BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

Motor & muffler in for a trial fit. The back of the pitts muffler is only about 2.4mm ( 3/32" ) from the front former / main firewall, any opinions on whether this is a big enough gap? I am thinking cooling air for the muffler as well as heat damaging the ply?

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

Sat the cowl in place for a quick check of how everything fits. It is a shame I will have to make a decent size opening to let some cooling air out, this would be a really neat install if I didn't have to do that!

tailskid

My Feedback: (34)

looking good Boltman.......too bad you couldn't exit the exhaust thru the scale location. I really don't have the metal background on how you could do that - but it would be cool

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

Yeah, would be cool but I too don't have the metal skills to customise a muffler like that. So I just keep that part simple, I will trim the exhaust stubs so they are flush with bottom of the fuse & not visable in the side profile.
i am going to have to get busy on R&R this week as my club has a warbird event on next weekend.

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

R & R is slowly progressing towards airworthyness. Looks like she should be ready to fly just in time for our warbird event this weekend.

I will let the pics show the progress.........

I made up a removable tray for the remote optical kill switch & master ignition switch


Fuel tank fitted


Dual receiver switch & BattShare fitted


Fuel filler & fuel vent fitted


Muffler Outlets cut flush with bottom of fuse

For those that are wondering, the piece of nyrod sticking out the front beside the motor will be the choke lever.

Ignition module & Ignition battery fitted ( I know the battery is an overkill but I need nose weight!!! )


Dual receiver batteries fitted

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

Deleted - Double Post

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

For some reason the pics in the previous post do not appear, so I will ty again........

These should be in the corrosponding order to the captions in the post above.

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

As the weekend drew nearer I stepped up my efforts to get R & R ready for the our local warbird event.

Thursday night I worked right through the night, crawling into bed at 5.45am & I had to be up at 6.30am.

Friday night I did not get back to the workshop until 8.00pm, but worked through to 2.00am.

Even with all that R & R was not ready for the Saturday, so I settled on taking one of my other projects out to the club for "Show & Tell".

Saturday night I worked through to 1.30am to Have R & R ready to fly for Sunday.

All the pull-pull cables were extended to suit the new servo location. You can also see the new location of the air filler valve for the retracts.


Once the cables were set up the removable throttle servo tray was fitted.


Some overview pics of the internal layout.

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

So now the internals are complete I arrived at the moment of truth - time to check the C of G.

Remember that I have removed 5.4kg ( 11ib 14oz ) of electrics from the nose, but I have moved all the radio gear forward to help compensate.

Turns out that all that was required was 0.9kg ( 2lb ) of ballast. This has resulted in a net total saving of 1.6kg ( 3lb 8 oz ). Well worth the effort of moving the radio gear.

Ballast secured with silicone & cable ties......


Note that I have gone back to a smaller ignition battery than first planned, dropped to a 4.8volt pack to ensure staying within the limits of the ignition.

Now all that was left was to blank out some of the openings in the cowl from the electric setup & focus the airflow over the cylinder of the new engine. Also to provide an exit point for the choke lever. ( The choke lever will be better disguised in the future & more detail added to the centre of the dummy motor ).....

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

So Sunday arrived. Up early ( even after several late nights ) and out to the workshop to mix some run-in fuel for the new DLE 55. Pack the car and off to the club.

Fuelled R & R with her first taste of the smelly stuff ( petrol / gas ). The DLE fired up after only a few flicks and sounded like she was running well. Then a suudden stop while doing a short burst of full throttle running. I decided to let her cool out before richening up the needles for another try. When the next attempt to start her was made the DLE refused to prime.

Further investigation revealed the real reason for the sudden stop - I had allowed the fuel line to the carbie to rest on the muffler and the Tygon tube had melted through. It had slipped my mind that unlike silicon fuel tube, Tygon is not heat resistant.

Unfortunately the carbie end of this tube is far from easy to access, so replacing the tube is not really a job I wanted to undertake at the field.

So we will have to wait until another day to find out how R & R flies with the new setup.

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

Today I finally got to do the check flight with the DLE 55 fitted........

The take off was easier with the petrol ( gas ) engine being less torquey than the electric set up. It's now much easier to keep straight on the ground roll.

Performance does not seem to have suffered any, if anything it has more vertical than before, so loops & cubans were nice & big.

The audio feed back definitely helps with speed management on the landing approach.

Rough & Ready certainly has more "presense" in the air now she is making plenty of noise, but of course the sound is nowhere near scale.

I also believe the weight saving is making the low speed handling more pleasant.

So overall I am happy with the result, R & R is still lots of fun to fly & looks great in the air, but for myself & where I am at at the moment, the petrol engine is a more practical setup to operate. It has been very interesting to have experienced operating this model on both forms of power and to have gained a true appreciation of the strengths & weaknesses of both systems. While I am leaving the electric thing for now, I can definitely see myself revisiting it down the track.

