I have this exact jet and fly it just fine without a gyro. I have a much tougher time with Freewing's F-18. That plane is a handful, especially landing her. The F5's wide gear stance is so much nicer to deal with
Hey Jon, Nice looking jet, I love it when things happen and it is not all way me when things go wrong. Good to see the plane was not damaged, what is your favorite jet if you could only have one? Thanks
You know why I subscribed right now, I love the way you explain everything that is going on and why it's flying the way it is. Your the only one that I know of that really explains what's happening. I already learned about what I want to buy and what it's doing so I can correct it. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Johan! Let's be real though, I'm definitely not a pro, but I do have a good bit of experience. Maybe above average if we're being realistic. I have a lot more to learn.
Nice, I brought this same jet a few months ago but haven't had the guts to take it out yet. You confirmed my thoughts lol. I will wait for a perfect weather day to try and see where I can squeeze a gyro in it.
Setup is in the end of the vid if you want to see how I did it and perhaps use my IX file if you've got an IX-series radio. It's a challenging aircraft to fly. Keep that in mind and be aware of accelerated stalls and you should be absolutely fine. It needs a good bit of speed to fly with those little stubby wings.
Very nice review! I also agreed with you! Most popular RC RUclipsrs only goes around and some are serius dumb flyers with lack of experience, never put they aircraft to do real test of capabilitys! and some when they crash blame the manual instead of addmit they stall! Never teaching useful stuff to noobies! Nobbies always tend to use to much 6 axis gyros and never learn to fly properly
I just measured the wing on my F-5N and came up with 196 sq.in. for the wing panels. If you add the fuselage area between the panels (we always included it in the old days), it's 268 sq.in. After all, the plane does fly partly on the fuselage a la F-104 Starfighter. At 5 lbs, that gives a wing loading of 43 oz/sq.ft. That's not too terrible considering there is some airfoil to the wing and you should notice some loss of lift before the critical angle. The hardest part is landing it and most of that is due to the lack of dampening in the landing gear. If you don't grease the landing, you'd better have enough juice left to go around.
Good info - thanks! Perhaps it's not an issue of wing loading as much as it is an issue of stubby little wings. It's actually pretty easy to land so long as you're bringing it in with thrust. I was able to perform about 15 T&Gs yesterday almost effortlessly while holding power on approach. The key so far is to treat it like a jet running crow. Hold some throttle to manage sink rate, otherwise it'll just fall out of the sky without dropping a wing if your glideslope is too shallow. Much easier to just hold throttle and manage the descent instead of trying to finagle a working glideslope that will always function regardless of wind conditions.
@@TwoBrosRC I control the pitch attitude with the elevator and control the descent rate with throttle. If I’m going to be short, I add power. I try to keep a little bit of elevator in reserve so that I have some left to soften the touchdown, if needed..
When landing with flaps, you need some power to keep the plane from losing speed too fast. It gives you a little more time between the start of the flare and getting it on the ground before it stops flying..
no one has ever said this is a beginner jet!! However it is not in anyway hard for an intermediate or expert to fly! Once you get the settings right and throws right, it is a total dream to fly! Mine always gets people to come to the flight line and watch as it flies! It needs to be slightly nose heavy and with the FMS 2100kv you need at least a 5000 pack to get the most fun. When I had this fan the plane was doing 150mph + and with my current Xfly it will do over that! All the throw you are using will make it depart really easily. From the voltage drop I am hearing on your telemetry you need a different pack for this set up as well. under load mine is still at over 3.7v per cell. I have had the same bird since 2014 and it is still going strong!
I won't argue that I need a new battery setup, but my throws are fine. I get into this argument constantly with people who think only in technedure - I get it, you fly the way you do, but don't come at me telling me that my throws are bad based on some arbitrary measure you've come up with. I know you don't argue about expo, so consider the idea that I'm flying with 85% expo and flying the jet perfectly fine throughout this entire video so long as the gear isn't malfunctioning. That alone shoots a gigantic hole in the "throws are too high" theory you've got.
@@TwoBrosRC yes we all have our own preferences. Get some more time with the plane and figure it out more. Like I said I did all the wrong and the right with mine. Had it since 2014 and its been to hell and back! Used to take off from a small dirt path then land in the grass… so my experience with the plane is not arbitrary.
I fully intend to get into it more. This was the maiden day, after all. I doubt you figured everything out on your F-5 in your first five flights. :) Unfortunately, it is arbitrary - you're not the designer of the jet, nor do you know what my goal is with it or what I'm trying to achieve. That's what I'm talking about when I say technedure. Your personal techniques are not my official procedure. If you want to offer advice to people, they tend to take it better when you offer suggestions instead of absolutes. Food for thought.
My 80mm F-5N in the aggressor scheme flies much better than my 90mm F-104 Starfighter. My F-5N is stock and is actually easier to fly than I thought it would be. And yeah, I think it’s my 10th EDF jet. It is difficult to see at the edges of the field. I put an AR637T in mine and mostly fly it in SAFE mode, even for takeoff and landing. I’m 72 and my eyes aren’t what they used to be. I can land and get it stopped without going off the end of our 350 foot paved runway. I had to enable reverse on my 80mm E-flite F-16 to get it stopped. Also, I put a KM-RC AB in my 70mm E-flite F-16 and I think it’s great. I did have a little trouble getting it to remember the calibration.
The KM unit has issues with Smart ESCs. The fellow who runs the site discovered it after I reported some bugs I encountered. There should be documentation on the site about Smart ESCs and what to do with them.
@@TwoBrosRC Yeah, I can see how the microcontroller in the KM-RC AB might have issues with the Smart signals riding on the PWM servo signal. If I still worked at a calibration lab, I’d see what it looked like on an oscilloscope. I’ve just started learning how to program Arduino boards and have learned there are at least two ways to measure the servo pulse width. My current project is for navigation lights for R/C models and using a channel to turn the strobe and landing lights on and off.
I may end up trying that. For now I've basically just gone back to using ailerons only. Seems to fly just fine. The primary reason I set up tailerons is to have the ability to flat spin and pull off other maneuvers, but this model doesn't really want to do it so I'm not going to keep forcing it to using stabs alone.
I think it doesn’t depend on your tailerons for a flat spin. You just don’t have enough surface on your rudder or deflection. I use tailerons on my aircraft because when you slow your aircraft to close to stall speed, your wing gets mushy. Tailerons in my opinion keep the aircraft with a symmetrical roll rate through its performance envelop.
@@terrencejackson4587 Differential stabilators (aka tailerons) actually are one of the only ways to properly flat spin a model without thrust vectoring. Sometimes rudder does it - and may do it here - but the stabs are where most of the rotational force is going to come from after the model is held in a stall with full back elevator pressure and left or right commanded roll. This is how I flat spin basically every other stab-equipped jet, such as the F-22, F-16, F-15, F-14, etc.
Well, I am not a flat spinosologist. It didn’t work out well for Goose so it most likely wouldn’t work out well for me. I gave up flying Motion’s foam jets as they only fly for 3 minutes at a time!
Probably because it's not the best designed model out there. When something gets laterally unstable when the CG moves back to the recommended point, it's a bit on the wonky side.
