Hobby Lobby: Wingo

Model Airplane News, Mar 1999 by Atwood, Tom

Hobby Lobby offers the Wingo as part of a turnkey package that includes an 8-cell 500mAh battery, an LRP charger, Speed 400 motor, all building accessories and Hitec Focus 3 radio. It has everything beginners need and can be assembled in under three hours (most of the time is spent waiting for the 5-minute epoxy to set).

The Wingo goes together simply and fast. There's one way to build it, and only one way. Except for tightening the keepers that keep the wheels in position and tightening down the servo arms, there are no screws to turn. There is no covering material to apply, no hinge slots to cut and no thrust angles to finesse, and all the parts fit together in a logical, straightforward manner.

Hobby Lobby calls this plane a "park flyer." It weighs only 20 ounces fully configured and has a wing loading of only 7.2 ounces per square foot. Intended for relatively calm air, it can fly very slowly, and it performs well in a small area; in fact, we're considering holding Wingo pylon races in a local basketball gym. The small Speed 400 motor is mounted in a direct-drive, pusher configuration and is held in place on balsa rails by a single rubber band and a yellow plastic jacket. This power system offers a surprisingly broad speed range. At low cruise in still air, it floats along not much faster than a paper airplane; yet at full power, you could not run fast enough to catch the plane.

Its injected-foam fuse tends to bounce after a collision without sustaining much damage. I hit a tree at 10 feet (pilot error), and the plane nose-dived into grass. The only damage was a slightly cracked foam nose area that was easily repaired with 5-minute epoxy. Model airplanes don't come much more durable nor safer.

OVER 20-MINUTE POWER-ON FLIGHTS

With the 500mAh Ni-Cd battery that comes in the turnkey package version, the Wingo will fly for over 10 minutes at low cruise in calm air. Hobby Lobby offers an optional 1250mAh nickel-metal-hydride battery that weighs about 8 ounces (only 3 ounces more than the stock battery) and is slightly less expensive than the Ni-Cd stock pack.

In a duration test using the NMH battery we flew the Wingo for 17 minutes, 10 seconds in intermittently turbulent air with gusts of up to l5mph. This required full throttle more than half the time and 1/3 throttle at other times. This was continuous, power-on flight and included a couple of loops and many semi-aerobatic maneuvers as we fought the turbulence.

This seems impressive: only three hours out of the box using the NMH battery, the Wingo will fly for more than 20 minutes in calm air and over 17 minutes in turbulent conditions. Materials, design, price, ease of assembly, docile handling and impressive power-on duration have all converged in the Wingo to create a special value.