FT Explorer Maiden

This is my new build plane which is replacing the FT Spear wing as my main FPV plane.

The build was done over a period of a month, so this counts as my slowest build yet.

All the electronics have been moved from the Spear to the Explorer. I was amazed at how well it balanced on the CG straight off and I have not had to move the tail section at all to get the balance right.

I have been learning with each build and with this one I did a much better job with the painting and think it came out really nicely.

First flight was meant to be a quick maiden, done in manual mode before trying the stabilized modes. That did not happen!

This is the most nervous I have been for a maiden and that was not helped with the fact that the wind was blowing way harder than I like for a maiden.

I made the decision to risk using auto launch rather than the risk of manually trying to handle the launch. It worked out well, which I was expecting as the setup was basically carried over from the Spear with a few adjustments for the plane setup.

iNav performed flawlessly and I was really impressed with the way the plane climbed out, despite being 200g heavier than the Spear which puts the power to weight ratio at close to 1:1 for the Explorer.