I finally got out to fly this little Beast on Sunday. I ordered three
Mad Dog 200 mAh 7.4V 20C Micro Batteries. This little bird is actually really fun to fly. I ran two batteries about 7 minutes each, so I'll charge to see how much is left.
On mine, the balance was way nose heavy, and I had to mount the batteries on a balsa stick with Velcro so I could push it back into the fuse about an inch in to get the CG on spot.
Flight is pretty interesting. It was pretty breezy, and you can hear the ASP corrections jittering away keeping the wings level as it flies by your head. I definitely feel the corrective control hindering acrobatics. If you snap hard, it goes over pretty nice. But, if you do a slow snap, it stalls on the roll and flops over in a roll-out, even at speed. It's pretty strange. I think it's making a rudder correction because the snap I was doing was all right-stick action.
Of course, I'm no 3D master, so I didn't get a real feel for that aspect, but hovering seemed to be pretty stable until it rolled off to one side from the wind. The airplane seems to nose high in a pre-stall state unless it's flying wide open. Is that what others see? I know it's balanced to the specification. It was too gusty to fly the inverted 45º upline to see if it would fall or rise. It slow-flies pretty nice, almost a little mini-harrier and a tail wheel landing. I landed it 5-6 times without incident, easier than I expected with wind and such a twitchy little airplane.
I had fun with it, so it's a good toy in my book. It was a gift, so I can't complain. Not sure I would buy one now that I've flown it. Maybe on a wind-free day it will be much better.
New Eflite Beast
Linear Mode
