Official Freewing 80mm EDF F-86 Sabre Thread

[Beeg]

First of all Welcome to the forum bluewaterjoe!

I'm not really good at evaluating what some folks are capable of handling but my opinion of the Freewing 80mm F-86 is that it is very well mannered and easy to land. It's not particularly fast for an EDF but if you have experience with moderately fast RC aircraft you should have no trouble with this model. My FW F-86 is the most tame EDF I own so I can't compare it to others that may be a better choice. But, if you want an F-86 for the cool factor this one would be a good choice as a starter.

[Lon]

Hi Joe,
I'm thinking that my first question/concern would be what is your flying field runway like? Reason is, to have early success with the F-86 80mm. A LONG runway is so much better to get the feel for landing,. Taking off, you only need a 100' of hard surface with flaps. Grass, i have not attempted to take off on it. Landing, you have to really do everything just right to only use up 100', and most the time you would roll off the end of a 100' hard surface runwaye (unless you have a nice 5-10mph head wind to land with flaps). No problem if there is nice grass at the end :) Once in the air, the plane really handles solid and predictable, even in windy conditions. But from what you have been flying, there will be a cruising rate of speed you will have to adjust to. The F-86 80mm is not a speed demon for sure, but will be an exciting change I believe, from what you are use to. The landings could be the biggest adjustment for you at first. When you have the CG correct, your first landings/approaches, this plane will seem to go, and go, not wanting to touchdown, that's why I think it's important to have lots of runway at first.

[bluewaterjoe]

Hey guys... need your opinions..

I'm jonesin for this F-86 but am wondering if it's out of my league. I've been flying warbirds for about a year and a half. specifically:
Parkzone Corsair
Eflight P-47 Thunderbolt
ares P-51 (around 800mm)
FMS 800mm BF109
Also a bunch of UMX planes (Eflite corsair, mig 15, eflite P-47, eflite PT-17)

I am comfortable flying the Parkzone corsair and P-47 thunderbolt inverted, do barrel rolls, etc..

The only plane I fly that has been flagged as "advanced" by motion RC is the BF109. I can fly that okay if I don't try anything fancy like inverted or barrel rolls. This one
taught me about wing tip stalls :( and I crashed it several times in the beginning.

Do you think the F-86 is within reach for my progression? It looks awesome and I wanna hear that woooshhh!! I'm leaning towards rolling the dice and trying :)

Thanks! Joe

[T-CAT]

Not a problem at all! It's a strange fitment initially when testing. Ha-ha

[Lon]

T-CAT, thanks. What you stated is what i was planning on doing. But I had to ask, scratching my head that i may have been missing something.

[T-CAT]

It's the same size EDF as the stock EDF, but the motor length doesn't make it any easier fitting the whole unit in the jet to seat well in the slot where the inlet lit lays flush in the provided slot. I just gradually pressed mine back and down rotating it slightly while doing that. It may disfigure some of the foam on the wall as you lead the EDF into the slot, but that's okay. That can always been fixed by slicing a tad out with a hobby knife and filling in with light weight speckle, or just leave it as is. Chances are you won't notice it a bit ;).

[Lon]

Shout out to anyone who has upgraded to the EDF inrunner unit. Did you find you had to do some trimming of foam to get the fan in?? I can't see how this can be avoided on mine to get it set in. Check out the picture and you can see i'm about a half inch short of the slotted area for the fan to fit in.

[AkumaZeto]

Yeah the CG is a crucial factor. Bing able to hold it on its mains is fairly easy when the CG is right

[DCORSAIR]

Will they ever come out with an updated version of this bird with beefier landing gear ?

You just have to grease it in and the cg plays a big part of that. Mine are the original retracts with lots and lots of flights, only thing I had to do was replace the circuit board in one retract, micro switch broke and let the stop on the worm gear go past its limit.

[weedsnager]

Will they ever come out with an updated version of this bird with beefier landing gear ?

[Alpha10]

It's such a great plane... Almost a 6s entry level plane IMHO, but the size really should've warranted us a 90mm. That would've been awesome!

I had to run a hot and lightweight setup to get it to 119mph, but she's there so I can't complain too much. : )

Just be careful taxiing in a strong crosswind.. It'll get under the wing and flip it over pretty quickly. Just ask my scuffed canopies haha!

[DCORSAIR]

I really enjoy my F-86 as well, and it was free. One of the guys I used to fly with crashed it into a fence and broke it in half so he gave it to me for free, the crash also took a chunk of foam out of the wing, nothing else was to bad so I got out my old rebuilding skills and went to work on it, if you look at the wing, almost at the tip you can see the balsa I glued into the chunk of foam missing, sanded it and used permanent marker to stripe it, turned out great, it has so many flights on it I lost count. By far one of the best 80mm EDF jets.

[gooniac33]

The F-86 is still the fave of my group of fliers!!

[dkalwishky]

I would also appreciate any feedback you may care to provide on the document itself.

First impressions after a quick look is WOW, nice job!

[Lon]

Bradm, very good document for those upgrades!!

[Bradm5312]

Install Inrunner EDF and Brakes

I upgraded my F-86 by installing the inrunner EDF and electric brakes. The attached document shows the details of the components and steps I used. I hope this will be helpful for anyone else considering these upgrades.

I would also appreciate any feedback you may care to provide on the document itself. I’ve received a lot of help from other hobbyists over the years and would like to give back to the RC community. In general, would you find documents like this helpful? Is there too much detail or not enough? What kind of topics would you like to see addressed? If you care to provide feedback to help me better serve the RC community, please PM me or send email to yourrcompanion@indy.rr.com.

Brad

[urrl]

Morning flights

[urrl]

A recent flight

[xplaneguy]

WOW!!! I really like this scheme! Now if we could get freewing to make an F-105 THUD in the same paint scheme!!!!

Thanks Ray, much appreciated. :)

[gooniac33]

Thanks fellow RCers for the reply. Will look at other jets for hand launching!

The smaller Freewing 64mm F-86 is meant for hand launching. that one is perfect!!