As some of you may know, our next planned release was going to be the Shinden. This has been one of the more difficult design to recreate into a good flying foamie.
We have decided to push back the relase to give this plane the tender love and care it needs to actually fly well. We promise that when it is release it well be significantly less of a headache than it is currently. The wait will be worth it.
We don't want to leave you high and dry so we are still going to have a release this month, but more on that later.
With the constant redesigning of this plane we had more than a handfull of prototypes lying around. Instead of just throwing them out, Peter decided that we should make some use of them.
How did he want to do that?
By strapping a rocket to it of course!
We tried to launch a rocket plane from a flying platform in the past, but it didn't work out so well. We had success launching from the ground but we still had the itch to take it off from the sky.
Our favorite big boy, The Kraken, selflessly volunteered to haul the explosive strapped Shinden into the clouds.
We got up to altitude, boot the Shinden out of the nest, and watched to see if it would fly.
Success!
We we thrilled to see that the rocket worked without fail, but were slightly disappointed to see the final speed.
We reached a max speed of 54.7 mph (88 km/h) with an E-Model rocket engine. Passable, but we wanted more.
Bring in the F-Model rocket engine!
The last time David strapped this style rocket to a plane it disintegrated. All the more reason to try it again!
Well, I guess we should have saw that coming.
To be fair, we did jury rig the motor because we did not have the correct ignitor. Our best guess is the lack of a long enough fuse being replaced by black powder didn't make the rocket very happy.
DO NOT DO THIS YOURSELF! We want you to have all your fingers. It's easier to fly that way.
We pulled all the shrapnel out of our Shinden and went back to work on the design. We had to come up with something to release in its place.
With winter just around the corner for some of us we though this would be a much better time to release our minis!
We have been stewing on a few of these designs since earler this year and came up with a few more along the way.
There will be smaller versions of some of your favorite FliteTest designs along with a few you've never seen before.
Even if winter doesn't visit you where you live (lucky you) these baby planes are great for flying around if you don't have a ton of room to do so.
Keep your eyes peeled for these to show up in the store very, very soon.
As always, thanks to the ones who asked for us to play with more rocket engines (Peter specifically loves you) and thanks for watching and supporting FliteTest!
