117 Eflite Radian XL review

After a month long wait, I got a chance to fly the Radian XL. I used a 3200 Mah battery and the indicated balance point. The plane traced a perfect flight from the start and when the 3 second period for the stability of the gyro was done, the plane acted like it was on rails. The Radian XL will indicate lift even though it is quite heavy compared to the other foamies. Buy one - its great!
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Great podcast. I'm surprised they didn't add a carbon fiber spar in that size of wing.
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The audio link is broken, please fix it so that I have something good to listen to at work!
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Great podcast, the audio link seems to be broken (unless I'm broke) stranger things have happened :)
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I had been curious about the radians but never really planned on buying one. I listened to this podcast on my way home from work and bough the Radian XL half way home. I blame you ALL!

I hope to meet up and drain a pack or two with you guys to learn the ropes.
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I have had this sailplane for about one month now. This is one heavy, heavy plane, motor is definitely underpowered, but does eventually get up there if there is no significant wind. It does glide nicely. The tiny spoilers are extremely effective. As mentioned in other's posts elsewhere, this plane can not handle winds much over 7 mph. I took her up the other day in 10 mph winds, and on launch she barely got up over 250 feet after a minute, my heart felt so heavy...I thought she was just going to give out and keel over in exhaustion. This is purely a fair weather bird. Quality, overall, is poor to fair. Over-priced in my opinion. I still can't get over how heavy she is for a foamy. The reviews in the magazines seem awfully biased IMO. Of significant note, the plastic inserts on the stabilizer where you place the set screws, cracked---and no, i did not over-tighten the screw. Horizon did send out a new stabilizer pronto, but this one also cracked after just a few flights, no hard landing incurred. When I called Horizon, they agreed to send out another stabilizer, but warned they were no longer going to stand behind this product----very disappointed. This is clearly a material quality/engineering issue.
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Howdy folks,

New here to the scalesoaring forum. I fly the Parkzone KA8, Radian XL, and am currently working on a TopModel Marabu. Just getting into soaring but I have been loving every moment of it, in an odd way it reminds me of sailing with Dad on a hobie 16 we refurbed.

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I've been really enjoying the XL, however as many of you have commented its a heavy piece of foam. One area that I found to save some weight is the yellow fiberglass wing joiners supplied with the kit. They weigh in at around 130 grams according to my somewhat-accurate scale.

Over the past couple of months I've been experimenting with carbon fiber wing joiners. All four of them weigh in at ~40 grams (my scale is only in five gram increments) so they save around 90 grams worth of weight total off of the plane. This weight saving is also decently far out on the wings, so it has made my radian more roll sensitive in terms of detecting thermals and other little bubbles.

I've made them out of two sheets of 0.5mm carbon fiber which sandwich 3mm epp foam. This makes them just slightly thicker than the stock heavy fiberglass joiners, so as a result they fit snugly in the wings. Interestingly, I have had no need to use the wing screws with my plane as the joiners keep them together really nice, so that saves a step and is one less thing to forget on the way to the field.

I've got the process down to where it takes around two hours for me to complete each set. I couple local guys have asked me to make some for them along with some folks on another forum, so I figured I'd jump in here and see what you all thought. More info can be found at my website, AvemRC.com. Click on 'Upgrades' towards the upper-left of your screen.

Anyways thanks for the read and I've love to hear of other ideas to really maximize the performance out of this plane [ATTACH]2259526[/ATTACH]

Cheers!!

-Jared
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