Freewing F-86 90mm Radio Control Airplane review

Written by Zhou Cheng Qing(the Boss of Freewing Model) in China Freewing Model,
Sport jet performance in a scale model
Product review
As seen in the Feb,23th 2019 In China,Shenzhen city

I like to watch turbine models fly because they are fast and the sound is awesome. If money were no object I'd probably own a couple of them. The smell of kerosene takes me back to my days in the Air Force. The problem with turbines is the cost and field requirements. There are some kits out there that are more than capable of grass field operation but you better be good to your retracts and able to manage a short approach over the trees on the north end of the field when the wind commands it.

EDF's on the other hand are very affordable, but most sound like an electric leave blower. There are a lot of bad kits, poor designs, weak gear and low performance options out there. Taking off from the grass needs good performance and stout landing gear. Some of the better performers use fixed gear to save weight and provide landing gear that can take the bashing a grass take off and landing deals out. There are hand launch and bungie launch-able kits, but they are small and not as cool as something that has retracts and size. I've seen plenty of these at the field over the years. Some run up and down the field without achieving take off speed. Others offer very short flight time and require a launcher for the bungy or trade fixed gear for speed.

What I was looking for was a plane that could take off from our field, had retracts and sounded like a turbine. I wanted to get 5 minute flight times and be able to use my existing LiPo batteries to power it. It needed to have reasonable wing loading because I have been known to fly pretty low and tight.

The search was on! Right away it became clear that Freewing seemed to offer the best quality in EDF kits. I started to look for suppliers carrying that brand. After my bad experience with the HK C-47 I wanted somebody that stood by their products with fast support. Freewing Model has developed a good reputation over the years and is a Freewing dealer. Their prices are reasonable and shipping is free on orders over $210.

I started looking at the battery requirements. Since I fly 550 and 700 sized heli's I have an abundance of 6s 5000mAh packs. My other packs are either 3S or sub 3000mAh 4s. It quickly became clear that I was going to need to look at a plane with a EDF unit in the 80-90mm range. This narrowed the selection significantly.

Now the search was focused on the landing gear. Big LiPo's add mass and retracts on a grass field equal stress on the gear. All the pretty scale jets with tiny nose wheels were quickly dropped from my list. Those wheels were far more likely to dig into the ruts, bumps and clumps on our field. This was confirmed in the reviews I read. The sport jets available with bigger wheels looked good, but had short flight times of around 3.5 minutes caused by the 90mm fans pushing them around. Thats the price of EDF speed. The search moved to scale jets of the 40s 50s and 60s. These jets had less intricate landing gear designs and bigger wheels because of the technology of the day. In addition early jets had relatively low power so they usually had more wing area which would slow the plane, but would provide longer flight times.

I read all the reviews on the sellers site and then moved over to RC Groups for the planes I was interested in. It came down to the Freewing ME-262 70mm twin or the Freewing F-86 80mm. Both are popular kits and landing gear is known to be good quality and relatively tough. The ME-262 was more than happy to accept the 6S 5000mAh batteries I have. The F-86 was designed around 6S 3700mAh to 4500mAh batteries. Hummm looks Like I either buy batteries or the ME-262. As I read about the 262 I started seeing some issues with the forward fuselage strength and ESC failures. I looked at how close the engine pods are to the ground and started considering flight time of one 5000mAh battery powering two 70mm fans.

Since I wanted to get a good idea of flight time I set my timer for 4 minutes to be conservative and rather than taxi to take off position I carried the plane there to ensure I would have plenty of juice for what I expected to be a long take off run. I opted to take off without flaps the first time since I had the space needed to make a good run and wanted to feel the plane out at low speeds. Take off was longer than I am used to with scale propeller driven planes, but the plane got up to speed quickly. It did not attempt to lift off on its own and needed a good amount of elevator to rotate. I was conservative on the elevator as I figured rushing it with a large input risked a tip stall with the heavy sweep in the wings. I probably could have lifted off sooner if I had stabbed at the elevator. Once in the air the only trim needed was some left aileron. No elevator trim was needed. It SOUNDS AWESOME! I cruised around at altitude feeling it out. its not nearly sensitive to drop a wing in low speed turns as I have experienced on pusher prop driven planes with high wing sweep. It does need a good amount of rudder in tight turns. I immediately felt comfortable making low passes. Flaps didn��t need any elevator trim. I had dialed the speed back on them so they deployed slowly. Did I mention that it sounds AWESOME? Very very turbine like. Anyway at the 3:30 mark I decided to shoot a landing. No flaps were used and it glided much longer than I thought it would. I also carried some extra speed to make sure I didn��t stall it. The 4 minute timer went off just as the landing rollout stopped. The next flight I took off with flaps. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! The take off run was 2/3 as long as it was without flaps. Climb-out was good, but the drag from the flaps was evident. I pulled up the flaps and gear then proceeded to fly it around like any sport plane. Rolls with full aileron were scale like. Loops from level flight were good, but you needed to be at full throttle before entering them to have enough energy. Landing with flaps was much slower and very predictable. Landing rollout was of course much shorter. On flight 3 I noted some odd wing wagging as if an aileron was being wiggled. I chocked it up to the wind effecting it since a cross wind had popped up since the first flights. On flight 4 I didn't see any wing wag. When I landed and after taxing back in noticed that the right main gear was not fully extended. I cycled it several times and it worked fine afterward. Don��t know if this will be a repeating issue or not, but it was not an issue on flight 5. On flight 5 I had a very bad feeling as if I was having radio failure about 1/2 way through the flight. It seemed as though power was down and aileron control was slow. I thought I was going to lose it in the trees for a little while. I dropped the gear, went to half flap and landed. It didn��t seem to have the power to taxi back in. Once back on the bench I discovered that the left aileron servo had failed in flight. It was working prior to take off. I also still had plenty of battery left and the power from the EDF seemed fine. I guess the taxi issue could have been the nose gear stuck in a rut. Anyway the left aileron that I had noted previously as not centering on initial power up was dead. It was not stripped, but could be moved with resistance.