deatonbt

Hey All,

This is a blast from the past if you flew back in the late '70s. I picked up a Jemco Focke Wulf 190D-9 kit at a swap meet. The reason why I am tickled about the buy is that I was just glancing over kits on the table when I saw it. I was looking for an ARF as a back up for my tired Ultra-Stik. It is complete as originally sold with decals and all. All of the wood and hardware is still bagged and stapled to the inside of the box. The die-cut plywood has not been punched out. I'll be building it over the next month or so. The fuselage is straight forward wood formers and the wing is foam so there is not anything really to show in the build. I'll post some pictures when done and give a flight report.

Back around 1980, I had the ME 109G-2, Zero, and FW190D-9. The 109 flew well but had flat sides; I was ok with it. The zero looked really good with a round fuselage, but I messed it up by using too much glass on it and as a result had to put A LOT of lead in the nose. When I flipped it on landing, I broke the canopy and stopped flying it. To fix it up and hang it from the ceiling, I recently bought a canopy from another zero kit that is still available. Suprisingly, it fit perfecly in that it set exactly against the old glue marks on the fuselage. The 190 was my favorite. It had a round fuselage and flew great. And of course, German planes have the really cool paint jobs.

Brian

Evil_Merlin

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I have one of these mostly done, they are great looking little planes.

deatonbt

Evil_Merlin,
I am planning on going with just 4 channels with nyrod from one servo for the ailerons. The instructions mention flaps and retracts, but I am wondering if it is too much for a 50" wingspan. How are you setting yours up?

SCALECRAFT

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I also had the Jemco/Dynaflite kits.

I had the 109, P-51D, Zero, Corsair, P-47 and AT6. I molded the Corsair and have an all composite one along with my molds, and I also have a Jemco P-47. I never got the Hellcat. I also have a unbuilt, in box Master Scale SBD Dauntless.

They are some of the most heavy duty model construction I have ever come across. Quick build with the jem lok fuse and foam core wings.

I learned a lot from building these with retracts.

Jim Miester was ahead of his time.

Steve

paladin

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here,here

109, 190, stang, pt-19

put flaps on my 190 +retracts and glass and if i did it again would skip the flaps and build it as light as possible. power would be a rossi 45 because my 35 year old rossi 40 will blow the doors off most 60's. enjoy the build, what will you cover with?

Joe

paladin

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my sons first low winger, soon to be my grandsons first low winger.

deatonbt

I am going to use Solartex. I have seen nothing but good comments on it in the different sites. I contacted Balsa USA a while back and they say that it takes paint well and the weave will fill with primer. I used to use Coverite and didn't mind seeing the slight weave when standing right next to a plane. I never had a problem with paint on Coverite.

I have what I think to be a Pilot 49" Spitfire sitting in the floor with the firewall torn out of it but a good cowl. I seem to remember "Pilot" written in red letters surrounded by white and red on the long gone box; dunno. I believe that it has Pactra and Polyurethane over chrome Monokote. The panel lines were scratched in with a pointy Dremel bit. Crude, but they look good. The paint still looks good on the plane, but the wing leading edge has a lot of chips though from landing in tall grass. So, I am going to try Solartex.

SCALECRAFT

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The pilot line of models. Another favorite of our flying group out here. We have new in the box, all the WWII warbirds and a partially built F2F Gulfhawk.

We also molded many of those in all composite. I have only one Zero in composite unfortunately.

The Pilot kits were pretty scale in outline. And not for the inexperienced flyer.

I smashed my share of those, but i did get the hang of flying them.

steve

Evil_Merlin

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Remember these were designed and sold before the engines of the 90's arrived. Anything before that was lower powered. A good .60 or .75 engine will pull these birds along just fine with the full setup.

I'm using a set of the smaller SpringAir's for my Fw 190 D9.

deatonbt

Has anybody used Gorilla Glue to glue balsa skins on to a foam wing core?

I have used Southern's Sorghum contact glue in the past, but I am worried about putting a twist in the foam core with it. And it is a one time shot.

I have found videos on youtube using these types of glue. It looks straight forward and glue expansion is handled by weighting the cores down in the cradles. Plus there is some work time. Any other tips?

SCALECRAFT

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It works very well. A urethane glue.

Spread on thin, and use the faster drying formula they put out recently.

