power source, the possibilty of failure, if ground or short, would still casue a total lost of control and crash. I would think the only way to completely isolate the RX from ECB would be to use two independent power sources and only use the signal wire from retract ch to ECB, eliminating the chance a power issue malfunction.

This is just me thinking out loud, so don't crucify me, if im completly out to left field just let me down in the most humanly possible way .

[flyAA]

H

I've been thinking about the two crashes I had on the BA F18, after testing everything, I found the ECB bad. I posted a video a few days ago to whow the ECB was functioning erratically. It got my thinking, power was distributed from the BEC > RX > ECB > servos. When the box malfunctioned all servos stopped working, the plane I installed the ECB on to test never had signal problems, plus I was only 5 feet away, soTX to RX signal could not be the problem. If the problem in the ECB is due to power failure, maybe a ground or short inside the ECB, that would cause all servos to stop functioning and unless the ECB can stop back flow of power to the RX, it could also be affected.

If that is the case, it would make sence why even though the elevators and ailerons were bypassed, I still lost control and crashed the first time. Second crash all was left stock, same result. There is always talk about bypassing the ECB but keeping the retracts and ligths plugged in, but if my unproven theory makes any sence, if both the RX and ECB still share a common power source, the possibilty of failure, if ground or short, would still casue a total lost of control and crash. I would think the only way to completely isolate the RX from ECB would be to use two independent power sources and only use the signal wire from retract ch to ECB, eliminating the chance a power issue malfunction.

This is just me thinking out loud, so don't crucify me, if im completly out to left field just let me down in the most humanly possible way .

Did you have a PNP or an ARF? If it was a PNP what receiver? We’re you using a satellite?

[Lcacing]

Futaba equipment. PNP. Flying new F18 PNP, no problems.

[e4dragongunner]

Jeti ftw! Love MUI telemetry as well - especially on EDFs!

Word of warning on the Hobby Eagle though. I have over 100 flights on one myself, and it is a fine littly gyro at affordable price, but there has unfortunately been some issues you should be aware of. In short, ALWAYS check gyro directions during every single pre-flight check. Someone on this forum a couple months back had a unit that simply wouldn't store setup correctly at all (correct procedure was confirmed by video). And worse, a friend of mine lost a model when the aileron direction reverted to factory defaults on flight 4 of the day. 3 flights no problem at all, on the 4th, the aileron compensation was wrong. No tuning what so ever in the meantime, only swapped batteries.

Thanks Man! Good intel, Is this "fe-nom" only with Jeti gear or is it receiver agnostic?

[thisguy65]

so are we in agreeance to push the cg back to 93-95mm?