Yes George it certainly does. It is fairly heavy and I think would be a lot of work to keep up in anything less than 20 kph winds. Good luck with your maiden. Cheers Michael
Almost makes me jealous, love watching Andrews videos. But I think I will stick to QLD weather, much warmer, and besides I love flying around the islands up here with a tail mounted camera... Great flying till the oops moment but we all have them🥺...sadly😅 Keep these videos coming!😁
Odd that it broke like that. Mine has seen worse. When I make my approaches while soaring with the Excalibur I like to put it well behind the slope and give it just a touch of throttle to bring it slowly to me. Most of the time I just catch it by the wing.
Yucannt Hahvitt yes I was very surprised to see the results. I had noticed some creases near the break in the earlier video, so I'm not sure if there was some weakening there. All good now it is repaired. Flies as good as new. Although I perfer my 1600 Phoenix for the slope in most conditions. Change Michael
Hi Michael, looks like you were really enjoying yourself before the crash. Was wondering if you needed to add any weights in the excalibur to fly it in these sort of winds. Do you know what the name of Andrews' plane is? Was contemplating giving slope soaring a try, looks like a blast on an otherwise too windy day for my other foamies.
G'day, I was certainly having a great time, until..... but hey you get that sometimes. No need for weight in the Excalibur, she is already a fairly heavy plane with the 4S 2200mah in front. And in fact I have had trouble keeping her up on this slope since if the wind is less than 20kph. Andrew is flying a very modified X-uav One. He was sent it for review, but in standard form it was terrible. He did try a few motor configurations, but removed it completely and ended up with an excellent slope plane. As for slope soaring, I'd highly recommend it. As you say great for when it is otherwise too windy for flying. I'll add too, that the Phoenix 1600 by Lanyu/Volantex is a great plane to learn slope soaring with. Anything above 15kph wind and you'll be having a great time. Cheers Michael
Such a great video Michael was good to see you were getting great fun out of it and confident sorry to see the excalibur in pieces after that crash mate. By the looks of it, it may have hit that bank just to the right but to me i did not expect such significant damage e.g the snapped fuselage your wing was down and probably the first part to hit but its spread the impact maybe. I no there is some huge weaknesses in this model mine i clipped the grass slow speed and it cracked both wings slightly and mainly around the plastics where the screws are. 1 of my wing tips snapped dues to the carbon spar popping threw the surace and i got a stress fracture on my fuselage. Are you going to repair this or will you by a new fuselage and get by with repairing the wings only?
Thanks Bob, I'm really glad you enjoyed the vid, I was having such a great time too. I was quite surprised the result of the crash too. Although it is hard to say exactly what happened. Andrew, who was filming there too, sent me a bunch of frames from his footage, but it starts just a little too late to be sure what hit first or even if the tail snapped before impact. Of course it does not change the result. The Excalibur is still on the bench for now. But, I tried last night to order a new fuse. In the end I just couldn't get the HK site to work, so I gave up for now. I might stick it back together, add some lengths of carbon to the section of fuse behind the wing and give it another go. If that is no good, HK may have ironed out the bugs with their new site and I'll order the replacement parts. Either way, I'll be posting videos of the next flight, so stay tuned. Cheers Michael
No problems thats the way get it all sorted and hopefully it flys on rails and locked in for you next flight im subscribed to your channel so ill keep an eye out i havent yet taken mine sloping but the weather here in perth is getting just right for it so i might try use my brother gopro and get you some footage of my maiden sloaping however atm im struggling in an open oval to fly as im new to planes. Hey not sure if your on rcgroups but checkout the excalibur thread alot of guys in there have been strengthening there excaliburs around the fuselage and mainly at the cowl by adding a 1.5 - 2mm motor mount to prevent the plastic cowl from snapping/cracking. Good luck with it mate all the best
Yeah I have been following that thread., bit of a worry with the motor mount. That area if mine does seem to be fine though. Good luck to you with a slope maiden. It loves the wind. But be careful with the aerobatics hahaha
The soaring is a huge amount of fun. I'll be back for sure. We did only had the wind speed app on the phone, but was reading 8.5m/s (30kph) (Zephyrus Lite Wind Meter). Cheers Michael
did you buy a new fuselage? and if so, could you put the new motor on the cowl without issues? I´m going for the second fuselage, and it is always a challenge to get the motor in and make it spin freely. cowl with bad design. what a shame
Lesson: if you want to do aeros then stay high and in the strong lift zone. Always turn away from the slope into the wind. You seemed to be too far out and low near the water. The strong lift zone is at about 45 degrees from the crown of the slope or edge of the cliff. Generally fly higher than you were.