To bad the glue has a short shelf life. The glue with the "bull" on it lasts longer on the shelf.

Steve

paladin

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deatonbt,i use 3hr epoxy. it allows me 20 minutes to get the alignment correct before it starts to set up.

Joe

scale only 4 me

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I always still use wood glue for my cores, spread it very thin, set some phone books on it and it will be dry in the morning

my Jemco Zero,, Solortex and Dope if I remember correctly

You'll find the picture of my Hellcat in my gallery

Love those Jemco kits

fordboy76

You should start a build thread for this model. I picked up a JemCO 109 kit and hope to get started on it in the near future. I have some learning to do so I figure I will comeplete either my 4*60, venture 60 or tiger 60 deluxe before I attempt it. But I would love to have a build thread for reference..... PLEASE?

deatonbt

fordboy76,
I'll post some pictures as I go along.

The structure type used for the fuselage on the FW 190D-9 is different than the ME 109G-2(these are the names of the kits; not the correct name of BF 109). My kit has 3D drawings of both fuselages.

The FW 190 uses a crutch with tabs and slots in the nose to line everything up. It is really close to the method used in my Gold Edition TopFlite SeaFury that is waiting to be built. The FW 190 uses tabs from the crutch that slide into precut slots in the side fuselage sheeting. It is going to be really hard to not come out with a straight fuselage.

The BF 109 has flat sheet sides that use triangle stock at the edges to line things up. The rear deck in the picture shows wood that has to be shaped into the rounded shape. Mine had an ABS plastic rear deck that saved a lot of work. The round top of the fuselage and the triangle stock allowed some roundness to be sanded into the sides. I laminated some sheet balsa onto the sides to get a little more wood to sand to get the fuselage a little rounder. I don't remember weight being an issue with 4 channels. It is up to you. On mine I carved the nose from a G version to an E. The horizontal stab was weak where it slid into the vertical stab. Mine broke. You might want to add some thin plywood there for strength. Since I made the E version, I added functional struts from the fuselage to the stab after the repair.

Don't ask me about high school chemistry, but I can picture just about every kit that have built in my mind.

Evil_Merlin

My Feedback: (13)

PS: Me 109 and Bf 109 are both correct...



Honestly though, the Fw 190 build was damn near impossible to get wrong, the JEM-LOK or whatever it was called, just worked. The plastic pieces (gun hood, tail area around the vertical stab) fit very well and required only some Zap-a-Goo to put into place. My fuse is 100% built and it looks decent... I really have to get my butt in gear and finish what I have on the table to get to all the other goodies I have half built.

Indycar4me

Is that Dauntless kit for sale? I had one in the 70s trade it , INTERESTED in getting one. André

deatonbt

Here is a picture of the frame. The kit plans are for reference. The fuselage is not assembled on the plans. The horizontal piece running from nose to tail is a jig that gets built into the fuselage. The box at the front is for the fuel tank and is used to line up the firewall and then the wood rails for the engine mount. The formers slide onto the jig against notches to position them. You only need to be sure that they are at a 90 degree angle to the jig when glued; the only real skill needed. The sticks glued to the back of the formers stick out a little way from the jig. They are tabs that slide into the slots in the fuselage side that is laying next to it. Once the fuselage sides are glued onto the tabs, the fuselage is locked in place and straight on the horizontal and vertical planes. The frame can't help but be straight.

I have discovered that I have swapped the resin and hardener caps on the epoxy bottles. I am getting the pliers out. Mistakes can still happen.

deatonbt

I finished up the 190. I thought that I would sum up the good and not so good of the build for a person to use on another sport scale kit build. This is going to be a little long. My only excuse for some of the not so good is that this is the only plane that I have built to finish in over 20 years. I have another that I work on and off but never seem to advance much. In the end, the plane looks almost good and flies very well.

The not so good first. It has strip ailerons because I clogged up the actuating cables for the scale ones with expanding Gorilla glue used for sheeting the wing. That pretty much says it all. I knew the glue expanded and didn't think. I won’t make that mistake again. The next mistake that I made was to use epoxy to glue the canopy on. After applying the glue and taping down the canopy it slipped and made a ridge of glue where the canopy meets the fuselage. Since I will probably not find another canopy, I left it on and live with it. I should have just used some sort of automotive fuel resistant silicone or rtv or something. After spending a lot of time getting the fuselage smooth, that was a downer. Those are the two build mistakes.

