splais

My Feedback: (25)

Since I could only find one write up on this plane (and that was for an electric conversion) I decided to provide a thread on the assembly of this plane. I have several years of experience with built up arf’s, but this was my first attempt with a composite airframe. I picked the 30cc T-6 because I wanted something a little different and I also didn’t want the cost associated with a larger 50cc composite. This will not be a “kit bash” into some kind of upgraded scale bird. Just a straight forward build of the stock plane using a DLE 30cc engine and ESM’s electric retracts. I had wanted to try the new electric retracts now available so this plane was a good opportunity to do that. The gear supplied were the generation 2 electric retracts from ESM.

So after I wrote the above and received the plane I almost decided not to go to the trouble of writing this thread. I was so mad at all the crap I had to re-engineer on the plane I didn’t think it was worth it. But I also decided people deserve to know what they are getting into. As things progressed I decided, that while the plane takes A LOT of work, when it’s done it is a gorgeous looking bird and flies beautifully.

This plane is supposed to be an ARF, but I would not suggest anyone get one of these that does not have a shop and a lot of experience – I would call this an A(almost)ARF for sure.

During the course of my build I encountered the following problems and or things you need to do above what I would consider normal ARF assembly:

-Two of the four wing servo plates didn’t fit.
-None of the three piece wing alignment dowels are pre-installed and the holes are not drilled.
-Both ailerons were warped.
-There is no hole cut for the split flat control horn to fit into.
-Tons of extra hardware with the kit but also several missing nuts and bolts, go figure.
-Mounting structure for all three landing gear out of alignment or holes cut wrong.
-Some dimensions giving in the instructions ARE WRONG.
-Mounting a 30cc gasser was a lot of work and required just hacking the cowl all up.
- Retract leads are not accessible after installing wheel wells.
-All the stock screws are cheap and will break
-Plane came out way nose heavy with the DLE30cc engine.
-One of the electric retracts fried even before maiden flight. Before I was done it took seven retracts to get two that worked!
-You have to build and/or modify several things on this plane to complete assembly.

The good things I encountered.

-Gorgeous finish and really sharp looking plane.
-Rudder, elevator, fuel tank, horizontal, and vertical stabilizer, wing-elevator alignment, split flap design, and canopy install all without problems.
-Flies beautifully.

What I put in the plane and where it went.

-DLE30 engine with Pitts style muffler. CDI unit inside firewall (no room outside)
-Smart-fly Power Extender Pro and Optical Ignition Cutoff mounted on added removable tray above (when plane is upside down) rudder and nose gear steering servos.
-Futaba R6014 Rx mounted to PEP.
-A123 Ignition battery mounted to fuselage side by PEP.
-(2) A123 Rx batteries mounted to bottom of fuselage behind wing.
-(1) Smart-fly Failsafe switch mounted to fuselage side.
-Supplied control horns on elevator. Dubro Horns on flaps and rudder.
-Central Hobbies CF pushrods with titanium ends on elevator, choke and throttle.
-(2) Aircraft Intl light foamy pilots.
-ESM Generation 2 electric retracts

OK, so here we go.

This is my first composite aircraft after years of building wood aircraft. Aside from the problems mentioned, got to tell you, I am really impressed with this aircraft. One of the reasons I got the T-6 was to kind of be a test for other future composite purchases and to see how the composite fuselage hold up to our sun and heat. The T-6 has also turned out to be a gorgeous looking aircraft and is large, at 80”, for a 30cc bird.

The Generation 2 electric retracts arrived today, nicely packed as you can see. I followed several comments and took the time to locktite every nut and screw I could find on them. You do have to check them out. I found on mine that one wheel spacer was missing and also three different locking screws off two of the gear. My initial impression is that the quality is just so so at best. Time will tell how they hold up.

