Sonic Modell AR900 Flying Wing, Initial Review
As COVID-19 moved across the nation I found myself locked up at home with my lovely wife. I did what any man would do…… start a new project to keep my mind busy during the hours after working from home, to ensure I could keep my sanity.
I came across the AR900 wing on Banggood. I must have watched countless videos, and read a lot about how flying wings performed and what challenges others faced when they had purchased them, built them and flown them. With the biggest feature being a very low price it was definitely time to get one and begin working on it
Assembly of the AR-900 couldnt have been easier, it was simple, straight forward, and since it is about the perfect size it made working on it a breeze. The fact that it comes in 3 main pieces was also very helpful as it makes modding it very easy.
Once assembled I decided to take it out to the park and fly it for a bit, trim it out and start getting the feel for how it flew.
Initially, I had expectations which were the following; I expected it to be very stable due to the surface area of lift, i expected it to be faster than the Ranger 2000 but not by much as it could generate better lift for its size therefore allowing for slow flight…… These expectations did not materialize….. Below are my findings.
Assembly: Easy- it took literally about an hour to assemble the basics, then about another hour for me to figure out, and install the added electronics for FPV.
Electronics used: Run-Cam 2- 4k for the very front of the plane, then for the FPV camera I used a Caddyx, Ratel as it has starlight capabilities and it sees well in the dark. Receiver was an R9-Stab OTA for long range flight. Vtx (video transmitter) used a Mini AKK at 1000 trasmit for longest range possible.
The build: Assembled the plane (3 main parts). After that, i installed the VTX in the wing with the micro RHCP antenna on top of the wing. R9-Stab OTA is a bit large and honestly i wish i wouldve used a smaller R9mini long range receiver. Part of my idea for it, was to add the vector system, GPS, and pitot tube for airspeed readings, but space internally is very limited when using a 2500 3s LiPo.60 amp ESC was used to help reduce the amount of heat it would give off. Also used LED lights along the leading edge of the wing to be able to better see heading during LOS flight (Line Of Sight).
The end result was a beautiful flying wing, that was certainly an attention grabber at the field. For the price of 79 USD for teh wing, you really cant ask for more. It certainly is a good purchase.
On the initial flight, I launched it and was surprised at how fast it was. It was indeed much faster than I had predicted it to be. I decided to trim it out and see what slow flight would be like on it…… NOTE: there is no slow flight on this wing. This wing has two speeds, fast, or really fast. This was a bit of a surprised to me as the entire wing produces good lift.
The video below shows a bit of the speed of the wing, and its stall abilities. Overall, i really enjoyed flying it i was just simply too nervous to take my eyes off it and put on my FPV gear as having your eyes off it for a second could mean catastrophic failure.
Once i got acclimated with the style of flight of the wing, i decided to fly it around a different field and test for the minimum turn speed possible. Given that i had used an over powered motori was feeling confident that no crash would happen. To my surprise i tipped stalled and was not able to gain enough speed to recover it, splattering it on the field. The 2 images of my model on the wall above was after the repairs. Im glad to let you all know, it still flies like a champ.