The HK Bushmaster is a great sport/fun flyer for intermediate to advanced pilots. Like with most things, it has some problems that need to be fixed, but with all the problems addressed, it is a amazing plane that is a blast to fly!
One of the first things I noticed is that the landing gear is just screwed on to a piece of plastic that is just glued in. I had a feeling that I might have a few rough landings with it so I glued some popsicle sticks on top of the plastic mount to give it a tad bit more strength. The landing gear wire is very soft and bendable, but making new landing gear would be difficult so I decided to leave it as is.
One other small problem is that the supplied screws for the control horns are too short so I had to dig out some of the foam on the ailerons and flaps so the screws would reach the plastic plate on the other side.One other small thing to note is that the HK website says that there is no glue required, but you will need some glue to glue on the flap hinges. One tip for using flaps on this plane is to mix in a lot of down when you use them. I have never flown a plane with flaps that balloons like this one. although the flaps are loads if fun when you set them up right.
One other minor thing is that the tail wheel is not very good, The outer foam keeps slipping off the inner plastic ring. I fixed that with a little hot glue to keep it from slipping. I personally think the tail wheel should be a little bit bigger and better, but it works.
Now the biggest problem with this plane for me was the motor mount. The motor mount is just glued to the foam with the awful glue that comes with most planes, There is no reinforcement, just foam. After the motor flew off while I was doing a snap roll, I decided to re-glue the motor mount using tons of epoxy and hot glue. I don't think it should fly off now, but who knows.
Given that this is a bush plane, I thought it should have some giant tundra tires. since I recently folded the wings on a 200% spitfire, I had some giant 5'' tires with nothing to go on. I added the giant 5'' tires so now it handles a lot better on grass. The tires were a tad bit heavy, so I had to move the battery back a little bit.
The Bushmaster has a 1.5 meter wingspan and is 1.1 meters long. The stock motor is a 36-48 700kv motor with a 40amp ESC. The stock prop is a 12x8. The recommended battery is a 4s 2600-3000 mah lipo. I use the 3000 4s, but I think it would do better with a 2600 4s. The plane already weighs a ton for its size (2000 grams with out battery) and would probably fly much nicer with a lighter battery. The website claims that a 3s 3000 will also work, but I could not get the thing off the ground with that battery. It really needs a 4s to fly. The Bushmaster comes with all 9 gram servos except the rudder and elevator which uses 25 gram servos. The website says that this plane is a great trainer, but it is not even close to a trainer. It flys awesome, but you need to fly it like a real plane. It has very bad tip stalls and requires a lot of rudder mixing to overcome the adverse yaw. All in all, the HK Bushmaster is a great plane if you want to put the time in to fixing some minor things like the motor mount issue. Here is a link to the Bushmaster. http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewitem.asp?idproduct=58055&aff=854261
The video is rather short because my little brother accidentally stopped filming which unfortunately meant missing a great crash, but you can get the general idea from the video. Thanks for reading!
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