Every once in while, we get a great comment to a blog posting.  Sometimes we get things like links to "enhancement" websites.  But this comment needs some air, so here it is.  A customer reports on his experience building and flying our QB F-15 Eagle....Enjoy.

Good news! Just maidened my F-15 Quick Build. Took me awhile to get it together for a variety of reasons, but it was worth it in the end.

I'm a very low time pilot. I.e., 3-4 hours total over the last two years on computer simulators, and literally 5 minutes in the air.

I'd bought a couple of those low/slow "trainers" (E-Starter and Slow Stick). With brushed motors and such they were sluggish pigs, slow to respond, and I thought very hard to fly and not much fun. guess I needed something with more pizazz!

I got the Quick Build because I didn't want to spend another 10-20 hours or so (I'm a bit of a perfectionist) putting together a trainer that would end up mangled and unsatisfying anyway. The QB went together well and I headed out to find a place to fly it.

Various potential sites (no clubs in my countryfied surroundings) proved too small or were in use. I went up to the park on the hill overlooking the highway (Chatham, NY) where there are three little league parks. No one was there, and although there are fences, buildings, obstructions and the like, it was the best shot I had.

Although I'd flown the E-starter into a fence there on its maiden a couple years ago (been away from the sport for awhile), I thought with the recent practice I had earlier today in the Clearview simulator on mycomputer, flying a Yardbird Su-27 i think it was (it would be great if someone would do the F-15 for Clearview), I'd give it a shot.

I throttled up to about 1/2 (Grayson power module they sell here is what I have, along with a Zippy 1300 mah, 3S 11.1V battery). I tossed her out in front of me. Trim was a little down and she flew toward the grass but I got enough (over)control and jammed in throttles and zammo!, she was rocketing for the sky. wow!

I throttled back and she politely nosed over. I got her flying hands off nice and level with little trimming needed. Very stable, no turn tendencies, easy to fly.

I made one circuit of the field, even zooming over a roof once, then cut power to see how she glided in. Smooooth and stable even at lower speeds. And a perfect landing, absolutely no sweat. Remember, I'm a novice.

Three more flights, more confidence with each one. She's a sensitive bird in that it's easy for a novice to overcontrol, very responsive with just the elevons, but not overly sensitive. And she'll slow down nicely and float along.

I got careless on flight #5 and beaked her in, so I'm looking for some scrap Depron now but can't wait to go out again. it's a real cool airplane, if you're looking for a confidence-building way to get into prop jets, this is a great place to start. Very stable, responsive, fun plane to own and fly. I'm going to order another QB, they're really a blast.

Fly safe!

Jim

You might recall that we posted a small note that the BD-5 was going the way of the dinosaur, and now we are sad to say, its time has come.  We sold our last kit last week and so the beloved BD-5 is now off the catalog.  Right now, we don't have any plans to bring it back in kit form or plans, though we might begin working on the latter.  It could be tough though, as all the templates are not in the computer. 

The BD-5 was good to us, and we will miss it.  So long....

So for some of you that have been with us since the beginning, you might know that we deployed a third party reputation and rating system that gave our customers a chance to rate their experience with us and we then posted it right to our site, so everyone could see what to expect.  We used a great system put out by a small startup called Rapleaf. 

As of the end of August, Rapleaf has shifted business models and is not supporting online reputations anymore.  Bummer.  So while the company lives, our rating system does not.  Now, thankfully, we had transferred over all the comments long ago and continued to update the list, so we didnt lose any data, but now, if you want to send us a comment, you need to email us, until we find an alternative solution. 

So, kinda bummed around here, because we really liked what Rapleaf supplied, then again, we never paid for anything, so I'm sure their business model needed some shifting. 

Anyone have any suggustions? 

Now, we want to say that by in large the fine men and women of the USPS do a great job shipping things.  But every once in a while (about once a year) a package goes missing.  This year's lottery winner notified us that he never received our package, even though he is but one state west.  So the hunt began, and in the mean time, we sent him out a new order.

So the package finally showed up and clearly got delayed because it got run over at some point, perhaps a couple of times. Even the carbon rod inside was snapped.  Well, at least it showed up. 

Everything turned out fine in the end, and we are thankful for our customer's patience during the entire experience.  So, who will win the once-a-year-my-package-got-hammered lottery?  It could be you...but you know what they say, "You can't win if you don't play."

For whatever reason, and you, the customer might have some idea, our F-22's have been flying out of our warehouse.  I have no idea why this month the Raptor is so popular.  So here is a little video of our F-22's, the Quick Build and the Original Series.  Both stunning, both totally capable of awesome maneuvers.  So here you go.  What?  Like you got something better to do for the next 30 seconds.

Just a quick post for all you that don't subscribe to our newsletter (sign up on the right).  Here is the link to the newsletter. 

One of our most popular Quick Build kits to date, the F-22 features one thing, serious maneuvers.  Okay, two things, great looks.  Fine, and it goes together really quick, like 2-3 hours tops.  So, what do you get when you roll all these features up into a ball (or plane) and take it to the field? The Quick Build F-22.  So pick one up.  You won't be disappointed.

As most of you know, we like to think of ourselves as a company that is here to do basically two things: 

1. Help support the builders out there that are a little short on time and want to get a great looking park jet.

2. Help the weekend designers get their designs out to other hobbyists.

Well, this is a time to look at reason #2.  We just contacted two more designers who have put together great little parkjets that we thought will fit in real nice with our current line up of Quick Builds.  Now the designers are still finalizing their plans, so it may be a few weeks or month or two, but we will turn around their design as soon as possible.  A little preview is below.