Cheers!

P4Patti

Hey Mick, great day yesterday and we've put together some footage with the sound. I was really surprised how much of the plane was in the shots because, as you know, it was so bright out there that I couldn't see a thing in the screen. We put the Spitty in there as a sound comparison. Nicer lower notes, but just not loud enough. The DLE 55 is loud, but just doesn't hit the right notes. Don't know what the answer is - without going to a Moki 250!! And, as Minister for Finance, I'm not overjoyed at that option at the moment! Anyway, here's the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU4kY...a&noredirect=1

cheers
Patti

trent smith

Is that Spitty the Comp ARF. I like it.

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

Hi Trent,

Yep, thats the Comp ARF. In Richard's hands it does fly very nicely. It also sounds really good ( better than it comes across in the video ), just not loud enough.

Cheers!

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

Thanks for the video! I hope you got some nice pics too?

P4Patti

Hi Mick - I didn't get any stills in the air of the P-47 but got some good ones of your MX. The first flight of Rough & Ready I was with the video camera and then on your second flight I just wanted to watch it! When you're down next I'll get some and hopefully with the 2 of them in the air together.
The video of the Spitty was taken from back in the pits under the shade of the trailer door in the hope that I could see something in the screen but it wasn't working out very well from that far away. That's another reason it doesn't sound as good as standing out in the pilot box.

Trent - Richard has been flying the pants off that the Comp ARF spitty for almost 2 years now and it is like a Sunday flyer. She has no vices at all, apart from the typical Spitty ground handling taxiing in a cross wind issue! It doesn't want to nose over at all, it just weather vanes into the wind. Here's a youtube video of a short circuit and landing of the Spitty that sounds better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbG8S...uBcClprPizgBOA

cheers
Patti

P4Patti

I did have a couple of stills after all. No more Mr Anonymous Mick

Now you've got Richard thinking again - DLE 85 with a canister. The moulds need quite a bit of work as we had a lot of trouble getting the fuse out because the big rivet/screw detail on the wing fairing locked it in. Aiming for Susan River warbirds on Feb 22nd. Hope you can make that one.

cheers
Patti

BOLTMAN

My Feedback: (1)

To follow up on the progress of "Rough & Ready" a year on from the conversion from electric to a DLE 55, she is still flying and giving me lots of fun.

Much to my surprise the effect of seeing R&R on the DLE has had a profound effect on Richard who created the moulds for this P-47. He has since produced a new P-47 of his own also running the DLE 55, but in the rear exhaust and fitted with an oversize cannister exhuast ( for an 85cc motor ). This produces a very different sound that is quite pleasant, especially when compared to the pitts stlye muffler on R&R.

Earlier this year I received an invite to a new comp here in Oz, the "Invitational Scale Classic Downunder". This comp is run in a format very similar to Top Gun in the USA.

Disscussions with Richard soon lead to the decision to do a team enrty with his ( then unstarted ) P-47 "Slick Chick" as well as my entry of R&R in the "Flying Only" category.

I managed to put together a pretty good lead up to the comp, getting plenty of quality flying in. However Richard had a few curve balls thrown into his schedule which meant it was a big push for him to get Slick Chick finished only a few weeks before the comp. Meanwhile I had assembled a bunch of mates to make the trip with me, unfortunately work committments meant the Richard & Patti could not attend. The comp was 20 hours driving away from home, so 2 days each way plus 5 days for the comp.

We did have a couple of minor technical hitches with Slick Chick, mainly due to not enough time to de-bug the new model. R&R ran like clockwork with no need to do anything except fuel it, flick it & fly it all week.

The first day was not so nice, gusty winds which meant the day was called off at lunchtime, but after that conditions could not have been better. The comp was fairly relaxed and plenty of fun was shared with lots of good company.

The 2 Thunderbolts in markings from the same squadron looked great together, and as usual the detail that Richard creates in the mould drew lots of attention.

The results. Well I managed to win the "Flying Only" category with R&R, actually winning all 4 rounds. In Team Slick Chick came in 3rd after scoring pretty poorly in static, mainly due to the documentation package that was compiled last minute. We won the first round of flying, but nothing was ever going to be enough to catch up after static.


The team & a close up of our shirts.....
....


The models..........



Overall it was probably the best fun week of modelling I have had in years.

Cheers

Mick

P4Patti

It's been a long time since I've been here but lots of flying and building in that time. My flying skills have improved with practise and a recent thrill was flying Richard's Slick Chick with a friend's BF109. Here's a short video from his camera following Slcik Chick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o4MEkKFu_E

I made my own Thundebolt "Big Ass Bird" and bought a Kolm EZ67 which is a very nice sounding 4 stroke. Thanks to Mick we're now converts to petrol! Love the long flight times but still like a decent sound so Richard's been using an oversized KS95 cannister with a DLE-55 in his Slick Chick. Long story short Big Ass Bird is no more (thankfully the Kolm is all good) so Richard and I are going to make 3 new Thunderbolts (hopefully quicker to do it like this than one at a time), one each plus a spare! given our new found passion for formation flying.

