Yet another Sukhoi joins my fleet!

[EricJ320]

Well, my temptation to hold off buying this jet reach it's pinnacle when I found it at a place out of Hong Kong that had it for $249 including shipping, nearly $150 off Hobby Lobby's price if you account for tax and shipping.  The only difference HL's comes with a 4S 3000mah 20C pack, although from my experience with RTF packs, they are usually junk.  I had gotten a couple Hyperion G3 4S 4000's from Tom during his before Christmas sale for either this very plane, or another something like it. 

Anyway, it's the Freewing SU-34 Fullback with 360* thrust vectoring, 2 64mm fans w/3500kv motors, 2 45 amp ESC's, retracts, and 11 pre-installed servos.  This plane truly comes 90% built.  All the servos are mounted, with all but the elevator servos already connected with control rods.  You simply have to epoxy the wings on, the vertical and horizontal stabs, canards, pilots and canopy, put the control rods on the elevators, install a Rx, and program your transmitter.  The retracts work flawlessly out of the box, and the thrust vectoring servos were near perfect, only needing adjusted on one control rod to center the exhaust.  All told I have about 3-4 hours and it's about 1 hour away from being airworthy.

About the only mod I made was trimming off the small foam tabs that mount the large under wing ordinance and installed rare earth magnets so that the missiles can be removed easily to fly with or without them.  To be honest, I'm not sure how they will do flying, they seem to hold really well, and the fact that they are pretty aerodynamic, I don't think they should have any problem staying on in flight.  If not I can always add another magnet or two the hold better.

A couple of initial thoughts on this plane.  It's HUGE!  This thing really is large, but it is draggy.  It's not a clean airframe at all, but it's not really made for speed.  This model is said to be fun to fly, but once you activate the 360* thrust vectoring it really comes alive.  It tumbles, flips, spins, and does other seemingly unrealistic flight maneuvers.  The parts fit together very well, the polish isn't perfect, but from the air it should look fantastic. 

[EricJ320]

Here's a short video of how I setup the thrust vectoring on my transmitter.  I setup Flight Mode- N (normal) to have no thrust vectoring.  Flight Mode-1 I setup to only have vectoring on the rudder.  With no working rudder, adding this thrust vectoring I figured could help in directional control during take-off, mainly after rotation when the steerable nose wheel is off the ground.  Flight Mode-2 is with all directions of the thrust vectoring activated.  This takes an 8 ch tx and rx, although the model comes with a few different y connectors to hard wire these vectors to certain channels, mainly the rudder, so that you can use a DX7 and still have 360* vectoring, but the ability to turn it off is lost in that case.  Also, the way I have programmed it uses 5 custom mixes for the full 360* vectoring, since each vectoring servo is on a separate channel, 2 mixes for elevator, 2 mixes for aileron, and 1 mix for rudder.  Again, a radio not as capable could likely still do it, just not with as much flexibility.  The manual HL puts out for this jet has a complete walk through for the DX7, Freewing (like mine) came with directions for the Futaba 9CAP.  I had to figure it out myself for my Airtronics SD-10G.  A little testament to the intuitiveness of this radio's programming, I figured I'd be flying a little bit before I was able to figure this complex programming out, but it really was not difficult on my radio, a few references to the manual and I was done in about 20 minutes. 

SU-34 Thurst Vectoring

As most models with retracts, the normal speed is just unacceptable to me.  In the past I've bought some servo rate reducers to handle slowing the retract speed.  I no longer need those with my radio, it can slow, or delay as they call it, the speed by up to 16 seconds.  Again, programming this function was not difficult at all.  In the video you will see them at normal speed, I turn on the delay function, and then cycle the retracts one more time.  I have to admit, it looks saaaweeeeeet! 

SU-34 Fullback Gear Retraction

[Flying_fox]

    sexy 

[i1afli]

That is awesome.  Being a newbie, that's the first time i've seen thrust vectoring demonstrated.  Love the reduced retract rate as well...MUCH more scale.  I'd like to see this fly!!

[EricJ320]

Just to give you some idea how big this thing is I've taken some pics with it next to a couple of planes you all probably know, or have a good idea the size.

[aston70]

I like it. Is that a pilot I see in the cockpit? Can he eject too?

[EricJ320]

Yep, 2 pilots, similar to our F-111, the SU-34 pilots sit side by side.  Oddly enough, has a cockpit big enough for a pilot to lay down and rest, and has a small galley and toilet behind the seats, although, I left all those items off mine.  You can really only go scale so far!

I'm hoping to maiden at KCRC tomorrow!

