Rotmilan Midi, kit overview

This is the shorter version of the Rotmilan which just won the F3F WC 2014 in František Ruisl's hands. With a wingspan of 2.86m and length of 1.47m, it features the same HN section than the Standard Rotmilan, It is made by RTGmodel (Website not updated yet with the Rotmilan Midi). I received my Rotmilan Midi in Donovaly when I was there for the F3F world championship. The color scheme is mine and based on the constraint that the control surfaces are moulded with an angle to allow the moulding of the wipers at once.

Let's have a look to the kit. Fuselage is made from Kevlar and Carbon. It is 2.4 friendly as the front part is kevlar only. The ballast tube and the servo tray, as a single piece is already installed in the fuselage. The tray is designed to receive 12mm standard servos like the MKS 6125e or equivalent. The hole is at the right size to not damage the wire when inserting the servos in its location.

Canopy is fiber glass with the lock system already in place.

The ballast tube occupies lot of place in the fuselage so the routing of the wires from the wing connectors to the receivers is pretty tricky. It requires to solder the green plug with the wires in place.

The elevator control rods are snakes using fiberglass core and teflon sleeve. They are guided into a plastic sleeve. No clevises or couplers are provided. In brief, the fuselage requires very little work.

The tailplanes are identical to the standard version and include the carbon rod joiners. 2 metal pins are here also for a better positionning. They still use the very simple and efficient aluminium control horns to be connected to a metal clevis

Wings are simple carbon using herex and spread tow fabric. The servos holes are reinforced with some extra carbon to avoid skin deformation while installing the servos frame. There is no ballast compartiment in the wings. The large carbon joiner allows to use brass ballast in it (not provided), to be added to the 900g of fuselage ballast provided with the kit (10 slugs).

RTGmodel has been the first manufacturer to use RDH/LDS. As it is built in, the installation on the control surface side is finished, and removable using a tool provided in the kit, a long brass rod that allow to extract/put the RDH axis from the root chord.

What to say about the moulding and finish quality. The Rotmilan moulding quality is absolutely top notch. Fit and finish are just superb: The illustration is how the joiner fit in the wings and the fuselage. no blocking point and no slop at all. When removing the joiner, you ear the "pop" sound.

To finish with the kit overview, here are the component weight:

•     Fuselage: 387g
•     Right Wing: 586g
•     Left wing: 592g
•     Wing Joiner: 88g
•     Left tail+ joiner: 40g
•     Right tail + joiner: 42g
•     Total 1735g
•     Ballast provided: 892g