GBLynden

These are my review videos for the new E-flite Draco 2.0m Smart BNF RC Plane.

Unboxing Video:

Maiden Flight Adventure!

E-flite Draco BNF Basic Review Notes:

Pros:
- Working suspension in the front & back landing gear
- 4S-6S battery options
- SAFE/AS3X Receiver with the BNF Basic version
- Many different light combinations
- Carbon fiber added all over for additional strength
- Reasonably quick Foam RC Airplane build time
- ESC works well with Spektrum Smart packs & lets you know if your flight packs are not charged enough to fly

Cons:
- The tail section is sloppy for a plane of this caliber
- Horizontal stabilizer could have used screws instead of just a click in setup to ensure strength

GBLynden

This is my third Draco flight flown with a little more pep than the first one, but the landing isn't quite as nice as the first two lol

LLRCFlyer

A very experienced club member maidened his Draco yesterday. He was running 5000 mah 6S lipo's. The plane takes off and flies easily enough, but it is heavy and despite the large motor, it is somewhat underpowered. Even on high rates, it does not roll very well. Inverted flight takes a whole lot of down elevator. It has lots of drag and landing approaches with full flaps require 1/4 to 1/3 throttle to complete a good flare to landing. The flat bottom wing mistakenly looks like it is slowing well for a landing with plenty of lift left, but suddenly stalls if power is not maintained. My friend is a very experienced flier with AMA instructor and jet turbine approvals and has flown everything from sailplanes to racers to jets... and he found this plane is difficult to land without bouncing... he flew through 7 battery packs and only got one good "greaser" landing. The spring loaded shock struts, in combination with a touchy throttle between just fast enough to prevent a stall and not so much as to make it balloon, contribute to bouncy landings. He let me fly it to get my opinion. I have flown RC for over 55 years, and I too got a bouncy landing. The Draco is is not hard to fly or land safely, but it is hard to fly well and it will take a lot of practice to learn its peculiar landing characteristics. The red color shows up well in bright sunlight, but near dusk, the red paint quickly turns "black" against the sky and despite the numerous LED lights, it becomes hard to visually determine its orientation. The LED navigation lights are not visible from all angles and during the turn from downwind to base, there are no wing lights visible at all... so forget about any night flying or late dusk flying. I would only recommend the Draco if you are looking for a scale airplane to just fly around and do not intend to do any aerobatics. Plenty of scale details, lights, reverse thrust and fancy landing gear for sure, but for $600, I would have expected better flight characteristics and performance. My $200 AeroScout easily out flies it.

GBLynden

This plane was intended to be a scale replica that flies. The inverted part tells me his CG was off, which may have impacted the other things you mentioned.

I will say that the bigger one is not for everyone, but the UMX version is closer to what I expected this one to be. Tons of power and is very fast on 4S for a high wing plane with a killer light kit.

GB

LLRCFlyer

Greetings GBLynden,

My friend has since made some modifications to his Draco that have helped mitigate the landing difficulties. He replaced one stock shock absorber on each gear leg with an oil filled model car shock absorber. He also replaced the stock foam tires with Du-Bro inflatable 5" wheels, installed completely deflated. That helped tremendously with stopping the previous "perfect three bounce landings". The CG is exactly where it is supposed to be. The inverted flight is poor because the wing airfoil is significantly under-cambered and was never intended to fly well inverted. The aileron rolls to the left are fair, but the aileron rolls to the right are very slow, probably because it is fighting motor torque to the right, whereas the torque assists rolls to the left. It does have a lot of lights, but there are some viewing angles from the 5 and 7 and o'clock positions for which the green and red wing nav lights are not visible unless the plane is banked significantly. We tried flying from dusk towards night and had to keep it in close and make steeper banked 180 degree turns from downwind to final to maximize navigation light visibility. We had to quit while we could still see that the grass was green during "civil twilight". The red paint scheme turned completely black at a distance before sunset. As you said, it is a scale plane that can also fly.