[relaxnfly]

 I wish I could be there to see it.  Video please

I bet you put that fancy new TX to good use.  Cant wait to check it.
Michael

[EricJ320]

I was hoping for 1PM at KCRC today (Saturday the 6th) for maidening this jet, but it's looking like 3PM is going to be more realistic.  If anyone else is heading out, see you there!  I'll also post in the "I'm going flying..." thread.

[EricJ320]

Got to the KCRC around 3:30, had to make an unplanned trip to HTUSA for our first repair parts for our Stampede truck, nothing too bad, but needed to have it ready to run!  I flew the F-16 a bit first, and waited for the wind to die off a bit, and for the place to clear out some before attempting to maiden the SU-34.  When I finally did, I had the runway to myself, with ByHisGrace, Romeodz, and of course BZFlygirl were on hand for moral support. 

I did some high speed taxi's and aborted take off runs first, after two or three, ByHisGrace said "I think it's ready",  although something tells me he needed to go but wanted to see it fly before he left, it was pretty much all the nudge I needed.  Taxi'd down to the end and poured the coals to it!  It screamed by, and although it didn't initially seem to want to come off the runway, it eventually did.  The nose felt quite heavy, but with enough back pressure it did leap into the air, although not too aggressively.  There was an initial feeling of worry that it wouldn't climb above the trees, but once the airspeed built up, it pulled up rather steep and climbed with authority.  Once it was planed out, trim added, it flew VERY well.  It tracked nicely, had great power, and speed was good.  I did a few passes, but kept the first flight relatively short, as I wanted to land and adjust the elevator linkages so I could zero out the trim I had added.  I brought it slightly downwind for landing, the wind wasn't too bad, and felt that was better than trying to land in the wind looking directly into the sun.  It glided pretty well, and due to the 3.8 lbs weight it retained a lot of energy and airspeed, so power needs to be pulled off quite a ways out.  As long as the glide is planned out for the runway properly you can land power off because it does retain so much energy, and touch down was rather easy to do smoothly.  Taxi'd back, and was quite pleased with the first flight.  I made the adjustments, and went flying again, this time turning on the thrust vectoring once in the air, and all I can say is WOW!!  When you do a tight loop, it pretty much comes to a complete stop and just rotates vertically, and once you return the sticks to neutral, it just flies off.  It's pretty darn cool!  I can't wait to get more and more comfortable with this plane and learn how to really wring it out with the full capability of the thrust vectoring. 

One thing I would add, flying the F-16 prior to flying this was a great idea.  I learned a lot about flying jets better, especially EDF's, that prepared me for something this big, with this much energy stored in weight at altitude.  If you have plenty of experience flying planes, and are at all interested in a jet, I can't say enough about this plane.  It really is a winner, and deserves all the awards it has won.  You wouldn't be disappointed one bit!

Kerbob asked that I put up the video no matter how it turned out, just to have something to see.  The conditions weren't that great, blue sky, blue plane, and sun in a bad spot.  Also, Kerbob can attest how difficult it is to film a jet, and all we had was a point and shoot camera with video, so it wasn't that great.  And due to technical difficulties, we missed filming the landing.

SU-34 Fullback maiden flight!

[relaxnfly]

Thanks for the video/report.  I know first hand what it is like to try to keep 100mph in the viewfinder.  I'm glad there was no  damage.  I assume this plane is faster than the F-16......will you be able to fly it anywhere other than the club field?

Michael

[EricJ320]

I thought I mentioned that, I don't really know, it doesn't appear to be as fast as the F-16, but it's hard to tell.  This plane being so much bigger should give the impression it's slower.  It's kind of like seeing a Learjet fly vs. a 747, the 747 appears like it is crawling across the sky, where as the Lear looks like it's hauling a$$!  Unless I could radar them, or fly them together I just don't know.  The F-16 is just so clean and sleek, this plane is far from that.  It's a very draggy airframe, with missiles, molded panel lines, and other scale details that should make it a slower flyer.  Let's not forget it's a bunch heavier, but has two fans pulling about 68 amps during a static WOT test. 

Incidentally, my missile magnet mod (or MMM  ) held very well.  At first I flew without them, but put them back on for the last flight and did some high speed/high G pull ups right over the runway, so if they did fall, they would be easily recovered.  The only thing Romeodz and I thought, if I was doing a flat spin or some other kind of sliding turn with the rudder thrust vectoring it may push them off from side loading, but we'll see.  It looks good flying with or without them.  Also, the retracts worked flawlessly!

[TNTHobbies]

Congratz Eric..I wish I would a got on here this morning, I could have come down and flown with you guys..Glad the jet did good,it looked great..

[Kerbob]

Nice video composition. Funny!
 
I've got the super-zoom on my point and shoot.. so if you fly far out and steady enough, I may be abler to get a good shot of it.

[ARMY1278]

BEAUTIFUL PLANE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!would love to see it fly
army1278