Ultima 2 F5J 4m

I have now had some time to fly the Ultima 2. It is without doubt one of the best planes I have flown. It is easy to fly, shows thermal well and circles well in thermal. I fly with the CodG well back but that has given no problems, it can almost stand still in the air, or go seaching for lift. I does not seem to have any vices, I have not found any so far.
The finish is great, up to a very high standard. I had to install a new rudder pushrod as there was not enough clearance between the two pushrods, but what was due to the servos I used.
I do not hesitate to reccommend this glider.

ALL THE REVIEWS BELOW ARE FOR THE ORIGINAL ULTIMA 1, HOWEVER THEY ARE STILL RELEVANT FOR THE ULTIMA 2

Great flying model and great service from Hyperflight. This model was packaged very well and shipped very quickly. Arrived in the US with no damage. I thank Neil for having this great place for all us glider people purchase all the things we need to stay in the air.

The Ultima is not a particularly easy build and I could wish that like most models it came with the motor mount installed. The main difficulty in the build is installing the servos for the pull pull rudder and elevator and figuring out where to put ballast. Compared to say a Maza these elements are less developed.

On the other hand if you want to own the first of the new super light carbon foam models this is the way to go. I have found mine to fly extremely well, to be competitive in competitions to be flyable even in strong winds -6-8 m/s but better in light and moderate winds. It has the ability it to turn virtually in its own wing span, obviously signals lift better than a vario and lands slower than a wet week.

Its a great thermal machine. I expect it to be come more refined as the manufacturer works his way down the learning curve. I'm very happy with mine.

Having spent many happy days flying my Ultima last Summer I was surprised to read Roger Sanders very critical review of the model. Several of Roger's comments are matters of opinion and, as such, I will steer clear except to state that, in my opinion, the Ultima is not ugly!

However he does make several other statements which give a rather false impression of the model:-

1. Hangar rash is not a problem. I have just looked closely at mine, there is not a mark on it despite many flights and many knocks in storage and transit. Carbon Fibre is extremely hard and rigid, the Ultima is the most robust high performance model of it's type that I have come across.

2. The hatch is perfectly adequate. Mine is 30mm wide for most of it's length. My 3S, 1000 mAh Turnigy batteries are 18mm wide and slot in with complete ease alongside the ESC.

3. I used Neil's recommended servos, MKS 6100, mounted as far back as possible. This left plenty of space for the Rx, ESC and battery.

4. Roger's concern over the closed loop system is totally unfounded. I have checked mine just now and there is absolutely no sign of any wear in the system. I used a clevis on one of the wires and connected the other directly to the servo output arm using a loop in the wire secured by a crimped ferrule.

5. The control horns on the servos do not need to be different lengths. Mine are identical and I get the correct elevator and rudder movements.

6. I agree with Roger that making the wing servo linkages to exact lengths is difficult but the answer is simple - use pushrods with clevises.

7. Roger's comments about the flap control horns are fine in theory but, in practice, there is no problem with using the supplied horns.

8. My wing hold down screws are both 5mm csk. with 3mm hexagon sockets. These are high tensile steel screws and it would be folly to use the same screws to hold the tailplane in place where weight is so critical due to the long moment arm and the bolting load is much less. The supplied nylon screw is ideal for the job.

Finally, the flying. This model has a very low wing loading and my previous experience with lightly loaded models was not good. They seemed to fly like paper bags. The Ultima doesn't, the handling is remarkably precise yet docile especially with the CG well forward. The soaring performance is outstanding, I bought two 1000 mAh batteries - one remains unused. The Ultima is not at it's best in high winds but surely this is to be expected?

Barrie Purslow
24th March 2017

After several years of "building" and flying a series of large eGliders I thought that the pace of development was tapering off and that my Euphoria would keep me satisfied for some time. Imagine my surprise when, whilst perusing Neil's Hyperflight website, I stumbled across a new 4 metre eGlider claiming to fly at almost half the weight of said Euphoria!..... I had to have one.

Being of a deeply suspicious nature I was concerned that this new machine would be rather too delicate or would fly like a paper bag or both. First impressions were that it was incredibly light, so light that I was frequently caught out by a failure to realise how large the component parts were as I moved them around the workshop. This led to a number of contacts with solid workshop parts. However the all carbon skins are very hard and well supported by the underlying foam such that almost no damage was caused. The elevator and rudder are operated by long closed loop systems with the final few inches at the rear being piano wire pushrods. This system is rather fiddly to set up but, once sorted, works well.

The small diameter of the Ultima's nose makes it almost impossible to squeeze a direct drive motor in there. Since my competition days are in the dim and distant past I avoid gearbox motor drives as an unnecessary and expensive complication but I ended up fitting a Powerline Micro 1015. With a fairly modest 11"x6" prop. this produced 235 watts . If I achieved my target weight of 2lbs 12 oz (1240g) this would give 85 watts per pound (190 W/Kg), perfectly adequate for my purposes.

A brief alert from Neil indicated that this glider was likely to turn out nose heavy. A quick assembly of the bits still to be fitted showed that this was indeed the case. A quick calculation indicated that the removal of 30 mm from the nose should put matters right. Well, it didn't quite but, thanks to the long tail moment, half an ounce of lead in the tail brought the C.G. bang into the middle of the specified range.

Although there were no instructions whatsoever with the as bought bits Neil had produced some figures for control surface movements by now and I set the surface movements accordingly.

With a 1000 mAhr 3S Lipo the target weight of 2 lbs 12 oz was achieved and all that remained was to wait for a calm evening and fly it.

The calm evening eventually arrived and away it went, climbing straight ahead with almost no control inputs. Cutting the power showed the glider to be very docile, pleasantly responsive despite the low flying speed and no sign of any paper bag tendencies. It's one of those gliders that likes to turn and these first few flights were very impressive. Hopefully some experimenting with C.G. and surface movements will improve matters even further. Stalls were docile and the huge flaps made very effective airbrakes although it is clearly essential to retract them before the glider contacts terra firma.

Finally, the Ultima comes with two sets of wing joiners for the tip panels, one pair at 5 degrees and the other 7 degrees. Now, if your flying buddy comments that your latest pride and joy looks "a bit skew whiff" on it's first flight, take a tip from me and check that you are using a matching pair of joiners!

Barrie Purslow
2nd June 2016