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Where to start with this one….
I recently acquired a 51″ 3DHS AJ Slick. This marks the first balsa model I’ve had since returning to the hobby, and the largest of my present fixed wing fleet if only by a few inches.
This is an ARF kit, which went together very easily. The build took roughly two evenings including wiring / electronics set-up.
My hope with setting up this plane, was that it would fit two purposes, and do them well…
Purpose 1 – Fly stable enough to continue progressing, and more importantly, enjoying flying F3A Pattern maneuvers.
Purpose 2 – Be generally capable of 3D flight, my skills aren’t there yet, but I’d like a plane that’ll be there for me as I grow.
Maiden was completely uneventful, a little trim was needed, but it felt great and quickly inspired confidence.
No bad tendencies on take-off, in the air, or during landing.
More information to come regarding set-up in a later post…. 🙂
51″ AJ Slick
Very solid plane. Thanks for letting me give it a whirl. I may revisit my old AJ yet.
Of course, and thanks for the sanity checks verifying set-up and bumping the trim for the maiden.
I have very little doubt there will be another in the air with similar set-up before long…
Indeed, I’m quite impressed so far. This set-up should see a lot of airtime this summer.
I also didn’t fully realize how nice it would be having a balsa airframe again, its been a long time.
Just under 20 flights on the airframe now, and I just can’t say enough about it.
Lets talk for a moment about gyros… In the rotary wing circles, we live and die by the gyro / fbl controller, however in fixed wing this is often a topic for heated debate.
This particular airframe is set-up with a Cortex gyro system, and I must say, it is absolutely outstanding and unlike any of the other fixed wing gyro systems I’ve had experience with.
On the maiden flight, take-off and initial circuits / trimming was performed with the gyro off. The airframe flew great. Flipped the switch to enable the cortex and any wind interference was all but removed, it immediately tracked as if on rails in straight / level flight. Noticeable immediately by feel and visually. That’s a good start, but what would it feel like…
Unlike some others, the Cortex just does its job without “feeling” like its there. There are absolutely no bad tendencies, or any feeling of it working against you in any way. The plane simply feels larger than it is. Much larger…
It does an incredible job of correcting the for the things you can’t experience being outside of the plane. To plagiarize Whitt’s words, it is the “meat in the seat”.
Make no mistake, it does not fly the plane for you, it does not have any form of “bailout” or return to level flight type logic, it just does precisely what I’d have hoped, makes the airframe feel larger and much more wind tolerant…
It’d be hard to stay in the anti-gyro camp after flying this.
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