[The following is an added comment: I might as well digress here and address the gear issue all at once. The ESM V2 electric retract actuators are crap and have been an unmitigated disaster. Too make a long story short I had to go through two complete set of gear and one addition motor just to get two that will work. I still have a pending issue with a non-functional nose gear to resolve with TBM as of this writing].

Note on instructions: The instructions, well the pictures, because there are no instructions, actually work pretty well in telling you what to do. You do need to review them carefully and read all the inserted notes and review the pictures carefully or you will miss critical information.

Even though I had several missing nuts and bolts, the picture of all the small parts is all the stuff I had left over when done. I suspect they use the same bags for all the planes.

[to be continued]

splais

My Feedback: (25)

Wing Assembly:

The wing assembly proved to be more of a pain in the arse then difficult. Installation of ailerons, cutting out wheels wells and installing the servo plates (I put 24” extensions on the aileron servos and 18” extensions on the flap servos) was straight forward. The only problem I had was that two of the servo plates did not fit worth a hoot.

Gluing the three section wing together was a messy project and you need to be VERY CAREFUL installing the wing alignment pins to make sure everything fits properly. I glued the alignment pins and wing spars into the outer sections first. After they had set I glued the three pieces together. I dry fit all the sections a couple of times and still had a problem getting the three sections to line up perfectly. When I was all done and finally glued the three sections together they came out pretty close. It is a large wing. You get three wing sections that do not have any of the holes for alignment dowels re-drilled. You do get a template to help in drilling and aligning the dowels. The template is a sloppy fit and you must be careful to get everything to line up.

While I was letting the wing dry I cut out all the plastic pieces and didn’t have any problems. They all fit well. The plans call for screwing the canopy on, I glued it on after installing a couple of foam pilot busts I have from Aircraft Intl. There is no access to the plane interior from the top of the fuselage. You must remove the wing to get at battery/fuel/servo/Rx compartment. Partly because of this and for looks I left all charge leads inside fuselage. The only holes in the fuselage are one small hole for the Smart-Fly Failsafe Switch and the fuel dot.

Wing Gear Installation:

The main gear installation only required a little trimming to get the gear to line up properly. I opted right off to not install the gear doors. It was a rhub golberg setup that was going to be nothing but trouble. In light of my subsequent gear failures it proved to be a good decision.

Do not install the wheel wells until you are completely done installing the gear or you will not be able to get at the power wires for the gear. If you install the wheel wells I highly recommend you only tack them in with silicon seal so you can remove them if you have to replace a gear. After my initial gear failures I opted to leave them out and paint the wheel wells black. Looks fine and can hardly tell the difference.

Flight Surfaces:

After installation it was clear that both ailerons were warped. First flights proved this not to be an issue. The split flaps were a nice design with a bent piece of wire the two flap sections ride on. The plans don’t show it, but there is no hole cut in the top fixed portion of the split flaps for the flap control horn to fit into. If you want it to come out nice you need to cut it before gluing the flap in. Be careful you need to hog out the wood almost to the covering in order to get the flap to close completely. I am using a Power Expander Pro so I could have used individual gear wires, but to clean thing up I used a “Y” inside the wing with only one gear wire exiting. Depending on your setup you will have something between 3 and 6 wires exiting the center of the wing.


[to be continued]

splais

My Feedback: (25)

Engine Installation:

After starting the engine install it became clear this fuselage really wasn’t designed for an engine the size of the DLE30. But subsequent flights showed that a 30cc engine was the smallest gas engine that would properly fly this plane. Size-wise it’s a big plane for 30cc’s, that’s part of the reason I purchased it. Testing fitting of the firewall showed both that the firewall was not flat and the engine had no built-in down or right thrust. I ended up putting some washers on the top engine mounts to at least level out the engine. Because of the small firewall and no engine box I had to cut a hole in the top of the firewall and mount the CDI unit inside the firewall. (Note: Do not mount the nose gear until you have all linkages, engine installation, throttle, choke, and cowl mounting complete or you will not be able to get your hand in there for what you need to do.)

