Fly RC

February 26, 2017

Freewing 80mm Super Scorpion EDF Jet

Recently, My flying buddy Martin has decided to branch out into some ducted fan electric craft and one of his first is the Freewing 80m Super Scorpion from Motion RC. Martin had the new aircraft shipped to my shop and today he came by and we did most of the assembly.

The first observation I would make is that we spent about 4 hours today doing assembly and we got to the point where all we need to do is plug in the receiver and set the throws and it will be ready to roll. Maybe we could have cut it back a bit but don’t believe the place on the website that says assembly time is 30 minutes! Just scroll on down where it says 3 hours and you are in the ballpark. The other specs listed on the site seem to be accurate, even down to the ready to fly weight. Measured with a 4500 6S on board, we measured Martin’s aircraft as just a couple of ounces over 5 lbs just as the web site reports.

Similar to the manual for the P-38s that I recently got from Motion RC, there is a lot of “stuff” in this document that describes assembly that is already done out of the box. This is distracting and it sometimes makes it hard to figure out what the next “required” step is in the assembly process. Unlike the P-38 this model however does not have a full assembly video on the web site and luckily it isn’t needed as there just aren’t that many pieces and assembly is not all that complicated. Just walk through the manual and keep skipping forward when you read the parts that are unneeded and you’ll have little trouble.

There are only a couple of places where I can give you some advice that might not be obvious.

When you put the screws in to attach the wings to the body, be careful to route the wires appropriately then be very careful that the screws are actually going into the holes in the plastic. The best way to avoid this is to just start each before you fully tighten any. A simple thing, but easily overlooked.
When you attach the vertical fin, insert the front screw first but only a couple turns. Then do the side screw and tighten both down before installing the screw from the top. Otherwise it is very difficult to get the top screw to hit the pre-drilled hole in the wood plate that it attaches to.

And a critique or two for the manufacturer and distributor.

Somehow there were only 2 of the 2:1 servo connectors and 1 3:1 servo connector included in the kit, even though the manual clearly indicates there should be 3 of the 2:1 connectors.
On the website it is implied that you can remove the wings and elevators and the vertical stabs (presumably) in order to carry it to/from the flying field. “Removable wings and vertical stabilizers for convenient transport”. Perhaps this could be done a few times in order to ship the aircraft from place to place, but these self tapping screws and plastic and wood into which they are screwed are not what I would expect if this were actually the case. I would expect most folks are only going to take these screws back out if a repair is needed. Anyone who needs to take this aircraft apart in order to get it to and from their flying field should look for a better alternative.

Since the high today in our area was 38 degrees (about 20 degrees below my minimum standard for comfortable flying) we don’t yet know how it flies but here are some pictures of how it looks. Some highlights I would point out are the nice shock absorbing struts, the cockpit detail and the attractive and hopefully easy to see color scheme. Though the aircraft is not quite as large as Martin had assumed, I think he is still fairly happy with the overall look and build quality of the aircraft.

Here is the nose gear showing the nice shock absorbing strut

Here’s a shot of the actual functioning inlet that feeds air to the ducted fan

And the finished product.

Looking forward to see how it flies.

January 30, 2017January 30, 2017

Motion RC P-38 – outboard flap issue resolved

So, the silver P-38 sitting on my bench has one flap servo that appears to have the servo arm incorrectly installed. See my previous post on this topic for details. Motion RC P-38 – outboard flap issue

I was gathering the necessary tools to slice into the plane as described but decided to do a bit more research and found that others had pulled other servos out of the P-38 and reported that they were glued to the paint, not directly to the foam. This gave me a bit more confidence that it would come out without tearing up the foam.

My first thought was that I would have glued the servo in directly to the foam… which would have made this worse… so good thing no one asked me! So with this new information I went back to the shop and made a careful incision all around the edges of the servo where any glue might be holding it and then with a pair of pliers I just grabbed on and started yanking and wiggling…

As advertised… the paint stuck to the glue and thus to the servo but the foam is largely undamaged. With this I was easily able to then remove and replace the arm into the correct position and things then lined up nicely!! Another hurdled cleared. Glad I didn’t get in a rush about cutting into that wing!

