PHASE 5e

Following on from his build review in the last issue, Kevin Crozier gets Ripmax’s Foss soarer airborne

-  Kevin Crozier

The easing of England’s lockdown restrictions came at just the right time for the second part of this review, with the reopening of my local flying sites occurring just days after I had put the final programming flourishes into the model’s set-up.

With only two people being able to fly at a time in those early days at my regular club, I grabbed a slot and persuaded my clubmate, Frank Skilbeck to come along and give the Ripmax Phase 5e a chuck. Maintaining a good two metres distance between us, I fitted the 3200mAh 4S LiPo and range checked the model before stepping back and letting Frank pick her up, sanitiser at the ready for when he had finished his launching duties.

This model has a generous amount of underwing fuselage with which to grip as you give her a firm overhand throw into the air, so solo launches are easy. But there’s no sense in going it alone for a first flight in the unlikely event that the trims are wildly out, so I always like to recruit a trusted clubmate to give any new models, sans undercarriage, an initial ‘heave ho’, leaving me to concentrate on making any quick stick adjustments that may be necessary in those first seconds of a new model’s first flight.