HobbyKing® ™ GeeBee 3D Voltige PPE Avion w / 1000mm moteur (ARF)

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Customer Rated

Apr 12, 2015

the motor supplied has just enough power but 20pcnt more would be good go foe a slightly forward cg so light tail servos obligatory elevator is very sensitive and will pull a loop 3 ft diameter so low rates and lots of exp for first flights this is full on 3d with big control surfaces

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Customer Rated

Oct 19, 2014

Unfortunately this plane is a real lemon. It has some serious design flaws, namely gross longitudinal instability- can be trimmed for straight and level flight, but any positive or negative pitch inputs cause wild fore and aft looping. Inverted flight has ridiculous gearward pitching. Knife edge also has terrible gearward coupling. This makes precision flight impossible. I have tried shifting the CG to numerous locations, even expanding the battery opening to allow for an 1800mAh battery to try a more forward CG, all to no avail. Clearly this model did not have adequate design testing.
Prior to discarding the model I experimented with extending the fuselage length between the wings and elevator in the hope of reducing the pitching moment, but the resultant rearward shift in CG did nothing to correct the problems.
Perhaps a bigger motor up front would help balance it better (the stock motor's a bit wimpy anyway)? I'm not wasting any more time on this one. There's plenty of other models from HobbyKing that fly great straight out of the box- for smaller, go with the Reaktor; for larger, go with the MXS 1220 or Edge 540T 1220 (especially on 4s!).

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Customer Rated

Jan 21, 2014

Dont buy this thing! I didnt even get to fly it! Mine fell of table while building it hit the floor nose first! And plywood busted in half were motor mounts! You would figure they would build up that area to withstand a few hits!

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Customer Rated

Sep 10, 2013

After a view flights with this bird I'm feelin' OK to do a review on it.

Important dimensions, servos & LiPos:
The battery cut-out is 90x20mm and the "Rhino 1550mAh 3S 11.1v 30C Lipoly Pack" are a perfect fit.
I bought 4 "Corona Digital Servo 2.2kg / 12.5g / .11sec" which are a little too small for the holes and servo trays. So I had to CA glue them.
The ideal dimension of the servo is 13x29mm ( the standard depth of a 11g servo).
It comes with a motor and air screw. In addition I used a 30A ESC from Horizon I had layin around.

Arrival & Parts:
It came in a brown cartboard box and there was no damage and every peace looked straight. All pieces where there and OK.

Build:
It takes a while if you do it properly as there a lot of part to glue together - so get a glue if you don't have one. I bought the "Foam-Cure EPP Foam Glue 4 oz." which works great but take 12h to cure.
The whole build is more or less straight forward.

Issues during/after the build:
One big problem is the way the servo push rod should be mounted to the servo horn. Its just by squeezin the push rod in a whole with a screw. This doesn't allow to a rotation during servo movement. And if you try to keep it loose enough to rotate, it wobbles.
Thank good I kept the push rods of my crashed Parkzone Extra 300 EPP. They allow rotation and in addition you can marginally change the length of the push rod - which is es

• Overall
• Quality
• Value

Customer Rated

Sep 10, 2013

The good:
This thing flies great and is hyper maneuverable. It has so much wing it wants to take itself off in a strong breeze. I've found it to be nice and durable, also very easy to repair as is the norm with EPP foamies. Goes together quite easily. The instructions are clearly worded and have nice diagrams. I fly it every time I go flying. It looks awesome, and gets a lot of comment from people.

The not so good:
As it comes from the factory, this plane is pretty tail heavy. This is mostly because the lower end of the suggested battery sizes (3S 1500mAh) fit OK in the provided battery slot but don't put enough weight at the nose to balance it out, and the larger suggested batteries (3S 1800mAh) don't fit unless you cut away some foam to make the battery slot bigger. Maybe it's just me, but even with the giant rudder it's got, and with as much throw as it'll physically take, I can't get it to knife edge without losing altitude. From the factory, the rudder drags on the ground when you take off from the ground because the bit that keeps the tail off the ground isn't tall enough, so you're likely to strip your rudder servo on takeoff.

Some suggestions:
I wrapped the tail riser in extreme packing tape and embedded a 4-5mm barbecue skewer to stick down and back a few inches so as to keep the rudder from dragging on takeoff. The manual suggests using CA to put it together, but

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Customer Rated

Aug 15, 2013

This thing went together pretty well. I took my time by using EPP foam cure as primary glue (12 hour cure time). I thought the control rods were a little small for the lengths involved, but decided to go with them initially to keep weight down. I had to cut open the battery compartment a little on each end to fit my nano-tech 3S 1800 and 2200 batteries. We fly on pavement, so I made a tail pad of epoxy layers (ground off the first day). A little piece of teflon or some other tough material to glue on the skid would be great. I have added a tailwheel to mine. First flights went great. My son and I had a blast with this thing. See our video here:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201750502793043&set=vb.1495253076&type=2&theater