SLOPING OFF...
...the Newsletter of Christchurch and District Model Flying Club for June 2021
CROSSFIRE (as sold to David Bicker by Treor Hewson)
Trevor's old X-Fire is one of my favourite planes currently. It probably doesn't like me - as I'm not very good at landing it slowly. I have this in-built fear that it's going to tip-stall in if I slow down too much. The up-shot of that is that I've had to repair it twice now due to landing too hard & fast. The first time I made the mistake of re-building the front end of the fuselage with slightly thinner balsa (all that I had to hand at the time). This made the result of the next bad landing inevitable as the front end needed a rebuild again!
This time around I decided to do a proper job of it & I used dense balsa of the right thickness, but I have also added 3mm box section carbon fibre longerons through the bottom of the fuselage to several inches behind the rear of the wing. I replaced the battery compartment & centre sheeting with thicker balsa (with some weight saving holes in it). I have also replaced the single servo in the wing with 2 of my stock of MG90S Micro Metal Gear 9g Servos so that I could dial in some differential.
The model has come out 28gm lighter after it's re-fit which is a surprise because of the dense balsa & extra servo. Again I balanced it at 30% from the front of the wing chord.
I flew it for the first time in this configuration at the Win Green NE slope & it's still a very rapid plane, but it looks much more elegant & gracious in the air than it did before. Trevor will probably lament that I've "dumbed down" the performance a bit, but I'm finding it much more manageable in this configuration & a pleasure to fly on the slopes.
David Bicker