In order to make things as simple as possible I built a little tray inside the nose wheel compartment for the throttle servo and put the choke servo in one of the existing holes back by the gas tank. I ran carbon fiber pushrods with those Sullivan quick disconnect ball joints on both the throttle and the choke. When I was done CG required me to mount the ignition battery all the way back by the nose gear steering servo. 2 & ¾” standoffs spaced the engine perfectly for the required 4” spinner. I used a carbon fiber spinner from TBM and a Biela 17x10 3-blade prop. The plane came out way nose heavy with the DLE engine, so you need the lightest spinner you can get.

Mounting the cowl was very interesting. You are supposed to go in there and mount some ½” square support blocks on the inside of the nose where the cowl retaining screws go. Doing that is impossible. Another person on RCU gave me the tip on how to do it.

1. Mount the cowl and get everything lined up.
2. Drill four small holes where the screws will go.
3. Run a long piece of piano wire into the fuselage. Drill a small hole in the wooden support block, slide it on the wire and put a bend in the end of the wire so the block will not come off.
4. Pull the block up tight to inside of fuselage with epoxy on the inside of the block, clamp the wire with a vise grip to hold it tight until epoxy starts to set. Then just pushed the wire back in and pull it out, let epoxy set and install screws. It worked like a charm once I got the hang of it. As bad as the hack job on the cowl is I still need to remove the muffler to get the cowl off.

Nose Gear Installation:

The nose gear mounting bracket was all out of wack and required an extensive amount of cutting and trimming to properly mount the nose gear. In addition to that, the provided tubes for running the steering control wires were mounted in the wrong place up by the gear. I just cut out the installed tubes and glued in some of my own. You also will have to trim the fuselage opening a good bit to get everything to fit.

[to be continued]

splais

My Feedback: (25)

Electronics Installation:

I had always planned to use the Power Extender Pro I had. The only problem was where to mount it. As you can see in the pictures I build a small removable tray that mounted over the rudder and nose gear servos. It worked out very well and helped a little with the nose heavy correction. Because of that balance issue I had to mount both receiver batteries inside the bottom of the fuselage behind the wing.

Rudder & Elevator Controls:

I installed the rudder pull-pull as described in the instructions. I did use those neat little pull-pull cable adjusters I think SWB sells. I upgraded the elevator pushrod to a Central Hobbies carbon fiber pushrod.

Antennas & “Wings”:

The plane has two scale antennas that attach to the bottom of the fuselage and two “wings” that glue to the fuselage and front of the horizontal stabilizer. I made installation of the “wings” a little easier by put two piano wire pins in the fuselage side of the “wings”, drilling two small holes and used these to hold the “wings” in place until the glue dried. You do, also, have sand a flat spot on the front of the horizontal stab to glue too. They did add that final little touch to the plane.

Control throws & CG:

The recommended control throws in the manual are pretty accurate. All the control surfaces are pretty effective and worked well. The recommended CG of 110mm IS TOO FAR BACK. I have my CG at `100mm and the plane flies hands off inverted. You could probably go to 95mm for first flights with no problem at all.

[one more to go]

splais

My Feedback: (25)

Flight Report:

Because of the gear problems I have only been able to put four flights on the plane so far, and all were with the nose gear extended. However, the plane flies beautifully and is very nice looking in the air. It’s roll rate is good and elevator very effective. Deploying full flaps causes no trim change. The flaps work excellently and allow for very slow flight with no tendency to do anything bad. It will be very hard to land this plane badly, it settles in and flares nicely, ground handling, i.e., takeoff is easy to control.

