Kyosho Ferias

Model Airplane News, Jan 1999 by Marshall, Larry

NEED AN INEXPENSIVE way to get into RIC? Have you been wanting a small electric plane that you can fly anywhere? Do typical ARFs just take too long to build? If any of these things are true for you, take a look at the new Ferias from Kyosho*.

When I opened the box, I knew the Ferias would be a winner. My Ferias came covered with red transparent film on the flying surfaces and white and red opaque film on the fuselage. Out of the box, the pushrods for the control surfaces have already been installed, and the rudder and elevator are prehinged. The motor and its gearbox come mounted to the firewall, and the motor wires have already been fed into the fuselage. The fin is preglued to the fuselage; thus, assembly is minimal.

I first opened up the slot for the stab (it's covered with plastic film) and slid the stab in place. It's keyed to the fin, and this automatically provides proper alignment. A single screw is used to hold it in place. Installing the control horns on the elevator and rudder came next; it took only a few minutes.

Attending to the front end of the fuselage, the cowl must be aligned so that the propeller shaft protrudes through the predrilled exit hole; Kyosho provides some sticky tape to hold it on. I decided to mount mine using some small wood screws, which I drilled into the firewall, but the tape would probably work here.

The undercarriage comes pre-assembled and prebent, so all you have to do is stick it into a slot in the bottom of the fuselage and insert a wooden plug to hold it in place. Before doing this, I coated the landing gear and plug with epoxy (included in the kit), and it has held up well in spite of a bunch of "off field" landings.

Servo installation is easy, as the servo rails are already in place. You just need to drill the holes and use standard hardware to hold them. I used microservos in my Ferias, but there's plenty of room for standard servos, and it flies so light that the bit of extra weight wouldn't matter. Since I was using the new Hitec Focus III radio, I installed the HAS-3MB receiver that comes with that system, and it has proven to be as reliable as it is small. I used one of the new Castle Creations* Sprite 25 speed controls, and it worked well, providing good control of power to the motor as well as to the receiver via its BEC circuit. I did replace the supplied "bullet" connectors with Anderson* Powerpole connectors, as all my chargers are set up for the latter. I fly the airplane with 7-600AE cells. Properly configured batteries are available as Kyosho part no. 71721.

The wing panels are completely built and covered. They come with some paper-covered sticky material on the two ends that come together to form the dihedral. You're supposed to remove the paper, stick the ends together at the proper dihedral and then use tape to hold the wing panels together. Kyosho has a bit more faith in tape than I do, so I used some of the 5-minute epoxy supplied in the kit to glue the two panels together.

At this point I had spent less than an hour assembling the plane. There it sat, with the supplied 9x5 propeller spinning on the nose as I checked the power system. I did spend another 20 to 30 minutes applying some of the decals provided by Kyosho.

Flying the plane is fun. It's not wildly aerobatic, though it will do stall turns, loops, snap rolls and such. But it really shines as a small-field, relaxed flying machine. Gerry and I flew the Ferias out of his backyard one night just before sunset. "Giggles" might be the best word to describe our responses during the session, as we were having a ball passing the sticks back and forth, wondering if we'd ever run out of power. With the 600AE packs, we were getting 9 to 10 minutes of flight.

Landings, even into Gerry's backyard, were easy; the plane slows down nicely. Because it's so light, even the absence of anything resembling a runway didn't prevent us from plunking it down without any damage. So if you want to have some fun at a really low cost-in time and in money-maybe a Ferias is for you. *Addresses are listed alphabetically in the Index of Manufacturers on page 174.