What do you think of the Dragon Force

[Barrie Norman]

I am very interested to hear what people think of the Dragon Force, if you sail one or just have an opinion please comment.

[Hermann Gruber]

I got my DF in June, it is my first rc-sailing boat. It was easy to build together. the rx/tx was just making noise and no action and it feels and looks 'cheap' .... so I sail it with my spektrum gear.

one can trim allmost everthing and if done well, it sails very nice! 

I'm sure there are faster RG65 ..... but for the price ..... and I prefer sailing to building ..... 

to make it faster I plan to get better sails and a light power supply (will a small 2S lipo kill the servos?).

and when the DF will be offered without rx/tx, I will buy another one for match-racing with friends.

=> I hope to see more DF on the Old Danube in Vienna  :-)

[Barrie Norman]

HI Hermann

Both Mike Weston and John Tushingham sail the DF with LiFe power packs not sure what size, you can look on the RC Yachts web site to see what size Mike sells, I don,t think the DF will be sold without the Radio but even so it is a very good price, you could make a little back by selling the radio gear on ebay.

[Barrie Norman]

This is a reply I had emailed I thought the comments were interesting, I have omitted the senders name as Im not sure if they wanted it published.

Hi Barrie, you asked fro views on the dragon force yachts. Well my personal opinion is. Great yacht for one class racing if the boats are kept standard. Great value and easy to build and rig. However if the plan is to race them against other rg65's i feel the odds are against you that you would ever win. If the boat is to have a class inside a class then at what point do you say the boat has been changed to much to still fit as a dragon force. The boats are already having there own sails made, i think i saw a swing rig as well? Will carbon foils be aloud and what other changes? 

[Barrie Norman]

The comments about the Dragon Force v RG65's, there are a lot of home built boats out there that would not beat the DF so in the hands of a good skipper the DF can be a competitive boat in all but very light conditions when the light CF boats come into there own so I see no reason why the DF's cant sail with the other RG65's.

Mike Weston proved this in the Huntingdon Open taking 7th place against some of the worlds top skippers, it will be interesting to see how many DF's enter the Nationals and what happens.

I understand The sail diagrams and one class rules are now almost complete and RC Yachts will have some Graphite A,B and C sails available, keep an eye on Mikes web site!

[Barrie Norman]

I have just heard that RC Yachts are now selling the Dragon Force without the Radio.

[tim moulden]

Hi, I brought a dragonforce from RC yachts a couple of weeks ago without the radio for £135 . This has to be great value. I put it together and sailed it at my local club. I have to say i'm really happy with it. It looks like joysway have put right the problems they had with the first batch. There are no leaks, I sailed on Saturday for 2 hours in a reasonable wind and only 2 drops of water came out of the drain hole. The bow is now fine.

    I replaced the sails with housemartin sails for £25 . The only problem with the original sails was that they had a dragon printed on them.

    I'm also impressed with the sailing, it copes with a wide range of winds just with the standard A rig. Once the wind is over 10 mph it goes like a rocket.

   I'm used to sailing a micro magic, I paid a lot more for my MM a few years ago. The RG65 Dragonforce seems to be a much better boat for a lot less cost.

   So well done all those involved with this project. I'm just hoping you might do the same thing for the IOM sometime in the future.

    Tim 

[ChewbeeDoo]

I am very happy with 

like people said RAdio is a bit cheap 

BUT

you gat a full RTS boat 

you can have fun with and improve on the way 

Good value for the price I would say 

[David Foster]

Great value.

Gone over to Spektrum radio (I like to use exponential on the steering and also better range)  and also a set of Housemartin sails (a lot better than standard sails and let's me put my sail numbers on where they should be!). Hull now blue (used ProTrim - used a lot by model aircraft fliers) so I now know which is mine! Also gone over to 5 cell AAA flat back alongside the Keel box.

We now have 7 or 8 in our club, though only about 3 or 4 of us have made it onto the water yet. Good unofficial racing though so far.

David

[Barrie Norman]

Hi David what club are you sailing in as we are trying to get an idea of how many clubs are sailing on a regular basis so theta we can introduce members in your area.

Barrie

UK RG65 Class Association

[Chuck LeMahieu]

Well guys if there was any doubt about how awesome the Dragon Force RG65 was, there are no doubts in the minds of the TRYC members who sailed in our first ever Club Match Race. 

We sailed 30 heats in winds exceeding 15- 25 MPH/ waves reaching 4 ft at times for over 5 hours at White Rock Lake in Dallas today, and what an incredible time we had!!!! 

Unfortunately we didn't have B rigs to race with since we haven't had the boats in our hands very long (although we had one out on B that one of our members had finished) So we were forced to sail in our A rig for the entire day.

Some have questioned how tough this boat is in windy conditions 

To put it mildly, we pushed this boat to its entire limit as much as any class we have sailed (Including IOMs).In fact we were overpowered almost all day long yet these boats only nose dived a few times and couldnt tack when the winds clocked up got to about 25MPH+ !!!
Between the 2 boats in 60 combined races there, was not one mast explosion, one servo failure, or breakdown of any kind from either boat!!! (we had several HARD high speed collisions too!) Eric R had to do some sail repair because a batten had broken through the one of the mains sail due to the winds. The boats stayed more dry than almost any boat we have sailed out there in those conditions. Anyone who has sailed at our venue can testify, RC Sailing conditions can get hairy at the Rock (Our motto is... "this aint pond sailing " for a reason ) in fact the Lasers were supposed to go out today... but they sat and watched us race because there was too much wind 

Here is a snippet of vid from my iPhone so you can get a taste ( apologies for the quality) :
http://youtu.be/5NedU00EPBs

If we had B rigs we would have sailed in them for sure. 

We only finished the round robin because we had 8 skippers racing ... (

But after 5 + hours in high wind we gave up before the boats did 

I will post better vid and more pics, but needless to say, we had a blast.

We hope y'all can join us for the 2014 RG65 USA Nationals / White Rock Cup at this very site ... (bring your B's and C's ) Registration is now open !!

Happy Dragoning all!

[Joanne Sharpe]

I only got the Radio sailing bug recently - October last year.

I bought a Dragon Force as my first boat after sailing a 'demo' boat on a C Rig day - what a blast !!

I have now sailed mine in conditions from 'mill pond' to 25mph gusting 40mph and it keeps on coming back for more. A fantastic little boat and even when it's been submarining down wind (I name this ship Red October), it's always dry at the end of a days sailing - well maybe a tea spoon if it's been really wild.

I look around me at our club at see a lot of experienced sailors who've been sailing IOM's and Marbleheads for years and they're all buying Dragons! That speaks volumes.

In terms of value for money, a complete on the water, sailing Dragon costs less than a competitive IOM keel fin !!

With three suits of Graphite sails I have a boat ready to race for the coming season and change out of £300 - incredible value.

See you all on the water I hope

Take care

Joanne

[Chuck LeMahieu]

Ok here are more Pics and full race video! :D

http://youtu.be/wHopqfetnuk

http://youtu.be/eNhKujZFEB8