@@icantfly Its for sure too far back and the elevator throws are not what this plane likes. I have done all that there is to do wrong and right with this plane. With my fms 2100kv fan the plane was over 150mph too so something is definitely wrong with this set up.
"I expected more." You were referring to the speed, but that pretty much sums up my feeling about this plane. 😅 Maybe my expectations were too high for it. Sold it after 8 flights. Maybe i would have liked it with a gyro, but it just never felt like i could get it flying right. Moved cg all over the place, messed with getting control surfaces level. Maybe mine was just a odd behaving one. Sure is a beautiful looking model though
I'll probably keep it until it wrecks. It was so cheap that I can't see it being worth the effort of selling. That being said, yeah, it seems to excel at fast flight but that doesn't mean I won't find a way to tame it and make it behave the way I want it to. As you might recall, everyone said I couldn't high alpha the E-flite Viper 90, yet it seems to feature high alpha quite prominently as the channel intro. ;)
@@TwoBrosRC o for sure. Im deffinetly going to be watching you work some magic on the f5 and am curious what setup finally gets a good all around performance for that plane
@@TwoBrosRC I don't have tons of 80mm fans under my belt. I have 3 of the 9 blades, tho. I will eventually experiment with other 80mm fans. For now I'm happy with their performance. I had thought about the newest fms 80mm 12 blade rig but its kinda spendy for my blood. I can not remmember now. Somthing like 3.6k thurst and super efficient.....2000kv?? mm??? I think. I have not looked that fans specs up in a minute.
I only use Polycrylic gloss on airshow style planes, like my FMS Pitts 1.4m v2. Otherwise they don't look quite right without the gloss coating. Gotta hit the F/A-18 Blue Angels at some point too.
I have had that model f5 before, stock setup no gyros it was flying good, sold it but want to buy again. Have mig 21 now, way harder for me got 6 flights now still adjusting trims. You did good reviews 👏
Hi Jon, you’re reviews are really great as you show the full flight envelope which allows people to really see how the plane handles even in bad situations so thanks! Do you think you’ll review the freewing Mirage or freewing 70mm F104? Thanks-Ant
Full flap works great - you just have to understand how to land a jet. It takes some finesse. I'll end up shooting a landing tutorial for this model soon.
you should try a yak 130 . I have one and it flies really well its kinda floaty and super light for being a 70mm 6s i sometimes fit a 6000mah batt and get 5 minute flights and its really fast. mine doesnt have all moving tail but it does have a servo per elevator side which is weird but helpful
I usually don't go for models without a full flying stabilator if they're supposed to have one - though a bigger Yak might have it. Thanks for the idea!
I flew this jet on the Maiden without a gyro and it flew beautifully. The funny thing is that the F5 was my first EDF Jet and my first plane with wheels on it 😅 but it is still in one piece.
Good to hear man! I think it'll fly fine without a gyro so long as you don't have asymmetric drag issues like I did on my initial maiden flight. It's still a weird airplane to fly, though.
'Ello! Could it be that this model is a handful because of the big honkin' 5000 packs being used? Thats a big velveeta cheese block for a model this small i would think...
@@TwoBrosRCyes, the next flight looked much better! I just bought the 90mm F-22 as my first EDF. Transitioning from Top Flight P-51 but concerned about the speed. Going to spend a few more days on the sim before I maiden it! Great videos!!!! Thanks!!!
Sorry that happened the first time around. I would feel just as infuriated as you. That thing honestly would be a good hand launcher with the size but I bet the gear are light. Cheers
so i have an f22 and i followed your advice of moving the batt reall far back and it flies great but just like what you said here i had to land without flaps cause it started being unstable on aproach idk if you had that maybe the full span flaps help cause i dont use full span
I cover voltage info in my setup vids, usually - check my RC Aircraft Setup Demos playlist: ruclips.net/p/PLiEHeXKlZj2mLRTlM9DCrCs302BJFNfyq I'm 99% positive the F-35 setup covers this. You can translate it over to this one.
Thank you much appreciated, I didn’t know if it would work on my 12s jets or not I just found out volt sensor is up to 60v. Thanks again sir! You rock!!!!
AR8360T - it should be in the video description. Speed requires a GPS: tinyurl.com/SpektrumGPS - you'll have to bind the receiver with the GPS installed in the X-Bus port for it to be recognized.
Amazing review Jon. I learned so much from it. Just as you I like the F5 too, but I am a bit afraid for it. It flys exacly how I expected. Too much tricky for me. At least for now. At this moment I have the Freewing T33 almost ready for its maiden. It is my first edf to fly. Do you have any tips for this one?
Nah, don't be afraid of it - just be aware that it's a power-hungry jet and requires a good bit of speed to stay airborne. It's not designed to fly very slowly. I'd recommend starting with an easier model, but if it's all you've got then I'd recommend keeping speed up throughout most of your maneuvers. Don't keep it at full throttle all the time, even half is probably fine, but you will stall it easily if you don't keep airspeed up while it moves around.
This is the part of the hobby thats tough... For what were paying I sometimes feel the quality in servos, servo wires and retract servos is a little sub par
Definitely. That's one reason why I usually redo all the servos myself with quality units. This one had the stabs replaced with AGFRC B13DLM units to ensure performance.
If you want a reliable radio/link that can’t brown the gear or worse, the receiver, the main battery has to power the receiver directly. There is never a need for satellite receivers except with Spektrum. I can’t recommend Hitec Aurora enough. You will never lose a link and never brown the gear. Spektrum will brown every flight if the control side load is high, and lose the link regularly. Many start with Spektrum, but no one sticks with it. The design is inherently bad. Better to the bullet and sell it off. If you do stick with your investment, it will help to test flight controls/accessories at full battery load… so full throttle with all servos/gear actuated at once. Personally I would test that way at a min flying battery charge, too.
All I can say is that I've flown models on Spektrum equipment thousands of times in the past two and a half years and I can't think of a single time I've encountered anything you're talking about. I simply can't correlate it - so I'm sure you understand that I'm most definitely not going to reinvest a ton of money into a new radio system based on a single comment which doesn't line up with my experiences so far. I use remote receivers because I *want* to, not because I *need* to. I prefer the insurance that a $39.99 remote adds to an expensive model. I would add remote receivers to any other brand regardless of who made it. That's not indicative of the brand's performance, it's me choosing safety and peace of mind.
