Gareth 1970

Hi John - thanks for the advice, I will need to work on getting a bigger turbine - just costly in ZAR.

Geebee - I would also be "cap in hand" to buy a cockpit kit - if you would be willing to sell me one.......it would be greatly appreciated.

Looking forward to starting mine this coming week.

Regards

Cape Town
South Africa

ColinW

Hi JohnMac OCU was Colt then 5 Sqn Binbrook 66 - 68. In those days aircraft were brand new - picked up from Warton with around an hour on the clock!! Also flew XS 422 on ETPS last flight around 87.

GEEBEER3FLYER

Ok so naked guy awaiting clothes as a test fit, all looks good, just waiting for uniform.... On to the intakes, in a word... Nightmare, firstly on the 2 existing Airworld lightning a, the front undercarriage sits in a fibreglass bay, I have reversed this bay compared to existing models, it fits better this way and I have let it into the intake bullet as per therealaircraft, getting everything square and neat is tricky but all seems to be ok with my odd modification

GEEBEER3FLYER

There is not enough height in the bay as supplied, for the wheel to fully retract if you fit it the way it looks like its supposed to go,i have a little more sanding to do in the intake and nosegear well, i have coated the weave of the cloth with filler primer to get rid of it and sharpend up the radius of the well where it meets the intake bottom in order to make it look more realsitic, detailing the well sides is next and installation of 2 small servos for gear doors

GEEBEER3FLYER

Spent quite some time cobbling a pilot together from Chinese clothing and naked figures in an effort to make the pilot look as real as possible, have hacked up his body and installed 2 mini servos to move his head up and down and left to right, will just slave it to the elevator and rudder on a couple of spare channels ... Quite paranoid as to wether I'm happy with him yet, getting the pilot right is a tough job if you don't want it just looking like a cheep doll imho

JohnMac

I am not even slightly envious Colin. I must say my fascination with aviation and then modelleing started when at the age of 5 or 6 I was taken to a local air show. This would have been a year before the Lightning was in service but I think these would have been RAF pre production machines. To say they made an impression on the people there was putting it mildly. There was certainly no quarter given to "the neighbours" as they pair made their first approach above the Mach. Broke a few windows I suspect.
Incredibly spectacular display, lots of reheat, shock diamonds et al, before they left vertically to disapearing point, in an azure blue sky. All they left behind was a deep rumble from the heavens, and a deep sense of awe, that has lasted 57 years so far! I would give my right arm to see one fly again.
I grew up determined to fly one also but the RAF MO put a stop to that dream.
John

GEEBEER3FLYER

https://youtu.be/pn6_F8LpNZ4 ok so have briefly tested the servos I installed in the pilot, seems to work ok , I added a couple more behind the instrument panel for the control stick as I was having so much fun, so the stick will move aswell( connected to his arm)

GEEBEER3FLYER

Have also completed the front gear doors, adding as much detail as I can, you can see the sidewalks I have added , ready to be detaile with a couple of mini servos tucked away to operate the doors

GEEBEER3FLYER

Work continues, cut all required holes in fuselage in terms of adding extra detail and other than rivets on the main canopy and framework on the front part, the glazing is more or less complete, it took ages to trim it and tweek it for an accurate fit though

GEEBEER3FLYER

Work still progresses, I have more or less completed the front gear( I have used one from my Hawk which is an identical unit, until the twits that are airworld send me the retracts that I ordered, at which point I will replace the hawks missing noseleg ) , getting the rear door to open and close properly without slop required an entire afternoons worth of thought due to the fact that airworld has the gear steer from the top of the leg whereas the real aircraft steers from the middle/ bottom, this made the necessary linkage a bear of a thing to figure out, the cockpit is almost complete now, just need some lettering here and there on some of the ditches then will need to install it and get the( finished ready to install for remote opening and closing) canopy installed and the locking pins working faultlessly, pleased with the scale features so far, the mods on the stock U/C leg in particularly happy with.

Gareth 1970

Absolutely incredible....

I am back from the Scale 2016 event in South Africa, and need to get cracking on mine. At least I can reference your build Geebee which makes life a lot easier.

ps - flew my Airworld R3 with Moki 250, but jeez the landings are terrible. touch downs is as smooth as silk, but then it get a mind of its on - any tips? I see you have one as well.

