Kit reviews

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I'm reviewing as many of the Science Olympiad Flight kits as I can. I'm concentrating on Div C planes since they are a little more challenging but offer similar peak performance to the B planes. First up is this delightful Lasercutplanes.com kit for Division B, chosen because of its interesting features and that they hadn't released a C plane at the time. Get it while you can, the propellers are in limited supply and I'm personally having proprietary props made to support my own production line.

https://youtu.be/cSOBXVamiC4

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Installment #2 in the 2023 series Scioly reviews: Retro RC. Unfortunately (for me, but is great news for potential customers) this one is out of date before I even got it uploaded since they've updated their kits to better serve the SO community. This kit had some structural deficiencies in the wing, but it is otherwise extremely innovative and remains easy to trim as you would expect from a RRC kit. It's also one of the cheaper kits on the market.

https://youtu.be/lspc0xYedQw

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And here's the one you've been waiting for, the Freedom Flight kit:
https://youtu.be/9mpo1mqlKUE

The is the Div C plane. The B version is larger and easier to fly.

WARNING: There is not a commercially produced box that will fit this plane. You will need to either shorten the right wing 1/2" to fit in my box (this won't hurt performance and will let you get rid of some of the wing twist), or follow the kit's box construction instructions EXACTLY.

I believe I covered most of the possible trimming issues, build quirks, etc, and demonstrated the flight envelope. After conversations with Dave, I agree that it's capable of a bit over 3 minutes in a large gym, probably 2:50 under a 25' ceiling, unmodified and built well. This is a good standard of performance and likely better than any of the all wood designs can deliver. With advanced propellers it is capable of a bit more.

[Maxout]

Just released part 1 of the Retro RC Cloud Hopper review. This is the only biplane kit released so far under this season's rules, and it looks really interesting. Lots of innovative featues.
https://youtu.be/-gWkpLIVJbM