We are now much closer to flight on these two birds and I’m starting to get back closer to the initial excitement to fly them that I had when we placed the order. Just another session or two at the bench to get all the throws and rates set up and we should finally be in a flight worthy status… just in time to wait on the weather…

January 14, 2017

Motion RC Pacific Green P-38 progress – near flight worthy

After an email exchange with Motion about the sheared screw in the back plate of one of the spinners, they shipped me replacement spinners and screws. While I still dislike this setup, I’m going to give it a try for at least a few flights. To replace these with something more appropriate in a two blade, as discussed in an earlier post, is just more than I want to spend at this point on this airplane.

Moving forward with replacing the screw led to applying the wire covers on the bottom of the plane. I deviated a bit here and just used some clear packing tape to hold these in place. I’m not entirely sure how well that will hold up but we shall see. I hesitate to glue those in case I need to get back in there and rerun any wires or the like. This was followed by adding the antenna on the nose as well as the counterbalances on the elevator and the “decals”.

The decals seem to be a mixed bag on this bird. First, the good news. Many of the decals seem to be vinyl or something very similar and they seem to adhere well and look fairly good. If you haven’t dealt with vinyl before, these are not peal and stick decals. You do not float them off the backing like the plastic models of old. Nor are they applied by just peeling them off the backing and rubbing them on. You do that, but then you peel the top, clear plastic looking material back off the plane and leave the vinyl behind. This can be a bit tricky at first. My tip is to use something like a pencil eraser of the round screwdriver handle end to rub with a bit of force in order to get the vinyl adhered to the airplane and then be careful how you peal the carrier off. Watch for the vinyl to lift back off. If it starts to do that you need to rub some more!

The vinyl parts are the majority but there are some of each of the others as well. This is very odd. The decals for the props seem to be the old water float decals and in my opinion they are the worst of the group. The props are not perfectly smooth with a fine grained surface and this makes it that much harder to get a good adherence with these water slide type decals. These are the worst of the group and I really don’t understand this choice as these are the most likely to fall off I would think.

Finally the stars and bars seem to be just a peel and stick type. I would much have preferred vinyl for these as well but they look decent. I just question their longevity.

There is a full page diagram included that shows where to put all the small vinyl decals and the opposite side shows the relevant parts of the aircraft from various angles in order to allow for positioning of the nose art, kill marks etc… It has been noted that there are some minor errors with the placement of the small decals for things like hatch cover markings, no step and similar items. I don’t plan on applying all of them as most are invisible at more than 3 paces anyway. If we get a lot of snow and I’m stuck at home for a full day in the next month or so I may go back and apply a few more but in my opinion they don’t add much. I did the nose art and fuel cap markings, kill marks and few other larger markings and stopped at that. The rest seem to be diminishing returns in my book.

I also had the displeasure of applying the slide on decals to the props. I hate that these hardly seem to stick at all and appear to be the lowest quality of the markings as they are also some of the most visible when the plane is sitting idle and add a nice look to the props. Unfortunately one of mine has already fallen off and I’ll be surprised if they last past flight 3. Oh well, as we say at the field: “50 feet and 50 miles an hour” If you can’t see it in that condition it isn’t worth worrying about!

After a batch of other sundry tiding up, labeling the wires etc… I’m pretty close to flight worthy. Here’s what she looks like sitting in the new “up stairs” shop.

She’s looking pretty good. Still not sure what to do about adding some invasion stripes on the wing and booms… I think it will need it for better visibility but I hope to get a few flights in before I get involved in that. I’ve never been much of a painter so not looking forward to applying those but it may become a necessity. Unfortunately there are no decals or vinyl for those included with the plane.

I think about all that is necessary before the first flight is possible is to set and double check the throws on the primary flight surfaces and check the speed controllers are calibrated/coordinated. Beyond that there might be a few tweaks toward getting the telemetry set up the way I would prefer and checking balance with various battery options and it will be as ready as I know how to make it. With a pair of 3300mah batteries on board it weighs in at 8lb 6ozs… I’m expecting very war bird like performance but hoping (maybe wishing) for a bit lighter feel than my 24lb Mustang! 🙂

I’m taking a break from this one for a bit and working on getting the Pacific Silver version ready for Kelly. We are having some issues getting his Graupner radio to do what we need and I keep missing out on making contact with Graupner support to iron it out so it has (pardon the unintended pun) stalled out for the moment.