Gareth

GEEBEER3FLYER

The geebee does float on to a landing quite well, i found it best to keep power on woth flaps down as the sink rate is massive with too low a power setting, once its touched down thogh and the taildrops, i havent had a problem with it, power is killed just after main gear touches the deck and the tail drops quickly, i modified the tailwheel set up slightly from the kit but only slightly, the steering is quite positive( mine tied directly to rudder servos) and any power on at all whilst on the groundand the sterring can be quite lively so i only blip the throttle to initiate a turn of rquired,

GEEBEER3FLYER

Apologies for typos btw, am on an ipad one and the editing wont work when im typing.
TheR3 has a hell of a big rudder directly in the centre of the thrustline so its very positive,

Gareth 1970

Great ...Thank you for the advice, and sorry to hijack your thread.

I will give your method a try....I am flying off tar, and I find the suspension incredibly soft, that let the spats touch the tar in some instances. Did you "beef" your suspension up in ay way?

Regards

Gareth

GEEBEER3FLYER

I didn't mod the suspension springs at all, BUT you do need a very flat approach with mine (and others I assume) as you are right about it being springy, my first landing resulted in it bouncing 8 feet back into the air due to the springs in the suspension and too high a sink rate before touching down.

a flat approach with some power on, more or less flying onto the ground for a 2 pointer, kill power straight after main gear touches, let tail drop, keep off the rudder till it slows a little the blip throttle with rudder to turn when tail wheel is on ground.

GEEBEER3FLYER

Cockpit complete and installed, was trickier than I thought due to the strange order I had to do so I could install a new 'roof' to the intake to keep airflow smooth, I can access gear door, steering and canopy servos easily enough but if there's a problem with any of the ones in the pilot, he will just become static, basically at this stage I now need to sand intake/ roof join to get a nice radius and tweek servos for perfect operation of doors / steering/ canopy, I'm sure it will be all way less straight forward than I would like....

Thatldopig

[QUOTE=speed is life;12247872]Hello GB R3
Welcome to the Airworld experience. I think Airworld revel in "taking the mickey" on their customers. Those that have followed the Airworld threads over the years will not be surprised at your report.
Now, that said, with a fair amount of work and re-engineering the models can turn out to be really nice examples.
- Mike

Oh no!

A friend and I paid up front for two Me 262's from Airworld. The responses to our emails were prompt right up until we parted with our cash and they are currently three months over the delivery time we were initially told, so five months at this stage.

Oh well, your 262's look great, so hopefully ours will arrive while my sight is still reasonable

GEEBEER3FLYER

Spent the last few days working on the bottom hatch ,a frame was added first to stiffen it up and als a strip run inside for some exterior 10mm m3 countersunk machine screws to seat into that match the Mildred on ones in the kit, as I'm doing an f6, a lot more detail had to be added to the panel to replicate the gun panels, you can see I have added the pepper pot vents just behind the removable panel, there's a pain of a join due to the kit being really an f2 , funnily enough, Airworld only supplied one of the 2 missile pylons, as it happens , it doesn't matter, as you can see, the kit part differs completely from what it should look like so it's going in the bin in favour of the accurate scratchbuilt ones

GEEBEER3FLYER

Few niggly little jobs to do on Tony end, just final bits of filling or sanding etc , then I can look at rear end details, pics are of the Redtop missiles I have made, wouldn't be a Lightning without them imho..

ColinW

GeeBee you might be interested to know that on the full size F6 you had to have the missiles on if you wanted to fly inverted at low level (as in a display). Without missiles you could not fly level - even with full forward stick! I'd be interested to know if this is also true on the model as the F2A and F6 have similar outlines.

GEEBEER3FLYER

Work on the details progresses, pleased with the completed misdials, the rear end required a lot of work to get parts to fit, the fibreglass pipes were modified to make the stainless thrust tubes easier to fit as the fibreglass parts are just for show/ scale effect, the airbrakes are pretty much as scale as I can get them and avoid that open rear that some models have that I'm not keen on ..hope you like it so far

Gareth 1970

Absolutely amazing - very inspirational..........

I hope you don't mind me copying the build photos, so I can catch up once I'm finished with the R3 wing tip and spat repair.

Cheers

Gareth

GEEBEER3FLYER

Gareth, please feel free to use them as you wish, its nice to be of help to someone, i know there are only 2 of these Airworld lightnings that have flown, the green prototype and Tronds silver one but im sure they must have sold more kits than that, even with their well proven crappy reputation for none existent customer service , obviously you and i have one so that makes 4 but wondering if theres any more out there that people havent built for one reason or another ...

JohnMac

Yes me. I realised that there was a huge amount of work and decided to leave the model until I retire. I did not get any missile pylons with mine. The ones in your picture look correct to me but without the rails.


John

gunradd

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Your build is looking great!

Barry will be coming over to Florida next month and he will be flying the lighting allot. Looking forward to seeing it fly again.