Techone Swift

[rpstar]

Well, can't seem to motivate myself to finish my Hangar-9 Toledo special at the moment so I've started on a new foamy. I seem to collect 3d foamies and my latest is a Techone 47" Swift.

All-in-all this is a pretty impressive foamy for the price. The hinging is nice and moves freely and the same on each side. My only complaint (if you can call it that) was that they included some wimpy spars for the wing. If you watch some of the videos on youtube of this plane you will notice the wing flexing pretty good in some of them. My fix is that I took a much larger carbon rod and cut a groove to embed it into after glueing the two wing halves together with CA. The pics below show my new rod as well as the included small (think control rod size) rods glued in.



Here is a side view of the fuselage. You can see the nice carbon already installed that it came with. Fuselage seems pretty stiff so far and I don't think it should need additional rods of my own. I already had another use for the canopy glue I bought for the Toledo special as I used it here on the included cool little actual canopy they include for this foamy. (By the way, you can glue EPO and such pretty well with Canopy glue, something I would not have guessed. Also, it's nice in that overspill dries clear!)




That's about it for tonight as i ran out of thin CA and need to head to the hobby shop tomorrow for some more.

Oh yeah, one more thing. The grooves cut in the wing for the ailerons were a bit rough. It does not sand easily given it's pretty tough EPP but I was able to sand the rough edge of the groove off to make the ailerons extend fully. Not sure if this pic will be able to show the rough edge or not but anyways...

 

[gyro]

Nice! Good luck on the build!

 

[rpstar]

Well, quality control could be better. The gear holder, while nice light ply, was inserted at an angle resulting in crooked gear like shown below. A quick cut of the foam and reseating of the holder along with some twisting of the gear in a bench vise corrected this easily enough but still....




Same lack of quality control in the slot for the horizontal stab resulted in the need for a small balsa wedge to get the horizontal stab aligned with the wing. Slot was both too big and crooked. I chose the wedge as the easiest way to fix this but I could have enlarged the slot also but either way requires some filler. I'll fill the remaining open area with thick CA.





Neither of these issues are a deal breaker but a newbie to building might night notice and end up with a seriously off-kilter horiz stab compared to the wing which is never a good thing. Having some foamy scratchbuild experience is definitely helping with this kit.

I will say the slot for the wing was also a tiny bit too big. This did allow me to get the wing aligned square with the fuselage however and I filled the gap on the bottom with hot-glue after using thin CA to set the location of the wing. Wing ended up being pretty square to the fuse for a foamy.

 

[rpstar]

Completed airframe sans electronics.




Motor is going to be a Exceed-RC Optima 480. Was considering a leftover Torque motor from a previous 48" EXF plane I had but it was feeling too big for this foamy and the Exceed just bolted on perfectly and matched the color scheme so we'll go with it since it's also one just laying around the shop. Should be ok as I can prop it for 300 watts max which based on my guestimates should give 150 watts per pound.

 

[rpstar]

One thing nice about EPP foamies it it's easy to tuck the wires in neatly into the fuse.


Almost complete, just need to attach ESC and solder on new bullet connectors on the motor. Receiver will tuck neatly into precut slot is fuselage.


Added a spare tail wheel I had for the heck of it. Not-steerable though.

 

[secondchildhood]

So, how did it fly? Ive been interested in this model for a while. Thanks for the build thread.
Any video?

Dwight

 

[hoghead5150]

well i just finished my techone swift. flown it once, and am loving it!!

 

[SnowDog]

Do you have any final pictures after the build? What do you like most about how it flies?

 

[hoghead5150]

my build went just about like the above build. same basic problems, altho none of them were really bad. the stab and elevator being the only thing that really took extra time. the fuse is cut at an angle so you need a shim to get the stab to set level. since i'm pretty new and don't have alot of parts laying around i bought the ARF version. the motor seems to be really good. pulled 404 watts with a 12x3.8sf apc prop at 36 amps on a 3s 1800mah 25c pack. the esc is a 40 amp unit with 5v 3a switching bec.

i did install different servos tho. the ad said "metal geared servos", but mine came with plastic geared ones. i put in hitec hs85mg's. overkill i know, but i had them on hand. i also moved the rudder servo up on the fuse so the control horn is in the center of the rudder. reduces flex in the rudder.

as for flying, it flies very well. with the 12x3.8 prop it has serious vertical. it will keep climbing till i can't see it anymore. the stock 11x4.7 seems a little better for slow flight. i had to turn my end points down on the elevator and rudder due to the rudder hitting the elevator at full deflection, and the elevator hitting the fuse (even after trimming the fuse) at full deflection. now on high rates i get around 45* aileron throw, 50* elevator and 55* rudder. low rates i just cut the throws in half. rudder and elevator are very powerful, the ailerons tho are not near as authoritive as i thought. even on high rate the aileron rolls are crisp but not what i would call fast.

 

[rpstar]

Ok, finally flew this today. I've got a video, not the best but gives you some idea at least. I used an Exceed Optima 480 and 30 Amp ESC. This is a very good match to this plane. I was flying with an APC 11x7 in the video but plan to switch to 12x6 or even a 13" prop as the motor was not even warm at all after the flight. Battery is a 2200 mah 3s.

Knife edge is easy. Tucked a bit to the canopy but I believe I'm still a bit nose-heavy (just a touch). You can't really move the battery around so I'll likely add a washer or other weight to the tail. It does not need much at all. Knife edge spins were easy to do (sorry, did not capture one on the video) and blenders should be equally good. Inverted did require a touch of down elevator (nose heavy as I said) but that will probably go away when I add the weight.

All in all this plane reminds me of my T-link Yak but better as it's bigger. Sweet plane really for a foamy. I've now owned over 20+ 3d foamies over the past 5 years and this is definitely the closest I've come to the feel of balsa. That's probably because it's fairly large for a foamy at 48" and hence weighs a bit more as a result. Balsa is still better of course (more violent in maneuvers if nothing else) but this is quite excellent. I was pleasantly surprised it had much less of the foamy floating feeling than I feared it might.

Here is my vid. Yeah, not the best but it's something....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg0VS6tk3OU&feature=youtu.be