January 8, 2017

Motion RC Flightline P-38 – Hinge fix

After some communication with the tech support folks at Flightline, I embarked on a plan to repair the poorly glued aileron hinges. To better explain the issue, here is a short video showing the undesirable motion of the aileron on Kelly’s silver P-38:

The Motion RC folks explained that the hinge in these planes is basically a rod that runs through the aileron with tabs that pivot around that rod extending into and glued (ideally) into the wing. It’s these tabs that are apparently not secured very well in the two P-38s we received. They suggested that I carefully drip some glue down into the pockets in the wing. The following is how I carried that suggestion out:

This was unfortunately not unique. At least half of the aileron hinges across both aircraft were found to be loose to varying degrees. This is disappointingly poor quality assembly by Flightline. Of course, the fix was not terribly onerous but I wonder how many folks have assembled the airplane and only found out this was an issue when the airplane shed an aileron or worse??

In any case, if you build or have built and are flying one of these I highly recommend you check your aileron hinges before you fly. This could easily cause a loss of control with serious ramifications.

December 30, 2016

Motion RC / Flightline P-38 assembly… more issues crop up!

As my buddy Kelly and I worked yesterday on the latter stages of assembly, we came upon yet another issue with these birds. As he was assembling the linkages and connecting them up, he noticed that there was some slop in the movement of the ailerons. Here is what we found:

Above is the Aileron with the aileron centered and the servo holding the center position. I am applying very light pressure to maintain this position.

Here I am applying a small amount of opposite pressure. Again the servo is holding center position and the linkage has almost zero slop. All of this motion comes from the hinges sliding around in the pockets (I think inside the aileron versus the wing…)

In this case, both of the hinge points (I think that is what they are) on the inboard end of this wing panel seem to be completely unattached on the aileron end. I am rapidly becoming very disappointed with the quality issues on this airplane. This is my first FlightLine and Motion RC purchase and I’m not exactly encouraged to spend more money with them at this point. Still, I have had some issues with other manufacturers aircraft “out of the box”… and some of those have become my favorite planes. Often this is based on a combination of flight performance and support from the manufacturer so I will withhold any final judgement until I get some response from Motion RC and I have a few flights on the bird under my belt.

Hoping for better things…

December 30, 2016

P38 conversion to “standard” 2 blade props… The plan.

As I think I mentioned in my last post, I really dislike the idea of having the 3 blade assembly on the Motion RC/Flightline RC P-38 being held together by the plastic back plate of the spinner and self tapping screws set into that plastic. In order to eliminate this, I started looking at options.

I first thought I would simply purchase some one piece 3 blade props… but upon further study I realized that the spinners supplied with the kit were customer made and would not directly support such props. Finding spinners that were appropriate would be possible but expensive and for all that expense I’d still have 3 blade props which are not my favorite from an efficiency perspective…

My next thought was that perhaps I just purchase the 2 blade spinners and props from Motion RC that are provided as part of their sport power set? The only issue is that the props are 12×8 two blade versus the 12×7 three blade set that is the standard set. I want something approaching the same load and speed profile as the original if at all possible. So the root question is what size and pitch prop in a 3 blade is most similar to the 12×7 stock 3 blade prop?

A bit of research revealed a loading factor can be calculated for any prop with the following formula:

PL=D*D*D*P*(square root(B-1) where PL=Prop Loading, D=diameter, P=pitch, and B=blade count.

Using this formula to calculate the loading factor of the stock props and then comparing to similar calculated factors for 2 blade options plus or minus an inch or two should give some propeller options that would be suitable.

In the course of measuring to see what options were possible due to ground clearance (I estimate anything up to a 14″ diameter would be reasonable) I found that the factory prop is actually about 6.25 inches in radius. Based on that I adjusted to a 12.5 inch diameter for my reference point.

After loading in several prop sizes it became obvious that a 12×8 two blade was a far less appropriate match than a 13×8. The 13×8 is less than a 1% load differential from the reference point while the 12×8 is 22% less load. This means that the 12×8 propellers available from Motion RC just aren’t suitable for my purposes… not with the stock motors. Based on past experience, it is highly likely that the difference between the stock prop and any other manufacturers similarly sized prop will vary by far more than this small percentage just due to blade shape and composition so, no guarantee but I think it will be close enough for my purposes.

