Contour HD, with battle damage

The Contour HD snuck up on me.  I was an early adopter of the Gopro Hero HD, and I was busy flying and making movies, not reading gadget sites.

I have been hoping for some time that we’d see a light, flash based HD camera with a slimmer form factor.  The Gopro HD Hero is great, but it presents a lot of frontal area.

The Contour lays flat, and it also has an innovative three position lens that allows you to shoot right side up from the get-go.  The Gopro handles this in software, but the firmware that supported that feature was painfully slow to emerge.

The Contour is also easier to use, in my opinion.  There is one power button on the back (it takes surprisingly long to boot up), and then a huge slide switch to start or stop recording.

The camera records to microSD (up to 32g, which is good for 8 hours), and connects to the computer via a mini USB cable.  The camera presents itself to Windows as a disk drive, no specialized drivers to install.  I really like devices that are set up this way, as a matter of fact I’ve never installed the software that comes with the camera.

I’m not as excited about the slide rail mounting system.  It does not feel as positive or high-quality as the Gopro setup.    The profile mount accessory is probably the most useful for R/C, but at $20 a pair, Contour mounts are a lot more expensive per airplane than Gopro’s mount.  *Note – Sometimes, various shopping sites will list the left vs. right side profile mount as cheap as $13/pair.

We had no problems in operation.  The dual laser pointers are useful for aiming, we basically just strapped it on and went.  On the second flight, I decided to mount it on the belly of a Great Planes Siren.

I really like the narrower 135 degree viewing angle vs. the Gopro’s 170 degrees. The color is slightly better than my new Gopro, and miles ahead of the first, early production Gopro we purchased.

In what was designed to be a much more relaxing video, here’s a fim taken from my 3.1m Topmodels.cz Grafas. I say ‘supposed to be’ because in this film, the radio system had a failure, and the airplane ended up spiraling in on failsafe, and hitting the ground HARD.

The camera shows some physical scars from this incident, but tested just fine after this crash.  If that was not bad enough, we dumped the Contour _again_, the following weekend – Mike was flying an MPX Easy Glider Pro and had an elevator servo foul.  He chopped the throttle late, the prop folded exactly 2 frames before impact!

We are _not_ a crash club, but if we were, the Coutour would still serve us well.

We shot all of those videos back in June.  I was in Southern Oregon mid July, and I took a flight around Crater Lake with an MPX Cularis, sporting the Contour up top.

The camera did a wonderful job, and even conveyed the unique blue you see at Crater Lake.   On a sailplane the size of the Cularis, you don’t even notice that the camera is there.

I weighed my contour at 4.3 ounces with the battery and SD card installed.  The waterproof case for the Contour adds about 4.7 ounces to the overall weight, which would have it coming in around 9 ounces with the case on.  This is a couple more than the Gopro, but remember that the Gopro has no natural protection unless the case is installed, so it always weighs 6.3 ounces no matter what.

I’ve interacted with Contour as a company twice, and Gopro a few times.   I can say that Contour is a heckuva lot more accessible, and they also provide telephone technical support.  Gopro support is email only, which can be limiting.

In summary, I think the Contour is a great camera for R/C use, and has some distinct advantages over the older Gopro.  In specific, I’m very excited by the rapid development of new products and accessories for the camera.

Over the last year, I’ve been looking at a lot of 3D/Sport ships in the 45-55″ range.    The PA Extra MX really attracted me at first, I loved the idea that I could just use commodity 3s 2200 batteries and enjoy high-dollar 6S performance.  For 3 minutes... 

I also looked at the 50″ Matt Chapman Eagle 580.  That’s one nice looking airplane, and the reviews were glowing.  I flew it on the sim for a few weeks, started looking at powerplant options, and that’s when my past experience with the whole Electrifly reality kicked in.  I remembered the specialized motor mounts and weird proprietary stuff associated with my last Electrifly ARF, and decided to wait a while until somebody had documented a good motor conversion. 

I wasn’t looking that hard, or thinking about this very much at all when I wandered over to my LHS one afternoon for some fasteners.  Lo and behold, one the shelf was the brand new E-Flite Extra I had heard about from SEFF press.  Great looking kit, perfect wingspan, and I started to notice things: Fully built up airfoil on the horizontal stab and rudder.   No externally visible cowl screws.  Cockpit latch.  High quality wheel pants included.  Decent hardware, from the factory, including a nice looking pull/pull setup!  

I had been a little bit disappionted with some of the details in previous E-Flite kits, and the Extra looked like it had raised the mark.  The hook was set. 

Over the next 48 hours, I realized that I had a brand new Power 32 in stock, a Turnigy Plush 60, an AR6200 and even a CC/BEC sitting new in inventory.  This made the purchase even more attractive, $199 for the ARF less my LHS club discount, 4 servos, and I was off to the races. 