@@TwoBrosRC I wouldn’t re-invest based on a comment either. But the comment is still a worthwhile point. Spektrum has gotten a lot better, but mostly due to bandaids required by a fundamentally sketchy design. There are a lot of issues, and I would call all the issues major because they can result in a loss of control. I used to buy satellite receivers and I still would if I flew Spektrum in anything bigger than a small foamie, because I think they are definitely needed. I still fly Spektrum in a few low risk park flyers and almost all my UMXs. I know UMX is branding, I mean “cul-de-sac” scale that can’t hurt anyone or go through a window with a lost link. The two main problems, in order, IMO, are (1) the lack of a direct, main battery powered receiver. This means that the “system voltage” is always fluctuating around min working electrical component voltage. So under load (all servo actuated, plus accessories like gear and lights) the link can easily drop in and out. It’s no different for 1S planes since the main is 1S too (another reason UMX “is what it is”), but even 2S makes a HITEC receiver, or similar solution, run on basically unlimited main battery voltage. IOWs, no matter how many amps you push through a 5V BEC, under full load V will sag to brownout levels. The bandaid is BEC amps, but even “just” 7 volts from a 2S main battery is plenty of margin with never a need for an amp-based strategy. 3S, 11V nominal, is crazy higher than the 3V microprocessor min requirement. And so on. The other problem is lack of a secure link with clear frequency scanning and constant frequency hopping. Also critical. It’s been a while since I entertained Spektrum, so maybe it’s gotten better. When I used it it was pure pain. I lost maybe 30 models to brownout, before I fully understood what was happening. You gear actuation fail is a perfect example of a Spektrum failure. High amp BECs are overloading the wire gauge to keep V droop low to keep the Rx awake. Almost lost that model, so you do have major issues. In summary: Q1: Why would you ever power the Rx on the same electrical bus as mechanically loaded flight controls and gear? Q2: Why would you ever put the Rx on an electrical bus that fluctuates on or near min microprocessor voltage? There are other problems which are pretty major too, and so safety related, like a lack of “awake” microprocessing power should link be lost due to excessive range or blocked LOS, or in Spektrum’s case, something like gear retraction drooping the system voltage. That prevents an “awake” no link fail safe mode for programmable flight control positions to spiral glide the model in full flap idle. One problem with Aurora is it will hold a strong link for 7-10 miles, so that spiral can be a looong ways away if you lose sight. Most don’t realize it but Hitec has had all the advanced assignment and mixing features you show, for decades, plus a more sensible setup. You name your own channels, for example, and they all have the same feature set. Spektrum is design to make it easier for beginners to do things like pre-conceived “flap” and “gear” type mixes, but it makes the platform kind of a a mess for advanced flight control designs. But it’s really the fundamentals that should drive a platform of choice, IMO. I have no affiliation with HITEC, but it’s night and day IMO.
Flat out brutal honesty: the more experienced flyers don’t appreciate people flying very high electrical load, fast/dangerous models on Spektrum. It’s just a potentially fatal accident waiting to happen. I’m mostly talking 500 and up size helicopters, especially in any way that ever directs energy toward the crowd. It is just stupid. I understand it’s mostly unrecognized risk, and airplanes are significantly less dangerous than a 2 meter blade disk with a completely random ground impact footprint. But they are still not without serious risk. I’m not talking about this little foam fighter, which at worst would be like torture with the “comfy chair.”
Appreciate the insights - but I think I'll stick with Spektrum for now. I usually don't change brands unless there's some kind of experience giving me a reason to.
Too much throw, gyro set too sensitive, ..and I'm not sure you have the control surfaces synced correctly. The plane should fly nicely without depending heavily on stabilization.
I don't really fly models stock. Not my thing. It's pretty stable in the rest of the vid, but the first section is definitely weird with the asymmetric drag from the stuck gear.
I don’t understand why it flys so unstably with a gyro, you seem to be stabbing at the sticks which is maybe why. I’m surprised your gear switch with didn’t wear out and come off you flicked it so much😂
It was unstable because of the asymmetric gear drag. Later on it was because I was still figuring out how it flew. "stabbing at the sticks" is using dampened stick movement. I fly with high expo because that's what I'm comfortable with.
@@TwoBrosRC I fly with expo too but I still try and fly as smoothly as possible even if the model has a gyro. I know the gear leg hanging out was causing the instability, I’m just surprised the gyro didn’t handle it with the amount of gain you had
I usually fly pretty smoothly as well, but on reviews I'm not looking for precision flying - I'm looking for what the model is capable of, how it stalls, how it maneuvers aggressively, etc. All of which is vital information for a proper review.
Landing on pavement would have guaranteed a skid on concrete that would have tore up the foam pretty good. I had no real visible damage going with grass.
Very interesting Jon. I saw the F-5s when I was in the Air Force in the 80's. It's amazing the technology that was available in the late 50s and is still in service to this day, such a cool place, thank you for your videos! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-5
Disliked this video because you are using click bait tactics. You get views from your organic skill, not misleading video thumbnails and titles. 1. You are the king of setups. You have more voice feedback than ive ever heard like holy cow. 2. Good piloting! Nice save.
This isn't clickbait though. It's an actual still from the footage using creative thumbnails to make it pop. Nothing is baited here. It's all relevant. Thanks for the feedback though! Disliking doesn't really hurt me or the content - any interaction promotes it. 😉
Sure. When full scale student pilots first try to land the T-38, they bring bad habits from aircraft that fly on the wing, like the T-6/37. Well, they aren’t “bad” habits if you have a significant wing, only if you don’t. A common, but not-useful paradigm brought from low performance winged flight to high performance jets, is the concept of using throttle to climb/descend from increasing airspeed seeking a trim point. That requires a low performance wing. With a high perf wing, zero camber (the Freewing model sneaks a little in, but the lack of wing area is still dominantly high perf in character) dictates some positive AOA to fly. And it’s never going to follow a trimmed attitude by flying on the wing, you have to manually force the desired pitch attitude. The AOA has a large range of buffet (can’t feel it in RC of course) before the lift peaks (actual F-5/T-38 is VIOLENTLY shaking, like wooden roller coaster x10. IPs will descibe it as mice dancing on the wing, gradually increasing with AOA until elephants are jumping up and down. When the brutal bangs start to hit out of even rhythm, the wing is now post stall. The nose still can be pitched farther up, but that just increases the sink rate. The vector of the real F-5 with full aft elevator pegged is about 70 degrees AOA with the pitch stable around 5 degrees nose low, so a 75 degree down vector from the horizon. It takes a while for the nose to come through the horizon to a stable nose low attitude. Maybe 10,000 feet of fall. That’s with flying airspeed. A full fuel stall speed (applicable since batteries don’t lighten up) for the F-5 is 180 to 190 mph. So let’s round to 3x a low perf aircraft. Because the wing has a very long AOA transition to a stall, you need to be stabilized a super high drag (buffet bleeds tons of energy from drag) high throttle approach. A heavy F-5, in order to fly slow enough, comes in about 7 degrees nose high on final at around 95% throttle. Because of the very high AOA to get everything available from the small wing area with symmetrical, very elongated airfoil, something strange happens. The airplane flies largely on the component of thrust opposing gravity. As you flare, that component becomes even bigger. As you round out and pull power, it’s like kicking the chair out from under you, because the wing cannot produce enough lift so you touch down, essentially like a helicopter, by removing the thrust component and flaring to compensate as much as possible without a full stall (violent, but not arhythmic buffet). It’s kinda similar in concept to the end game of autorotation once the power is pulled. The same thrust-wing relationship occurs during slow flight. That equates to any speed under 250 KIAS or ~300 mph in the real jet. If you are under maybe 50 mph with the model the thrust component, from positive AOA, will become the primary lifting device. I’ve owned that model and you really need a long paved runway and sharp eyes. It’s the nature of Gen 2 jets. Another option is to flop it in the grass gear up, but that’s not without foam damage at these speeds.
