Hobby King does it again!!

Does this look familiar?

Go Discover FPV Plane, and in Australia store!! $150 bucks

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__51559__HobbyKing_Go_Discover_FPV_Plane_EPO_1600mm_PNF_AU_Warehouse_.html

38072(3).jpgThe Go Discover was designed from the start to be a great FPV platform with a massive center bay, straight forward layout and superb, predictable, yet sporty, flight characteristics.

What makes the Go Discover stand out is the integrated pan and tilt system in the nose, giving an un-obstructed bird’s eye view of the world below. The pan and tilt system uses 2 gear driven engagements for a smooth solid camera platform. The pan and tilt system  was designed to perfectly house a GoPro 1, 2, 3 or 3+ as well as any other board or cube FPV camera with an easy swappable back mounting plate, all housed behind a clear acrylic dome. The front dome provides a great view, while protecting your FPV gear.

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  • Steve, you're amazing!  Thanks for letting us know just how much!

    Yes, it's (slightly) less than a direct copy.  No, it's (much) less than a new, original design.  Put it this way, if the RVJET didn't exist, then chances are neither would this thing...

  • Oh, one more thing,... For X8 owners,. if you want to use less reflex and improve performance and handeling try cutting off the "Camera Bump" on the bottom of the main body,... you will NEED to move your cg over 25mm forward AND tape the wing so the TOP surface of the wing is level with the BOTTOM surface of the body.... 

    I removed the bump and promptly spun the old beast in on launch due to a VERY rearward cg! 

    How and why?   the "BUMP" kinda looks like highly cambered wing, inverted and it is a long way forward of the centre of pressure (look it up, !!) therefore it tries to LIFT the nose DOWN,.. ( isay lift because aerodynamically that is what it is doing..lifting down....) and to stop it the designers used lots of reflex, over all this has a similar effect to dihedral on a wing. it increases trim stability, ie you use cg and thrust and the speed becomes quite stable and somewhat self regulating, nice for some aspects of flying (can be useful for fpv) but not alway and efficient way to do it..

    Cheers

    Steve

  • Seriously guys , those of you that think this is a knock off would say that a mini (car) is a knock-off of a Volvo,... cause it has wheels....

    For those of you that think this is a knockoff it just shows how little aerodynamic knowledge you have. 

    I can see SIMILAR layout features. but NOTHING that is a direct copy

    Having said that it WOULD appear that the design was certainly INSPIRED by another aircraft. What is wrong with that? Lets look at design criteria,... 

    FPV model...

    Ideally forward facing camera = pusher configuration or motor on a pylon,.... Pusher is more efficient in so many ways so we will settle on that for the moment.

    Layout, since we decided on a pusher it either means a deep fuse, a flying wing or a twin boom arrangement...  Twin boom is complicated for structural design, time consuming to put together, expensive to manufacture (more parts..)

    A deep fuse with motor on top of wing, works fine an allows a conventional tail group which = more expense for manufacture (more parts again..) and also a limit on what size prop we use which COULD effect the level of efficiency we can achieve.

    Blended / Flying wing.. Limited no of parts (cheaper to manufacture) less servos required (possibly, could run 4 scontrols on the wings and 2 on the fins) Large area to house everything in the Centre panel of the wing without increasing drag too much,... 

    Can run as big a prop as we like, (with in reason.....) so we could swing a larger prop slower and gain some efficiency here (longer endurance for less weight = nicer to fly plane for longer)

    See where I am going with this??  It is a blended flying wing, sure and if you squint from a distance it has similar looks to a RVJET,.. so what?  Those that know the slightest bit about HOW a aircraft flies would not even consider the go discover against the RVJET,.. so why not have a "cheaper" (POSSIBLY lower performance) aircraft on the market to get started with? 

    I have worked in the modelling industry AND UAV industry for many years (nearly 2 decades) and am honestly sick with the later generations of "modellers" that think they know everything saying how this is a copy of that and how this looks the same as that.... Years ago when you actually had to (shock,..horror..) BUILD you model you usually gained a reasonable grasp of BASIC AERODYNAMIC PRINCIPLES..... These days you buy from hobby king, it arrives with minimum instructions, you throw a battery at it and go try fly at the local park...

    Honestly guys,... WAKE UP<   the ONLY similarity these two aircraft have is the GENERAL LAYOUT is similar.

    Airfoils are VERY different, Fins are VERY different, (bet very few of you know why the fins are angled out on the RVJET ? hint,.. it aint for looks!!)  Aerodynamics are not even in the same ball park, nor is the performance, And i can tell you that by a 5 second look at pics of the aircraft. Yes they are both blended body flying wings, THAT my friends is where the similarities end!

    Sorry for the rant, just getting fed up with reading BS over and over again!!!!

    This is not an attack on hobbyking, or those that support it, nor is it an attack on the later generation of "modellers", who incidentally i refer to as flyers,... not model pilots or modellers.

    Oh, I do buy from hobby king,..... BUT i try and get what I want from my local shop first!

    Best Regards

    Steve

  • It was quite windy today so I can't say for certain but I remember the RVJET being more stable at cruise speed. All in all I'd just say its a different plane. It handles better in some area's and worse in others. I don't think its really anymore of a ripoff than the FX61 Phantom is of the Skywalker X8. The X8 literally falls out of the sky like a leaf with very little warning if it stalls the FX61 carries less but also works a lot better.

    I really think that the RVJET is more in that range though: it carries similar amounts to the X8 but was well designed.

  • I got to fly the RVJET a couple months ago and it basically reminded me of an X8 that didn't suck as a plane (great payload and handled well). I just received the Go Discover from the US warehouse and got to fly it for about 5 minutes before it started raining but my initial thoughts are: 

    Pros:
    It seemed handle better than the RVJET in small form. Obviously in large form we're not really comparing the same thing.
    The fences really seem to help a lot in low speed spins.
    It's cheaper.

    Cons:

    The dome has more reflections and distorts your image more than I remember the RVJET doing. Although I think I flew with the clear RVJET dome and this only came with a reflective dome.

    Carries far less than the RVJET in large form.

  • It's a pretty clearly intended to be a copy of a RVJet. The RVJet is well designed, documented, and packaged, and RangeVideo provides outstanding support, so I imagine the purchasing decision comes down to time and frustration vs. money. 

  • Well, I think the makers should follow the lead of Apple and register/copyright/patent the "rounded corner" and the "beveled edge" and maybe while they're at it the color "white." Meanwhile, if any of you are presently sitting on a four-legged chair, kindly stand up and do not sit back down until you've mailed me my $50 licensing fee, as I have a patent on that design.  

  • To be awarded or to uphold a registered design, the design does need to be new and distinctive.  It sounds like from some of the comments that the Swedish designers may not have had a new and distinctive design.

  • @Justin;

    All foam planes are variants of some thing else in some form or other. Adding a plastic dome is hardly a technological breakthru. Nobody wants a repeat of the Wright brothers copyright lawsuit where if it had a wing, they wanted royalties.

  • Very interesting. I am curious as to how much it applies to aviation. I would imagine Boeing and or Airbus would have pretty large financial battles in Australia if this could be so easily represented. I know for patents and copyrights it is very hard to prove that an airframe is a copy of another, especially with this many differences...
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