A few modifications will be done to these 3, the main one is an improvement to the undercarriage. We've found the Robart gear hasn't worn well over time with the amount of use it's had. Fortunately a local has started producing his own range of cnc machined undercarriage which promises to be extremely robust and also looks miles better. Can't wait to get some pics of that for you!

I've got a set of his machined articulated gear in my Carbon Z Cub that I use for teaching newbies at the club. The Carbon Cub is a fantastic trainer, big and easy to see but the undercarriage is the definite weak link.
http://pradscalerc.com/index.php/pro...-carbon-z-cub/

I'll post some progress pics of the builds as we go and show the mods we've made along the way.

cheers
Patti

P4Patti

Hi again

I forgot to put a pic of my beautiful Cub undercarriage. I call it my Carbon bling - closest I get to diamonds! It doesn't just look great, it works amazingly.

cheers
Patti

Oakey

Patti
how great to hear what you and Richard are up to. cant believe you have gone petrol! . still you are getting lots of time in on the sticks so that is great. the thunderbolts look fantastic. are you going to do a bit of a build thread on them?

don't know if I will get up to Qld this year, but if it do I will see if you are both around and look you up if you are free

cheers

Craig

P4Patti

Hi Craig

Good to hear from you too. Petrol, yes I know!! Just goes to show we're open minded, show a better way for a good logical reason and we'll change Having said that, it's the Moki sound that really swung us. We bought a Moki 180 for the composite Corsair that Richard has 99% finished. We also have a true 1/5 scale Mustang build in progress - plug, moulds etc and really hope to have that flying by Christmas as well. Too many projects, not enough time - you know, the usual!
We have a Facebook page for our build stuff if you want to have a look https://www.facebook.com/pages/RAP-F...636361?fref=ts RAP Fun Factory
The other thing that's making this work is having Adrian here locally setting up Pradella Scale http://pradscalerc.com/ making some awesome undercarriage and later hopefully spinners and canisters/mufflers. The petrol is great for long flight times but we still hate the 2 stroke brush cutter sound so the cannister for us is a must have. That's another reason I bought the Kolm 4 stroke from Austria, great sounding engine.

I will do a build thread - I'll throw some pics up as I get time. Just cleaning up the shed this morning to make some room to start on the next "batch" of Thunderbolts. We built a new shed a couple of years ago too - custom made for making planes so pretty happy campers.

Give us a yell when you're up in Qld next. it'd be great to catch up. What are you building/flying?

cheers
Patti

Oakey

Hey Patti

Richard was also doing a big lightning wasn't he. you guys are great builders together, you clearly inspire each other to greater heights. I would love to see pics of the 1/5 corsair! if I remember right Richard has always had a thing for corsairs and lightnings. and apparently P51s and P47's

after moving house a couple years ago I have a building room (used to be a rumpus room) it is even air-conditioned. Sadly building time is in short supply, Lily is growing up to be a wonderful 9 year old handful. but with horse riding swimming and all the other things, there is not much time for building. I am still building the 109 after about 5 years. so no speed records here. the 3D printer is really interesting to use and play with, Rhino woks pretty well in that case and I must say it can added some interesting details to models. I am playing with scale wheel hubs with wheel bearings and it seems to be both pretty tough but reasonably light too.
someone local making retracts is very interesting and useful to know about. I will have a squiz at his stuff as I would like to buy local where possible. I have robarts in the 109 but they haven't done any hard work at all yet. I am almost done with a design for a 1/6 Fokker DVII and I am going to do the machine guns and motor parts on the printer to see how they go. might even have a crack at a head for the pilot.

anyway if we are coming up I will give you a call. actually I will give you a call anyway over the next couple of weeks.

cheers

c

P4Patti

Hi

Just a few pics of the progress of my next P-47 "Lizzy". Not truly scale but it's not intended for any contest, just for fun flying.

The nose art has been layed up into the cowl and after a few trials of different methods we found that using an inkjet printer onto fine cotton (500 thread count white pillow case) worked pretty well. The ink doesn't run when it comes into contact with the epoxy and the cloth wets out and is conforbable. We masked off the circle for the picture into the cowl and painted the other colours first leaving a blank circle. The printed cloth was fitted into the circle, wetted out with resin then the normal layup process of the cowl continued. It's not perfect but after 3 attempts using different materials including water colour paper which didn't conform and left a big air bubble, this one will fly!
She just needs a rudder and elevator and some undercarriage and she's ready for a taxi run. That will be in the next week or so.

cheers
Patti

fokke

Hello Patti , do you have some update for the topic ?
I try to see your website but the web do not work