Katana Giant
The Hangar 9 Katana — a giant-scale balsa-and-ply sport-aerobatic ARF in the Hangar 9 family — captured in the simulator's standard form.
About
The Katana is part of the Hangar 9 sport-aerobatic ARF family, a Horizon Hobby brand whose balsa-and-ply ARF kits have been a fixture of the intermediate-and-advanced RC market since the late 1990s. The Katana name has been applied to several different airframes in the line over the years, and the giant-scale variant in this model represents the larger-engine end of the Hangar 9 sport-aerobatic catalog — the kind of airframe a pilot graduates to after spending time on a smaller Funtana, U-Can-Do, or Ultra Stick.
Like every well-loved sport-aerobatic ARF, the Katana Giant earns its place in the hobby by being three things at once: light enough for honest aerobatic figures, strong enough to absorb the bumps of intermediate flying, and substantial enough at the larger size class to give the pilot the kind of in-the-air presence that makes 3D maneuvers easier to read at altitude. Big control surfaces and a symmetrical airfoil mean the airframe is equally happy upright or inverted, willing on knife-edge, and predictable in stall behavior.
The bigger picture is the giant-scale sport-aerobatic ARF category itself. Whether Hangar 9 Katana, Funtana, U-Can-Do, or competing designs from rival brands, balsa-and-ply ARFs at the giant-scale-engine class have become the standard step beyond foam park-flyers and smaller .40-class ARFs for pilots who want serious aerobatic capability without committing to a full custom-built competition airframe.
In the simulator
A confident sport-aerobatic mount. The Katana Giant's larger size translates to more substantial inertia in the air — you have time to read what the airframe is doing during 3D figures, and the bigger control surfaces give the kind of authority that makes hovers and torque rolls satisfying. Use it for the intermediate-to-advanced aerobatic vocabulary: knife-edge passes, slow rolls, hammerheads, and inverted figure-eights. Pairs well with grass strips and aerobatic-box landscapes. A natural sibling of the Katana Giant W-Smoke (with smoke system) and Katana S50 in this same pack.