That's a lot. Appreciate the in-depth response. Unfortunately, I don't think the full-scale F-5 info translates to model scale due to the Reynolds number difference. Full scale F-5s have a razor sharp wing compared to these foam models, in addition to the difference in mass, materials, and the fact that I'm not physically in the model experiencing the flight. The Reynolds number itself is a huge difference - massive, even - in that it's going to experience majority laminar airflow throughout almost all of the flight envelope as opposed to a full scale F-5 which will experience more turbulent airflow and have a different lift coefficient as a result. Basically, I'm sure they fly similar but there's no way they'll fly identically - especially not with my setup using differential stabilators to assist with roll and perform post-stall maneuvering - or attempt to, anyhow. Summed up, the F-5 definitely doesn't glide well. It does however fly fine with even a little bit of thrust from the motor, and I find myself holding thrust on approach to overcome the drag from the flaps. It lands like a jet configured for crow, not a jet with standard flaps.
@@TwoBrosRC I agree they don’t fly identically, but Reynolds Number makes models fly worse, due to a smaller number of air molecules pushed around by a same-shape airfoil. That makes air less predictable at smaller scales. That’s why the model has more intense less predictable wing rock, although the full scale plane experiences severe wing rock, too. If you hold the stick full aft, the full scale plane will very predictably rock to 60 degrees bank from side to side to side, with the nose basically level on the horizon, but a straight down velocity vector, by that I mean an AOA near 90 degrees. Just falling. The F-5 airfoil cross section, because it is a long thin plate at almost any scale, is basically going to approximate flat, so a special case of symmetrical, no matter how much you try to camber it. Flat airfoil flaps add some camber, but a lot of drag too so they are helpful but not down most of the time, anyway. I think you are right, though, that all models feel sort of similar, but nevertheless different. The similarities make flying RC fun, especially giant scale which feel pretty close but with a generally stronger thrust to weight. In this models case, the fan acts more like a very low torque, high RPM, so decent horsepower, prop, but permitting only slow speed flight in the non-compressible region. Since the air can’t be compressed at speeds less than around 0.3 Mach, it’s another reason the model acts more like a speed-starved airplane” and less like a “flat-plane” high perf jet. All that said, you can definitely see classic F-5 characteristics in your video. Especially when you get very “slow” which I would say, for this particular airplane, is most of the video. The best example is what happens at 7:13. But the plane is largely struggling in a near stall most of the time. That’s why the real aircraft has a speed waiver to do 300 KIAS below 10K feet. 250 KIAS is not near enough, especially when heavy, which is how the electric model feels all the time. Especially on landing. Landing a heavy weight F-5 is risky to say the least. You want a barrier option which is why all USAF training bases (T-38) have two ~10,000ft RWYs with BAK-15s. To make a long story endless, the real F-5 actually glides very nicely and reasonably efficiently, but L/D(max) is 240-250 KIAS, or like 300+ mph. That almost requires declaring an emergency just to “legally” hold your glide speed. So the way less mass-dense model is going to bleed airspeed at anything near an efficient glide airspeed, too quickly.
I definitely noticed the glide slope issue you're talking about yesterday when I shot the landing tutorial. I got about 15 touch & go approaches and it became very noticeable when I tried landing power off. It simply started falling and only my massive throws on the stabs kept it from having a strong impact on the pavement. After that single attempt at power-off approaches, I went back to low-end power to maintain the slope. It's significantly more fun to fly than I originally thought on the maiden. I actually find myself really enjoying how it lands. It's a unique challenge, something I appreciate in a hobby where so many models feel so very much alike as you've mentioned.
Mine seems to fly best with the battery about a quarter to half of the way behind that line inside the fuselage too far forward it pitches up during turns to far back it acts wonky like in this video not hating at all I've learned a ton from your videos but this particular jet is super picky about cg
I have the fms 3665 2000kv platinum pro in mine and on 15 degrees timing she's a beast gets 150 160mph flat an level on gps love it best sounding edf I own and 2nd fastest next to Zues
I appreciate the camera man doing his best👍👍👍👍
We appreciate you watching!
That sounds amazing
I have this exact jet and fly it just fine without a gyro. I have a much tougher time with Freewing's F-18. That plane is a handful, especially landing her. The F5's wide gear stance is so much nicer to deal with
👀
Hey Jon, Nice looking jet, I love it when things happen and it is not all way me when things go wrong. Good to see the plane was not damaged, what is your favorite jet if you could only have one?
Thanks
The Rafale 80mm would probably be our pick.
Like your videos they're really cool. Your runway needs a little bit of work maybe a weed eater And some round up
Thanks! I know the runway is less than perfect but it's pretty nice for being free. 😊
Nice Swedish Air Force t shirt!👍🇸🇪
Min familij år från Sverige. ;)
Looking good Jon! 👏👏👏👏👏
Thanks buddy!
CA glue on an electrical connection??? Loved the video.
What's your question in reference to? A timestamp would be helpful.
Nicely done!
Thanks buddy!
You know why I subscribed right now, I love the way you explain everything that is going on and why it's flying the way it is.
Your the only one that I know of that really explains what's happening. I already learned about what I want to buy and what it's doing so I can correct it.
Keep up the good work.
Will do Jeff - thank you for joining us on this aerodynamic journey of ours!
That afterburner looks fantastic
Nice Save Jon. You are definitely pro flyer. Dam. You always take it to the limits. Thanks for sharing 😊
Thanks Johan! Let's be real though, I'm definitely not a pro, but I do have a good bit of experience. Maybe above average if we're being realistic. I have a lot more to learn.
Hey Jon! Live in the Pinehurst area of NC. Plenty of longleafs here. Let me know and you can fly at my club field anytime!
I'll have to swing by and see. All we get up here in the Raleigh area is loblolly. It's sad.
I wouldn't be able to resist the urge to give this jet the Mig 28 paint sceme.
Nice, I brought this same jet a few months ago but haven't had the guts to take it out yet. You confirmed my thoughts lol. I will wait for a perfect weather day to try and see where I can squeeze a gyro in it.
Setup is in the end of the vid if you want to see how I did it and perhaps use my IX file if you've got an IX-series radio. It's a challenging aircraft to fly. Keep that in mind and be aware of accelerated stalls and you should be absolutely fine. It needs a good bit of speed to fly with those little stubby wings.
Very nice review! I also agreed with you! Most popular RC RUclipsrs only goes around and some are serius dumb flyers with lack of experience, never put they aircraft to do real test of capabilitys! and some when they crash blame the manual instead of addmit they stall! Never teaching useful stuff to noobies! Nobbies always tend to use to much 6 axis gyros and never learn to fly properly
Thanks man, much obliged.
I just measured the wing on my F-5N and came up with 196 sq.in. for the wing panels. If you add the fuselage area between the panels (we always included it in the old days), it's 268 sq.in. After all, the plane does fly partly on the fuselage a la F-104 Starfighter. At 5 lbs, that gives a wing loading of 43 oz/sq.ft. That's not too terrible considering there is some airfoil to the wing and you should notice some loss of lift before the critical angle. The hardest part is landing it and most of that is due to the lack of dampening in the landing gear. If you don't grease the landing, you'd better have enough juice left to go around.
