Goldwing 68inch Slick

Out-of-Box and Build Comments

Review left on Hobbyking site:

Pleasantly Surprised By This Gold Wing Plane May 06, 2019

Positives:
- Very nice turbo spinner supplied.|
- I like the cowl attachment method although it did require a bit of shimming to get the cowl and fuselage walls to match.
- Very well glued up airframe - nice and solid.
- AT LAST someone has correctly reinforced the undercarriage mounting plate! - Very nice carbon undercarriage.
- I like the wheel stub axles.
- Liberal use of carbon reinforcing on battery tray and through many of the more fragile stringers along the fuselage.
- Very nice canopy slide clips. They did require a bit of trimming and lubrication to get them to slide well. The mating canopy slide wedges are, unfortunately, very lightly mounted. Easily fixed.
- Ball jointed push rods are great.
- Spring loaded tail wheel is a nice servo protection feature.
- I like the older style pinned hinges all round.

Negatives:
- The film covering was pretty lose. It was fairly difficult to shrink effectively.

Out-of-Box:

- Very sturdy packaging.

- All components nicely held and protected in place by bubble wrap, plastic bags and tape.

Build:

- The provided spinner is well colour matched to the cowl and is of the "Turbo" style.

- The undercarriage structural support is the first I have seen in an ARF. Very well designed to resist the rigors of longitudinal loading caused by a rough runway. Two logitudinal angle pieces from ply and carbon spread the undercarriage to adjacent formers.

- In general, the build went very well. Rudder nice and square to the wings. The rear stabiliser required minimal shimming to get it parallel with the wings.

- I employed a rear located servo for the rudder (with comensurate push-pull operation) and even this adjustment still requires the battery to be located well forward.

- Since our flying field is grass, small wheels and spats were not advisable. So, I installed 3" Dubro low bounce wheels on 8&4mm stub axles with no spats - see photos.

Click the button below to download a word document explaining "How to Install the Horizontal Stabiliser and Elevator"

How to Install the Horizontal Stabiliser and Elevator

Current (2019 July August),
Successful Flying Setup

Power Considerations:

- Using the 6S 5000 40C battery, Dualsky ECO4130C-470 motor and 15x10 APC prop was supposed to yield about 1606watts at the ESC. This equates to a theoretical 472w/kg well past the 450w/kg considered a minimum requirement for a pattern plane. Certainly, the plane has plenty of get up and go!

- After a full 3:50 minute 15 component sequence, the plane lands with all cool components - nice.

- The sound of the plane with this power system is very pleasing. Really solid.

Comments after about 10 flights:

- Even at high power the plane produces very low noise - pleasingly quiet in flight. I like calling it "quiet authority".

- The very soft, "low bounce" Dubro wheels are very quiet even on the rough grass strip! The grease and snug tight wheel collars (no play along the shaft) contribute to this quiet performance.

Overall Performance:

- Altogether a very nice performing plane. I am well pleased.

- Rather belatedly I have added the provided SFGs (Side Force Generators) and the roll performance has improved with better knife edge boyancy. Unfortunately the SFGs also introduce a little wobble during ordinary flight.

- Super plane, top marks to Goldwing.