You can't imagine how long I've been waiting to get this bird airborne! I wanted the X5 so badly because it looks so cool, fits my car and has a huge canopy. I got mine from BevRC, but hobbyking also sells them. It appears I got an older version with different winglets. The new version is slightly larger.
I received it this summer, but due to the delays with GP2 and (very bad) weather it got its maiden today. Flight report.
Build
The X5 is easy to build because it arrived as 1 big piece. The canopy is huge and the wings are large (1 meter span, cord +- 25cm). The winglets are also big. I'm thinking of replacing them with something smaller and ligher someday.
After trying various configuration, I decided to mount all the autopilot equipment in the last (and smallest) compartment of the large canopy. This leaved us 1 compartment for the battery and the middle one for payload.
The locosys GPS and XBee with stick-on antenna fitted perfectly. As you can see, the new GP2 software allows you to mount the system at any 90° angle! I tried to mount the Corona RX as far away as possible from all noises. A ground test with collapsed antenna was > 100m before the servos started jittering. The RX is amazing!
To improve the visibility I colored the winglets and bottom wings in orange. An all-white wing becomes impossible to see at 300m altitude!
I installed a SK3 1200KV motor (everybody knows I like my planes light) with a 3s 2200mAh battery, which will be replaced by a 3000mAh one (to avoid the 30grams lead I had to add). Total weight around 800grams. Not a funjet, but still OK
They include a stupid system for screwing on the canopy using 2 nylon bolds. Doesn't look easy and fast! I replaced it with the multiplex click-on system, but it doesn't look strong enough. I added some tape before takeoff just to make sure.
Maiden
The weather was really nice (but cold), but rather windy. Still perfect for a maiden!
On the bottom there is a hole and handle so you get a real good solid grip when launching this plane! Launching was no problem, it needed a little bit trimming before flying straight. After some trimming I switched to stabilized mode. No problem either! It rolled a bit sluggish but OK. In autopilot mode I had only 1 circle defined at 100 meter. It tracked nicely but was blown away when flying downwind. It appeared to be 6m/s wind at 100 meter! Combined with an untrimmed plane he didn't track the circle spot-on, but it wasn't too bad!
There was some minor wiggle around pitch and roll. The wings don't contain any carbon bar, so this might be the reason. Another reason could be the (too?) large winglets. Of course we're talking about 6m/s wind as well.
Landing was really easy. It glides better than expected! Slightly pull up during landing for a gentle touchdown.
Power was enough, but obviously no verticals Flight time was around 15minutes with around 1500mAh used (often flown at 100% throttle). Expected flight time when properly tuned and with the 3000mAh battery will be around 30 minutes.
Next step will be to include an FPV camera with OSD and later an Ixus camera for mapping my town!
Conclusion
The X5 is a real workhorse. Solid, lots of room and easy to fly. Due to the thick wing and large winglets it's not a speed demon and it flies like a truck. However for some applications this is exactly what we want. There is some minor wiggle around pitch and roll in flight, so expect to do some tuning if you want to get rid of this.
This is a plane which I can recommend to people expecting not the highest performance but a nice looking wing to fly. I expect the payload bay (+- 11cm x 6cm) to take around 200grams without any problems.
Performance with the Gluonpilot 2 is excellent!
People interested can download the flight log. Replay it with the Gluon Control Station version 0.9!