Customer Reviews

Easy Star Electric, RTF (colors may vary)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I asked friends about a simple plane to fly for a beginner they pointed me to the Easy Star. When I saw the price of the RTF (Ready to Fly) model I about $%*% my pants! It seemed awfully expensive for an airplane made out of foam.

I quickly realized why it was so expensive. The radio system is excellent. This isn't something someone put together with parts from Radio Shack. This is a quality plane made with above the bar parts.

Everything from the plane itself to the electronics will blow your mind. The wingspan is large enough to impress friends. The receiver is 4 channel and the servos are micro so this setup can be moved into another plane as your level of experience and tastes change.

I have crashed this plane once and my friends have crashed it twice. Well, to be honest, I have crashed it more than 10 times to varying degrees. But the only time it broke I just glued it back together. Now it is nicknamed FrankenPlane. You can barely see the cracks where I glued it, the foam hides them well.

If you are a beginner and you know you will crash, get this plane.

TIPS - When checking the center of gravity (you will see what I mean in the instructions if you are a complete newbie) make sure to hold it by your finger tips under the wings where the lines (you mark) are at, not the body of the plane. The wings.

Put a small piece of tape on the front and back of the canopy.

Glue in the tail and rear wings instead of using their included double sided tape.

Check and RECHECK the elevator (up and down flap on the tail wing) to make 100% sure it is moving up or down the way it is intended to! I didn't and it turned out the up/down joystick was BACKWARDS so on my first flight I promptly ran it into the ground. Because the radio system is top-notch, switching it is as easy as reversing a plug in the transmitter and the back is screwless so no pulling out and putting back in 8 screws like on other models.

Make sure you are 3 (three) miles away from any airfields that might have radio controlled planes flying on them. I found a perfect field to fly in and it turned out that a radio controlled air field was only a little over 1 mile away. That was my only big crash (from about 200 feet). Once the plane got about 1/2 a mile away from me it began to take its instructions from someone else at the airfield.

This is a popular plane with beginners and experienced pilots. It is widely used by FPV (first-person view) pilots who use a real-time video camera in the plane to fly it, while the pilot is on the ground. Also a perfect plane for aerial photography and videograpy. The material used for the is plane is called elapor or z-foam, which is slightly flexible and easy to repair. Minor dents can be repaired with a hair blowdrier or hot air gun. The plane is very fast because it's so aerodynamic. The rudder (vertical stabilizer) is a bit too small to turn (yaw) the plane sharp enough for experts, but it's quickly remedied by either taping an extension or gluing it to the existing rudder. The elevator (horizontal stabilizer) is sufficient for pitch (up and down). This plane is so modifiable, and that's the main reason it's so popular (see rcgroups dot com, and youtube for "easystar"). You can change out the receiver and servos for ultra-micro-sized units for lighter weight. You can modify it to take longer wings from other planes. More powerful motors and lipo (lithium polymer) batteries have upped its performance greatly. And if it's kept light enough, can be an average slope glider. Find some scrap foam, shape it into floats, and you've got a float plane. It's also fly-able on moderately windy days. It's an extremely tough airplane, and I've seen some very beat-up Easy Stars still flying. This is the peoples' plane!

Excellent for the beginner. My boy had three hard landings in series, and practically nothing hapened. Very good feature is to have a motor at the top. Also there is nice simulator software available for this model on Internet. If begginner I recommend to try simulator first and learn to balance it in the area there, then wait for a day without any wind.

At 61 years of age I had wanted an RC plane for many years I finally got one, the Easy Star. It is a great plane and can take the abuse a new pilot can give. This was the best price around. It came with everything I needed to fly/crash and only took about two hours to have it ready to fly. Put your name and phone number on it so if it flies off into the woods someone can return it when they find it.

This is an all foam airplane - not styrofoam which is brittle, but something the manufacturer has named "Elapor" - firm but squishy. Actually the wings and horizontal stabilizer are made of a different kind of foam from the fuselage and vertical stabilizer. I think "Elapor" might actually be EPP - Expanded Poly Propylene compared with ordinary styrofoam which is EPS - Expanded Poly Styrene.

