ZOHD Orbit Review

Overview

(Specs at end of review). You would think that cheap kit planes coming from China would be poorly executed knock-offs of more compelling planes from established manufacturers. And yet, in the past year Sonicmodels and it’s offshoot ZOHD have come up with some of the most compelling new planes in the industry. Earlier this year, Sonicmodels AR was one of the first “must have” smooth EPP foam blunt-nosed planed from China. It outclassed the very sophisticated Reptile S800 (also from China). The AR is a new generation RC plane, an FPV with the mindset of those who design miniquads. Every inch was well thought out with places for your Runcam/Go Pro and FPV camera as well as your flight controller. ZOHD has had some success with the Nano Talen and some failure with the original Dart only to come back strong with the Dart XL.


One of my friends has been raving about his ZOHD Orbit to the point that I bought one. I was in between the Black Friday deals and the potential new tariffs from Chinese products (United States). So, when the 20% off sale came along I bought some planes to carry me through 2019 to build.

First Impressions

The good

Box Storage -I am running out of room to hang planes in my garage and keeping planes in boxes to me sounds like a great idea, especially if they are small boxes.



No servo wire fishing - Spending a few minutes before every flight fishing servo wires through the body isn’t that much fun. And that’s where the Orbit shines. There are no wires to fish because the servos and all electronics are kept in the center portion of the plane. It offers a new and very clever way to work the elevons from inside the center of the wing. What it means is that you just push it together, and it’s ready to go flying. I am excited to try this out.

Extra Light Weight -It has a flying weight of 1 lb (455g) which is not only outstanding but puts it in the league of a light-build Teksumo. This means it should stay up in the air longer than my AR wing. This is achieved by having s somewhat hallow wing core.



Flight Stabilizer - The plane comes with a flight stabilizer installed and configured. This makes the plane one that would be fine for line-of -ight (LOS) flying or FPV without a flight controller. This plane doesn’t scream out that it needs a flight controller As I understand it, the stabilizer work well enough.

EPP (Not EPO) Foam - The plane is EPP foam which is nice because I seem to be building mostly EPO foam planes lately. I really do like a good EPP delta wing, though I am not a fan of pure white EPP foam. It tends to look a bit static. I may have to finish off at least part of the wings with a colored lamination. I would not use paint on this plane because it would just add weight.

Prebuilt- Usually, I like to build my planes from the ground up. But, more and more compelling planes are coming out as prebuilts. As long as they are built right, I won’t complain.

The bad 

The Motor -The motor is a bit unusual. It’s a 2204 which in motor terms isn’t the most current. It weighs around 50g which is heavy for a 2204. It also takes a proprietary propeller. I have to examine it to see if it eventually get swapped out for a lighter 2205 or 2206 2200 KV motor. There isn’t a lot of specs about the motor so I guess we’ll just have to see how it works.

The build process 

It takes about 3 minutes to figure out how the plane assembles. The square rod didn't go in as smoothly for me as I would expect so most of that time was spent getting the rod in the right way. The wing clips in fairly easily. I do like this design because it detaches easily during a crash. This is a good thing because crashes aren't uncommon in our hobby. The detaching process during a crash hopefully is enough to absorb energy without causing damage.

Binding-

I did seem to have an issue getting the ZOHD to work with a Spektrum AR7000 receiver. I put in a Redcon receiver with satellite and there was no problems. Others have expressed similar issues with the Spektrum brand receiver. Interestingly enough there is a small port for a Spektrum satellite receiver to hook in and give you all the channels you'll need to fly this plane.   I've tried it, it works fine.  You need to do a range check if you plan to use a Spektrum satellite receiver only.  The usual range is 300m to 1000m  (1000 feet to .6 of a mile).  The Redcon and LemonRX have rave reviews.
At the risk of changing topics the little satellite receivers have similar range than their counterparts with servo connectors.   If you're only flying line-of-sight (LOS) with this plane you can get away with a 'good' satellite receiver.    If you like flying about as far as you can see you may want to go the full servo-pinned receiver with satellite route  (Which is what I did).

The choice of a receiver is something you may want to really think twice about. The reason is that the flight times on this plane are insane. Without a flight controller, there is no return to home function with this plane. If you install a camera and VTX on this plane you don't want your receiver to lose range before the VTX you will need a longer range receiver.  If you plan to take this plane beyond line-of-sight there are other brands of transmitters to investigate that have longer range capabilities.

PWM Receiver Setup

The only other part of the build process which was kinda frustrating was the very basic documentation could have labeled the colors of the wires. It just uses terms like "Elevator, throttle, mode" Here they are:

3 wire (black, red, white)-Aleron

Blue-Elevator

Yellow Throttl

Green-Mode




Just double check, you never know when they change coding schemes. .

