HK Mini-Swift

fwa2500

Ramp Rat
anyone else have one of these? when i was looking for a small motorglider, the mini-swift caught my eye. after doing some research it seemed like a great flyer so i ordered one. mine finally arrived yesterday, now just waiting on the batteries, charger and reciever....cant wait to fly this thing! only difficulty i have had so far was with the decals, they just would not come off their sheet, so i decided to make my own with a high visibility underside...

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the stuff i used is just some coloured vinyl from my local hobby shop, it works nicely and wont be hard to remove if i decide i want to change it at some point :D there is one thing missing though.....a flitetest decal on the wing :p
 
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I got one of these a couple of months ago. Love it. Great little plane! Flies for a long time on a little 350mah lipo. It's pretty quick also. Only trouble I've had is when the elevator servo broke. You have to do 'surgery' with an exacto knife to get the servos out because they're inside the glued-together fuselage. There's no other way to get them out, you've got to cut.

I used craft store shiny sticker material on mine, LOVE that holographic sticker material!

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earthsciteach

Moderator
Moderator
How do y'all with these planes think they would be for teaching someone to fly rc? Would it be a reasonable 2nd step from a beginner plane to a 4 channel, low wing?
 

fwa2500

Ramp Rat
I haven't flown mine yet, but from what I have seen on youtube I think these would be too fast for somone still learning. Assuming the first plane is the hobbyzone champ, I would say go with the ultra micro t-28 as the first 4ch plane (plus then you also have the advantage of being able to use the same tx right out of the box). It is a very nice flyer and I think is perfect for the transition to 4ch and faster, more agile planes.
 
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How do y'all with these planes think they would be for teaching someone to fly rc? Would it be a reasonable 2nd step from a beginner plane to a 4 channel, low wing?
No, I wouldn't recommend this one as a trainer at all. It has a bad stall characteristic, it does the "death spiral" if you go too slow as I found out on its maiden flight. A good low-wing, aileron plane for a beginner would be the Parkzone Wildcat in my opinion. My favorite stable, low-winger is the Hammer 3D but it's got wild aileron roll on high throws but that can easily be toned down with the radio or the control linkage adjustments.
 

fwa2500

Ramp Rat
a little box arrived from HK today containing my rx and batteries :D was too windy to maiden it though....tomorrow ill be out of town but hopefully wednesday morning the weather will cooperate...
 

fwa2500

Ramp Rat
just got back from maidening it.......can you say love at first flight? this thing rocks! it was slightly windy for a plane of this size (6-8kts) but it handled it well. power-off stalls result in a sharp but controllable nose drop and dive and it does drop a wing slightly in a power-on stall, but other than that i didnt notice any bad tendencies. the roll rate is gracefully slow and the climb rate i will have to determine when i have a fully charged battery and calm winds, though it seemed more than adequate. the best thing though is how well it glides. get it up to altitude and cut the power, then just float gently back down to the ground before powering back up to do it again. it also looks absolutely fantastic in the air, very clean lines and smooth, fluid-like flight.

i highly recommend this plane. :D
 

fwa2500

Ramp Rat
added some decals since i had some leftover decal paper.....anyone that has played ace combat should understand, lol

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the pin-up is sally jupiter from watchmen.
 
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bmsweb

Site Moderator
Nice one! We were going to get one of these but ended up buying the Kinetics instead. Mind you I might still buy one and have it ready to go in the Car all the time :D . . . just in case there is the need to fly
 

fwa2500

Ramp Rat
this would be great for that :) relatively small, tough (literally just toss it in your car, it will be fine, lol.), and it flies great.

about the toughness, those nicks on the wings are all the damage from crashing into a tree when i ran out of airspeed and maneuvering room after the motor got jammed by the sticker on it (stick came un-stuck in flight, unwrapped and jammed between the motor and the inside of the fuselage while i was at low altitude)....i would recommend taking off the spinner and using a skinny knife or tweezers to remove the sticker before flying to avoid this happening, though it really wasnt that much of an issue.