After buying it I also saw another scheme I really like so brought that on impulse as well. Import tax plus handling fee by Parcel Force into the UK pushed this A320 up to 300 USD and the 2nd model up to 320 USD ! 2 weeks later it arrived and was a little concerned as the brown paper wrapped polystyrene box just had a plain cardboard lid. When a manufacturer can`t be bothered with nice packaging and graphics on the outside of the box it leaves you wondering about the effort that has been invested in the actual contents of the box. During assembly I found that some of the back plates for the horns were missing and most of the screws were too short to go through the control surfaces to hold the horns on. All the horns had to be drilled to 2mm so the clevises would fit. All small problems but not what you expect in a modern ARF kit. All the electronics and wires inside the model were tangled so after straightening that out and setting up the receiver I discovered one of the elevator servos was not working. Just gave a constant buzz and didn`t move on the servo tester. X-Flight said they would send replacement servos but they never arrived. 2 new servos ordered from a UK online shop and a few days later the assembly was complete. CG balance as stated in the manual could only be achieved with a 3S2200 pack. I suspect a slightly larger capacity pack could be used but no idea how a 4S pack of reasonable capacity could be used to get good CG as stated in the manual without moving a lot of the electronics inside the fuselage. First flight had its own problems as seen in the video. Lack of power made for a long take off run and we found that the main gear retract units had very little (if any) glue holding them in so each unit came out on the first two landing runs. On getting this A320 in the air on the 3rd attempt it had to be flown at speed to prevent stall and it rocked and rolled as it was flying. No flaps on this airliner which is a serious issue. Landing speed was relatively high. One of the retract units popped out again but no serious damage so we might get this airliner in the air again soon just to finalise our thoughts on this expensive small twin 50mm EDF Airliner. Filmed by Jason for the Essential RC YouTube channel using the Panasonic AG-UX180 Pro 4K camcorder.
Strong Santa Ana conditions on Jan 19 2021 provided enough wind for Spencer Lisenby to bring the dynamic soaring speed record back to its birthplace of Parker Mountain, CA