I will add one little aside. When I was trying to fly with the bad gear on landing the right main gear would not come down. I came in low and slow, full flaps, with just nose and left main. The plane came in so slow and sat down so smoothly I did no damage at all except a small scrape on the right wing tip that did not even go through the covering.

splais

My Feedback: (25)

"You talkin' to me?"

mlawrencemsc

My Feedback: (19)

The ESM T-6 Texan ii is a very nice plane good luck with yours. Mike

Tip22v

I recently bought this same setup and followed this thread during my build, good information thanks for posting it. Unfortunately I also bought the ESM retracts. I was thinking that you had the v2 and since I got the v3 that I would be good, bad assumption on my part. The retracts have been problematic right from the start. I cycled them a few times before installing them in the aircraft and everything seemed fine. The very first time I tried to cycle them after installing them the controller board fried, and when I say fried I mean there was smoke. I was only using a 2 cell LiFe battery, well within spec. They did not seem to bind so I'm not sure why the controller fried. Anyway I called TBM and they were kind enough to quickly send me another controller. I have not tried the second controller yet but I'll report on that outcome soon. Based on my experience thus far and everything else I've read about these retracts I'm having a difficult time trusting that they will re-extend even if I manage to get them to retract in flight. For the kind of money I spent on them I should not have to be worried about it. At this point I would not recommend these retracts to anyone considering them, even if they come out with a v4.

My biggest gripe with the build, other than what is already mentioned in this thread, is drilling the holes for the wing saddle. I measured the best I could, then drilled the holes slightly low, then used a dremel tool to very incrementally remove a little from the top of the hole each time trying the wing fit until it fit snuggly (I had to do about 15 iterations before the wing was snug). Be careful not to make it too loose or the DLE 35 will shake your wing to pieces.

As recommended by Splais on this thread I set my CG to exactly 100mm and after seven flights I think I'll leave it there for now. I'm running the DLE 35 RA, which worked out great and did not require mutilating the cowl, the DLE 35RA is a perfect match for this air frame. Even with a break-in prop (Beila 17x10 3-blade) and the gear extended this plane is fairly fast, once the motor breaks in and the gear retract (hopefully) I'm confident this plane will fly at or slightly above 100mph.

My a/c weighted in at 18lbs 5 oz without fuel. The manual says you can fly this plane with a nitro 1.20 four stroke. While you may be able to get off the ground on a really long runway I seriously doubt this would fly safely on a 1.20.

Regards,

Tom

splais

My Feedback: (25)

Tom, don't feel bad. I went over a year and 5 sets of gear between v2-v3x. Every kind of failure you can think of including fried controller (with smoke) on v3's. I will never get another set of esm electrics no matter they say they have fixed.

I have Robart electrics on my H9 P-47D and they are beautiful.

Tip22v

I tried the retracts tonight with the new controller, the gear cycled properly twice and then it was hit and miss. Every time I cycled the gear one or two of the three failed to cycle. To get all the gear up or down I consistently had to try 2-3 times. I suspect the problem will be worse when the motor is running, what a disappointment.

Has anyone found a set of gear that will fit this aircraft?

splais

My Feedback: (25)

Tom,you also have to make sure there is no mounting pressure on the gear housing. Make sure it is perfectly flat and screws into wood are not to tight. Also Locktite EVERY screw, even the two long screws holding motor in. When you put them back together do not over tighten them. If you pm me you can call if you want.

Tip22v

I tried the retracts tonight with the new controller, the gear cycled properly twice and then it was hit and miss. Every time I cycled the gear one or two of the three failed to cycle. To get all the gear up or down I consistently had to try 2-3 times. I suspect the problem will be worse when the motor is running, what a disappointment.

Has anyone found a set of gear that will fit this aircraft?