Overall it is a good trainer but here is what I mean by saying its strength is its weakness.

a) The foam is too flexible, especially the tail which is made of really thin pieces of flexible foam. Airplane stability in the air depends on accurate alignment of the tail with the wings, and it must stay that way. This tail is supplied with double sided tape for attachment to the fuselage. Frankly that is nonsense in the hands of a beginner pilot. Every first time RC flyer is bound to crash repeatedly likely knocking the tail out of alignment - if it was ever precisely aligned in the first place. So step one when assembling this plane is to throw away the double sided tape and glue the tail to the fuselage with silicone RTV bathtub caulk or something similar. Of course RTV silicone doesn't dry in a few minutes, so you will have to wait until the next day to fly. Before setting the plane aside for the RTV to dry, be sure that the horizontal stabilizer is perfectly parallel with the wings and the vertical stab is truly vertical and lined up with the centerline of the fuselage. You should be able to accomplish these things by carefully eyeballing your work from the rear of the plane.

b) The instructions caution you to check the center of gravity fore and aft by placing your fingertips 5 mm forward of the rear edge of the spar box. If you don't understand that part, you will once you see the actual wings and illustrations in the instruction book. The instructions should also warn you to check lateral (side to side) balance. Mine was way off and I had to tape a penny to the left wingtip to get the plane to sit level on a tabletop. Best way to check lateral balance is to support the plane with a pin in its nose and a string around the propeller shaft. Mine had a serious inclination to fly in right hand circles until I figured out the lateral balance trick.

c) With the CG properly set up you will notice that your plane probably climbs constantly at full throttle. Nothing says you have to fly at full throttle all the time. I normally launch at full throttle and then cut it back some when I have gained sufficient altitude. The trouble with that technique is the tendency of the plane to porpoise violently if you make any sudden changes in throttle or elevator. An experienced RC flyer would have no trouble recovering from that situation but the newbie will be very lucky to get the plane down gracefully once the plane starts going straight up, straight down, up, down, up, down, crash. Furthermore, at full throttle this plane actually flies very fast. Beginners really want something slower at first. I have found that the "right" setting is only 2 or 3 clicks up from the OFF position of the throttle (once you get up to a safe altitude).

d) The radio supplied with this Ready To Fly (RTF) kit is decent but hardly state of the art. You may notice that nearly everyone these days is using 2.4 GHz radios because they are completely immune to interference from one another. The radio supplied with this RTF model is a 3-channel crystal controlled unit on 72 MHz. It does work, but you probably won't want that once you graduate to more advanced flying. Consider buying this kit without the included radio and add one of the more current 2.4 GHz radios separately. It may cost a bit more to do it that way but not much more. The money you save on the kit without radio will go a long way to offset the higher price of a modern 2.4 GHz radio.

Very easy to tape / glue it back together, and with the engine facing rearward, it isn't the part " first to the scene of the crash " if you know what I mean. I zoomed this guy into a CHAIN LINK FENCE at full speed, and had it flying again within an hour.

My kid loves it, except the part about getting up early to fly. You need to get out on the field ( Almost any school field will work ) early before the wind comes up...Anything more than a 7mph wind will steal the plane away from you.

I highly recommend this product.

Was looking for first RC plane to play with. EasyStar is best among all availble for beginers. I liked everything that comes in RTF kit except the battery charger. It can only be used by attaching it to car battery terminals (I like to have simple car charger that can be attached to 12DC plug inside the car).

My son and I have crashed this thing multiple times including cart wheels not to mention the three times I put it into the trees. With the prop in the rear it's never sustained damage. One hell of a motor. My 11 year old loves it.

Be advised, the included transmitter does not come with a charger or batteries. Order that lot seperately at an extra $25 or so from this site. Upon first try out it nose dived and the front end smashed apart quite severely making us retreat to the garage for massive glue fixing!

I only had R/C helicopter experience before getting this, and this was surprisingly easy to get the hang of. It's fun and easy to fly although the lack of ailerons makes it a slow turner. It climbs rather slowly due to its weak engine, but as long as it climbs at all, right? In a matter of 30 seconds you'll have enough altitude to attempt loops 'n stuff.

It handles wind quite well although I would not recommend too much of it for a virgin flight. Oh yeah, and it's easily glued when it breaks. I've only had to repair it once, though, due to its easy maneuverability - including landings!