Friday the 13th, an awesome day to maiden my new Ranger EX 757-3 FPV plane.
Watch the unbox video here:
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Here are links to the plane:
This was the longest period ever between unbox and maiden videos, sorry about that, winter got in the way. All the flying today was line of sight taking baby steps to sort out the COG and just get some air time. And to be honest, I had no desire to fill it full of FPV gear if I didn’t like the way it flies. Well, it flies great.
I had to use two 4s 5000mAh lipos to get the CG correct. There is room a lot more battery if you wish and with the two 5000’s in place, there was ample room to move them fore and aft to maintain the CG depending on the stuff you cram in the fuse. I set the CG in the middle of the recommended range and it is very close. When I put the plane up, it took quite a bit of elevator trim to get it to fly level but when I found the sweet spot, it tracked like it was on rails. No aileron or rudder trim was required
I ended up with a 30% aileron to rudder mix and it was perfect, no more sloppy turns. I wanted the mix so that when flying FPV, I knew the right amount of rudder was going into turns when the plane was a few miles away and I couldn’t see it to tell how much rudder to input manually.
Ground handling on our bumpy grass field was excellent despite many reports to the contrary. I think some may have had a problem because they tried to use the crappy hardware that came with the plane. If you installed the wheels onto the gear as instructed, there is no way to stop the tires from rubbing against the aluminum landing gear and therefore putting on the brakes. This may be the reason why so many people are reporting endless nose-overs on grass. I installed 4mmx32mm axles with two lock nuts on each axle to space the wheel/tire out from the landing gear. Now, ground handling is excellent. I was going to install larger wheels (and probably will) but wanted to try it bone stock for the maiden/review. If you came to this video expecting to see a bunch of nose-overs like many other videos on this plane, I’m sorry to disappoint. The only time it came close was when the plane went into a dip in our grass runway (as you can see on the video).
A big problem (widely reported by others) is that the foam hinges are too thin and weak. I actually had the rudder fall off in my hand when assembling the plane. Some people have crashed their planes when the elevator fell off. This issue was easy to identify and remedy. I just laminated all the foam on the plane and captured the control surfaces in the laminate, problem fixed.
The plane flew great and didn’t pitch up with throttle changes (as you can see in the video) like others have experienced. I can't explain why it flew so well. When you increased or cut the throttle, it just went faster or slower with no drama.
All in all I’d say this is a contender and should make a great FPV platform, especially if you like a plane that you don't have to hand launch and one that you can land it on its wheels.
A big shoutout goes to Nick who flew the plane for the video. He hasn’t flown a high wing plane for years and he loved it!
Thanks as always for watching and happy flying!
Music: The Royalty Free music is courtesy of YouTube’s Audio Library
Song: Hey Girl by Topher Mohr and Alex Elena