Getting A Cub! Questions!

[jakestg]

Hey,

Hows it going guys? I live in Florida and yes it is nice down here but anyways, I'm getting a Super Cub at my local Hobby store named Hobby Central. I'm getting it for 159.99, I think that is the total. I just have a few questions to ask you guys.

Is this plane durable and easy to fly? I am 13 years old and I enjoy flying very very much, I owned many Small RC scale planes before and man do they love hitting the surface of the earth! I am a WW2 Freak and soon to be hoping of owning a WW2 RC fighter but I must go through the beginner stage first. I play a lot of simulation games like Flight simulator X or 2004 and a bunch of combat simulator games. I use a Joystick and I hope that will give me a bit of experience credit of flying these planes! I've learned many things from crashing like holding the stick down for too long in turns causing a stall or stalling cause of high pitch.

Another question is, How long do these planes fly for on one charge? And If I buy multiple batteries will the engine burn up like my tiny helicopter? Can someone link me where I can get bigger size, longer lasting batteries if its possible?

The only thing that scares me to death is landing, I keep thinking I am going to bowl right into the ground.. Does the plane slow down fast enough to prevent any bad collisions into the ground?

I think that is all the questions for now but I'll ask more later if it is required. The thing I'm happy about though is that the planes that my hobby shop sells includes all spare parts!

Happy Flying!,

Jake

[jakestg]

No answers ?

[cratermaker]

Welcome to the group!

You have many questions (grasshopper) as we all did. There are many very experienced RC aircraft people on this site, me excluded! I have tried to read as many threads as possible and explore my interest in this aircraft and this club. You obviously know how to use the internet but a lot of info is here and there are many friendly people here and we're ready to help. So to close I will gladly help you find the answers to your questions but so many people smarter than I have already answered 99% of questions on this site! Try some research here! Then post A question. You will love the Cub and the club as we all do!

just my .02 cents

[patmatgal]

jakestg
The Super Cub is an easy plane to fly. The plane will right itself if you let go of the sticks so unplug the ACT wires from the ESC, (ACT causes more problems than it solves). Other modifications and upgrades are posted all over the site, pick and choose what will work best for you.
The plane will fly for about 10 minutes on a fully charged Ni Mh battery, longer if you ease off on the throttle some and even longer if you ease back a lot. Around 7 min wide open throttle or 15 min just cruising around the sky. Go ahead and get a couple extra batteries, won't hurt the engine, but take your time replacing the battery so the ESC can cool off a little.
The plane is made of foam so it's fixable from most bad crashes. Gorilla Glue seems to work especially well, in my opinion since it foams up to fill in crevices and the excess can be wiped off while still wet. And since your hobby shop carries a lot of replacement parts, if it don't want to fix the part go ahead and replace it.
As far as landing, just let it glide in, keep the wing level with the ground and keep cutting throttle to zero. Takes about as long to stop as it did to take off, longer on asphalt but shorter on a grass field. Hope this helps a little, with all your experience on a simulator it should be a peice of cake. Enjoy.

[graves]

Hey Jake,

Try this: Load up FSX or any flight sim that has a tower view and fly the airplane from that view. Take off, fly around, and see if you can land from that view. If you can land it consistently, you shouldn't have a problem landing the cub.

[jakestg]

Ok when you guys tell me to turn off the ACT, isnt there a switch to turn it off cause I dont understand these abreviations.

[patmatgal]

Yeah, there is a switch on front of the radio. That is supposed to just turn ACT on and off but I read that it is better to unplug it from the receiver (I called it the ESC earlier, my bad, sorry for creating the confusion) because with it just turned off at the radio it may still cause interference. Anyway just follow the wire from the ACT sensor in the windshield back to the receiver and unplug it from there, same with the ACT sensor from the bottom of the plane. I just taped the 2 wires to the side rather shan snipping them off for the sake of... Well just for the heck of it I guess.

[jakestg]

What is so bad about ACT? I've seen people use it before and they work fine I mean it looks helpful to me in a way.

[patmatgal]

It's a shade sensor. If the plane senses that you're not flying level (with a little leeway) then it takes control away from you, rights the plane and returns control to you. All good and well in theory but if: say after take off you need to climb to avoid some trees and you're climbing at 45 degrees, well ACT would sense that the ground isn't where it's supposed to be and level the plane out, headed toward the trees again. It works fine when you're flying high and don't need it but down low it causes more problems than it's worth. Just my opinion

[jakestg]

So Enable at High alt, and Turn it off at lower?

[patmatgal]

Nah, you don't need it at high altitude. That's when you're safest, altitude is your friend. Personally I would unplug it from the receiver and not have to worry about it but if you want to leave it hooked up and experiment with it, go for it.

[admiralev]

Load up FSX or any flight sim that has a tower view and fly the airplane from that view

never seen that before. whats it look like?

admiral

[jakestg]

PatMat, Someone on youtube said that when they disconected the ACT from the receiver it caused there planes engine to turn off.. If it were to do that to me, do i just reboost the throttel?

[patmatgal]

Haven't heard of that happening before. I'm thinking the battery may have been hooked up and then ACT disconnected? Other way around, pull the plugs, hook up battery and then arm the throttle.

[alexinflight]

Never flew mine ever with ACT on. Unplugged it and considered it junk. You want full control of the plane at all times. Learning is better this way. I did have cut out issues with my stock RX/TX/speed control. Never did figure out why the motor would stop in mid flight and then kick back on. I converted the Cub to 2.4ghz, lipo, brushless/esc, regular servos and she flys perfect. This was a full blown rather expensive conversion and required buying a DX6i TX, but it did solve the cut out problems I was having. Fly the plane as it is without the ACT and enjoy!!! Good Luck!