Good info - thanks! Perhaps it's not an issue of wing loading as much as it is an issue of stubby little wings. It's actually pretty easy to land so long as you're bringing it in with thrust. I was able to perform about 15 T&Gs yesterday almost effortlessly while holding power on approach. The key so far is to treat it like a jet running crow. Hold some throttle to manage sink rate, otherwise it'll just fall out of the sky without dropping a wing if your glideslope is too shallow. Much easier to just hold throttle and manage the descent instead of trying to finagle a working glideslope that will always function regardless of wind conditions.
@@TwoBrosRC I control the pitch attitude with the elevator and control the descent rate with throttle. If I’m going to be short, I add power. I try to keep a little bit of elevator in reserve so that I have some left to soften the touchdown, if needed..
When landing with flaps, you need some power to keep the plane from losing speed too fast. It gives you a little more time between the start of the flare and getting it on the ground before it stops flying..
Nice save. Good looking Jet.
Way to work thru the problems and keep a professional composure.Best rc content on RUclips!
Thanks man! Really appreciate the sentiment.
How did you fix the canopy problem..?
We didn't. It's still a problem.
Cool good flight. 🙂
Great video!
PS - Do you have plans for the PVC jet holder? Very cool.
Thanks! No plans, my wife just winged it.
no one has ever said this is a beginner jet!! However it is not in anyway hard for an intermediate or expert to fly! Once you get the settings right and throws right, it is a total dream to fly! Mine always gets people to come to the flight line and watch as it flies! It needs to be slightly nose heavy and with the FMS 2100kv you need at least a 5000 pack to get the most fun. When I had this fan the plane was doing 150mph + and with my current Xfly it will do over that! All the throw you are using will make it depart really easily. From the voltage drop I am hearing on your telemetry you need a different pack for this set up as well. under load mine is still at over 3.7v per cell. I have had the same bird since 2014 and it is still going strong!
I won't argue that I need a new battery setup, but my throws are fine. I get into this argument constantly with people who think only in technedure - I get it, you fly the way you do, but don't come at me telling me that my throws are bad based on some arbitrary measure you've come up with. I know you don't argue about expo, so consider the idea that I'm flying with 85% expo and flying the jet perfectly fine throughout this entire video so long as the gear isn't malfunctioning. That alone shoots a gigantic hole in the "throws are too high" theory you've got.
@@TwoBrosRC yes we all have our own preferences. Get some more time with the plane and figure it out more. Like I said I did all the wrong and the right with mine. Had it since 2014 and its been to hell and back! Used to take off from a small dirt path then land in the grass… so my experience with the plane is not arbitrary.
I fully intend to get into it more. This was the maiden day, after all. I doubt you figured everything out on your F-5 in your first five flights. :)
Unfortunately, it is arbitrary - you're not the designer of the jet, nor do you know what my goal is with it or what I'm trying to achieve. That's what I'm talking about when I say technedure. Your personal techniques are not my official procedure. If you want to offer advice to people, they tend to take it better when you offer suggestions instead of absolutes. Food for thought.
@@TwoBrosRC to each their own… and you do it your way… in no way does it make it anywhere near right either!!
My 80mm F-5N in the aggressor scheme flies much better than my 90mm F-104 Starfighter. My F-5N is stock and is actually easier to fly than I thought it would be. And yeah, I think it’s my 10th EDF jet. It is difficult to see at the edges of the field. I put an AR637T in mine and mostly fly it in SAFE mode, even for takeoff and landing. I’m 72 and my eyes aren’t what they used to be. I can land and get it stopped without going off the end of our 350 foot paved runway. I had to enable reverse on my 80mm E-flite F-16 to get it stopped. Also, I put a KM-RC AB in my 70mm E-flite F-16 and I think it’s great. I did have a little trouble getting it to remember the calibration.
The KM unit has issues with Smart ESCs. The fellow who runs the site discovered it after I reported some bugs I encountered. There should be documentation on the site about Smart ESCs and what to do with them.
@@TwoBrosRC Yeah, I can see how the microcontroller in the KM-RC AB might have issues with the Smart signals riding on the PWM servo signal. If I still worked at a calibration lab, I’d see what it looked like on an oscilloscope. I’ve just started learning how to program Arduino boards and have learned there are at least two ways to measure the servo pulse width. My current project is for navigation lights for R/C models and using a channel to turn the strobe and landing lights on and off.
I use ailerons on my aircraft too. Reduce your throw on your tailerons and you will get a full axial roll.
I may end up trying that. For now I've basically just gone back to using ailerons only. Seems to fly just fine. The primary reason I set up tailerons is to have the ability to flat spin and pull off other maneuvers, but this model doesn't really want to do it so I'm not going to keep forcing it to using stabs alone.
I think it doesn’t depend on your tailerons for a flat spin. You just don’t have enough surface on your rudder or deflection.
I use tailerons on my aircraft because when you slow your aircraft to close to stall speed, your wing gets mushy. Tailerons in my opinion keep the aircraft with a symmetrical roll rate through its performance envelop.
@@terrencejackson4587 Differential stabilators (aka tailerons) actually are one of the only ways to properly flat spin a model without thrust vectoring. Sometimes rudder does it - and may do it here - but the stabs are where most of the rotational force is going to come from after the model is held in a stall with full back elevator pressure and left or right commanded roll. This is how I flat spin basically every other stab-equipped jet, such as the F-22, F-16, F-15, F-14, etc.
Well, I am not a flat spinosologist. It didn’t work out well for Goose so it most likely wouldn’t work out well for me. I gave up flying Motion’s foam jets as they only fly for 3 minutes at a time!
So glad you were able to get it down in one piece - great skills!
What do you use for wall mounting your planes?
A Lowes bicycle rack.
That’s a nice plane, sorry maiden went south!!! Great piloting though!!
Thats a great flying jet not sure why yours flew wonky. 120mph all day long with stock set up.
Probably because it's not the best designed model out there. When something gets laterally unstable when the CG moves back to the recommended point, it's a bit on the wonky side.
@@TwoBrosRC idk mine is pretty rock solid. Your battery placement looked too far back. Maybe try moving the battery forward a couple of inches
@@icantfly Its for sure too far back and the elevator throws are not what this plane likes. I have done all that there is to do wrong and right with this plane. With my fms 2100kv fan the plane was over 150mph too so something is definitely wrong with this set up.
I did in later flights, which made it fly a bit better but still on the nose-heavy side of things. I'm not a big fan of that TBH.
Mine flys great maybe my camouflage scheme lol all though i still buddy box it...
Now i have ideas thank's Jon...also i have the V2 version inrunner
have you Flown a Sr-71 Blackbird Twin 40mm EDF yet
Check out our long form vids.
"I expected more." You were referring to the speed, but that pretty much sums up my feeling about this plane. 😅 Maybe my expectations were too high for it. Sold it after 8 flights. Maybe i would have liked it with a gyro, but it just never felt like i could get it flying right. Moved cg all over the place, messed with getting control surfaces level. Maybe mine was just a odd behaving one. Sure is a beautiful looking model though
I'll probably keep it until it wrecks. It was so cheap that I can't see it being worth the effort of selling. That being said, yeah, it seems to excel at fast flight but that doesn't mean I won't find a way to tame it and make it behave the way I want it to. As you might recall, everyone said I couldn't high alpha the E-flite Viper 90, yet it seems to feature high alpha quite prominently as the channel intro. ;)
@@TwoBrosRC o for sure. Im deffinetly going to be watching you work some magic on the f5 and am curious what setup finally gets a good all around performance for that plane
IM curious , did you fly it stock and felt it needed the upgrades ?I just maidened the stock F 5 with the 85amp esc and it was fast for me,
We just wanted the FMS motor which always produces more thrust than the stock Freewing setup of this jet's era.
