http://www.horizonhobby.com/umx-whipit- ... c-eflu3150

That pre-order price is pretty tempting. I've been looking at a Libelle for a long time...

I've fancied a dlg for a while since Chris and Bobby discussed on podcast so this looks a great first step. I've talked a couple of people at the club into it to so have three preordered. Hope its not a turkey!

I read some really favorable comments from the beta guys about how well the Whipit performs. Looks like a lot of fun to me.

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Chris Boultinghouse

My wife bought me one of the HK 950mm dlgs for my birthday last year. I only managed a couple of sessions last year, but it was some of the most satisfying flying I've ever done, especially when I caught my first ever thermal.

I had my eye on the hobbyking DLG but they were mostly backordered, also the whole stepup/lipo/balast seemed a lot of agro, and I figured I would break it on a launch pretty quickly too - I liked the look of the foam bird Dream Flight Alula but that got really expensive too, this hopefully could be perfect.

Gary - Andy, Steve and me have these pre-ordered so hoping to do some chucking in the summer evenings you could bring your DLG and show us how its done !

Well, I'll certainly come and join you, but I doubt I can teach you much.
The lipo step up wasn't a problem. Finding the right size lipo to get the CoG in the right place, that was the problem. Now hk sell low voltage 5g servos you could lose the step up and just run a 1s system.

I got my whipit yesterday, I ordered three for me and a couple of friends, its my first DLG, so am looking forward to flying it on calm evenings.

Box opening is a bit of an anti-climax as its almost empty. There is a paper manual taped under the polystyrene.

A few hiccups as usual, but nothing awful.

Assembly

The screw holes for the wing and fuz don't line up, there is about a 0.8mm difference (wing holes are 52.1mm apart, fuz holes 52.9mm) , both the whipits I checked are identical, so I suspect they are all like this, the factory have mounted the rear plastic moulding on fuz too far back (see gap in pic attached). Its not a big deal, just put all 4 screws loosely through the wing and start each with half a turn into the fuz holes, then do up half a turn at a time all round, the screws are soft so find a #0 screwdriver so you don't round them out, the rear screws will tilt alarmingly, but they go in OK.

There are some clear bits of tape in the bag, they are to hold the vertical stab/rudder on firmly (there are a couple of tiny bits holding it on, but it knocks loose on first landing), I couldn't find anything mentioned in manual

I had to add some bluetac inside the plastic nose cone to get cofg to 36mm from leading edge, I would guess about 2/3 of a pea of bluetac was needed on mine.

Rudder linkage I had to move to inner most hole on horn to get decent turn authority, elevator is very powerful so doesn't need touching.

Setup

DX8 I've used airplane mode, set wing type to 1-aileron 1 flap (otherwise you can't use flap settings for down elevator) and in flaps menu select switch you want (I'm using flight mode), as I think we need some down elevator for launching so it doesn't balloon, I will try 10 and 20%.

I stuck 30% expo on elevator (as its very touchy).

I set timer to stopwatch on throttle out over 25% as its much easier to flick throttle stick to start/stop timer when you launch/land than to try to reach a switch.

Flying

I was just dart launching out in front of the house as not a lot of space and there was a breeze, so didn't want to get it stuck in a tree on first flights, but I found you need a poke of down elevator as it climbs to level out otherwise it loses all its speed and then stalls.

I managed 21 seconds flight from a dart launch two circuits and landed on the ground, and a 12 second flight to a hand catch, this was in about 10 minutes before kids bathtime.

So far it flies well so I think will be a lot of fun.

I stuck a quick video up showing the assembly tips here

Thanks for the photos and video. I've had mine pre-ordered since they day they were announced. For whatever reason, they haven't yet shipped out any US orders. I hear they'll be shipping soon, so I'm looking forward to trying out my first DLG.

I'm half-afraid that this may be the gateway to a future investment in "real" DLGs (read: $$$ DLGs), but we'll see!