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20" wingspan, 30" length, 9.5 oz rtf. This was requested by a customer who sent me some drawings, took a small amount of tweaking but flies great.
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F-22 Raptor R/C rocket glider
- Thread starter burkefj
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timb
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Was finally able to fly the Dynasoar F22 late last month. I bought and built the thing ‘way back in August. Sorry no vid, but here’s a couple of pics of it in the white - I’ll paint it now that it’s flown a couple times. Planning on the Alaska (AK) livery - Sticker Shock vinyl on the way.
Construction is pretty simple; I deviated from the instructions a little - dry assembled the fins/side panels and figured out where the servos would be placed, then disassembled and made the cut-outs. Also, having located the servos I was also able to easily slot the airframe in the correct spot for the wire. And it’s easier to work on the thing upside down if the fins/rudder are not in the way. I thought I had the control surfaces square and even but I must have been just a little off somewhere. I made my own custom servo extensions and placed the dry-cell and receiver far forward in the nose cone so no ballast was required - in fact it may be a tad nose heavy. I did have some minor trim issues which nearly caused me to crash it first time out. It tips the scale at 6.5oz dry and just shy of 7.75oz ready to go (E6 & 500mah cell).
Taking a page out of Mr. Gassaway’s playbook the first motor I burned was a D7. More or less the same thrust profile as the E6 but without the few seconds or so of sustainer so if things go really wrong you aren’t dealing with the extended burn. As it happens that’s good advice! The first flight went a little wonky in that it needed a click or two of down and four or five clicks left. It rolled pretty fast on boost which caused a little disorientation on my part - in my defense it’s the first time I’ve flown a rocket glider on RC. I did manage to pull it out just in time, but that first landing was pretty hard and no where near the desired recovery area. No appreciable damage - to the model that is, my pride took a bit of a beating though.
The second and third flights were much improved if a bit short on glide; it’s a hair nose heavy so it flies fast. The third flight was actually pretty tame and my nerves had come back to normal. So I’ll paint it now and graduate to E6’s. I also have Moch 10 all set to build.
Thanks for the kits Frank! It’s a pleasure doing business with you. I would have bought some at the NSL but space is at a premium when traveling with teenagers.
Construction is pretty simple; I deviated from the instructions a little - dry assembled the fins/side panels and figured out where the servos would be placed, then disassembled and made the cut-outs. Also, having located the servos I was also able to easily slot the airframe in the correct spot for the wire. And it’s easier to work on the thing upside down if the fins/rudder are not in the way. I thought I had the control surfaces square and even but I must have been just a little off somewhere. I made my own custom servo extensions and placed the dry-cell and receiver far forward in the nose cone so no ballast was required - in fact it may be a tad nose heavy. I did have some minor trim issues which nearly caused me to crash it first time out. It tips the scale at 6.5oz dry and just shy of 7.75oz ready to go (E6 & 500mah cell).
Taking a page out of Mr. Gassaway’s playbook the first motor I burned was a D7. More or less the same thrust profile as the E6 but without the few seconds or so of sustainer so if things go really wrong you aren’t dealing with the extended burn. As it happens that’s good advice! The first flight went a little wonky in that it needed a click or two of down and four or five clicks left. It rolled pretty fast on boost which caused a little disorientation on my part - in my defense it’s the first time I’ve flown a rocket glider on RC. I did manage to pull it out just in time, but that first landing was pretty hard and no where near the desired recovery area. No appreciable damage - to the model that is, my pride took a bit of a beating though.
The second and third flights were much improved if a bit short on glide; it’s a hair nose heavy so it flies fast. The third flight was actually pretty tame and my nerves had come back to normal. So I’ll paint it now and graduate to E6’s. I also have Moch 10 all set to build.
Thanks for the kits Frank! It’s a pleasure doing business with you. I would have bought some at the NSL but space is at a premium when traveling with teenagers.
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Cool, as I noted in the instructions My model needed about 1/8″ of downtrim for straight boost. Ymmv. Regarding the fast glide once you try it with a little less nose weight try putting in more uptrim until it seems like it's going to stall and then back off a little bit I think most people tend to fly my models without enough up trim and they seem like they're gliding a lot faster than they need to. Even for me first flights are always nerve-wracking.