Try the F-104😈
One of these days.
Did you have to do a lot to put that fms motor in there?
Not much, just some foam shaving and it fit.
That really is a cool looking plane. Kinda reminds me of the L-39 flying through the air.
I was thinking F-104 personally, but I can see where you're coming from.
WHAT SIZE PCV PIPE DID YOU USE FOR YOUR PLANE RACK?
Standard size.
My f 5 really dosnt like any tail heavy. The 9 blade will have her doing 130mph +, I would put it back in. Besides the sound is amazing.
I don't think the motor is limiting speed. It's most likely caused by the ESC. More testing will be needed.
@@TwoBrosRC ya. Makes sense. She is a hot rod...thats for sure.
@@TwoBrosRC I just like that freewing h.p. 9 blade fan/motor.😎👍
I'm not a fan of it - it's a bit heavy for the amount of thrust it puts out.
@@TwoBrosRC I don't have tons of 80mm fans under my belt. I have 3 of the 9 blades, tho. I will eventually experiment with other 80mm fans. For now I'm happy with their performance. I had thought about the newest fms 80mm 12 blade rig but its kinda spendy for my blood. I can not remmember now. Somthing like 3.6k thurst and super efficient.....2000kv?? mm??? I think. I have not looked that fans specs up in a minute.
This F5 is for extreme speed, very different to your flying style. Right jet for wrong flyer :-) 😂😂
OK
Hey Jon….were you able to high alpha this rocket? Would love to see more content on this jet….Wish Freewing would make a 90mm version…..
I think we were able to get it to perform inverted high alpha for a short period of time. Otherwise, no, regular high alpha was way too unstable.
Some challenging flying Jon. Do you use polycrylic on all your planes? What is your main reason?
I only use Polycrylic gloss on airshow style planes, like my FMS Pitts 1.4m v2. Otherwise they don't look quite right without the gloss coating. Gotta hit the F/A-18 Blue Angels at some point too.
I have had that model f5 before, stock setup no gyros it was flying good, sold it but want to buy again. Have mig 21 now, way harder for me got 6 flights now still adjusting trims. You did good reviews 👏
Hi Jon, you’re reviews are really great as you show the full flight envelope which allows people to really see how the plane handles even in bad situations so thanks! Do you think you’ll review the freewing Mirage or freewing 70mm F104? Thanks-Ant
Hey man! Both are on my list. Thanks for letting me know what you're interested in.
@@TwoBrosRC nice one Jon! Awesome and looking forward to it. Keep the reviews coming. Ant
I have had really bad landings on my one. It busted the front gear. I learnt that landing with half flap is actually better for me.
Full flap works great - you just have to understand how to land a jet. It takes some finesse. I'll end up shooting a landing tutorial for this model soon.
Mosquito blood on that wing. In scale size that would be a bird strike. 😂
Absolutely - good thing mosquitoes don't dent foam.
you should try a yak 130 . I have one and it flies really well its kinda floaty and super light for being a 70mm 6s i sometimes fit a 6000mah batt and get 5 minute flights and its really fast. mine doesnt have all moving tail but it does have a servo per elevator side which is weird but helpful
I usually don't go for models without a full flying stabilator if they're supposed to have one - though a bigger Yak might have it. Thanks for the idea!
if you follow the manual then the plane flies well .have had 3 trips with my no problems
Good to hear you're having fun!
I flew this jet on the Maiden without a gyro and it flew beautifully. The funny thing is that the F5 was my first EDF Jet and my first plane with wheels on it 😅 but it is still in one piece.
Good to hear man! I think it'll fly fine without a gyro so long as you don't have asymmetric drag issues like I did on my initial maiden flight. It's still a weird airplane to fly, though.
'Ello! Could it be that this model is a handful because of the big honkin' 5000 packs being used? Thats a big velveeta cheese block for a model this small i would think...
Nah, it's squirrelly regardless of what pack you use. F-5s don't have big wings so they're always going to fly heavily loaded.
Yes, unfortunate. Fast jet and very unstable flyer. Maybe rates a bit high? CG off?
Nah, rates are never the issue with us. We fly 150 travel on everything. CG was the issue.
@@TwoBrosRCyes, the next flight looked much better! I just bought the 90mm F-22 as my first EDF. Transitioning from Top Flight P-51 but concerned about the speed. Going to spend a few more days on the sim before I maiden it! Great videos!!!! Thanks!!!
Sorry that happened the first time around. I would feel just as infuriated as you. That thing honestly would be a good hand launcher with the size but I bet the gear are light. Cheers
Thanks man. Just happy I got mine down safe.
so i have an f22 and i followed your advice of moving the batt reall far back and it flies great but just like what you said here i had to land without flaps cause it started being unstable on aproach idk if you had that maybe the full span flaps help cause i dont use full span
You could try crow if it's getting unstable. That might help bring it back into stability.
Can I ask how you are getting voltage readings off your pack? I have ix20 as well but can’t figure out the voltage reading?
I cover voltage info in my setup vids, usually - check my RC Aircraft Setup Demos playlist: ruclips.net/p/PLiEHeXKlZj2mLRTlM9DCrCs302BJFNfyq
I'm 99% positive the F-35 setup covers this. You can translate it over to this one.
Thank you much appreciated, I didn’t know if it would work on my 12s jets or not I just found out volt sensor is up to 60v. Thanks again sir! You rock!!!!
Oh no!!
Oh yeah!
What receiver are you using and how do you get the air speed to work. i have an ix20
AR8360T - it should be in the video description. Speed requires a GPS: tinyurl.com/SpektrumGPS - you'll have to bind the receiver with the GPS installed in the X-Bus port for it to be recognized.
Amazing review Jon. I learned so much from it. Just as you I like the F5 too, but I am a bit afraid for it. It flys exacly how I expected. Too much tricky for me. At least for now. At this moment I have the Freewing T33 almost ready for its maiden. It is my first edf to fly. Do you have any tips for this one?
Nah, don't be afraid of it - just be aware that it's a power-hungry jet and requires a good bit of speed to stay airborne. It's not designed to fly very slowly. I'd recommend starting with an easier model, but if it's all you've got then I'd recommend keeping speed up throughout most of your maneuvers. Don't keep it at full throttle all the time, even half is probably fine, but you will stall it easily if you don't keep airspeed up while it moves around.
This is the part of the hobby thats tough... For what were paying I sometimes feel the quality in servos, servo wires and retract servos is a little sub par
Definitely. That's one reason why I usually redo all the servos myself with quality units. This one had the stabs replaced with AGFRC B13DLM units to ensure performance.
Tail Heavy
It definitely was not tail heavy.
My gear won’t go up! Honestly, dear, this usually never happens!
Oof size: huge.
The real f5 only uses the stabilators in pitch.
Good thing this isn't a real F-5!
@@TwoBrosRC just thought I'd mention it, I noticed your roll was a bit excessive.
