A Joy to Fly

Best Review on Hobby Zone Champ RTF

I'll never forget crashing my .049 Cox model airplanes on their first flights when I was a kid. As traumatizing as losing a pet! About ten years ago I thought I'd like to get back into planes, and checked out the latest at a hobby store. $400 to get back in with a nitro plane, plus a transmitter, plus you need to find someone at a flying field willing to put in the time to train you. I backed off. Fast forward to last October, I looked into the state of the hobby, and found that a revolution had taken place, with lots of cheap, well-designed electric foam trainer planes on the market. I bought the Champ and the Aerofly simulator, and now wonder how the heck anyone managed to get into all this before. This has been the perfect trainer plane, though the sim made a huge difference, and putting in a good 8-10 hours really paid off. I've crashed the plane dozens of times (mostly on grass, except when I get cocky at a local parking lot), with no damage that I couldn't repair in thirty seconds with scotch tape. It has been my little buddy I carry around in the back seat of my truck and pull out whenever I pass a park and have a few minutes to kill. So fun. Also, the batteries are really cheap, so get three extras (if you can find them, seems like everyone sold out for Christmas).

Because the Champ is 3 channels (throttle, rudder, elevator), you should practice on the sim with the model that most closely matches that config. You will probably want to take the smallest cub-type plane, hopefully electric, and disable the ailerons. Even though in real planes and models it is mostly the ailerons that are used to turn (in the air anyway), you don't have them on the Champ, so you should start sim training without them. Later it will be easy enough to re-learn the proper way when you get a four channel plane.

Expect the sim to be hard at first, especially landing. Practice landing as much as you can. It takes a while to get used to controlling the plane when it's coming toward you. One note regarding this: as it's turning toward you, in order to level, turn the steering stick in the direction of the wing that is dipping down, which will straighten the plane. This advice helped me get the hang of it.

When you fly for the first (and if possible any subsequent) time, go to as big a space as you can, with grass. You can launch by hand if there's no asphalt. My first flight I got stuck in a tree, and it was a real chore to get the sucker back. Stay as far from trees as you possibly can. The Champ is very sensitive to wind, so go on calm mornings. Take it really easy at first, and take advantage of the little trim adjustment buttons on the controller, so that if you let the steering stick go neutral, it will fly straight and level.

As soon as the batteries go weak (or momentarily stop), bring it in as soon as possible. These lipo cells don't like to be completely discharged, and you don't want to lose control when it's really high.

This plane is a fantastic bargain, and prepared me for my second plane, the ultra micro T-28, which is the perfect next step.

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