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

[Hugh Wiedman]

Aros, Todd, got out today with a few aircraft including the F18 getting 6 flights on it. Wanted to confirm the potential BS I posted above about the Spektrum gyro RX upgraded to plus being the ultimate game changer for the F18. Turns out after tweaking and zeroing in the RX gains it's all 100% true. And it's spectacular! You may not believe it, and I almost can't, but now the F18 is my absolute best flying/landing military jet, along with the TV installed Mig. The F18 flies better and lands easier than even the 90mm F16!

Took some harrowing flights to get there, but I've reached Nirvana. Performs like God intended it to when He designed it! All 6 flights, in 10mph winds changing directions, were absolutely perfect. Smooth takeoffs, rock solid with aggressive flying and the best butter landings I've seen. Can hardly believe I was even at the controls.

If I remember, you fly Futaba, so basically you're outta luck with the F18. I've only got about 60 flights on my 2 F18's, and each of those had their "oh no" moments. If I got home with little or just minor damage, I considered it a Super Bowl win. No longer. Turns out the F18, and only the F18, had weird issues with rudder gains. But when you get it right, Whooo Hooo! I'm using 40/45/12 normal flight gains now (R/P/Y). Others easily handled Yaw gains up to 50-60. On take offs, using 45/50/15 & landing gains 55/60/18.

Additionally, learned a technique from some "Pro" RC pilots relative to throttle on landing. First, after plugging in the battery, I trim the throttle up to about 60/70 so the fan never shuts down even at 0 throttle. Then, put a simple and seemingly innocuous mix in of when you drop throttle to 0, a 5-8 click of down elevator comes in. Results, with the plus upgrade, is virtually consistent absolute perfect butter landings.

So my F18's are going to be quite busy from now on. Maverick, move over!

[Hugh Wiedman]

Elbee
Steve, I'm no real promoter for HH, prefer Motion hands down, but the Spektrum IX 14 is an outstanding TX. Most of my buddies use the $2,000 IX 20, but now with Spectrums simple download upgrade, the IX 14 also has 20 channels, and costs less than half that of the IX20. And with the new Plus on their 6/8/10 channel gyro RX's, it's hard to beat.

You may wonder why we would need 20 channels (I certainly did). On my Mig 29 with TV nozzles, I'm using 10 separate servo connections and another 6 internal channels tied to switches, for all the surfaces, separate nose wheel with their own gyro, the TV nozzles and their own gyro, tailerons, and a bunch of other things. Using 3 separate sets of gyros. Everything is essentially pre-set with a lot of mixes so it still seems to fly as if you have the standard 6 controls.

And as I said earlier, the plus RX's are unbeatable. I'm even using 10 channels on my Corsair.

The "Big Boys" with their $20-$30,000 turbines all use Jeti Tx's (the cream of the crop) and Cortex RX"s/gyros, but then a Bentley is cheaper. For my money (which is very minimal) an IX 14 and their gyro RX's are more than sufficient. And on all my jets, I also install their twin antennae sattelite RX. You asked a question earlier about antenna placement. The reception zone around the active end is like if you stuck it in the center of a donut, with the donut being the reception area. Therefore, you need to place one antenna's active end flat, pointing forward or backward (makes no difference) and one verticle Up or down). Ideally, a 3rd would be placed lining up port to starboard. Then you have all 3 axis covered. My set up has a 4th antenna, so I place that on a diagonal. Since doing this, all my aircraft have outstanding signal reception and not only do I get no "holds", I now also have no frame losses. 50 to 100 frame losses in a 5 minute flight used to be acceptable, but I have 0.

My 2 cents.

[Elbee]

Hugh Wiedman

I've not flown anything but Futaba, ever, but I'm needing more than Futaba is providing at less than $1699.99.

I am too poor to buy cheap, if you follow my meaning.

So I am looking for best bang for the buck for the 6-10 times I fly annually. (Kinda sad, huh....I know, right?)