This means I need both standard and reverse pitch 13×8 props and spinners. Note that the spinners must be be cut to match the pitch direction so just 2 standard spinners won’t work here either. Looking into all this, it appears the cost to get this all done is not exactly going to be cheap… So maybe a flight or two with the 3 blades is in order to determine just how much I dislike this setup! Maybe the plane will fly poorly enough that I won’t really want to spend the money… 🙂

Just as I was about to hit “publish” on this post I was assembling the propellers for both the green and silver aircraft when I had a problem that added yet another wrinkle…

As I was putting in one of the final screws on the final propeller assembly (for my green bird) one of the screws sheared off before it even got tight against the prop! Here’s a picture of the result:

I’m a bit concerned, wondering if the other screws are all this weak? Just when I was thinking maybe these assemblies would be OK… This did not add to my comfort level. I’m really in a quandary now as to which way to go.

December 19, 2016December 21, 2016

P-38 assembly… going slow but some progress

With the recent move to a new house, time in the shop has been minimized but that is starting to change and I had time recently for a couple sessions.

Session one started with some of the structural assembly. Motion RC has provided an assembly video and between that and the manual we got most of the screws in the right holes on the first (OK, second… maybe third) try. Well at least I guess we did. If you decide to get one of these I highly recommend you go through the video and the manual a few times to figure out which screws go where before you assemble anything. Luckily (or maybe by design?) The screws are all the same diameter so even if you use the wrong ones, you aren’t permanently expanding the holes in the plastic and messing them up so that swapping them around later doesn’t create a big issue! Likewise the wiring runs can be confusing. Take special note that there is an extra wire on the port side which is where the landing light is located. We got both the nacelles, the horizontal stab and the center pod all tied together and the wiring runs done during the first session mostly by just following the video.

Let me take a moment here to add in some commentary on the ease of assembly. The manual that comes with the airplane is a bit confusing (thus the video I suppose). Most of the manual seems to be redundant information since a lot of the document is dedicated to installing the servos and landing gear and similar information on topics that are unnecessary since these things are already done for you! I appreciate the extra work that has already been done for me but then why do I need instructions on how to do it? I initially tossed the manual to the side and just started to work from the video, but it gets very tiresome trying to play a section/stop and backup and try to find the same section again to be sure what I thought I saw was correct… I’m convinced I could work much more quickly from a standard written document than from this video. After a while I went back to the video and kept the manual handy as a secondary reference. It has some information about linkage lengths and screw sizes that are somewhat easier to find in the case that you need to double check anything.

Some other oddities with the video… What other “Comprehensive build video” includes such vital information as “Matte/Flat finish paint for enhanced realism”? I already bought the plane and don’t really need the commercials. It looks like you could skip the first several minutes or at least condense them to a list of parts that should be in the box. Also, if you are making a video rather than creating a quality manual, wouldn’t you think some voice over commentary to explain things would be included?? I mean, the video does actually include sound… it’s just that for some reason the producer of the video decided to use only text embedded in the video to impart information on which screws to use where, etc… I can hear the clicks and scratches of the screws being tightened but no actual instructions are provided as part of the audio track. Someone suggested to me that this is more universal (for non-English speakers) but the overlaid text is in English so that doesn’t seem to be the reasoning either. Maybe I’m just a throwback but I’d really much prefer a well written and illustrated manual that takes me through the actual steps that I need to complete the aircraft, rather than this somewhat bizzare video. OK, rant paused… back to the build.

Both of the aircraft in the shop got to this same stage of assembly on the first evening but for the next session I pressed ahead only on the green model (mine). For that session I enlisted the help of another flying buddy. Steve helped assemble linkages for all the control surfaces while I wired the various connections to the provided “control module” or whatever you want to call it.

