Fury-ous!
Ken Kammerer

I decided to try out the "new old" kid on the block. The X-Cell Fury. I say the "new old" kid on the block because the design is new in many ways but also borrows many of the proven X-Cell parts from previous model X-Cells. There are a lot of things that are very nice about this new X-Cell and some that I think could have been improved upon. The big one is of course the tank-in-front design. Same as the Vigor. I always noticed the Cg change on the Vigor and wished the tank was closer to the Cg. Having a radio with digital trims makes it a bit easier to handle but still the trim changing is annoying. The other thing I don't like about the design is the skinny little tail boom! I know it shouldn't matter, but a larger boom is so much stiffer, you'd think in this day and age a 24 or 25 mm boom would be standard issue. The Millie is 24, the Vigor 22, and the X-Cell is only 20! Mechanically the stiffness of a boom is increased greatly by a small increase in diameter, so you'd think they would take advantage of that. Of course for Miniature Aircraft, that would mean a whole lot of parts they would not be able to carry over from previous successful designs, so that's why they do it.

They also carried over the XL pro head and drive train. It includes their well-executed split gear constant drive tail system with a massive carbon torque tube, very cool. New to the Fury is a completely self-supported clutch system. This takes the engine out of the stiffness equation completely. The clutch is supported both above and below with bearing blocks, and their uni-ball damper-driven clutch system is used so engine alignment is essentially a non-issue. Even the gear mesh is factory set. How nice! The damper drive system also relieves some of the stress on the drive components because the power pulses from the engine are somewhat damped.

Of course the best thing about the Fury is the single piece frames. I have never even considered purchasing previous X-Cells because they went by the "the more parts the better!" philosophy, which is totally counter to my preference. The Fury is a complete 180 degree turn from that. The single piece frames and CCPM control system are a model of simplicity. They even used servo supporters instead of push-pull controls, which I think is a very smart move. I never quite agreed with the use of a push-pull system that is only push-pull til you get to the bell crank! In that case, all it does is support the servo output shaft a little better; but that's only assuming the two links are perfectly the right length so as not to push or pull on the servo. This is never going to be just right! So you will always have some stress on the servo output. In the Fury there is a shaft mounted to the servo output which passes through a bearing. Standoffs mount a plate that holds the bearing.

Basically the Fury is offering the same basic feature set as the Vigor CS at about US$450 less. We'll see how it comes out when I actually get mine in the air.