That's only when I use the full stick. The rolls aren't terribly excessive otherwise. Appreciate you mentioning it though.
If you want a reliable radio/link that can’t brown the gear or worse, the receiver, the main battery has to power the receiver directly. There is never a need for satellite receivers except with Spektrum. I can’t recommend Hitec Aurora enough. You will never lose a link and never brown the gear. Spektrum will brown every flight if the control side load is high, and lose the link regularly. Many start with Spektrum, but no one sticks with it. The design is inherently bad. Better to the bullet and sell it off.
If you do stick with your investment, it will help to test flight controls/accessories at full battery load… so full throttle with all servos/gear actuated at once. Personally I would test that way at a min flying battery charge, too.
All I can say is that I've flown models on Spektrum equipment thousands of times in the past two and a half years and I can't think of a single time I've encountered anything you're talking about. I simply can't correlate it - so I'm sure you understand that I'm most definitely not going to reinvest a ton of money into a new radio system based on a single comment which doesn't line up with my experiences so far.
I use remote receivers because I *want* to, not because I *need* to. I prefer the insurance that a $39.99 remote adds to an expensive model. I would add remote receivers to any other brand regardless of who made it. That's not indicative of the brand's performance, it's me choosing safety and peace of mind.
I’ve never had to use a satellite receiver with my Spektrum AR636’s or AR637’s..
@@TwoBrosRC
I wouldn’t re-invest based on a comment either. But the comment is still a worthwhile point. Spektrum has gotten a lot better, but mostly due to bandaids required by a fundamentally sketchy design. There are a lot of issues, and I would call all the issues major because they can result in a loss of control.
I used to buy satellite receivers and I still would if I flew Spektrum in anything bigger than a small foamie, because I think they are definitely needed. I still fly Spektrum in a few low risk park flyers and almost all my UMXs. I know UMX is branding, I mean “cul-de-sac” scale that can’t hurt anyone or go through a window with a lost link.
The two main problems, in order, IMO, are (1) the lack of a direct, main battery powered receiver. This means that the “system voltage” is always fluctuating around min working electrical component voltage. So under load (all servo actuated, plus accessories like gear and lights) the link can easily drop in and out.
It’s no different for 1S planes since the main is 1S too (another reason UMX “is what it is”), but even 2S makes a HITEC receiver, or similar solution, run on basically unlimited main battery voltage. IOWs, no matter how many amps you push through a 5V BEC, under full load V will sag to brownout levels. The bandaid is BEC amps, but even “just” 7 volts from a 2S main battery is plenty of margin with never a need for an amp-based strategy. 3S, 11V nominal, is crazy higher than the 3V microprocessor min requirement. And so on.
The other problem is lack of a secure link with clear frequency scanning and constant frequency hopping. Also critical.
It’s been a while since I entertained Spektrum, so maybe it’s gotten better. When I used it it was pure pain. I lost maybe 30 models to brownout, before I fully understood what was happening. You gear actuation fail is a perfect example of a Spektrum failure. High amp BECs are overloading the wire gauge to keep V droop low to keep the Rx awake. Almost lost that model, so you do have major issues.
In summary:
Q1: Why would you ever power the Rx on the same electrical bus as mechanically loaded flight controls and gear?
Q2: Why would you ever put the Rx on an electrical bus that fluctuates on or near min microprocessor voltage?
There are other problems which are pretty major too, and so safety related, like a lack of “awake” microprocessing power should link be lost due to excessive range or blocked LOS, or in Spektrum’s case, something like gear retraction drooping the system voltage. That prevents an “awake” no link fail safe mode for programmable flight control positions to spiral glide the model in full flap idle. One problem with Aurora is it will hold a strong link for 7-10 miles, so that spiral can be a looong ways away if you lose sight.
Most don’t realize it but Hitec has had all the advanced assignment and mixing features you show, for decades, plus a more sensible setup. You name your own channels, for example, and they all have the same feature set. Spektrum is design to make it easier for beginners to do things like pre-conceived “flap” and “gear” type mixes, but it makes the platform kind of a a mess for advanced flight control designs.
But it’s really the fundamentals that should drive a platform of choice, IMO. I have no affiliation with HITEC, but it’s night and day IMO.
Flat out brutal honesty: the more experienced flyers don’t appreciate people flying very high electrical load, fast/dangerous models on Spektrum. It’s just a potentially fatal accident waiting to happen. I’m mostly talking 500 and up size helicopters, especially in any way that ever directs energy toward the crowd. It is just stupid. I understand it’s mostly unrecognized risk, and airplanes are significantly less dangerous than a 2 meter blade disk with a completely random ground impact footprint. But they are still not without serious risk.
I’m not talking about this little foam fighter, which at worst would be like torture with the “comfy chair.”
Appreciate the insights - but I think I'll stick with Spektrum for now. I usually don't change brands unless there's some kind of experience giving me a reason to.
Too much throw, gyro set too sensitive, ..and I'm not sure you have the control surfaces synced correctly. The plane should fly nicely without depending heavily on stabilization.
Throw is fine, gyro is obviously in need of tuning because it was the maiden. Surfaces are synced correctly.
You didnt want to fly it stock to see how it handled? Thats the first time i've seen an F5 fly so unstable.
I don't really fly models stock. Not my thing. It's pretty stable in the rest of the vid, but the first section is definitely weird with the asymmetric drag from the stuck gear.
I don’t understand why it flys so unstably with a gyro, you seem to be stabbing at the sticks which is maybe why.
I’m surprised your gear switch with didn’t wear out and come off you flicked it so much😂
It was unstable because of the asymmetric gear drag. Later on it was because I was still figuring out how it flew. "stabbing at the sticks" is using dampened stick movement. I fly with high expo because that's what I'm comfortable with.
@@TwoBrosRC
I fly with expo too but I still try and fly as smoothly as possible even if the model has a gyro.
I know the gear leg hanging out was causing the instability, I’m just surprised the gyro didn’t handle it with the amount of gain you had
I usually fly pretty smoothly as well, but on reviews I'm not looking for precision flying - I'm looking for what the model is capable of, how it stalls, how it maneuvers aggressively, etc. All of which is vital information for a proper review.
i can fly it with out a gyro no issue
Congrats, thanks for sharing.
flat spinning it in tall grass wont kill it , but i would of landed it on tarmac instead of grass
Landing on pavement would have guaranteed a skid on concrete that would have tore up the foam pretty good. I had no real visible damage going with grass.
Very interesting Jon. I saw the F-5s when I was in the Air Force in the 80's. It's amazing the technology that was available in the late 50s and is still in service to this day, such a cool place, thank you for your videos! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-5
Disliked this video because you are using click bait tactics. You get views from your organic skill, not misleading video thumbnails and titles.
1. You are the king of setups. You have more voice feedback than ive ever heard like holy cow.
2. Good piloting! Nice save.
This isn't clickbait though. It's an actual still from the footage using creative thumbnails to make it pop. Nothing is baited here. It's all relevant. Thanks for the feedback though! Disliking doesn't really hurt me or the content - any interaction promotes it. 😉
Gain was too high on gyro….
Yeah, that tends to happen when you're setting up a model on its maiden flight. :) It's still being tweaked.