Pause for rant 2…. I hope this isn’t the start of a pattern. The part I’m referring to looks sort of like a receiver. It’s encased in blue plastic and acts as a distribution point for the many, many, many… wires that you have to connect, as well as a sequencer for the gear doors and landing gear. It also provides one light connection that is strobed, 1 that comes on when the gear deploys and the other 2 are solid and all are labeled Light!? OK, extra credit for coming up with the box which encapsulates a few Y connections (but not all), a sequencer and the lighting controls… and then I take all that back for making me comb through the document (which labels it wrong!) and then finally just testing it myself or reading a few hundred posts on one of the two active threads that I’m aware of in order to find the actual layout of these light plugs. Oh, and before I forget it is clearly labeled but double check your polarity on those light connections… they are opposite the servo plugs that they rub up against!! OK, second rant finished.

After all that was done, I got the receiver bound to the bird and plugged in more wires… did I say there were a lot? Here’s what it looks like once you get it all connected and routed.

I’m not fond of this spaghetti bowl of wires either but their just seems to be no good way to tame them without some major rewiring. I’d do that if this was a $3,000 aerobat but for a standoff scale foamy I think I’m just going to live with it as is.

We then attached and mechanically adjusted all the linkages. This took a bit of doing since you can’t use much of the radios sub-trim when you have 2 or 4 connected servos on most channels. Nothing wrong with that… I recommend you always get your servos as close to perfect as possible by using mechanical means rather than radio settings. Just be ready to spend some time as you will need to do this for most every linkage and again the P-38 has a bunch so it can get tedious to get them all correct.

In a follow up session we did this same thing for the Silver bird belonging to Kelly. During the process we realized there were some wiring errors where things were plugged into the module (this is when we figured out all the lighting) as well as a retract wire that had been routed in a “non-optimal manner” which made it more difficult to get the wires all plugged in and the module tucked into the center pod.

Also between sessions 2 and 3 we went ahead and converted to the new “upgraded” oleo style struts. My experience with war birds is that you want all the help you can get absorbing landing forces without tearing up the structure, landing gear struts, etc… so these seemed like a deal at only $40 for the set. The two main gears were pretty much a drop in change. The only hard part is making sure you don’t strip out the set screws that hold the struts into the retract unit. About 15 seconds with my soldering iron in the whole prior to loosening each one did the trick nicely. Flightline/Motion RC did provide several new set screws with the new struts. Kudos for that. The new tires look better as well as being marginally larger which is always welcome. In both cases, I found that keeping the struts as long as possible (there is a very small amount of up and down space available within the groove cut to receive the set screw) helped with any tendency for the tires to rub or bind when moving in and out of the wheel wells.

The nose gear was a bit more of an adventure as it is held in place with an almost microscopic “C” clip. A new clip is provided for this as well, which is probably for the best as the chances are you will either bend this beyond further use or lose it when it flies off as you attempt to remove it. I had two to do and I encountered one of each. This is the modeling part, right? I managed to drop the replacement on one of them as well so was left scrounging for a replacement which I found in the bottom of a spare screw and nut drawer. (It’s not called Jack’s house of everything for nothing… my wife calls it hoarding… tomato/tomato).

Here’s the new strut in place… maybe its even worth chasing tiny c-clips around on the carpet! It sure looks nice.

During the course of all this I have had to disassemble some parts of the airplane in order to re-run wires and correct wiring errors on both birds. It’s a challenge to get done correctly and extra hands were a big help during the “re-work”. This is not a first ARF for sure!

I still have to do the linkages on the silver bird but then we will be back to equilibrium on both. There is still a lot to do but they are starting to look like airplanes and the Xmas holiday will afford me more time to get some shop time so I’m hoping to get them finished up soon. I am considering changing over to 2 blade props on my Lightning, but Kelly is going stock with his. The idea of screws in plastic being what holds the three blades in place makes me uncomfortable and I don’t want to spend a fortune in time and money looking for proper 1 piece props (with reverse pitch for one) and having spinners cut to match etc… So will probably find some simplistic replacements. I like 2 blade efficiency anyway if the ground clearance is available and I think it is.

Hopefully, I’ll have more updates soon.

November 18, 2016

The P-38s are here!!