A few days later, I purchased the ARF and 4 HS-225MG servos.  E-Flite says you can get by on MN48′s, but the Hitec servos are a good deal, and JR does not have an analog Hi-Torque servo anywhere close to the price range.  It was perfect, a low cash outlay for a lot of airplane, even more so for me due to the fact that I had so many useful parts already stashed. 

When I started the build, the quality of the kit blew my mind.  E-Flite has always made nice ARF’s, but this was a step above.  Right off the bat, I decided to slow down and have some fun with the linkage.  E-Flite was already using nice aluminum control horns, and I decided to eliminate as much nylon as I could from some of those linkages.  

Enter Central Hobbies, and the Dubro catalog.  Central Hobbies does some wonderful pushrod hardware, designed for much larger aircraft.  I used the small stuff in their line, some 2-56 titanium ends and the recommended CF rod.  You cut the CF to size, and JB weld or epoxy the ends in.  A steel clevis is used on one end, and a 2-56 Dubro ball link at the servo end. The finished product is a threadable, adjustable link that is extremely light, strong, and attractive to look at. 

The rudder linkage was a joy.  I like pull-pull setups, and the only modification I made was to use metal clevis parts instead of the supplied nylon ones.  I used the same Dubro threaded clevis and std 2-56 pushrod on the ailerons, it’s a short rod and plenty strong that way. 

Mounting the motor was straightforward, and I loved the adjustable motor mount.  No matter what motor you want to put on your Extra, you can probably bolt it right up without worries.
I was using the Power 32, but I had another little problem.  The recommended 2.25″ E-Flite aluminum spinner was on pan-Galactic backorder at the time, with a long lead time.  I happened to have a nice ‘Ultimate’ spinner in the right size, but it didn’t have enough plunge to engage the motor shaft.  I used some nuts that were a little over 1/4″ tall to space out the motor, and all was well. 

Ultimate Spinner on Extra 32e

When it came time to set up the electronics, I decided to use a tried and true Turnigy Plush 60, powered by a Rhino 3700 4S battery.  I also incorporated a Castle CC/BEC to power the electronics, because I wanted to drive the servos at 6 volts.  I used a Spektrum AR6200 RX, and also incorporated the SPM1600 capacitor.  I probably don’t have any real reason for using these, especially with a quality seperate BEC installed, but I used it anyway.

I closed up the canopy on my trimmed down Hangar 9 pilot that night, after a getting a preliminary idea on CG, and radio setup.  As I mounted the balanced 13×6.5 APC prop, I could not wait for morning to arrive.  It came up to 4.1lbs all up.

The maiden flight was splendidly uneventful.  The ground handling is great, and the big power 32 rolled it into the air with authority at 50% throttle with minimal rudder correction.  I had to give it one click of up trim, and that was that.  I flew it around for a few minutes (half of the expected 7+ minutes) and brought it in for a nice slow powered approach.  I find nice three point landings particularly easy and rewarding with this airplane.

In subsequent flights, I moved the CG a little further back from the recommended for better hovering, swapped out the prop for a PA Vox 14×7 (sounds and flies great!), and tuned the throws to my personal liking. 

I really like this airplane.  I’ve been taking it out every time I go flying, and I have fun flying it slow, fast, and some 3D within the limits of my skill and bravery.  I think it’s one of the best behaved model airplanes I’ve ever flown, and I’d highly recommend it to anybody looking for an economical, versatile sport ship. 

Full build gallery here.

- Eli

I used the typical electronics shopping list:  Turnigy 3536C-1100, Turnigy Plush 40, Rhino 1350 30C lipo, Master Airscrew 10×8 prop, and 4 HXT900 micro servos.  I decided to fly it FM, mostly because I can buy nice R790 receivers for cheap on Ebay, and I had one on hand.

The next thing I did was get ahold of Gary at CustomRC to see if he had plans to do an aluminum mount for the Wildcat.  He does plan to make one, but since the plane is brand new it was going to take a few weeks before he was ready to ship one out.  I knew I wanted to use the same Turnigy 3536-1100kv motor I had used in the Mustang, so, I decided to make up a little mount adapter to compensate for the fact that the Turnigy is shorter than the stock PZ 480.  I used some .125″ aluminum plate (measured  3.14mm) and some 1/2″ aluminum standoffs.  I’m not that great at layout, but I got the job done.  Thank God for the drill press.

This is a really cool foamy.  The thing is loaded with neat features, like a rigid battery box that will take 1300 or 2100 batteries.  It has a fiberglass wing tube that fits into molded plastic bits in the wings and fuse.  The horizontal stab has a carbon fiber rod that runs through it, and a very cool interlocking setup that joins the stab halves and keeps them perfectly straight.  The servo pockets fit the Hobbycity HXT-900 servos I planned to use, complete with nice wire exits molded in.  There are even little molded grooves in the receiver pocket so that the whiskers of a DSM2 receiver will lay down gracefully.  All in all, PZ is continuing to evolve the foamy, and that evolution makes these stronger and easier to build with every release.

