Saturday 5 April 2014

RCRCM Mini Vector Review

Here is a short review of my new toy after a very successful maiden today. I bought this glider through a BMFA wanted add which came up trumps.
I can't really comment on the building of this model as it was already done, which was a bonus. The model seems fairly well made for the price. The design is very sleek with a very narrow fuselage, just enough room for the battery, RX and 2 servos.
Now for the flying part, which is the best bit. The MiniVec is the first mouldie glider I've flown and all I can say is wow!!!! Wind was about 15mph today and its sooooo smooth and precise to fly, seems carry its speed incredibly well through the turns. As for aerobatics, it make's everything seem so easy. Loops, rolls, 4 point roll, inverted and stall turn's ( which isn't quite so easy, more practice needed i think) are all the things i tried on it's first trip out. I was a bit nervous about the landing especially at Colley Hill where your always in the lift, when we were there last i flew my phase 6 which i found very hard to land. But with the MiniVec and it's flaps deployed no such a problem, what a difference flaps make( never had them on a model before). First 2 landing's where brilliant ( dont like to boast but they were), last one it took a bit of a thump but all was well with the model! Lauching is a bit tricky as the only place to hold it is the fuselage behind the wing which makes it a bit unbalanced, the one time i tried to lauch it myself resulted in a very short flight of about 3 seconds:) more practice needed with that too.

In short a very nice model and well worth the money. I look forward to experimenting with it a bit more:))

4 comments:

  1. Steve (A470Soaring)5 April 2014 at 21:04

    Well done jack, the Minivec is a lovely plane and I'm sure you'll get a lot of fun with it. I don't know how you've set it up but if you haven't done so already, mix the flaps in with the ailerons and best of all with the elevator to give you snap flaps. With that set up you'll be doing square loops so easily. I shall be looking out for some video and I hope you bring it with you to the Bwlch.
    Steve

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  2. Cheers Steve. I see in the instructions its got the settings for flap as aileron, snap flaps and camber . I'll get that setup on the tx, then I'll be well away :) though I'm not quite sure what camber does?

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  3. Steve (A470Soaring)6 April 2014 at 11:22

    Jack. Camber is deflecting the flaps down for extra lift, usually when you want to gain height in a thermal or launching from a bungee or winch. Reflex is the opposite and often called Speed Flap. In both cases you usually only want about 1mm of deflection otherwise you create more drag and lose the benefits. To be honest, I wouldn't have thought you'd need either with the Minivec. I use both on my moudies but the Minivec is designed for true aerobatics, hence the wide nose, which is designed to offer some lift when in a knife edge manoeuvre or hesitation roll. Of course, applying camber slows the plane down too. Start by mixing about half the movement of the flaps to aileron when applying that mix as a starting point as you need more movement outboard than inboard, but it does help with rolling.

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