I will look into what you fly, I am diggin' the features you rave about of late.

Thanks, Steve

[Hugh Wiedman]

Hugh Wiedman,

Which make and model of transmitter do you fly?

Best, Steve

Steve, I'm using a Spektrum IX14 upgraded to 20 channels. In all my jets (and prop planes), I'm using the Spektrum AR637T/AR8360T/AR10360T RX's all upgraded to "Plus" (which brings a nose wheel gyro with it) along with a 2nd remote satellite in everything except a few prop planes. Excellent signal strength and the programming options are outstanding. The previous gyro RX's were nice, but upgrading them to their new "Plus" programming has made a huge difference. All their AS3X are now plus programmed.

The AS3X gains can easily be programmed on the TX, with even several different sets of gains for control surfaces, for the nose wheel on takeoff, and a seperate set of gains for something like TV nozzles. Gains can be increased/decreased in flight and programmable call outs of the current flight pack voltage is standard so I don't have to rely solely on a timer and can land when I really need to. You can type in any call outs you want and I've found a way to call out certain throttle % so I can be consistent in my landing approach speed. For someone like me that's not exactly high tech, these features take a lot of the stress out of flying so I can concentrate on just crashing at landing! Now if they just incorporate an autopilot for landing I'd be ecstatic.

[Aros]

I'm with you, but still have/fly 2 of them, both with hitec servos and the big 12 blade 6S fans. They were always twitchy but fun to fly (if you like always being on edge), but when I upgraded my AS3X Rx's to "Plus", everything changed. It now flies rock solid and is simple to land. The "excitement " is gone, but it's now a blast to fly. Plus has completely changed all my aircraft into something special. I still can't believe how effective it is.

As I posted earlier, the F18 (and no others) had one thing different, and that is the YAW gains need to be minimal, otherwise the rudder will "fight" an aileron turn, and you don't want to know what it does. Took a while to figure it out. Usually YAW gains could be high 60/70 or even 80% with no bad issues. With the F18, yaw needs to be no higher than say 20%. Jon (2 Bro) helped me confirm this.

So if you want a sweet flying/landing FW 90mm F18, get the Spektrum 8 channel AS3X + and I'll give you a starting point for gains.

THANK YOU brother Hugh Wiedman !! I will absolutely grab some of those RX's and maybe give her another try! Lucky number 8? LOL

[Elbee]

Hugh Wiedman,

Which make and model of transmitter do you fly?

Best, Steve

[Hugh Wiedman]

Bro, this model breaks my heart. This is my bar-none favorite full scale jet with Blue Angel livery. Thunderbirds are cool, of course F-16s are bad ass but for my money it's the sexy F-18s in Blue and Yellow. This is why I HATE that I can't seem to tame this model. I've had, what, like 6 of them? Each one ended in disaster either from no fault of my own (original bad servos) or just Dumb Thumbs where it always felt wonky and heavy.

Yoda, I call out to you. What is the magic secret here? I've flown TONS of EDFs over the years but this model gives me nothing but headaches. I want this in my hangar but am tired of fighting the sticks every single time. Thoughts?

I'm with you, but still have/fly 2 of them, both with hitec servos and the big 12 blade 6S fans. They were always twitchy but fun to fly (if you like always being on edge), but when I upgraded my AS3X Rx's to "Plus", everything changed. It now flies rock solid and is simple to land. The "excitement " is gone, but it's now a blast to fly. Plus has completely changed all my aircraft into something special. I still can't believe how effective it is.

As I posted earlier, the F18 (and no others) had one thing different, and that is the YAW gains need to be minimal, otherwise the rudder will "fight" an aileron turn, and you don't want to know what it does. Took a while to figure it out. Usually YAW gains could be high 60/70 or even 80% with no bad issues. With the F18, yaw needs to be no higher than say 20%. Jon (2 Bro) helped me confirm this.

