X-Wing

Review by Bryan

When Jess Nicholls visited us at the October 2004 Club meeting I bought the flying wing that he showed us. It is called X-Wing and it came in 5 major pieces.There were a pair of fully moulded wings complete with joiners, 2 plug in tip fins, and a short glass fuselage to house the receiver and battery. When Jess showed us the model I just had to buy it! I have a soft spot for flying wings.

All that needed to be done was to glue 2 Hi-Tech HS81MG servos in the pre-cut boxes in the wings (after cutting off the usual mounting lugs). Drill 2 holes to bring out the servo wires, make a couple of slots in the ailerons and epoxy in the supplied horns, fit linkages. Fit a switch harness into the fuz and throw in a regular 4xAA battery pack up front and wedge in a standard size receiver behind it. Less than 1 hour from start to finish. The instructions suggested covering the servos with iron on film and I just had some of a pretty close colour match - unfortunately the next morning the film patches had come off - the wings were obviously coated with a releasing agent that I never cleaned off.
2 x 4 mm nylon bolts hold everything together and a very small piece of lead was required to balance the model and there it was finished.

The wing is made of 1/32 balsa with a thin glass cloth coating which is then moulded, it has some carbon composite spars and a carbon tube runs down each aileron near the leading edge to give it rigidity. There is no reflex applied to this wing like you see in most flying wings. Instead there is a great deal of wash-out moulded into each panel - I couldn't wait to try it.

I took my FF8 transmitter and copied my Zaggi program to a new model setting and then checked out the movement. It was perfect and it also had exponential rates selectable on a switch. I wiggled the elevator stick, up was up, down was down and the aileron stick moved one aileron up and the other down.

The next morning was Sunday, my flying morning, but it turned out to be flat calm so I didn't even try it out. Eventually, on Wednesday November 10th it was blowing 24mph gusting to 32mph on Selsley North and I found time to race up to the slope to try the X-Wing.
I'd been looking forward to the moment, so I rushed across the common turned everything on, wiggled the sticks and launched it. Well, it reared up a bit and so I gave it a nudge of down elevator and corrected it, I tried to correct the start of some right rolling movement with a nudge of left BUT some stupid idiot had reversed my ailerons and of course It rolled violently over to the right and smacked the hillside below my feet!! This all happened in less than 1 second due to the strong wind. Why is it that the older one gets the more stupid one becomes. £150.00 plus servos and receiver and it seemed like I didn't give a shit - well let me tell you that I very nearly did!
Luckily it completed a full roll and hit the deck belly first and only bust one of the 2 nylon wing bolts - I was amazed that it wasn't a write-off - I still had to go back home to drill the freaking bolt out before I could fly it properly (with the ailerons corrected).

It flew like a dream, very fast and when you put it into a tight roll it shrieks and screams as the very taut ailerons resonate in the wind. It is real good fun. Inverted performance is strained. All the washout becomes wash-in when inverted and if you try to slow it down slightly it tip-stalls and falls off its back!

I'll bet it will make a good pylon racer - perhaps Boxing-Day. Unfortunately I only had 10 minutes spare after my false start and I have been waiting for another opportunity on a Sunday morning to fly the wing, but so far the Sunday morning weather has been against me.