Super Capable Jet... With 2 Flaws - FMS Super Scorpion V2 Review

It used to be orange, now it's orange in camouflage, and it's not really a version 2 either. Hey there, I'm John, this is Two Brothers RC, and this is the FMS Super Scorpion 90mm. The Super Scorpion is a jet that's been out for quite a few years now, and you may have seen it on the channel back when we were, you know, kind of getting started. So you'd think we'd be getting more of an improvement when FMS markets it as a second version. Unfortunately this is more of a version 1.5 at best. The first version of this jet didn't have lights, and the second version doesn't either. The only notable change between the two versions is the 8 cell power system option and choice of paint. That's it. I'm kind of disappointed here because I expected more. LED lights would be a great upgrade for a second version. So would full flying stabilators instead of the fixed stabs with elevators. That also would have been a great improvement. Anything to justify calling it a version 2. But we didn't get that. Instead, we got a plane that does fly well and it does look cool, but is essentially just slightly different from the first release so many years ago. Alright, enough of the overview. Let's dive into this jet and see how it stacks up to the patent pending Two Brothers review system. Friendly reminder, this is about as objective as we can be. It doesn't matter if a company sends a plane or if we buy it, all of them get the same treatment. It's just easier to, you know, not have to buy them, to fly them a few times a year just for one YouTube video. Diving into agility, let's get this started by covering the 8-cell system and how it flies, then compare it to the 6-cell setup. If you've been watching Two Brothers for a while you know that I'm a big proponent of light wing loading on jets. In my view most jets are already heavy enough as is. Adding even more wing loading in the form of a heavier motor and a pair of batteries always kind of struck me as being asinine. Then I started trying it myself and I gotta say I like it. It doesn't always work on every jet, but in some jets, it does. And the Super Scorpion is one of those jets where an 8-cell system gives you a very real benefit with only marginal drawbacks. So to cover why this is a thing at all, you generally get more efficient power systems on an 8-cell setup. You theoretically try to run lighter batteries to offset the weight penalty of having to use two of them. The weight penalty is a real thing to be concerned with because the heavier a plane is the harder it stalls and the more difficult it is to recover from a stall when you do inevitably stall it. Airplanes can stall at any airspeed. All it takes is yanking the elevator aggressively enough. But it's also true that the speed at which a plane stalls goes up with more weight. So the biggest drawback to an 8-cell setup is that it does, by design, have a higher stall speed. Meaning that in plain English, it'll stall for the sake of argument at 30 miles an hour, when it may have stalled at 26 miles an hour before. That doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that everything happens much faster in model aviation than in full-scale aviation. So when something stalls, you often have no warning at all. And when you're flying by the seat of your thumbs, even a few miles per hour of buffer speed can mean the difference between a up plane or a successful flight. To make it easy to figure out, I'd say go with eight cells if you want longer flights with more available thrust, but you don't mind having to charge twice as many batteries and you're not worried about stall recovery. I'd say go with six if you only want to charge one battery per flight, and you want a jet that handles lower speeds easily, and you want shorter flights with with somewhat less thrust as a consequence. Speaking completely agnostic of either system here, the Super Scorpion is very easy to fly in general and it carves very nice lines. The additional wing load of the 8-cell motor and dual 4-cell packs is surprisingly carried very well by this jet's plan form. I'd go as far as to say that I think the definitive way to enjoy the Super Scorpion is on the 8-cell setup. Sure, it's more annoying to charge a pair of batteries to get a single flight because you need two 4-cell cell packs in series, But it's not so annoying that I think the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. In general, it's not capable of post-stall maneuvering, regardless of whether you're running six or eight cells, but neither was the first version of the jet. It's a sport jet. Some sport jets can do a high alpha pass, others can do an inverted high alpha pass. The Super Scorpion does a really nice inverted high alpha pass, but only with the flaps dropped. Or, at least, that was our experience. Since this jet has both a 6-cell and an 8-cell option, and we flew both of them, we're going to feature two different scores here for each applicable part of the review. The 6-cell setup isn't prone to accelerated stalls, the kind of stall that you get while flying at maneuvering speeds. Yes, you can force it into an accelerated stall, but you have to be really heavy-handed on the elevator stick to do it, so it passes the scoring there. It's exceptionally easy to make it fly neutrally balanced. Just throw the battery all the way to the back of the jet. It does have adequate thrust, but you will find yourself using a lot of the stick if you're trying to climb, leading to shorter flights than what you'd get on the 8-cell system. It takes off and it lands with zero issues at all. If you do somehow end up stalling the plane, applying power and getting the nose down will fix it almost instantly. It's forgiving overall, and it handles really well, earning it a 5 out of 5. But what about the 8-cell setup? That also gets an identical score of 5 out of 5. It will be a little more prone to accelerated stalls because of the nature of adding more wing load to the planform, but I didn't notice it handling poorly. Just like the 6 cell setup, slam the batteries all the way to the back if you want a neutrally handling jet. It takes off even easier than the 6 cell setup, and I'd suggest I'm just going with eight cells for grass because it'll launch right out of it. It has absurd amounts of thrust compared to the 6-cell option and you'll find yourself mostly flying around at half throttle, netting you longer flight times with more airspeed for tumbling and sport flying. Just like the 6-cell setup, stall recovery is pretty easy, I didn't notice any issues with it at all. Moving on to flight time, this is where the two power systems start to diverge from one another. At best, I could get 4 minutes and 45 seconds