This is one of my favorite edf’s….I run a 3700 roaring top 70c….with freewing inrunner….it rips….
Trying to fly an F-5 on the wing.
Not gonna happen.
The F-5 flies on the thrust component opposing gravity.
Mind clarifying?
Sure. When full scale student pilots first try to land the T-38, they bring bad habits from aircraft that fly on the wing, like the T-6/37. Well, they aren’t “bad” habits if you have a significant wing, only if you don’t. A common, but not-useful paradigm brought from low performance winged flight to high performance jets, is the concept of using throttle to climb/descend from increasing airspeed seeking a trim point. That requires a low performance wing.
With a high perf wing, zero camber (the Freewing model sneaks a little in, but the lack of wing area is still dominantly high perf in character) dictates some positive AOA to fly. And it’s never going to follow a trimmed attitude by flying on the wing, you have to manually force the desired pitch attitude. The AOA has a large range of buffet (can’t feel it in RC of course) before the lift peaks (actual F-5/T-38 is VIOLENTLY shaking, like wooden roller coaster x10. IPs will descibe it as mice dancing on the wing, gradually increasing with AOA until elephants are jumping up and down. When the brutal bangs start to hit out of even rhythm, the wing is now post stall. The nose still can be pitched farther up, but that just increases the sink rate. The vector of the real F-5 with full aft elevator pegged is about 70 degrees AOA with the pitch stable around 5 degrees nose low, so a 75 degree down vector from the horizon. It takes a while for the nose to come through the horizon to a stable nose low attitude. Maybe 10,000 feet of fall.
That’s with flying airspeed. A full fuel stall speed (applicable since batteries don’t lighten up) for the F-5 is 180 to 190 mph. So let’s round to 3x a low perf aircraft. Because the wing has a very long AOA transition to a stall, you need to be stabilized a super high drag (buffet bleeds tons of energy from drag) high throttle approach. A heavy F-5, in order to fly slow enough, comes in about 7 degrees nose high on final at around 95% throttle.
Because of the very high AOA to get everything available from the small wing area with symmetrical, very elongated airfoil, something strange happens. The airplane flies largely on the component of thrust opposing gravity. As you flare, that component becomes even bigger. As you round out and pull power, it’s like kicking the chair out from under you, because the wing cannot produce enough lift so you touch down, essentially like a helicopter, by removing the thrust component and flaring to compensate as much as possible without a full stall (violent, but not arhythmic buffet). It’s kinda similar in concept to the end game of autorotation once the power is pulled.
The same thrust-wing relationship occurs during slow flight. That equates to any speed under 250 KIAS or ~300 mph in the real jet. If you are under maybe 50 mph with the model the thrust component, from positive AOA, will become the primary lifting device.
I’ve owned that model and you really need a long paved runway and sharp eyes. It’s the nature of Gen 2 jets.
Another option is to flop it in the grass gear up, but that’s not without foam damage at these speeds.
That's a lot. Appreciate the in-depth response. Unfortunately, I don't think the full-scale F-5 info translates to model scale due to the Reynolds number difference. Full scale F-5s have a razor sharp wing compared to these foam models, in addition to the difference in mass, materials, and the fact that I'm not physically in the model experiencing the flight. The Reynolds number itself is a huge difference - massive, even - in that it's going to experience majority laminar airflow throughout almost all of the flight envelope as opposed to a full scale F-5 which will experience more turbulent airflow and have a different lift coefficient as a result.
Basically, I'm sure they fly similar but there's no way they'll fly identically - especially not with my setup using differential stabilators to assist with roll and perform post-stall maneuvering - or attempt to, anyhow. Summed up, the F-5 definitely doesn't glide well. It does however fly fine with even a little bit of thrust from the motor, and I find myself holding thrust on approach to overcome the drag from the flaps. It lands like a jet configured for crow, not a jet with standard flaps.
@@TwoBrosRC
I agree they don’t fly identically, but Reynolds Number makes models fly worse, due to a smaller number of air molecules pushed around by a same-shape airfoil. That makes air less predictable at smaller scales. That’s why the model has more intense less predictable wing rock, although the full scale plane experiences severe wing rock, too. If you hold the stick full aft, the full scale plane will very predictably rock to 60 degrees bank from side to side to side, with the nose basically level on the horizon, but a straight down velocity vector, by that I mean an AOA near 90 degrees. Just falling.
The F-5 airfoil cross section, because it is a long thin plate at almost any scale, is basically going to approximate flat, so a special case of symmetrical, no matter how much you try to camber it. Flat airfoil flaps add some camber, but a lot of drag too so they are helpful but not down most of the time, anyway.
I think you are right, though, that all models feel sort of similar, but nevertheless different. The similarities make flying RC fun, especially giant scale which feel pretty close but with a generally stronger thrust to weight.
In this models case, the fan acts more like a very low torque, high RPM, so decent horsepower, prop, but permitting only slow speed flight in the non-compressible region. Since the air can’t be compressed at speeds less than around 0.3 Mach, it’s another reason the model acts more like a speed-starved airplane” and less like a “flat-plane” high perf jet.
All that said, you can definitely see classic F-5 characteristics in your video. Especially when you get very “slow” which I would say, for this particular airplane, is most of the video. The best example is what happens at 7:13. But the plane is largely struggling in a near stall most of the time. That’s why the real aircraft has a speed waiver to do 300 KIAS below 10K feet. 250 KIAS is not near enough, especially when heavy, which is how the electric model feels all the time. Especially on landing. Landing a heavy weight F-5 is risky to say the least. You want a barrier option which is why all USAF training bases (T-38) have two ~10,000ft RWYs with BAK-15s.
To make a long story endless, the real F-5 actually glides very nicely and reasonably efficiently, but L/D(max) is 240-250 KIAS, or like 300+ mph. That almost requires declaring an emergency just to “legally” hold your glide speed. So the way less mass-dense model is going to bleed airspeed at anything near an efficient glide airspeed, too quickly.
I definitely noticed the glide slope issue you're talking about yesterday when I shot the landing tutorial. I got about 15 touch & go approaches and it became very noticeable when I tried landing power off. It simply started falling and only my massive throws on the stabs kept it from having a strong impact on the pavement. After that single attempt at power-off approaches, I went back to low-end power to maintain the slope.
It's significantly more fun to fly than I originally thought on the maiden. I actually find myself really enjoying how it lands. It's a unique challenge, something I appreciate in a hobby where so many models feel so very much alike as you've mentioned.
Battery way to far back you love flying stuff way to tail heavy that's why it was so wonky
That's not really the main problem with the jet here.
Mine seems to fly best with the battery about a quarter to half of the way behind that line inside the fuselage too far forward it pitches up during turns to far back it acts wonky like in this video not hating at all I've learned a ton from your videos but this particular jet is super picky about cg
I have the fms 3665 2000kv platinum pro in mine and on 15 degrees timing she's a beast gets 150 160mph flat an level on gps love it best sounding edf I own and 2nd fastest next to Zues
Where is the crash? Not in the mood to search for the thumbnail in a 50min video. 👎
Use the chapters I thoughtfully provided for you.
@@TwoBrosRC 🤣
This jet sucks!
Kinda yeah.
@@TwoBrosRC but I don't like your videos