roydefiant

avi sirota

Good to have you back in the air Roy. what did you do?
Avi

roydefiant

Franzl

does anyone have the Fouga with the flaps in the sport scale version, with the hinges instead of the rails ?
I would need some photos of the hinges of both flaps.

Many thanks
Franz

CraigG

My Feedback: (40)

I did mine with "sport" hinges. My suggestion; set up each of the 4 flap sections independently, each with their own servo. I found it impossible to drive both flaps on a side with the supplied rod/hardware with a single servo, so I did away with the rods entirely. One servo per flap worked great. This is all I could find in the way of pictures:

Franzl

many thanks Craig, that helps. May I bother you with another question. What is the height of the hinges ?

Again many thanks
Franz

smchale

My Feedback: (67)

Franzl

Many thanks, that is perfect.

I was considering the RC Jet Center Fouga for a while but finally decided to am build a slightly larger model in 1:4 scale. Most of my other planes have this scale as well.
This kit is unfortunately not prefabricated as well as the RC Jet Center model was. I have to make a lot on my own.

Could you give me also the offset from the leading edge of the flaps ( or the line of the wing in front of it) backwards to the pivot point for the 4 hinges ?
That would help me a lot.

Again many thanks for your help.
Franz

avi sirota

Hello,

I present to you some pictures of my IAF-Zukit building process. The model was developed for few years by RCJC and it is manufactured by FB jets according to the RCJC team specification.

More info can be found in the RCJC web site and here at RCU in theFouga Magister Is On the Market.

The majority of the information here is based on my personal opinion and experience. All other information is welcome.

Why this Jet?

Being a scale enthusiastic in general and for warbirds in specific I always liked special planes. For about 12 years I am building and flying mainly scale warbirds. For me the CM170 Fouga Magister was always one of the more elegant and graceful airplanes I ever knew. When I first started with RC Jets about 18 months ago I knew I'll have one sooner or later and being an IAF veteran it will definitely be the Israeli version called Zukit.

I was looking for a relatively big, easily noticeable scale jet with pleasant flight characteristics. Budget and storage place were also arguments so all in all I came to porches one beautiful Zukit directly from RCJC local inventory here in Israel.

General overview of the Jet itself

Manufactured by FB Jets the overall quality is good. You will hardly find nasty or hidden issues. The model was manufactured some time ago so in today's latest material and manufacturing technology there are products of lighter weight.

Fuselage is made from Fiberglas reinforced with carbon strips. The formers are from medium grade wood with part of the main formers reinforced with carbon doublers.

Scale details such as panel lines rivets and air vents are well made and noticeable. The kit comes with bags containing a lot of scale parts that will upgrade the scale appearance of the complete jet.

The paint job including weathering is done at the factory the quality is good with even and drop-less paint coating. Although the finish is too shiny not as the real life planes it still looks good. Unfortunately some areas have too much sealer/primer/paint so panel lines and rivets are lost under it. This is also the case in other areas of the wings.

Front gear with its door is very scale like and factory installed. The front wheel is scale like with the unique groove in the middle originally designed to rout water from entering the air inlets. The wheel has the Goodyear logo on it just like the real plane had. Remarkable.

V-tail is beautiful. One of the Fougas "trade marks". Made from main and rear spars-don’t know the material- covered with load bearing composite. It comes with flight surfaces hinged. Feels very strong but heavy. Later on ill inform of some must to do points regarding the tail section.



Wings are divided in two sections. Center section is a part of the fuselage and forms one solid platform for the main gear and containing one of two flaps each side. External sections are about 2/3 of the each wing and have the external flap, aileron, air brake and wing tip fuel tank (not functional in the RC plane). Flaps can be either scale fowler type or semi scale asymmetrical hinged style. Choose your preferred type when ordering the model.

Same as the fuselage the wings are well detailed, ailerons already hinged. Scale like main gear with doors is air operated and factory installed. Brakes are also there.

All in all the first impression was it is a good quality product.

Fuselage main section was inspected for formers attachment and bonding. I used Hysol 9462 for local reinforcement.

The main wing spar is actually the front main former. it is partially reinforced with carbon doublers.

avi sirota

To better cope with hot climate and tarmac in our summer the rear fuselage was reinforced with carbon and then was thermal treated with heat shield. The 180 grams weight increase worth it and the final result is very good.

To better cope with hot climate and tarmac in our summer the rear fuselage was reinforced with carbon and then was thermal treated with heat shield. The 180 grams weight increase worth it and the final result is very good.

avi sirota

avi sirota

Wiring harness for tail section-2 servos and light was heat protected and directed properly.

avi sirota

V-tail servos in place.

avi sirota

I decided to be on the safe side and replaced all original air lines with new more flexible tubes. I used color coded lines.
Green -gear down
Red-gear up
Yellow-doors up
White-doors down
Clear-brakes

avi sirota

The scale type flaps are beautiful and challenging…they can be operated with one or two servos. The mechanical system consists of torque rods cranks and levers. After hours of head scratching, measurements and a lot of coffee I finally got the flaps to work correctly using one servo for each couple of flaps. I.e each 2 flaps are operated by one servo.

avi sirota

Internal Flap torque rod crank and lever.

