Pun Jet- Anyone built one yet?

Winglet

Well-known member
Well along on the construction of my first Pun Jet from a quick built kit. It is very simple build. I am expecting it to be fun to fly. Does anyone have one in the air yet? Any tips?
 

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wtaylor3

Junior Member
After seeing yours I'm embarrassed to post mine, however I built one from plans as a chuck glider except I added a rubber band kit from a guillows kit for my son. It doesn't work lol, but ill post the pics anyways and he still enjoys it. Now that it's done I wish I had the electronics to make it rc
 

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croucht

Junior Member
Linkage Stopper Difficulty

I'm currently in the process of building mine...given my tiny apartment and limited time to have projects left out, I had to go for the kit + power pack. However, I'm having trouble with the 5g servos not fitting the linkage stoppers included with the kit. I watched the build video and all my parts seem to match what Peter is using. I'm comfortable drilling the servo arm out to accommodate, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious that would allow the stoppers to fit. Thanks for any help people may have from this or previous builds.

T.C.
 

ruud

Senior Member
I've always had to drill out servo horns to fit the linkage stoppers. If I recall correctly I believe a 5/64" bit is just right.
 

Craftydan

Hostage Taker of Quads
Staff member
Moderator
Mentor
nope. not missing anything.

It needs to be bored out a bit, but just a bit. I usually use the next-size-up drill bit, but reaming it out with an exacto #11 is a pretty common method.
 

croucht

Junior Member
I got impatient and went ahead and drilled it out, seems to work fine. Good to hear I'm not insane. Was initially worried even after that the nut did not fully clamp down around the servo arm, but once the piano wire was secured there didn't seem to be any slop in it. Looking forward to the maiden tomorrow after work. Thanks y'all!

T.C.
 

Zarphus

Junior Member
i just finished a build based on the pun. one of their recent videos showed fictional aircraft. got me thinking of Starfox, and the Arwing. i've never built an RC plane before, but the mini pun looked like a good base to build an RC arwing.
it's a fair bit smaller than the mini pun, scaled down to about 11 inches wingspan. (hard to believe it even flies!)
that said, it doesnt use any of the hardware of the mini pun. i got ahold of a broken Hot Wheels Street Hawk (its pretty much a Duet, with fixed elevator) and just mounted the parts into this body. with a few tweaks it works great as a small space or indoor RC! 2015-04-28 01.12.52resize.jpg
 

Winglet

Well-known member
Chuck glider

Well, it might not be quite as pretty as mine but bet you had just as much fun building it. Nice work!
 

Winglet

Well-known member
Just finished building the Yellow Pun Jet All I need is a propeller and we are ready to go. Fun build!
 

markmark

New member
First Time with Foamboard -Fun-Punjet!

Hey Guys
My first try at cutting and working with foam board. Not too bad.
I just got in a hurry and did not have a good sharp blade.
Still have some glueing and touching up/trimming to do.
Then ready for the guts !
20150428_215011.jpg
I am thinking of doing a EDF version. I have a 40MM fan I am not using .
I am thinking of making the fuselage/wing/canopy a little wider to accommodate the fan?
Looks like maybe around 12-13 mm extra
Any ideas ?

Love this thing ! Can't wait to get it in the air !
Guinea Pig is next on my list !
Thanks
Mark
 

Winglet

Well-known member
Maiden Flight

Perfect weather to test fly the Pun Jet today. I stated with a couple of glides into tall grass. This resulted in little learned about the airplane and the beginnings of a crumpled nose. Deciding little would be learned by gliding and I was only damaging the airplane I began powered testing. I started with a gentle toss into about a 6 knot wind. I pre dialed in a touch of right aileron and a touch of up elevator. I was using a 5x4 propeller and 3 cells. Takeoff power was about 1/2 throttle. Feeling that things wern't going so well I chopped the throttle as I was headed back into the tall grass. The nose ended up with a little more damage and the propeller being so close to the vertical stabalizers ate a little piece out of the RH stab.

After some minor repair work I tried it again. This time with the controls dumbed down way below the suggested low rate setting and expo kicked up to 50 percent. Got it to fly this time but it was a wild ride. It IS fast and it doesn't want to fly slow at all. Controls are twichy in all respects. All of the controls functioned and the CG was correct to slightly nose heavy. I managed about 4 minutes in the air before it got the best of me. I hardly ever crash but I crashed. Damage was major but somewhat repairable. I put her back together and tried it again but it nailed the ground on launch and that is the end of the story.

Here are my thoughts on this airplane.

I'm a HUGE Flitetest fan and have sucessfully built and flown most of their designs. I have build and flown all sorts of models over 40 years or so. Nearly all have been successful. This was a fail.
I could probably mess around with this design and get it to fly alright. But in the end, it is very fragile and really difficult to handle. The combination of really small and really fast isn't good in my book. You ARE gonna crash it to pieces very quickly.

I'm sure I will get suggestions on how to set the little jet up better, but I honestly think I did a pretty good job of it. Some might like it, but it was a disappointment to me. Guess that is why the call it Flitetest and not Flite for sure?

This hobby is all about having fun and this ain't no fun. I would select something else from Flitetest.

Not trying to bash Flitetest in anyway. Just trying to give you guys an accurate report from the field. If a bunch of you guys get them flying well and really like them, I might feel the challenge to revisit the Pun Jet. If I did it again I would quickly build the fast build kit and wouldn't spend any extra effort at all on it making it pretty. I would add some reinforcement to the nose and would move the motor back a little to provide better clearance to the propeller. Hope this info helps someone. punwreck1.JPG punwreck2.JPG
 

ruud

Senior Member
Unfortunately, my experience is rather similar to yours. I managed to get it flying, barely. But it wasn't fun. Scrapped mine and built Sp0nz's Baby Baron with the Pun Jet electronics and having great fun with that.
 
sadly mine suffered the same fate-it seems it doesn't want to climb- but I want to try and dial in some down thrust, engine being in the back, it should push it upwards. I do wonder where we went wrong with the build, if it even was us at all.
 

richb2599

Active member
Well I just maidened mine. What a hoot! It is a bit of a handful but with the throws dialed back and some expo I was able to have 2 successful flights. I had a friend toss it up for me and what a surprise! The plane did a 360+ Degree snap roll as soon as he let go of the plane. I was able to recover and had a great flight after that . I'm not sure what problems you guys are having but mine flew great . I will say this....probably had too much throttle on launch. Also, the ESC I think was overheating because the power shut down basically after maybe three or four minutes of flight . I'm going to add some ventilation openings and maybe use a bigger ESC . My set up is 1000 mA hour three cell lipo with a 6 x 3 prop on the recommended 250 size motor . The ESC is a 12 amp which is probably too small. One more thing. I had to trim about 1/4 inch from the back edge of the vertical stabilizers for prop clearance. I didn't expect this plane to last very long but as long as it's in one piece I plan to have a lot of fun with it .
 
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Zarphus

Junior Member
if i'm interpreting this right, this pun jet was designed originally to handle rocket engines, or a motor. For this reason, there's no airfoils, because (generally), airfoils wreak havoc on rocket flight. as a result, people will want to adjust prop angle, to keep a good angle of attack, because that, and your elevators, will be all of your lift.