Tip22v

Thanks. I will check the tightness of the screws going into the wood, it would cause torsional stress on the gear drive casing if the mounting surface is not completely flat (which it's not). I was very careful not to over tighten the screws when I put locktite on them so they should be good. -Tom

pauljohn666

Guys just a question to anyone using V3 retracts.
I have just bought this model and retracts and find that there is no way
that the main retracts fit properly.
If I have the wheels facing outwards like the picture in post #2 they sit
way outside of the wheel wells.
If I turn the struts and have the wheels facing inward the wheels hit the
retract's motors and don't retract fully.
The nose wheel fits perfectly, so even if I was to get longer main structs and turn the wheels inwards
I would have a nose down attitude on the runway.
Looks to me that the retract mounting blocks need to be deeper inside the centre section.
Has anyone else found this problem?
Paul

Maybe I should get a refund on the retracts and try another brand.
Any Suggestions???

splais

My Feedback: (25)

Paul, what you describe indicates to me you have the wrong gear. The gear motors for the T-6 Texan II stick into the wing, not into the gear opening. What I mean is when the gear are raised, the gear and motor are at 180 degrees to each other. The struts do not raise against the motors, they raise by closing away from the motors, and the wheels should point out. In the picture I posted the gear motors stick out to the left of the mounting plates, into the wing. See picture

pauljohn666

Thank you for your quick reply.
Yes indeed I must have the wrong retracts.
I shall visit my Aust dealer tomorrow and see if he has the correct ones.
thanks again.
Paul

Tip22v

I ended up returning my gear, Bill from TBM is going to send me a set of the v3c, evidently they are slightly different then the v3. I'm not all that optimistic, but who knows maybe I will get lucky.

Paul, My v3 mains did not fit right either, the wheels were outside the wheel wells by about 3/8 of an inch. To me it looks like the mounting blocks were not low enough in the wing. I believe I have the correct gear because the struts do not fold over the motor assembly as described above. I believe the problem is poor craftsmanship and design, pretty typical from most Chinese stuff. I really hope the Chinese design their military equipment with the same level of detail

pauljohn666

Well I spoke to the Aussie dealer yesterday and told him what you guys have told me.
He checked his stock of V3 retracts and they appear to all be the same as what he gave me.
He says he will contact ESM and find out what the story is.
Do you think that the V3 retracts are model specific?
He thinks that this may be the case and he will ask ESM to send the correct ones and hopefully, I should get them
by late next week.
I'll let you know how it all pans out.

Paul

splais

My Feedback: (25)

Yes, the gear ARE model specific.

PS: if you are going to use ESM electric retracts you have to accept the fact that all versions of these gear are crap. Wires will come loose, motors will burn out, controllers will fry, and the struts will get sloppy. It's what you get when you pay 1/2 what you should for gear. You get what you pay for.

pauljohn666

Hmmm, not so encouraging then.
Has anyone tried any other gear with this model?
May just have to go down the path of using Spring Air or the like.
What about size 60 Eflite electrics?
Paul

JSZ

My Feedback: (73)

Hello, I have one that flys great on a DLE 20. Got it in a trade. Fixed it up and added pilots and made it so there heads turn. Flys like a pattern ship. I have the air retracts that haven't given me any problems. If interested in seeing it its up for sale here on RCU.

pauljohn666

Another question for you guys.
I see that you are using the 30cc DLE Motor but I have
a 55RA DLE Motor on order.
How do you think the Texan T-6 would handle the extra power?
Thinking of using a 18 x10 4 Blade prop with it.
thanks
Paul

JSZ

My Feedback: (73)

You'll lose most of the cowl and that size engine is extreme overkill. Wouldn't go over the 30. It's a very light plane.

Tip22v

55cc is definitely way too much for this airplane. I have the DLE 35 RA and it's a perfect match with respect to both power and weight. Because the DLE 35 RA is rear exhaust there is very little trimming of the cowl needed. This airplane is nose heavy, even with the smaller DLE 35, and even after placing my batteries back by my servo rudder I still had to add several oz of lead to the tail. -Tom

pauljohn666

Yea I've had another think about it.
That would be a fair bit of extra weight up front and it would take a bit
of working to balance it.
The DLE 35RA sounds like the way to go and will be minimum cutting of the cowl
due to the rear exhaust.
Thanks for your input guys.
Paul