Torque rod from main section to outer wing.

Internal Flap final drive. All original clevises where replaced by Sullivan 4-40 Gold-N-Clevis

igoren

My Feedback: (23)

Hi Avi, nice work. Last time were i was at your house you used on servo per side with the torque rod for the flaps. Are you still using this method or you went into 2 servos for each side ( 4 servos in total for the flaps ?
i still didn’t work on my fuga since we last met.
keep the good work,

Isaac , from Los Angeles.

DHC6

My Feedback: (6)

Very nice build! Just wondering where are you going to install your air tanks?

avi sirota

Hi Issac,
Thanks. I used one servo for each pair of flaps in each wing. It works good and saves the servo weight.
Avi

avi sirota

Thanks DHC6,
Here are the air tanks. The kit has one big tank and 2 smaller tanks.I used the big+1 small for the retracts and one small for brakes. This configuration allows for complete 5-6 retract cycles and plenty for braking operation.
2 tanks are removable for service and to allow the exhaust pipe removal.

avi sirota

Ill continue posting info and pictures in a separate thread I opened.
IAF-Zukit-Fouga Magister (RCJC)
You are all invited to look and comment. See you there.
Avi

roydefiant

Flew at Minnesota Jets this past weekend. We had 20 mph winds but straight down the runway. The model performed flawlessly and the new nose springs worked great.

avi sirota

Good news Roy!
Avi

DHC6

My Feedback: (6)

Hello Guys,

Hopefully some of you are still monitoring this thread. So I finally did the maiden on my Fouga and quite frankly I was lucky it survived. I will explain and hopefully I can get some ideas. So the first problem is a serious lack of power. I have a jet central Cheetah 140 in it and saying it was anemic would have been a compliment! The take off took 3 attempts with the third one being very sketchy because I yanked if off the ground. The runway is is around 7-800’ with very short grass. All my other jets have no issues, even ones with far smaller wheels, larger and heavier then the Fouga. This should have been plenty. In the air I needed 3/4 to fully throttle to fly with any kind of authority, and I don’t mean crazy fast high speed demon authority. Any less and climb outs would result in a stall. This plane should be flying perfectly with that much power. Also my gear didn’t retract, and no brakes on landing. I had attempted to fly it a few times however something would always happen and it didn’t fly. So I was pretty frustrated and hung it up for the remainder of the season. So now I am inspecting the plane closer and there is significant heat damage on the inside. Specifically on the left side forward of the turbine area. The vent tube on the left saddle tank had melted shut and the tank was still 1/4 full. Mostly of the air lines in this vicinity had also melted (hence why no gear or brakes) and the air lines at the bottom leading to the air tanks where also melted. These airlines are encased in hi temperature sheath and secured to the bottom of the fuselage. My servo extensions are in a separate high temp sheath which is underneath the air lines. There’s even slight evidence of heat damage to them. So between the airline and fuel lines melting and extensions clearly nearing their heat capacity I was lucky that nothing happened in flight apart from no brakes on landing. Thankfully it’s a very well behaved and very well flying airplane and was one of the easier planes to fly on a maiden that I have had. So absolutely no complaints on it’s in flight manners and landing was nice and slow so no need for brakes anyway. I really do like the way it flies, but with no power and this heat issue I don’t know what to do with it. It can’t fly again obviously until this is solved. Also taxing takes a HUGE amount of power, which again shows a lack of thrust.

I really believe this is down to the thrust tube. There is no end bell on mine, and I believe it’s really diminishing the power. I don’t know if no end bell has an effect, or what it is about this tube but it’s impossible that a 140 in this plane is not enough. Even the 140 is very tight and if a 140 is causing heat problems, a larger turbine will only exasperate this problem.

Of the times I had tried a maiden the air lines again melted, but in a very specific spot. Just beneath the thrust tube where the divide begins is where they were melted. I had a look and I could see light at the divide and exhaust was leaking there and being directed onto the air lines and melting them. I feel my thrust tube is defective and causing these issues. Any ideas?

lavi rider

My Feedback: (6)

May I ask what is the distance between the turbines exhaust nozzle and the thrust tube ? As it seems to me you’re set up too far from each other .
I’ve flown this plane in different setups with 100 size turbines and 120 size turbine without any issues . Takeoff roll was about 130-150 meters with a shallow climb out of about 5 degrees until the gear and flaps were retracted after that the plane would do any maneuvers in the book . What is the all up takeoff weight of your plane ? The ones I flew were around 18.5kg .