tuchadwick59

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My name is Austin Chadwick and I am putting together the P-38 Yellow Aircraft. Actually I am just the owner, David Collins, accomplished builder of scale and full-size aircrafts, will be building the model.

This will be a promotional plane and will be very unique. We are starting the build thread here. This plane will be electric with two, counter-rotating motors (40cc eq.). The pallete scheme will be made of vynal with a Col. Robin Olds "Scat 2" Pallete with invasion stripes. The plane will come with a modified Benedini Sound System that will be out of this world. I am currently working with Thomas Benedini on becoming a distributor for his sound system and have put together very inexpensive and reasonable packages for all planes (Small, Medium, Large, Foam, etc). This P-38 will be a promotional plane for the large version of the new Benedini packages.

David Collins received the kit from Yellow today. Here are a few photos. He will keep me updated and hopefully i can get him on here so he can post himself.

Yellow Aircraft
http://www.yellowaircraft.com/props/p38.htm

Good luck to David, this will be a fantastic kit. I own the KMP P-38 (Very old model) and this will be much bigger and better.

Flybob54

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Construction is moving along with the speaker and battery locations finalized. The retracts have arrived and will be working on mounting them and setting up the gear doors, the doors will be opened and closed with 9gm servos 1 on each door and will be strong and reliable.

I will post pictures as I go along.

Skylake Models

tuchadwick59

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The Pallete schemes (I will let David explain the vynal direction for covering) will be the Col. Robin Olds' Scat II Pallete. However, we will include an aluminum finish like he had on the P-51 Scat 4 pallete.

tuchadwick59

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Here is video of the Benedini sound system on a Hangar 9 (60 size) corsair. This runs pretty simple with two, 3inch speakers and a 40w amp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77pwFeTsAI0

AC

tuchadwick59

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Here is the Benedini set up on the P-40. This has dual 4inch speakers in a box (We used the speaker box as the actual motor mount).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S2we...ature=youtu.be

AC

Chris Nicastro

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Has anyone sourced a low frequency 4 inch speaker?

To get the rich deep sounds you need to get below 60Hz where the real engines are like 32-35Hz and then couple that with your speaker boxes/motor mounts.

Ive been looking around and haven't come by anything suitable yet.

tuchadwick59

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Great question and you are exactly right. These motor sounds and those on the Benedini software are much more efficient at a very low frequency. There is a 4.5inch speaker that will get as low as 80Hz. This will be a very affordable and lightweight speaker that SonicBoom is putting in their packages. Also very inexpensive. And they will have them packaged with 2-channel 50w amps and 2-channel 100w amps along with the Benedini system (They will also have the Benedini mini TBS in the $100 range. 30% cheaper than Hobbyking with local shipping).

Flybob54

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Motivation is here in the form of Aerodrive 6374s nice looking motors ! It's funny I have several airplanes RTF that weigh less than one of these motors.

Flybob54

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The jet project in my shop is finished and shipped so the P-38 has moved to the front of the line. The motor boxes and motors have been installed and the spinners lined up perfectly with an even gap all around, I think that might be a first !

Flybob54

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Got the gear doors mounted and working smooth, careful measurments and Clecos really help with a difficult task. The quality of YA parts is second to none, the gear doors fit perfectly and open / close just right.

Flybob54

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Started on the cockpit as well, got the tubs mounted and it all comes out with 3 screws.

Greg Wright

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I have built several of the yellow aircraft p-38's in my time in the hobby with gas motors and i have thought about doing one with electric. If you could tell me what size these motors would be equal to in HP to a gas motor i would appreciate it. Also what kind of power system are you going to be running? Will it be like a 10s or 12s system. I would like to know.

tuchadwick59

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Thanks Greg. 

Chris Nicastro

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http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...ner_Motor.html

Here is the motor info. Looks like about 3.7hp max.

Im building a P-38 now for a friend and were installing a pair of DLE 35 RA's so about 4hp per for comparison.

At your estimated weight and wattage your looking at about 171W/lb, that should move out.

Update: Turnigy are claiming Nominal values not Peak.

Max Voltage is 50.4 not 44V
Max Watts is 4032 not 2750W if their Max Amps are true at 80A. Closer to 5.4hp per motor.

Their claim of 2750W is actually very low or just incorrect.