As I got more involved with RC aircraft, I always wanted a twin engine aircraft… and in my book the only twin worth considering was the P-38 lightning. I have always thought the P-38 was a gorgeous aircraft and I kept an eye out for a chance to purchase a nice example but there were a few issues with acquiring one. Remember this was before the advent of high quality ARFs and certainly before low cost, high quality electric power systems became the norm so the only P-38s available were very large, very heavy gas powered craft with equally impressive price tags! Smaller glow powered versions were few and far between partly because keeping two glow engines in sync has always been a challenge and I would assume partly due to the difficulty of designing an building an aircraft as structurally complicated as the Lightning.

For instance, designing and building a light and rigid boom assembly with the landing gear location limiting your options for structural integrity in the wheel well area would certainly be challenging. And of course everything about the craft is round and tapered, making for additional challenges for the builder… especially if you wanted to create something close to the scale outline. Lots of beautiful curves means difficult to form from Balsa, glue and covering.

Lucky for me, the days of stronger foam, carbon fiber reinforcement and inexpensive electric power systems is upon us! Enter the Flightline RC P-38L available through Motion RC. Since these first became available a few months ago, my buddy Kelly and I have both been watching the various on line forums for reports of both build quality and the air handling of this latest iteration of an RC version of the Lightning. Reports seemed mostly positive so after he hinted for several months that we both should have one I recently texted Kelly with the phrase “I want the green one!” It only took about 3 days after that before Kelly arrived at my shop with two fairly large boxes. Here are a couple shots of the unboxing:

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And here is the workbench (all 12′ of it!) covered in P-38 parts!!! Now that is a bunch of airplane parts….

At first impression I can say that these things are pretty impressive. For $349, you are getting what seems to be a fairly strong airframe with two motors, two speed controllers, 9 servos, 3 bladed props, spinners, decals for 4 different aircraft, servo linkages, etc… Basically it looks like EVERYTHING you need to fly except batteries and a receiver. Yes, as widely reported, you can certainly see the foam cell structure through the paint. This is especially true of the silver model as it has a higher gloss/luster to it. Scale aficionados will doubtless be displeased but the overall lines are very nice and I am not trying to win any scale contests here so my initial impression is that they look pretty good.

I’ll post more as I get to assembling. I’ve already ordered the upgraded landing struts (they seem like deal for $40 for the set!) and my receiver is on order as well. I expect to be posting again soon as I don’t think I can stand to let these lay around here for very long. Christmas just came a month or so early!

May 23, 2016

Conversion of the Telemaster 40 to Electric Power – Part 3

When is the 300th flight a maiden? Telemaster 40 returns to flight once more!

Since the last update about 6 months ago, I finished up the covering job on the Telemaster and got all the servos and radio gear back in the old Telemaster 40. The usual challenges of hindging, recovering and getting control horns back in place kept me avoiding these somewhat onerous tasks but once I got past some of that and got close enough to see the finish line I quickly finished her up and it was time to put her back in the air.

Here it is after the final decals were applied, screws tightened and radio system installed.

One of the common tasks I ran into when I went to reinstall the servos was to rerun the servo wires out into the wing bays. Of course I should have run those when I had the covering off but of course that thought didn’t occur to me. First, I applied the servo clips (how can you attach extensions to servo wires without those?) to insure the wires stay together.

Then I grabbed my custom servo wire guiding tool (patent pending) and thread the wires back in there… This tool is quite complicated (a string and a nut) and customizable by picking out a longer string or a smaller or larger nut! Here it is in action.

Tie your servo lead to the end of the string, fish the nut down through the wing and pull the wire though… presto!

With the 3700 6S on board the plane now weighs approximately 7lbs. Figuring the original 5.5lb weight (approximately) and adding the on board fuel weight (maybe 3/4 of a lb) means it has gained maybe 3/4 of a lb flying weight. This is a bit more than I wanted but this plane flew so light that I think an extra couple pounds would leave a flyable airplane but I admit I would like to keep it as light as possible. I fully expect the power system to be able to handle up to about a 9lb airplane to at least “hover” if not “pull straight out of hover” levels so it may be that the extra weight won’t cause a problem.

So, with all that in mind, off to the field to meet up with several of my flying buddies and see how it goes. This is the third covering scheme on this aircraft. It started off base white with some red and green highlights and then after I needed to do some maintenance that caused much of the red and green to exit, I decided over a white bread sandwich that red, yellow and blue polka dots were the answer. Now along with the conversion to electric power, I went to a combination of transparent yellow, white and checkerboard black/white. While all had their appeal, the new scheme is my favorite.