The maiden

There's a reason I don't video my maidens. The first ones don't go as well as plan quite often. Despite my CG being correct per the CG marks on the bottom of the plane it took off tail heavy. The stabilizers did their job, sorta. I brought it back down and put  a couple ounces more weight in the nose and it flew for 45 minutes before I got tired and landed it.  I checked the 3S 2200mAh Lipo to find that I had close to a storage charge worth of power left! Now I can see why people love this plane so much.

The flying characteristics of this plane were very nice.  There was no glaring negative experiences that I've noticed about this plane. when flying her.    The stabilizer worked well and though it was a bit underpowered it was a fine flying experience.

So, why aren't I raving about this plane?  I  know people love this plane and some may get a bit angry that I'm not singing its praises.   But I have to tell it like it is.

The flying experience is about as sterile as the big white hunk of foam you're looking at in the sky.  It's safe and predictable.   I am really going to have to do something to jazz up the looks.  Aside from its appearance, the flight characteristics are a bit too smoothed out.  To be fair, I haven't taken it off of the flight stabilizer.

The one huge omission with this plane is no spot to mount an antenna for your VTX.     Some people have worked around it, but it leads me to believe that this is a plane you throw your Runcam into the front of and fly Line-Of-Sight while on vacation.  And yet, even with stabilizers the plane has waggle.  This may be because the plane is light.  Even though it has digital servos the stabilizers won't give you the silky smooth video that you would get with a gimbal.

The YouTube Vlogger Painless 360 has come up with a VTX antenna mount for the Orbit which can be found on Thingiverse.






Of course, this begs the question "Why is such a superbly designed plane missing an antenna mount if it's marketed as an FPV plane?" 

As predicted, the motor was underwhelming. I guess if you want performance you should stick with the AR 900. This plane is about efficiency, and thus it's a bit of a vanilla flying experience. That's not bad, some days you just want to loiter around in the sky for about an hour.   This plane will do that.

Would I recommend this plane?

Nope.


It's not a bad flying experience, and it's not a mind-blowing great flying experience.  It's just okay. It's been so refined that it managed to suck some of the soul out of flying.   It's the Michael Bolton of RC planes. 

I'm not saying that this is a bad plane and you shouldn't buy it.  What I am suggesting is that this is version 1 and it hasn't really evolved enough.  This is more of a proof of concept plane.  They have proved you can make a compelling 900mm plane out of EPP foam that can fly for an hour and can be broken down and stored in a small box.   It can easily be setup again and ready to fly in a couple of minutes.  That's remarkable.

I can throw different motors on the plane and put in flight controllers and antennas, and GPS.  But sooner or later that effort is better spent on another plane  I'll just accept this plane at face value for what it is, a nice plane to take with me on vacation or when I leave town.    Just take along a few batteries and you've got good flying for days.


I know this plane will appeal to some people.  If you've outgrown your trainer and need a good first delta wing, this isn't a bad choice.  If you're not into building planes but would like a plane that you can easily get flying with as little fuss as possible, this is a good plane.   But, if you're into building kits and worry about all the little details, this plane may not excite you enough.   Despite all the innovative cool features, in the end, it's just a light, stabilized 900mm delta wing.


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Specs- ZOHD Orbit 900mm EPP AIO HD FPV Flying Wing PNP

Key Features:

Built-in gyro makes flight super stable and easy to control.

Autonomous flight directly after hand-launching - never crash when taking-off.

Multiple bonus camera mount, compatible for Gopro H3/H4, Runcam2 HD, Foxeer HS1177 FPV camera in the market.

EPP molded wing, pre-built-in Carbon Fiber spar for enhancement, light and flexible plus crash-resistance.

Detachable mainwing for easy transport - easy to change the wing via a simple plug.

Mainwing connected to fuselage by buckle - this will disconnect and release in the event of a crash.

Room inside fuselage for FPV gear  (Debatable)

''NACA” air-intake in nose and air-outlet in tail for better cooling on FPV gear.

Self-tightening prop nuts for secure prop mounting

Specifications:

Brand Name: ZOHD

Item Name: Orbit Wing

Wingspan: 900mm/35.43in

Length: 422mm/16.61in

Flying Weight: 455g (w/o FPV gear)

Material: Crash ResistableEPP

CG: 11.50cm from the wing leading edge(a bump CG mark under the wing)

Color: White + Black

Motor: ZOHD 22041870KV BL

Motor Shaft Diameter: 5mm

ESC: 30A W/1A BEC

Servos: 2pcs 8g digital servo

Propeller: 6x3

Recommended Battery: 3S 1300-2200mAh 25C

Flying speed: 10 to 85km/h

PNP Package Includes:

Airframe

ZOHD 22041870KV BL motor

30A W/1A BEC ESC

2pcs 8g digital servo

Gyro

Hardware