This time Mat was on the sticks to fly his brand new Taft Hobby Viper Jet. As usual, onboard recording of the flying has been done with very simply attaching the GoPro 3 with some fiberglass reinforced tape to the tail. You can see how its done when fast forwarding to the very end of the vid. We needed to move the 6S Battery slightly more into the front to level out the Center of Gravity taking into consideration the additional weight of the cam. The GoPro has had indeed some minor impact on the flight characteristics especially when performing rolls with the Jet, but neither take off nor real flight was really impacted.
Some reviews on the Jet:
– Servos are metal gear compared to most of the other brands. We experienced a lot that servos quit during flight when not being manufactured with metal gear. Especially on the no name brands.
– The Sound is absolutely stunning! Almost like you would fly a real turbine
– Weight ratio is approx. 1:1 which allows you to do vertical climbs easily
– Overall appearance is excellent given the relatively small price
– Dampers are included in the retracts, again: not common in this price class
– In the video you see that we had a small problem with the sequencer for the retracts. This is normal and can be corrected easily when putting D/R for Gear to the max.
Technical data:
Wingspan: 1450mm/ 57 in
Lenght: 1274mm / 50.2 in
Ducted Fan Unit: 90mm / 11 blades
Motor: BL3541 Ducted Fan Motor, 1450 KV
ESC: 80-Amp BEC Brushless ESC (HobbyWing)
Servos: 11pcs 9g Digital & Metal Gear( CYS)
Battery type: 5000mAh 22.2V 6-cell 30C Li-Po
Landing Gear: Retractable Metal landing gear
Flying Weight: 3050g/ 107.6 oz