HellcatAce

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Hey there all. I realized I didn't have anything in here about my first foray into the lekky to glow conversion world. It's the GP PBY Catalina. It has a pair of the Thunder Tiger GP.07 engines and it has 9 flights on it so far. The only bummer is I only fly it a couple of days a year at mt local club Float Fly in September. Here's where it started with mounting the engines. I was able to utilize much of the existing mount and hardware but it took some experimentation.

HellcatAce

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I guess the Multi file thing still doesn't work so you get one pic at a time. This shows where I figured out the correct mock up with a motor.

HellcatAce

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Next I had to figure where the tanks were going to go. In order to use the stock mounts and keep wood hacking/removal to a minimum, I had to go with 1oz. Sullivan slant tanks. As you can see in this pic, I traced the outline of the tank on the top sheeting and began to carefully cut an outline. Then came the part where I knew the project would ultimatley succed or fail. I had to start carving away the top of the leading edge. Good thing it was plenty beefy, but that first flight had me wondering.

HellcatAce

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Here's the tank in place. I wanted to make sure the nacelle and cowlings would still be usable so it was lots of testing to make sure I ONLY removed as much LE as needed.

HellcatAce

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I backed the inset mount with some 1/8 ply to beef it up and give a uniform mount surface.

HellcatAce

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Here's the first engine and tank as a test install before the epoxy was called into service.

HellcatAce

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Here's one with the muffler from a head on perspective. It's tight, but it's good.

HellcatAce

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The underside view. I added a light ply floor for the tank which also doubles as a surface to mount some spruce blocks to mount the little throttle servo. It took an hour and a few choice curse words to bend the wire for the carb. As you might imagine, the other side went together much faster after I worked everything out.

HellcatAce

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Success, the nacelle still fits. I cut one side open to fit it on clam shell style to allow for maintenance.

HellcatAce

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Here's the cowling install. I was amazed how much I was able to keep intact. The part where the carb matched exactly with just one dummy cyclinder was just plain dumb luck.

HellcatAce

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Side view showing the muffler. This one pic at a time stuff makes for a long thread no?

HellcatAce

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Here she is with feet wet the first time.

HellcatAce

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Here she is just before lift off on the 2nd flight. It's about the only time I need full throttle. Uses about the same amout of water as the electric version. Came out at just a tick over 3lbs and no additional weight needed.

HellcatAce

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Fly By....about 1/2 -2/3 throttle moves it around in scale fashion. Yes it has enough power to pull a loop from level flight, but I only did one to see if would do it. Loops in a PBy are NOT scale!

dlach

Hey hell,

I've got to admit, AWSOME PLANE, very nice conversion, I have a catalina too, but almost giant scale with 2 YS-120 four stroke engines, and has the exact same configuration of engine - tank, that you used, also de servo mounted behind the tank, not on the bottom, but being a larger scale its only logical to have it there, but you used the same configuration and it became a great conversion, and also its a very nice A/C, I'll need to finish up moving all my A/C's so I can post some pics of the catalina, which I need to fix because it had a hard landing on the ground using the retracts...

take care,

Daniel

Invertedflyby

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Very nice conversion!  That turned out well.

Mr Cox

Nice one!

Do you have any data for the engines, like fuel, prop and rpm?

HellcatAce

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Well, I know I tached them when I was setting the engines up because I'm not running any fancy set-ups on the throttles. Just a y connector and plenty of mechanical adjustment for synchronization. If I recall with 25% Powermaster with an APC 6x4 they turned around 11,000 rpm. Its been almost 2 years since I put it together and I probably won't check it until our next float fly in Sept. when it gets a check over before being returned to active duty.

sdjb

HellcatAce , Very nice. nice work man.

sdjb

Caesarbt

Heya Guys, Just ordered my first model, the pby. Can not wait to get started, gonna paint it up first then dive into all your posts, looking forward to reading them.