The first flight session went remarkably well. The new hatch gives ample access to the battery area and there is plenty of room to shift the battery to achieve any desired balance point. In addition it appears to allow for plenty of air flow and the magnet (which I had been concerned about) is keeping the hatch in place nicely. After the last flight of the first day, I noticed the engine had started to move. Upon further investigation I realized just how loose it was! Here’s a shot showing some of the issue.

Not one of the mounts is still tight! Two of the back screws are completely lo0se inside the body and one of the front mount screws is missing! Yikes! In the back of my head, as I looked it over I remembered thinking I would go back later and apply thread locker and re-tighten these mount screws. Such is the danger of spreading out a job like this over close to a year span. Later never quite arrived… until after these first few flights. I got lucky that no damage resulted.

Once home, I pulled all the bolts and added some thread lock before re-tightening and she was ready to go again. Next trip proved that the airplane still flies as well as ever. The added weight doesn’t seem to hurt, maybe even helping in somewhat breezy conditions. It seems to fly well with anything from my smallest to largest 6S batteries, from 3200 to 4500mah. The 32/3300 packs give me a safe 5 minute or more flight with the 4500 netting an easy 15 minute flight. Short takeoffs with flaps are easily doable with slow lazy flight being the real forte of this old but dependable platform. The plane will pull straight up indefinitely with any of the packs as well so float flying, glider tow and carrying my RC jumper all seem doable. This is a great start.

The 300th flight… or just the latest maiden flight. Anyway you look at it, the Telemaster continues to perform well. When I opened that box of sticks ~15 years ago… who would have guessed!

April 15, 2016

P-51 Redtail… Wing repair.

The last big repair task before the P-51 is ready to soar again is to get the starboard side landing gear mounting area rebuilt and get the fixed gear back in place. The downside of course is “no retracts” but on the upside no “heavy” retracts and no need to spend another 100+ on a replacement/repair! Pulling these is going to drop a full half pound and since I’m giving up the pretty gear, I’m going to replace the Robart spoked aluminum wheels with the Dubro light treaded wheels. This will save another 6 ounces or so. Those Robarts are 8 spoke anyway and everyone knows a Mustang has 10 spoke rims… so these weren’t really correct anyway… right?

Anyway to give you an idea what had to be done… check out these photos

Here, I’m fitting some new wood at the top of the inboard rib to give it some meat to mount the gear into! What was there previously is a shredded mess.

You can see that not only is the rail gone on the outboard side but the underlying wood was split and pulled away as well.

After fitting that, I had to do some similar work on the outboard side. This time just scabbing in some additional wood to provide a good base for the rails there. Needed to use some temporary braces to hold it in place while the glue dries.

A bit later with all the rails in place and with careful alignment and drilling… the gear is in place.

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Next I had to piece in the sheeting around those wheel wells. I actually made markings to cut the curved sections by pressing the balsa sheeting down over the edges and letting the fiberglass cut/mark the wood enough to then use my Xacto to finish cutting the outline.

Then just drop it in place and wick in a little CA and we are back in business… well close anyway!

Here you can see some of the railing that needed to be replaced as well as the scabbing for some of the ribs that were a bit… crushed…

Here’s another piece fitting into place…

Here it is with all the parts in place…

Next, had to re-cover and drill new holes to mount the landing gear cover.

After a little covering, the wing looks… well, good enough! I could have spent more time and made this look better but this part of the airplane is only seen as it is flying by at 50′ and 50 miles per hour.

I am just not willing to invest the time at this point in an airplane that is unlikely to see much flight time. I’m more interested in fun, and this bird looks cool but just isn’t my cup of tea.

I’m looking now at putting some new batteries in (and losing a bit more weight in the process). The present pair of 2300mah A123s are 6 years old I believe and really larger than they need to be. If I get some good high quality A123 1100s I would have plenty of capacity to get in half a dozen flights between charges, and still save another 4-6 ounces. With that I should be getting closer to 1-1.5 lbs lighter. I have great hopes this will positively affect the overall flight characteristics.

I’ll try to post an update or two later in the summer when I get a few flights in.