G'day Chris, you are right indeed. It did sit sadly in pieces for a while, but made a triumphant return to the air with the help of some exopy and tape.
Sorry about that ending. But wait - it's Excalibur, right? It's SUPPOSED to be buried to the hilt in stone... Never mind. Just hit the 'Reset' button and try again. What? You mean this wasn't a simulator? Oh noooooooooo...
obscured021 I did add another 10% to the spoilerons after the first landing but didn't get a chance to use them. haha. Watching Andrew's plane looked like a lot of spoiler deflection and landed very nicely. I think your Walrus would slope really well!
Ouch! I'm sure it can be fixed, but it always breaks my heart to see a beautiful plane all mangled like that. Hope you can get her in the air again, buddy. It was a good flight though. 👍🏼
Thanks Vas, it was a lot of fun and then.... no fun at all. It is still sitting on my bench in bits. I was considering just buying a new fuse, but I think I've finally decided to glue it back together. We'll see how that goes.
G'day John, this is at Thirteenth Beach Rd. Victoria www.google.com.au/maps/place/Thirteenth+Beach+Rd,+Victoria+3227/@-38.2792962,144.4377748,227a,20y,149.02h,45t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x6ad4403602d520cf:0xb880d002e6ccd350!8m2!3d-38.2842556!4d144.455413 Awesome spot with a southerly.
Aero FPV I need to investigate further, but I'm starting to wonder if the tail didn't snap off before getting to the ground. there are no real impact marks on the fuse, that you'd expect from a hard impact. I need to review Andrew's footage to see if I can get more details. It had started to develop stress marks just being the wing....
I looked at the fuse again this morning and there is basically no marks on it. Andrew has sent me pics from his footage, so the investigation continues. Unfortunately no change to the outcome yet. hahaha
I crashed my original Bix3 a while ago and only damaged the wings so I had a spare fuselage. I just bought some wings from Hobbyking and patched it all up! The crash last week was a nose dive from around 80 metres so as you can imagine the thing was completely smashed to bits and repairable. But amazingly all the electronics and battery survived!
That is one thing about the Bixlers, is they are very repairable. I must have glued my Bixler 2 back together 20 times. I have been a lot kinder to my BIX3 though. Fly'em, break'em, Fix'em, repeat.
Lol, my philosophy is Fly'em, break'em, Fix'em SKINT.... Cry, patch up best I can them Fly more carefully! The Bix 3 crash wasn't due to my flying though. I pushed a bigger battery in which pushed all the electronics back and it broke a solder joint (or in the US Sodder..lol) the negative joint then touched a positive which burnt and melted the 2 main wires to the ESC! The elevator servo for some reason stuck to full down so it nose dived! But as I said, the ESC and everything else is ok! I've tested the electrics and apart from the 2 melted wires and completely smashed up foam everything is working perfectly!!
this plane is hard to fly. Thin airfoil, forward swept wings, and it always needs a lot of speed. The 800kv motor and 13 inch spinner that it comes with on 4s has so much torque it makes it even sketchier! I ended up crashing by having zero control at about 100ft up, broken airfoil the whole way down.
I have had a different experience with this one. Besides this crash, which was due to my inexperience turning into the slope. But, normally off the flat I like the way this plane flies. I have found it very responsive to input. What battery do you run? Maybe your centre of gravity is off a bit, that would certainly make it a handful to fly.