I painted the plane with Rustoleum over Solartex. It is fuel resistant and I found two colors that matched a scheme done on 1/48th scale plane. It is one of the Jagdverband 44 planes with the red and white striped under surfaces. I didn’t use the decals in the kit because they are over 25 years old. I could have masked off the wing crosses but wanted to make some decals. I found some emblems on the internet and was going to print them on some label paper from my PC but the black on the crosses was not very rich on my printer. A friend who works at a print shop offered to print them on matte vinyl for free but he was going to have to special order the vinyl. I didn’t want to take advantage and asked him to run them off on some paper based adhesive sheet on a Xerox. I cut them out with an xacto blade. Don’t cringe at paper. I printed an emblem off on regular printer paper and then coated it with Minwax polyurethane. I put raw 5% fuel on it and it never did run. The decals are about as thick as pressure sensitive ones that you would see on an arf. But, I was worried about protecting them and sprayed them really wet with the polyurethane. The decals got soaked and the red on the bottom of the plane showed through the white on the crosses. Thank goodness the white came back when they dried. The lesson learned here is go with vinyl and don’t go overboard with the polyurethane; just a little does the job. Now that I trust minwax polyurethane, I am going to try one of the Testor brand camouflage paints to get access to more colors. Here are the links where I got the JG 44 emblems and crosses. I made the red number in a word document. I wish that I could have done something unique like a Romanian scheme but it was too late in the war when the 190 D9s came out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JV_44

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Roundel

The plane came out heavy at 5 lbs. 6 oz. for a 50" wingspan and 4 channels. I mounted an O.S. 46 AX and it is way too much motor weight wise and power wise. I could have dropped 6 oz. right there. If you notice in the picture, the spinner sits too far away from the cowl. If you know of a spinner where the skirt sits farther behind the prop let me know. Also it wouldn’t surprise me if I put about 6 oz. too much paint and polyurethane on it. The plane flies well but comes in hot. But it gives so much warning that it is going to stall, you would have to be really numb not to catch it. On the flip side, the plane is fast. Luckily I didn’t have the cowl on yesterday because on the 2nd landing I flipped it over its nose onto its back. No damage. It was my fault because I didn’t flare in time. But also the 5/32” wire gear bent. Just sitting there it’s flimsy. I won’t be using 5/32” on any .40 and up plane again.

Blunt comments and suggestions are welcome.

mobyal

Boy. what a nice job. Really brings back memories, "Jemlock" system, which you described in the way the fuse goes together, and all. My Jemco Zero, built back in the late 70s, was among other things my first foam wing and first flap and retract-equipped airplane. They do buld up heavy, particularly in the fuse, so don't beat yourself up over the weight. I had to add a lot of weight to the nose of the Zero, but it flew well. I doubt that with the Dora's long nose you had to add too much.
Try Skyshark RC for their FW D9 spinner. I think the Skyshark FWs and the Jemco are close to the same size. Here's a pic of the 190D spinner on my KMP 190A. It's a little small for the KMP (72" span) but should look good on your Jemco.
Again, good job!
Al

motoman326

I just found a Jemco FW 190D-9 at an estate sale. 
I am planning on it being a winter project.
Any updates since the last post was almost 4 1/2 years ago?
Thanks for all the info


John

deatonbt

I crashed the plane on landing. It was numb thumb on my part. I was flying into a strong cross wind too slowly and stalled when turning out of it over the runway.

The only real sugestion would be to toss the 5/32" landing gear and bend some 3/16" wire to make new gear. My plane would bounce all over the place on our grass field just taxiing. I just used a cheap propane torch like one that you can get at a hardware store. I put the wire in a vice to bend it. The vice acts like a little bit of a heat sink. So you have to heat the wire slightly above the vice. The wire will bend in the same spot above the vice every time and make nice 90 degree bends.

Here is a good article on the Vailly Aviation website for bending wire.
http://www.vaillyaviation.com/images...re%20_web_.pdf

alanc

heating piano wire to bend it will lose the temper,and soften the wire, the only real way is to use an apropiate wire bender, and some muscle,

deatonbt

The article covers tempering the wire after bending it with heat. I tried to bend some 1/4' wire one time cold and gave up when it moved the work bench.

scale only 4 me

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2 words,,, retract retrofit