Hi, Mark -

I bought a Nutball a couple months ago when it was on sale and you wanted to know what people thought about it, so here’s my two cents worth.

I have about 20 other electric park flier planes of various kinds, not to mention a bunch of old glow-powered models, so I have a lot of experience, and I must say I really like the Nutball.  Extremely easy to build and a lot of fun to fly.  I love the super-slow harriers, yet it can scoot also, and it’s not bad when there’s a little breeze either.

I mounted the servos flat and put all the electrics on top, which worked great.  I left the landing gear off and I also velcro-mounted the motor to help prevent possible crash damage to the motor and firewall, but that’s proved unnecessary (mainly because there haven’t been any crashes).  However, interestingly, the velcro mounting has worked just fine and it also resulted in an extremely silent-running plane, since motor vibration is isolated and the plane doesn’t act as a sounding board.  A nice surprise.

Another little change I might suggest that you incorporate in your instructions is to use the wing angle triangle of EPP as material for the tail skid.  I cut off about 2 inches of the tip and glued it on, an it’s just perfect!  Of course, without the LG I don’t really need it anyway.

My plane weighted in at just 4.9 ounces without a battery, and it will fly for about 15 minutes on a little 500 mah 2-cell, so that’s fantastic.  I’ve tried several different 24-gram motors from 1300 KV to 1700 KV, and they all work just fine with the GWS 8×4.3 props that I like.

So that’s my little report.  Thanks so much for making this unusual and very fun airplane kit available!

Sincerely -

Bob Martin
Long Beach, CA