Extreme
Brian Mclean
crafts this ship specifically for F3F and DS sloping. The fuse mold is all new, with a slip-on nose cone over a carbon
servo tray insert, a removable carbon ballast tube, and a unique mid-tail fixed
horizontal stabilizer with elevators.
The linkage in the tail allows up-elevator with a servo pull--key for
heavy DS elevator loading. The fuse is
heavily reinforced glass, with thick Kevlar in the wing root section, with
Kevlar and carbon extending from the wing root trailing edge to the tail in the
boom. Wings are carbon over high density foam with a ply reinforcement
of the leading edge and a heavy ply root and sub-rib. The foil DS19 and wing planform was custom designed for Brian by
Joe Wurts for F3F and DS. The kit comes with both carbon and steel
joiners. Ailerons and flaps are
silicone-hinged with internal balsa wipers, and the molded rudder has an
internal wiper. Wing span is seventy
eight inches, wing area five hundred and four square inches, dry wing loading
twelve point eight ounces per square foot (with steel joiner and the ballast
tube filled with steel, eighteen point six ounces per square foot), with room
under the tube for more lead.
The pictures below detail my initial setup,
with about 4.3oz lead in the nose (with the top ounce accessible for trim), a 5
cell 600mAh AE pack, two regular and four MG Hitec HS-85 servos, a Hitec
Superslim 8 channel receiver with the antennae soldered to the rudder pushrod,
and a dowel fixing the ballast tube in place. With camber mixed to the top half of up-elevator (snap flaps),
you would have to see it to believe how this plane pings off a turn. With aileron-flap mixing, axial rolls are
effortless, and with no elevator.
Inverted flight takes only the lightest touch of elevator. On our local inland slopes, I pull down a
little camber, thermal it up, and then dump the camber and shred up the slope.
Click on the
17k/256x192 images below for the 350k/1024x768 full size pictures. Most of these pictures were taken at a local
slope between Grass Valley and Marysville.
The last two were taken of Doug Reel’s at Los Banos Creek in the
twilight at the North/South F3F.
Brian Mclean
can be reached at (530) 432-5991 or by email at mcmodels@yahoo.com .
Rob Crockett
March 5, 2001