Phase 5e Review

Ripmax Phase 5e

First Contact
I first saw this model at an electric fly-in held by the Basingstoke Model Aero Club in September 2019. Three of the 'locals' were throwing them around the sky and clearly having great fun. In concept, the model is not unlike my ageing Crossfire, which, being over 22 years old, has been on the ''replace or upgrade one day' list for a few years now. Although I did look into the Phase 5e a bit further after the fly-in, that is as far as it went - until I crashed my Radian Pro a couple of months later! The Radian had done good service, mainly as a standby on marginal sloping days and also as an occasional training model. It met its end though, flying aerobatics from the flat when, let's say, a limitation on its aerobatic capability manifested itself at an unfortunately inadequate altitude. In other words, pilot error!

So, now in need of an electric glider, thoughts turned again to the Phase 5e, which could now provide a rare opportunity to reduce the number of planes in the hangar by replacing both the Crossfire and the Radian. The fact that it was now late November and I was being pestered for Christmas present ideas was the final clincher, and a one-item list of present suggestions was duly drawn up!

The Pedigree
Having done most of my intial flight training on a Middle Phase 2 and still counting my 32 year old Phase 6 among my favourite slopers, I have great respect for the design and development skills of Chris Foss, so that aspect of the model wasn't in doubt. However whereas those were traditional kits,, this is a chinese-made ARTF. . .

Inspection
The Phase 5e is attractively presented with smart artwork on the lid of the substantial box. Opening up shows that a lot of thought has gone into the packaging to ensure that the parts are not easily damaged in transit. The downside of this is that several yards of very strong adhesive tape have to be removed to extract the parts from the box.

That done, the overall quality of the main parts seems very good. The cowl is a very flimsy-looking moulding and there have been many reports of this breaking too easily and not really being up to coping with the sort of ground conditions encountered at the average slope soaring site. More on this later.

The only significant disappointment was the covering. This does seem to have been applied very neatly and accurately but, as you can see from these pictures, it was badly wrinkled. Although the covering was still taut over the open areas of the wings, most of the sheeted surfaces had suffered to a greater or lesser extent. My guess is that either the kit had been subjected to extreme temperature and/or humidity variations in transit/storage or maybe the model was assembled in damp conditions and the wood has simply dried out subsequently. Most of these wrinkles came out with judicious use of a covering iron and heat gun but on some of the control surfaces I wasn't able to get a good wrinkle-free finish.

Fitting Out The well illustrated instruction manual does list parts needed to complete the model, such as servos, motor, propeller, ESC. However, over the years I've developed my own preferences on such items so did some careful measurements and placed a couple of orders. I used Corona servos throughout: DS-939MG in the wings, DS-238MG in the fuselage. These proved to be an excellent fit. For the motor, I chose a Turnigy Propdrive 35-42, 1250kv. This was a bit more of a a gamble than the servos but I was relieved and delighted to find that it was exactly the right length - there's little or no scope for tweaking the cowl position to accommodate any mismatch. Offering up the motor's cross mount to the pre-drilled firewall showed a very slight discrepancy in hole positions, easily rectified by slightly enlarging the holes in the cross mount.

I'm not a fan of those brass block servo connectors but, with the elevator pushrod being pre-fitted, it seemed as well to use the supplied connector rather than try to form a Z bend or fit a threaded adapter for a clevis. As you can see though, I took the precaution of gluing a couple of short lengths of nylon tube either side as 'emergency stops', leaving a little bit of room should any mechanical adjustment be needed. After a quick test with the motor an Aeronaut 9.5in x 6in folding propeller was ordered. The motor has a 5mm shaft but the case-mounted prop driver in the above picture is 6mm in diameter. I already had an Aeronaut spinner (of the wrong diameter) which had a 5mm collet insert so, to keep my options open, I ordered the right diameter spinner, this time specifying a 6mm collet size. So the options were either to remove the case-mounted driver, push the motor shaft through and use the 5mm fitting or saw a chunk off the existing prop driver and use the 6mm fitting. Since the second option is irreversible, I was preparing myself to tackle the job of shifting the motor shaft when I discovered that I'd fitted a similar motor to my AV36 a year or so ago. The AV36 installation is internal so the case-mounted adapter wasn't used - so I had a spare to play with! Half an inch was duly sawn off the spare adapter and a trial fit showed that the spinner with the 6mm insert fitted okay so the adapters were swapped over and, with much careful measuring and re-measuring, the cowl was fitted.

I must admit that I'm quite pleased with how it's all lined up in the end. Interestingly, the cowl feels much more substantial once fitted. I did line the inside with cross weave tape in the hope of strengthening it a bit. Time will tell. A cg check confirmed that the model will balance okay with a 2200mah 3s pack on board so, apart from a range check, it's ready for a maiden flight. At the moment though there's no prospect of a weather window in the forseeable future so it might be a little while before I can report back on how it goes.