Now that the season is about over, I thought I'd give a flight report for this project. I have 14 flights on it so far. The weight of this saucer was a challenge to work with. It ended up at about 20lbs. The biggest challenge aside from building it, was getting the landing gear to be strong enough to handle it on landing. I started with 1/4" wire, but that did not work. The nose gear ended up being a dual wire 1/4 scale unit. The main gear is from a Great Planes 25% YAK 54 1.60. This gear is holding up just fine. The next item was power. I started with an E-Flite Power 90 on 8 cells. It would get the plane in the air, but, it was like a WWII bomber that was over loaded on take off. I switched the 90 out for an Exceed Monster 160 with a 20x10 prop. Now I had decent power to get it airborne. The short video will show that. For next season, I will be going to 10 cells. But, my Castle Ice 100 is only good for 8 cells. So, I hope santa will be good to me this Christmas. With 10 cells, I will feel very comfortable with the power level. The Power 90 is an 1800 watt motor. The Monster 160 is a 2700 watt motor. This winter I'm going to work on the lighting system that is already installed. I can turn it on, but I want to be able to individually control each of the 28 LED pods( 9 leds in each pod). Should be some fun there. The video is very short. Basically a take off, then coming in from the west to land it. The picture is from Watts over Owatonna in Minnesoto.



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I'm surprised at how noisy the prop is. Almost like a gas engine.

 

I've heard that one before. It has to do with the prop chopping thru the motor mount plane. There's that short distance where the air flow is interrupted and makes the chop sound. It's the pusher type setup that results in this noise.

 

Very cool! 20lbs? 2700 watts? What a beast! Great work.

 

Thanks for all the comments. The landing strip does add some fun challenge to landing. So, 66tbird, you got my attention on the ESC.