So if you want a sweet flying/landing FW 90mm F18, get the Spektrum 8 channel AS3X + and I'll give you a starting point for gains.

[DCORSAIR]

Bro, this model breaks my heart. This is my bar-none favorite full scale jet with Blue Angel livery. Thunderbirds are cool, of course F-16s are bad ass but for my money it's the sexy F-18s in Blue and Yellow. This is why I HATE that I can't seem to tame this model. I've had, what, like 6 of them? Each one ended in disaster either from no fault of my own (original bad servos) or just Dumb Thumbs where it always felt wonky and heavy.

Yoda, I call out to you. What is the magic secret here? I've flown TONS of EDFs over the years but this model gives me nothing but headaches. I want this in my hangar but am tired of fighting the sticks every single time. Thoughts?

I'm with you on this one Aros, I hate the thing, had two of them and both flew goofy, but my buddy has one and he loves it and his flies great he says, so I just don't understand it and don't want another one that's for sure mainly because of that ugly main gear, if they only would have got that right or close to scale I may have bought another one.

[Evan D]

I have one of the very early ones, set up with a 8S JF. Flies awesome, love it, easily a couple 100 flights.

Built one recently for a friend and did the first flights, flew horrible. Not sure why and he hasn't investigated it.

[Elbee]

Aros.

IMHO, I sum it up in a nutshell...wing-loading.

I had thought this particular model could benefit from slightly open LE slats (scaled to the actual) but fixed maybe.

An increased lift airfoil with a cheat of up to 2" in overall wingspan.

Scale guys might flinch a bit but I think it would greatly help in flight performance.

My $00.02 USD.

Best, LB

[Aros]

Bro, this model breaks my heart. This is my bar-none favorite full scale jet with Blue Angel livery. Thunderbirds are cool, of course F-16s are bad ass but for my money it's the sexy F-18s in Blue and Yellow. This is why I HATE that I can't seem to tame this model. I've had, what, like 6 of them? Each one ended in disaster either from no fault of my own (original bad servos) or just Dumb Thumbs where it always felt wonky and heavy.

Yoda, I call out to you. What is the magic secret here? I've flown TONS of EDFs over the years but this model gives me nothing but headaches. I want this in my hangar but am tired of fighting the sticks every single time. Thoughts?

[Hugh Wiedman]

Not a lot of action on this thread lately.

Some thoughts/recommendations for anyone updating their Spektrum AS3X to Plus:

1) Definitely worth it for all aircraft, especially the 90mm F18. Turns a somewhat finicky/wonky bird into THE most stable EDF I've encountered and makes landing a complete no stress perfect landing bird. However, there are a couple things I found, only with my F18 (and I have 2), that was unusual compared to my twin tail other aircraft (Mig/Su-27,F22, B24, A-10,etc.). On all others, I use relatively high YAW gains (50/60/70) with no issues. On the F18, I found that the more active corrections of the rudder on "Plus" with 2 tail rudders ends up actually "fighting" the other surfaces when doing a bank and yank, or even a normal bank turn. The rudders try correcting, putting them in the opposite direction of your turn, resulting in it climbing and fighting the turn. Increased Priority and decreased expo won't solve that unless you give input to the rudder. Of course if I also use rudder in the turn, it would alleviate the problem but don't use much rudder except on the B24 and A10 (and my 3D planes) in turns. Finally had to reduce the YAW gains to like 15% from 60%. Problem solved and left the roll and pitch gains fairly high. Now it's a sweet bird to fly/land. What's strange is that with my Mig, SU-27, etc., I have high yaw gains with Plus and it does not affect my banked turns. I usually have weird gremlins that only affect me, so this may be another one of those.

