Hall OF Fame Customer Letters
Hall OF Fame Customer Letters
JETT SJ-46 Powered
Diamond Dust
Carl Engel of Clear Lake, WI writes...
Dub,
This is my 2nd Diamond Dust, the first with a Jett, and also my first experience with digital servos (Hitec 5645MG's). I built it during Independent Activity Period (basically the month of January) here at MIT (I'm a freshman). One of the faculty told me of an old project that used 2 Jett 46's, one regular and one built to run in the opposite direction. That project has been done for a year or two, and the Jetts were just sitting around lonely and unloved. When I heard that, I had a Diamond Dust kit I had at home mailed out to me. My plan was to build the DD, giving one of the Jetts a home, and install a pitot tube to measure
airspeed with.
I flew the Diamond Dust for the first time today, and wow! I'd never seen a Jett at home, only read about them online, and I sure am impressed! I used a 10x6 for initial flights to keep speed to limited to blisteringly fast instead of insanely fast. I think this Diamond Dust is going to have even more punch than my 1st one that had a MVVS GRRT 40 FAI engine on
it. That engine was impressive and ran really high RPMs, but only with small propellers like 7x9s. The Jett seems to have more snort, easily turning a 10x6 over 16k. I plan on turning a 9x8 or maybe even an 8x10 later on. Very user-friendly too. I'm definitely a Jett believer now!
I don't have the airspeed logging system installed yet, so I don't have any speed data. I'll keep you updated, and let you know airspeeds when I getthem. In the meantime, I've attached a couple pictures. One shows the servo bay. I mounted the digital servos on their sides and back a few inches to help balance and to keep more of the servo out of the air stream
and to make more room for the airspeed data logger. I sure can tell a difference with these...MUCH more solid-feeling. The other pic was taken just after the first flight. Consensus was that the flames on the fins add an extra 10 MPH. :)
Carl Engel
Attending college at MIT, Cambridge, MA
Home: Clear Lake, WI