The Wildcat flies great.  It’s a little smaller than the BL mustang or the T-28, a little faster, and the wing tube pretty much eliminates wing flex even with the hopped up motor.  I used a 15% rudder to Aile mix in my X9303, 25-30% expo across the board, and I tend to fly it on high rates all the time.  The axial roll rate is snappy, it turns nicely, and gains altitude like who would not have it.  It’s also remarkably balanced, and flies inverted very nicely.

I got about 5 minutes with throttle management out of a Rhino 1350, and I highly recommend using 30C batteries if you intend to go full throttle.  I have not tried flying it with an 1850 yet, mostly because the CG is dead on with the smaller battery and I wanted to try flying it light, first.

So, when I add up what I spent, it comes to $202.30, not including any sales tax or shipping.  Shipping from Hobbycity can be significant, especially on motors and batteries, so be aware.   Also, that figure includes an inexpensive Ebay JR SPCM receiver.  If I had used an AR500, I’d be at $225 before tax.  If you were to buy the Wildcat from Horizon as a BNF, you’d get all this stuff plus a cheapie charger for $189!

So, building with Turnigy and Rhino is not necessarily the cheapest way to go, but I definitely think you are getting a better airplane at the end of the day.  If nothing else, raising the top speed from 45 to 70+ mph is worth the extra bucks, and once CustomRC produces a mount, the job of assembly will be even easier.  Building a foamy yourself over a couple of evenings is a lot of fun, as is the chance to decide what parts you would like to use.

Full build gallery here.

- Eli

Image from Horizon Hobby

I bought the micro 4-site as soon as my LHS could get one in stock.  We were locked in the middle of a long rainy period with no end in sight, and I was really looking forward to something I could use in the conference room at the office.

The model comes with the handy reusable carrying case (box), 2 of the high cap batteries, and one of the 4-port Celectra micro chargers.  These chargers are very nice, and a boon if you have lots of micros.  That said, I got one with my MsR, and I wish I had been given the option to buy the 4-site for $130, less the charger. 

Like all of the micros, setup was as easy as charging the battery, binding it to my DX6i,and going flying.  I approximated the factory settings at 30% expo and did not bother with low rates.

Charged up, and fired up, I hauled the airplane to the office, and hung signs on the doors of the conference room that said “Important Meeting!”

ROG proved to burn up too much of the available space in the conference room, but hand launch was fine.  With the battery set exactly in the middle of the Velcro strip, it wants to roll over and hover with no problems.  However, my fingers were rusty on the sticks and I could not get it to slow down enough.  I gave up before one of my wall impacts did damage.

That night, I glued the speed brakes on, and the next day I hung the signs in the conference room again.  This was much better.  You can hold the airplane just above a walking pace, and it’s very predictable.  I was amazed at how stable it was, no real wing tipping, and very smooth. 

At this point I was starting to hit my own limits as a 3D pilot, and after 2 packs and some minor damage to the nose I was ready to quit.

I’ve owned the model for a few weeks now, and I must say that I am a lot more at home in a low-wind outdoor situation than the office. I’m still not good enough to keep it in that tight, and being able to punch skyward is still an important strategy for me when I get in trouble. 

I have some buyer’s remorse.  At $169, this airplane is not cheap, and I am starting to think that the regular 4-site might have been a better choice for me.  If I had access to a gymnasium, I would probably feel different.

The solution to this?  E-Flite needs to release a version with no fancy charger and a $125-130 price point.  Also, I think that an airframe only (no electronics) version should be offered, so that one could swap the electronics from their old, battered plane to a spanky new airplane without spending the bux for the PNP version.

We beat the Winter blues with this thing, now we just need a better value in order to keep recommending it.

Horizon’s website indicates shipping late this month, although we all know how that works. The official JR site has yet to be updated at this time.

A couple new features myself and many many others really wanted to see got incorporated as well:

A backlit LCD display 

The ability to trigger the timer with the throttle. No more forgetting to start the &$%@ flight timer!

Manufacturers Advertised Price for the radio & 9-channel R921 receiver w/no servos is $549, $80 less  than the previous MAP of the X9303. Considering the R921 is worth $169 alone, it’s a good bundle.

Then again, not everyone sells for MAP – “add to cart” and you’ll see what I mean. I would imagine this reputable vendor should have the X9503 radio priced similarly.

The radio retains %100 of the legendary 9303 programming, which was introduced with the 72Mhz S/PCM XP9303. Naturally it is compatible with all Spektrum aircraft receivers.

Add. model memory, more features (and useful ones at that) @ a lower price.

Although I won’t be in a hurry to replace my X9303 with this upgraded model it will be quite tempting!

-Zeke