Although the HET Rafale is a very attractive model, my experience with it could best be described as buyers remorse. This kit, really caught my eye. Enough to where I “just had to have it” It looked so sleek & sexy. When I pre-ordered mine, the specs showed a 42” wingspan, including fixed landing gear, fiberglass fuselage and balsa sheeted foam wings. I dug deep into my hobby budget and ordered the combo package (kit, 2 6904 fans, 2 Typhoon 2W motors, and 2 TS-54 ESC’s) for a package price of about 500 dollars. Things started off great and got even better as my kit arrived within a week of ordering it.

From there things started going downhill. Checking the small box (fans, motors, ESC’s) showed that “almost” everything was there. One of the fans was missing the impeller so I fired off a quick email to Robert@EJF.com and got one coming. After getting home that evening I unpacked the kit and shot a few pix for the website, That’s when I found that there was no fixed landing gear included and that the wingspan is actually only 32”. I guess that was just a typo since the overall length is around 42”. Not too much I can do about the wingspan, but can always improvise for the landing gear. So I set out assembling the motors to the fans and programming the ESC’s. The 54’s set up the same way as the HET 72’s so it didn’t take quite as long this time around. After that, I read through the construction manual a couple of times and called it a night.

Next morning I took the model out of it’s plastic bags and started trying to decide just how the fans were supposed to be mounted since the manual pretty much leaves it up to your imagination. That’s when I noticed that the right side inlet ducting had a split in the glass running almost it full length on the outboard side. (No way to get to it and really fix it). I suppose it’s possible that it could have occurred during shipping but seriously doubt it since the package it arrived with was in excellent condition and there were no signs of damage on the outside. More emails were sent but it only took about 24 hours to find out that I wouldn’t be getting a replacement fuselage. So… I ran some medium CA into the split and hope for the best, before proceeding with the build. The kit itself builds quickly (I’m guessing it could be done in 15-20 hours if everything needed was on hand) and the manual covers the basic construction pretty well. You might want to check my photo page as a supplement though. It will also cover any quirks that I ran into and adding the landing gear.

I had originally planned to use 2 3700 MA 25c packs for power but as assembly went along decided that it was going to make it extremely nose heavy and finally ordered a single 5000 MA 3s 25c Flight Power battery from Tower. Getting one of those “$25 off any purchase of $150 or more” coupons took some of the sting away from the $185 price tag of that but it appears my math must really suck. Or, I don’t understand all I need to know one. Here’s my train of thought. The motors and ESC’s are rated at 54 amps max. or 108 amps for the 2. The battery is rated for 125 amps continuous. Therefore, 5000 MA should translate to 5 minutes of run time at full throttle, right? Evidently not. A couple of timed “static” (sitting in the floor with nose butted against a wall) runs gave about the same results. After 3 minutes you WILL be getting ready to land. These were not all full throttle runs either. Broken down as: 15 seconds @ 1/4 throttle (taxi simulation), 30 seconds @ WOT (take off & climb out), 1 minute @ 3/4 throttle (cruise), 15 seconds @ WOT (speed run), and about 45 seconds @ 1/2 throttle (landing setup) before the ESC’s shut down the motors. Now where did all those other electrons go? That’s what I want to know.

The video shown here is the 3rd flight on the Rafale. The 1st two were short and video quality really abbreviated since I was having to abandon shooting to help with adjusting trims. 1st flight was made with the CG at the recommended 2.5” from wing leading edge. It needed a lot of left trim and even more up trim for it to maintain altitude. It was landed with the elevons trimmed to about 1/4” above the wing fairing. The battery was extremely hot as well so added some airflow to the design. (see photos). It took some time to determine why it wanted to roll right but checking with an incidence meter showed that the fiberglass fuselage also has a bit of a twist in it. The wing roots align perfectly with the fuse but the centerline of the fuse was off just a bit. The second flight was made with the CG at 3” behind the wing leading edge and stretched out close to 4 minutes. This video was done with the CG at 3.5” back from the wing leading edge. It greatly improved the rotation and flew reasonably well unless you purposely stall it. Then it does nasty things. Luckily this test was done at a safe altitude so it lives to fly another day. Even though I’m a bit disgruntled by it on the whole, I still plan to replace the current motors with a pair of 3W’s and TS-36 esc’s as soon as they come in. With that and a 5000 MA 4s pack I should be able to get 5 minute flights.
I'll hope for anyone else that orders one of these that the quality is better than the kit I recieved. It's a great looking model but I wouldn't recommend it based on what I ran into.
The 2W’s and TS-54’s from this one will be transferred to my scratch build project. Another “Euro-Delta” that does have a 42” wingspan and enough room to handle 2 battery packs. I’m hoping to get it to come at less than the 4 lb. 12 oz. (76 oz) weight of the Rafale. Even if as heavy it will still have a lighter wing loading with the extra 10” of wingspan. It’s not there at this time this page was published, but check my “Projects” page for updates on this one.