So with 8064W on this plane your max power is around 252W/lb! So do you plan to be the first to hover a P-38?! Lol

Greg Wright

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Thanks for the info Austin & Chris,
The last one that i built and owned was powered by two DA50's Turning a couple of 20x10 three blade props and it was and still is an absolute rocket ship. I never really was able to get an accurate reading on a radar gun but it was around 120mph is what we figured. It now belongs to a good friend of mine that works at Horizon Hobby so it is in good hands and should be around for a while.

tuchadwick59

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Thanks Chris. That's great stuff. David is an accomplished builder and he is doing a wonderful job. 

Chris Nicastro

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Oh yeah a pair of 50's would haul all the *****! Lol

No I havent started a build thread on this project, not sure if I want to. Im interested in seeing how this electric lightning turns out though.

Ron101

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Great build guys!

As a long time electric lover.... I have to ask why a hobby king motor of such a high end project?

I fly giant scale electrics on a regular basis and have great success in the 100's of flights with Hacker, AXI, Scorpion motors.... along with Castle Creation ESC (ICE 160 HV's) most using Thunder Power lipos. I have just seen to many Hobby King motors demag or there ESC fail.
I'm all for it on lower end projects but this is a big project.

Not to say you can't have success because much to my surpise most of the hobby king stuff seems to work,,,,, I would at the very least do a serious bench test on that motor,,,, which ESC are you planning? which ever it is I would also bench test it before the install. I've have seen a good amount of new builds get burned on the first run up. Once you have 5 to 10 get runs on the gear you can start to have a little more faith in the gear....

but until then I trust nothing that's just how I roll and I have a good track record (knock on wood)

tuchadwick59

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Thanks for the heads up Ron. 

Chris Nicastro

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Having been to the factories that make these motors, not Turnigy specifically that I know of, there are some things to look for to give you a clue or two about the quality of the build.
1) look at the winds on the stator and gently try to check if any of the winds are loose or damaged or poorly wound.
2) look at any soldering on either leads or a PC board or anything that was soldered to see how clean it is and if its a cold solder joint. The solder joints should be shiny and bright not dull or dirty looking.
3) examine the motor can for how its made, the bolt pattern evenly spaced, is the case concentric, are the vents machined cleanly and evenly - these details contribute to balance at high RPM.
4) what metal was used in the construction of the motor, is it soft aluminum? The screw threads are at risk here and the Chinese are notorius for cheap hardware such as undersized screws both in length and diameter for a given claimed screw type. Poor hardware and soft metal leads to failure.
5) the bearings should be smooth and tight and clean. There should be no play in the assembly

You can test the claimed KV by running the motors on a set DC voltage like 10V and use a tach to read the RPM. You should get 1930rpm for example give or take just watch for how the motor settles and read the RPM. The closer the motors are the better the quality of the production.

Demagging will happen to any motor its just the quality of the magnets and the motor design that will determine how the motor deals with the heat. If they used high temp magnets verses fairly standard magnets it will show quickly under load.

One thing that stands out to me is the physical size of these big OR motors. The higher quality German and Czech and US motors are smaller and provide comperable performance. This speaks to the quality of the magnets and materials used to reach a low price point but acheive a reasonable level of performance.

So by all means do your testing and qualify these motors rigorously. Im sure we are all curious if for the money its worth powering big scale war birds with these motors. I know Ive tested my fair share of motors direct from the factories, boxes of them, and more often than not they didnt pass my approval and required design or material updates to go to production.

tuchadwick59

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Thanks so much Chris. I really appreciate that.

ram3500-RCU

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Nice project. Subscribed.

70 ragtop

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Any progress??

I am rebuilding a wrecked yellow P-38 I picked up this spring, also going electric. Did a little testing with Tacon 160s on 12s in a 71" ESM FW190. Easily spun a 16x10 MA 3 blade prop at 11300 rpm in WOT flight. Started playing around with more pitch. Got up to an APC 20.5X14 cut down to 16" turning 9600 rpm. Pulling too much power, but it was fast. Like I said, was just testing different setups. Unfortunately, depth perception got me as I clipped the top of a tree turning on final, so no more testing. Back to working on the P-38

Would love to see how yours is progressing

Mike

tuchadwick59

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Thanks Mike. The Tacon Big Foot 160 are fantastic. I have one in a pica 1/5 spitfire. Turns a 21x10 3-blade prop. 12s set up. It is fantastic. So I may be converting the two aerodrives to the Tacon 160.

AC

tuchadwick59

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Got an update from David. He has completed and primed. It looks like a dream.