of flight on the 6-cell I'm going to show you how I set up my 8-cell setup, with 3 minutes and 30 seconds being my average performance flight. The best time that I got required a lot of babying the throttle and conserving momentum where possible. You really have to overthink it to get it to fly longer. The SMC 5900 high voltage batteries that I was flying it did really well but a six cell setup is never as efficient as a throttle managed eight cell setup. The 6s power system gets a four out of five in flight time. Now, comparatively, the 8-cell setup requires a lot less thinking, with most of my flights being an average of 5 minutes. Yes, that does include performance flying too. Now to get there, you have to shift your mindset and stop pegging the throttle constantly. I know dudes who fly jets always have a transmitter that suffers from a defective throttle stick that's either on or off at all times, but trust me here, try flying on half the stick for a while and notice how much longer you'll fly when you stop chasing arbitrary ground Ground speed numbers. Flying longer isn't for everyone, I get it, but those of us who want to see the jet do more than go fast in a circle will benefit from conscientious throttle application in the sky. Your batteries will last longer when you don't peck the stick too. The only drawback is that you won't be able to go on Facebook and say that your jet went one mile an hour faster than someone else's jet. I flew my 8 cell setup on SMC 4400 high voltage batteries and CNHL 4000 LiPo packs. Both of them performed well with the SMC packs edging out the CNHLs with a little more flight time and noticeably more power in the air. The AS system earns a 5 out of 5 in flight time. Moving on to landing gear I didn't notice an appreciable difference between the two power systems. While yes the eight cell jet is heavier the gear is pretty much best in class so the additional weight is nothing to really worry about. Now note that I said the gear is best in class not the wheels. Those are made out of hard plastic of course and they have very little give to them. The struts that they're attached to are amazing and they work well on grass or pavement. If you're used to the Viper 90 from eFlight, the Super Scorpion's gear are identical. You can even swap them out if you want to. They require little maintenance and they work flawlessly in general, assuming you don't slam the jet into the ground. Even best-in-class gear require you to land the jet like an airplane, not a monster truck. The Super Scorpion earns a 4 out of 5 here. Onward to fit and finish, the quality of the foam is typical FMS. That means dense foam cells with good quality paint. I didn't notice any visible damage that didn't come from FedEx treating the shipping box like a football field goal. All of the hinges on the Super Scorpion are gapless except for the flaps which are foam hinged. I can't really split scores the way this system is set up so we'll just say it passes here because the ailerons, rudders, and elevators are Are all gapless hinged. The Jet does come with stickers instead of decals. I know some people don't care about that, but I do, and I dislike how they tend to peel up over time, or how stickers are often peeling up before you even take a plane out of the box, in the case of like the X-Fly B-1 for example. But in this case, at least the stickers didn't have any issues to note, so the Super Scorpion gets a 4 out of 5. Moving on to avionics and lighting, the jet does ship with metal servos. They're 17 gram units. Not the fastest servos you've ever used, but they have enough torque to fly the plane well. As far as the ESC goes, it's a standard FMS Predator 120 amp, capable of running an 8 or 6 cell motor. It doesn't have any lighting though, so it fails both the contains lighting system check and the lighting is correct check. 90mm class jets should have lighting out of the box, Thanks, so sayeth I. Feel free to disagree, but I think I'm right on this one. Nobody should have to mod that into their airframe. The battery tray is pretty awesome though, plenty of space to make it as nose heavy or slightly tail heavy as you desire. The Super Scorpion earns a 3 out of 5 here. Overall the 6 cell variant scores 20 out of 25. The 8-cell variant scores 21 out of 25. If you want more flight time and more thrust while flying mixed throttle, get the 8-cell version. If you want fewer batteries to charge and bring to the field and a lighter jet overall, get the 6-cell variant. And if you want a sick afterburner system for your jet, pick up a few units from KMRC Model who's been gracious enough to send over afterburners to demo them on the channel. The Super Scorpion flies like a sport jet and it can do some pretty nifty maneuvers that you might not expect it to. It's stable, it's easy to fly, and it's enjoyable. Can't really ask for much else, although I don't think it's too much to ask that a version 2 actually ships with some lights. Come on, FMS. Moving on to setup, it's a pretty simple bird to get going in the air. While you can fly it completely stock on a 6 channel AR637T receiver linked below, I didn't fly it completely stock because you know how we do here. I unplugged the two elevator servos from the control board and I ran them directly into the receiver on a taileron tail type and my spectrum radio using an AR8360T receiver which you can also find linked below. I always found the stock roll rate on the Super Scorpion to be lacking with how small the ailerons are even with 150 travel and all the you know control surfaces maxed out. Now if any of this is confusing at all hop on Discord and ask for help from the Two Brothers community. I'm always around usually but everyone is pretty friendly and loves to help even when I'm not there so don't be afraid to ask because I don't always know everything and a lot of people know stuff that I don't. Since I used Spectrum AS3X Plus, you'll find the gyro gains on screen here. You can also get a sense of where my center of gravity was for these flights by looking on screen. Basically I have it balancing nearly over the main wheels. You may not want it to be that aggressive, but it flies really well for me like that. You don't need any fancy wing mixes, just a basic throttle to gain mix and a few flights to get it dialed in to your preferences. If you don't know how to set up a throttle to gain mix, check out the AS3X guide linked below. If you like these kinds of in-depth reviews, smash that super thanks button and let us know, or just click the like. That works too. We also have a nifty merch shop if you're into that sort of thing. Hey, thanks for watching, Merry Christmas, and we'll see you guys again next Saturday with the Hacker Mad Bull Max from Hacker Models USA.