bonsai review

[scruffy1]

apologies for the cross posting from my blog over here but i thought this may be of interest in wattflyer for people into flying wings

it was certainly an economical and effective way for me to try this out, having never owned or flown this sort of layout previously

the bonsai was a complete bargain !
essentially the $20 kit from hobbyking which required the following to complete :
460mah turnigy nano-tech battery - fits like a glove
orangeRx r410 receiver - great, but i keep peeling the plastic sleeve off the aerials; have learnt that spraying them with polyurethane after twisting them is a good repair, but should simply use a dot of hot glue at the base to secure it
2x arrow 4.3gm servos - bought a batch for the binary but decided to go with the recommendations of the designer and get the dymond d4.7's for that project; any micro servo ~4gm should do the trick for the bonsai- these certainly manage the task well so far
hobbyking 12amp blueseries brushless speed controller - vast overkill i suspect, but i have one here, whereas the 6amp turnigy plush is still in transit
18-11 2000kV micro brushless outrunner - awesome for the $8 it cost
to round it off, a 5x3 cheap arse propeller - which is surprisingly resilient and effective, because i am too lazy to reclaim the tornado 5x3 off my mini-stick, although i may try the tornado 5x4 i have here at a later time
a pair of wing skids to protect the entrails of the power train and underside of the wing

building was ridiculously simple, requiring some foam safe cyanoacrylate, and another opportunity to solder tiny 3 pin connectors - which on this, only my second real attempt, was spectacularly good with the 936 soldering station and the help of the hands free small item holder - see my photos and marvel at the professional results (hidden under the heat shrink, but really neat dare i say so myself)
we will ignore the fact that i first joined the wrong half of a jst pair to the esc, and the male 3 pin plug to it instead of the female all good practice and extra sidestream lead fumes into the bargain

how did it fly ?

in a word - awesome !!

rigged as suggested out of the box it flies without any major trim adjusts, and the speed envelope is astounding, having never flown a "wing" before

hand launching a wing is interesting, but no bounces yet, and it got more confident each successive flight

loops look good, consecutive rolls pretty neat, tends to track like it's on rails, so any nose down after manoeuvres sees in head ground-wards at frightening speed, but it jumps up as soon as you touch the elevator

it does spectacularly tight turns and spiral climbs, and spins like a maple seed when idling

most fun was getting way up and then pushing the sticks to any extreme i felt like and watching it go completely crazed - a simple matter to throttle back and recover from any attitude

6 out of 6 landings close to where i wanted and no damage whatsoever; easy 8 minutes at max revs, and i reckon 10 minutes with electrons to spare
the motor and esc were cold on landing

once i get the watts up meter soldered i will apply science to the flight time expectation and re-jig the spektrum timer accordingly (presently set for 7 minutes, in deference to using 370mah's as the other 2 batteries besides my pair of 460's)

i can't recommend this highly enough - maybe not for a beginner, but if you are confident with aileron / elevator, you will definitely enjoy it

very much !

final additional step was inserting a rare-earth button magnet in the nose skid, so it mounts on my wall attached to a stack of 3 of the same magnets which were stuck there via a simple double sided piece of foam tape - simple but very effective

[doublebuck]

Thanks for the review! You did a through job of describing the plane's equipment and flight. I love flying wings! I flew my Mini Pop Wing indoors with a Eflite 180 motor with 6' prop (I think the Mini Pop Wing is a Bonsai knock-off). It was a blast indoors too. I recently flew my 1200 mm Pop Wing with a 400 slo fly motor, 2200 Mah battery (3 cell), and a 9x5 APC prop. Wow what a fun plane. It was slow but for a maiden thats not too bad either. It had that locked in-flying on rails feeling. I'm sure it would make a great camera/FPV plane. Really, it would be simple to trace the 1200 mm kit I got and make another out of EPP for the KF airfoil and dollar tree foam for the main structure. It sounds like you had a great time with your Bonsai too!

Cheers,

Ron

[scruffy1]

if you liked that, then be sure and follow this link over to the follow-up posts, because after i wrote all that i upgraded the motor, lipo and prop to more ridiculous levels, and the thing is crazy !

it is still my most fun plane for simply "going out for a fly"