FMS F-16C 70mm EDF

[ndrew3]

Saw a thread about this plane on RCGroups, but nothing on here, so figured I may start one up.

I just won this plane at a raffle over the weekend with my local club. Looks like an awesome jet (love the retracts), but probably somewhat sensitive when it comes to CG. Seems like keeping the battery size pretty low/light (I plan to use 6S 3300s) and maybe a bit aft of the recommended CG is the way to go. Also interested if anyone has setup flaperons and if they're necessary.

Anyone have experience with this jet?

[Alpha]

Congrats on your raffle win!

FMS' 70mm F-16 doesn't need flaperons. Their stock recommended setup flies the bird really well and is what I'd suggest starting out with. You can always experiment with other configurations later.

What is your EDF experience? F-16s in general are easy to fly when balanced correctly. I prefer slightly tail heavy for more maneuverability, but they do well on stock CG or slightly forward, if you're worried about being *too* sensitive. FMS' bird as you see here does not use full flying horizontal stabilizers, so don't worry too much about overcontrolling. The most finicky things to watch out for tend to revolve around the narrow landing gear and smaller wheels.

Enjoy!

[ndrew3]

Congrats on your raffle win!

FMS' 70mm F-16 doesn't need flaperons. Their stock recommended setup flies the bird really well and is what I'd suggest starting out with. You can always experiment with other configurations later.

What is your EDF experience? F-16s in general are easy to fly when balanced correctly. I prefer slightly tail heavy for more maneuverability, but they do well on stock CG or slightly forward, if you're worried about being *too* sensitive. FMS' bird as you see here does not use full flying horizontal stabilizers, so don't worry too much about overcontrolling. The most finicky things to watch out for tend to revolve around the narrow landing gear and smaller wheels.

Enjoy!

I have a pretty good amount of EDF experience at this point. I made the mistake early of getting a Yak-130 and crashing it way before I was ready about a year ago, but at this point I've worked my way up through 64mm f15, 70mm BAE Hawk, and finally my twin 70mm Freewing AL37 so this should make an awesome addition as it's a much more scale military jet.

Appreciate the info, cool to get a reply from the man himself! Will for sure need to post up my maiden whenever I'm able to get around to it in the next couple weeks.

[JeremySean]

Here's my FMS F-16 70mm Big fan! Just painted it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhmRBu75A-I

Here's a flight

[JeremySean]

https://youtu.be/a4WVCxOGLmI

[ndrew3]

Finally got a chance to maiden mine a few days ago. Love the way it flies, feels like it has a ton of weight/scale-flying characteristics to it even though it's a pretty light plane. The landing gear is incredible too! Was super tail-heavy on my maiden with a 3300 though. Here's some video of my maidens:

[Evan D]

Where did you set the balance at?

[kallend]

People describe two different characteristics as “tail heavy”:

1. Plane wants to climb and needs lots of down trim. This is really a trim issue.

2. plane shows pitch instability. This is generally a CG issue.

[ndrew3]

Where did you set the balance at?

On the first flight, balance point was right at the tail end of the limit described in the manual (~105 mm from front of wing chord). Still felt a bit on the back foot though, much better for the 2nd flight.

People describe two different characteristics as “tail heavy”:

1. Plane wants to climb and needs lots of down trim. This is really a trim issue.

2. plane shows pitch instability. This is generally a CG issue.

A little bit of both for the first flight, definitely needed some down trim. Going anywhere above half throttle caused a lot of pitch-up moment. In general though even with a far-back CG it felt relatively stable (and landing was very easy)