04-21-2010, 06:30 AM
Just flew a new plane tonight, the FPV has been a great excuse for me to buy and test cheap Chinese foam airplanes.
I ordered 2 Skyfun aircraft from Hobbyking and they arrived about 1.5-2 weeks after the ordered cleared.
The Skyfun is a flying wing, which is a rip-off (theft of concept) from a few other designs, this is pretty common with Chinese aircraft
I bought the models for US $63.29 each.
The skyfun includes 2 servos, 1 1900kV brushless outrunner motor and an 18 amp speed controller. I was expecting it to be an unflyable, underpowered, piece of garbage. (If you set expectations low, you will never be disappointed, especially on cheap stuff)
Overview
The aircraft is not too terrible, it has a very smooth finish. In fact it is shiny aside from the injection points for the foam which are the normal injection marks.
The aircraft assembled VERY quickly. There are 2 wingtips which need to be installed and two vertical stabilizers. I used a fair amount of foam safe spread across the mating surfaces evenly instead of epoxy. Of course when gluing any surface, clean it well. I used 91% rubbing alcohol (also known as isopropyl, normal store stuff) to scrub the surfaces, then dried with a clean towel, then let air dry for a bit. (epoxy is included and may be better, but I used the foam safe CA)
Setup
I used an 1800mAh Li-Poly battery for this. Specifically a Turnigy 3s 11.1v 40-50C pack. (They're rated at 5c charge now!?)
For the receiver I installed an 8 channel Airtronics 2.4Ghz receiver. The Atx is no good for FPV, but it's fine for test/fun flights!
A simple re-configuration of the radio to delta and the setting of 35% exponential and I was finished building Monday night in about 1 hour for 1 plane.
Flight
My friend was busy working so I had to hand launch myself. It took a few tries to get it in the air, but I'm sure someone with experience would have no problem.
Although the motor seems very small, the plane has quite enough power to get up to a good cruising speed once in the air. While it is certainly not going to do unlimited verticals, etc. it flies pretty damn well in basic flight. The plane rolls like crazy and it loops fairly well. The loops could be tighter and rolls faster by setting greater control throw distance.
FPV Considerations
This plane has a large space under the canopy for avionics and OSDs and other things inside of it. The one thing I notice about the Chinese planes is that because they use a minimal amount of material to be cost efficient, there is a TON of space available inside of them. Sure the plane may not be as durable as another similar one, but we build planes to fly, not to crash!
The Plane is quite nose-heavy, to add FPV equipment into it would mean finding a way to mount much of the weight towards the rear. With just the receiver and the 1800mAh battery I still had to add $0.50 worth of coins to the back of the plane to balance. My planes are becomming my retirement account with how much money I have glued and taped onto them!
This is certainly a craft I want to do FPV on. I just don't know if people move their systems around often, or if they buy multiple systems?
Here are a couple of pictures (once the camera battery is charged):
[attachment=511]
[attachment=512]
I ordered 2 Skyfun aircraft from Hobbyking and they arrived about 1.5-2 weeks after the ordered cleared.
The Skyfun is a flying wing, which is a rip-off (theft of concept) from a few other designs, this is pretty common with Chinese aircraft
I bought the models for US $63.29 each.
The skyfun includes 2 servos, 1 1900kV brushless outrunner motor and an 18 amp speed controller. I was expecting it to be an unflyable, underpowered, piece of garbage. (If you set expectations low, you will never be disappointed, especially on cheap stuff)
Overview
The aircraft is not too terrible, it has a very smooth finish. In fact it is shiny aside from the injection points for the foam which are the normal injection marks.
The aircraft assembled VERY quickly. There are 2 wingtips which need to be installed and two vertical stabilizers. I used a fair amount of foam safe spread across the mating surfaces evenly instead of epoxy. Of course when gluing any surface, clean it well. I used 91% rubbing alcohol (also known as isopropyl, normal store stuff) to scrub the surfaces, then dried with a clean towel, then let air dry for a bit. (epoxy is included and may be better, but I used the foam safe CA)
Setup
I used an 1800mAh Li-Poly battery for this. Specifically a Turnigy 3s 11.1v 40-50C pack. (They're rated at 5c charge now!?)
For the receiver I installed an 8 channel Airtronics 2.4Ghz receiver. The Atx is no good for FPV, but it's fine for test/fun flights!
A simple re-configuration of the radio to delta and the setting of 35% exponential and I was finished building Monday night in about 1 hour for 1 plane.
Flight
My friend was busy working so I had to hand launch myself. It took a few tries to get it in the air, but I'm sure someone with experience would have no problem.
Although the motor seems very small, the plane has quite enough power to get up to a good cruising speed once in the air. While it is certainly not going to do unlimited verticals, etc. it flies pretty damn well in basic flight. The plane rolls like crazy and it loops fairly well. The loops could be tighter and rolls faster by setting greater control throw distance.
FPV Considerations
This plane has a large space under the canopy for avionics and OSDs and other things inside of it. The one thing I notice about the Chinese planes is that because they use a minimal amount of material to be cost efficient, there is a TON of space available inside of them. Sure the plane may not be as durable as another similar one, but we build planes to fly, not to crash!
The Plane is quite nose-heavy, to add FPV equipment into it would mean finding a way to mount much of the weight towards the rear. With just the receiver and the 1800mAh battery I still had to add $0.50 worth of coins to the back of the plane to balance. My planes are becomming my retirement account with how much money I have glued and taped onto them!
This is certainly a craft I want to do FPV on. I just don't know if people move their systems around often, or if they buy multiple systems?
Here are a couple of pictures (once the camera battery is charged):
[attachment=511]
[attachment=512]
