On the bench, the airplane is quite impressive. It's a large airframe and the finish on it is quite nice. The digital camouflage is executed well and looks good on the airframe. Also, the model features nice scale landing gear as well as gear doors. Additionally, the cockpit area is cover is plastic which will help save it from texturing in the sun, so that is very nice! This airplane would really take some weathering nicely. There is a big tiger decal provided that can be placed on the vertical tail which I would have placed, but unfortunately the artwork was pretty pixelated, so I decided to pass.
One additional note on the Freewing MiG-29 is that the wing tips have quite a bit of camber to them. So, to reduce some of that, I split the difference on the aileron trailing edges to add a slight amount of reflex into the wing. The middle of the aileron trailing edge is set to the top of the wing tip for trim as shown below.
ELEVATOR SERVO REPLACEMENT & SETUP
As a whole, I've found the Freewing elevator servos on their jets marginal at best. This model was in the first batch of pre-orders which had a recall on the initial elevator servos. Replacements were sent out to everyone (and are being included in the subsequent batches) and the servos were replaced and they worked well enough. That being said, I still wasn't happy with the performance and so ultimately replaced both servos with Hitec D85mg servos. This is a large high performance jet, and so this gave me the most peace of mind in flying the airplane and they are a drop in fit.
In addition, I wasn't happy with the servo matching of the replacement stock servos as they did not operate symmetrically left to right. To rectify this, I setup the tail servos on separate channels which allowed me to program each to match each other perfectly. This does require bypassing the blue box inside the airplane and plugging those two servos directly into the receiver so keep that in mind. In the case of the D85 servos, they are programmable, so could be programmed to match via the programmer also.
TWIN CENTERBURNERS
The full scale MiG-29 was a full afterburning jet, so adding CenterBurners was a must! :) All of the newer 80mm Freewing EDFs are coming with 36mm diameter inrunner motors, so this is my twin 36mm inrunner setup. The inrunner designs simply use 4 set screws to clamp the tailcone in place onto the back of the motor which makes it pretty easy. The look is great in the airplane and is especially great in the air!
AIRCRAFT SETUP & CG
On the control surface setup, I prefer to setup individual elevator and aileron triple rates so I have options for the maiden flight. Through flying the MiG-29 I ultimately converged on my high rates for elevator and low rates for ailerons as that provided the best feel in the air. My final recommended control throws are as follows:
Elevator - 37mm with 10% expo
Aileron - 25mm with 10% Expo
Rudder - 45mm with 25% expo to desensitize the steering
Flaps - 22mm mid, 40mm full and no elevator mix is required
For the CG, the model has molded in CG marks which I found to feel about perfect in the air. Simply pick up the airplane with your finger tips at the rear edge of the mark and look for the aircraft to be level. I'm using a two Roaring Top 35c 6s 6250 mah batteries which are place as far back as they can realistically go inside the hatch area. My timer is set to 4:00 minutes as the airplane flies quite efficiently compared to other EDFs.
Note that the airplane flying at this CG location does require a good amount of up elevator trim for flying. The leading edge is set to about 3mm below the lower fuselage line as shown below. This is noted in the instructions as well and is something to be aware of.
7 сен 2024