2) If you use the Plus nose wheel gyro (which is outstanding), HH recommends some "heading" gain, equal to the rate gains. I know Jon with 2 Brothers says don't use it, although my programming expert flying buddy does use it on all his aircraft with no issues and perfectly tracking take offs. My concern is that if you extend gear on say the downwind leg before landing, then turn to line up the runway (without using any rudder input), the nose gear is fully turned to the right after the turn (on a counter clockwise flying circuit), so when you touch down, bad things may happen. Removed the heading gain, just used rate gain (of about 35%) and I felt the tracking on take off was fine and no worries on landing. Now my buddy is accomplished enough to use rudder on lining up the runway, so even with his heading gains, he has no issues. I gotta get more expertise to be there as well.

[Airguardian]

[Elbee]

https://www.printables.com/model/958206-freewing-fa-18c-90mm-edf-vents-louvres-and-antenna

Hornet Honchos.

I know I am a bit tardy with these files.

I've posted the 3DP files for all the fuselage vents, louvres, and antennae I added to my Legacy "BUG" on Prusa Printables.

As usual these are downloadable for free. WooHoo!!

Some of these parts require some 'foam surgery' which violates any warranty real or imagined, but nothing new about that.

Any issues, let me know.

Best, LB

[Hugh Wiedman]

All looking for some help. IF you had it to do again which motor and speed control? My wife bought me this plane but got the one missing the EDJ and Speed control. I went to purchase the one they are installing in the PNP but it's out of stock. Any ideas? I want to keep it on 6 cell but want as much power as possible.

Thanks,

Brian
'

Also agree with Evan! Have 2 of these Hornets both with the big 12 blade. Plenty of power. And I fly off grass which requires a little more thrust. Went to 8S on F4 and F16 but this F18 doesn't really need it. Suggest you power it with a SMC 6S HiV 5900, gets over 4 minutes. Also balance it further back than manual, which I think was at 88mm. Start at 98-100mm. Lands better when not nose heavy. I've even gone to 110mm to 115mm when feeling frisky, very responsive but can get you in trouble if you're not on top of it.

[Elbee]

All looking for some help. IF you had it to do again which motor and speed control? My wife bought me this plane but got the one missing the EDJ and Speed control. I went to purchase the one they are installing in the PNP but it's out of stock. Any ideas? I want to keep it on 6 cell but want as much power as possible.

Thanks,

Brian
'

Hey Brian,

Welcome to Hobby Squawk.

Glad to have you onboard, Sir.

Great gift and her heart was in the right place.

Can't go wrong with Evan D 's advice.

Best, LB

[Evan D]

Money is power… a JetFan/HET would be best but expensive. FreeWing has a good fan too but my recommendation would be this, fairly cheap, good power and light weight. Also get the 120A reversing ESC.

https://www.motionrc.com/products/freewing-90mm-12-blade-edf-6s-power-system-w-3668-1960kv-inrunner-motor-e72216

https://www.motionrc.com/products/freewing-120a-esc-with-8a-bec-with-reverse-thrust-function-070d002010

[66Stang]

All looking for some help. IF you had it to do again which motor and speed control? My wife bought me this plane but got the one missing the EDJ and Speed control. I went to purchase the one they are installing in the PNP but it's out of stock. Any ideas? I want to keep it on 6 cell but want as much power as possible.

Thanks,

Brian
'

[Elbee]

Rich049, Welcome to Hobby Squawk. Glad to have you onboard, Sir.

I just measured my Hornet and it is just at or <12 inches top of the vertical stab to the bottom of the fuselage with the MG retracted.

I transport my Hornet with both wings on in the back of a pickup.

I store mine with one wing off and that side against the wall on a rack.

I hope this helps, you;re going to love this fast mover.

Keep the speed up with full flaps on landing, though, just sayin' as she has high wing loading and a thin rib profile.

Best, LB

[Rich049]

Please tell me the height of the plane with retracts retracted as the rear shelf is low, about 17 inches clearance. Also, how do you guys transport this jet,... wings on or off? My hatchback is only 36 inches wide. Do you routinely remove both or just one wing? Thanks you in advance. This would be my first large edf.