I have a pilot Twin Ace kit that I started building in 1986 and finally completed in Feb of 2002. Starting on it and then finally finishing the kit is a very long story.

I paid $100.00 for mine back then, of course not knowing that the plans were in Japanese, then translated to German, and then translated into broken English. I guess that may have played a part in taking so long to finish it.

I would love to share it with any of you if are still interested. I am still flying it today. I used O.S. 25FX engines on mine. I use "Top Flight" 9 x 5 power point props on mine and the spinners are Carl Goldberg. I actually purshased 2 red and 2 white spinners so they would look like the meatballs on the plane. I used Dave Brown Lite wheels, which come in very handy slowing the model down and keeping it on the runway...

I was originally going to use O.S. 25 FSR ABC engines on it in 1986, but by the time I finished building the model they were long gone. It's just as well as it turned out because I need every bit of horsepower to get it off the ground.

Since I had to use the 25FX engines, I did away with the plastic engine cowls and built up by own soft balsa blocks around the hardrails and did a lot of sanding to shape the nose of each nacell. Mounting the engines inverted does hide a lot and makes the model look real nice...

I have very unique 7 and 1/2 ounce gas tanks that came out of a CMP de Havilland Mosquito kit that are octagonally shaped and just barely squeeze into place.

I get a good 6 minutes of flight time and can stretch it to 7 minutes using a timer.

Since the kit was Japnese, I just went with that theme and made it look like a twin engine fighter. It is not scale to anything that Japan flew in WW II but I have been told that parts of it look like prototypes that were never completed. It flies very close to, if not over, 100 mph and looks really nice in the sky. I covered mine with white "World Tex" Iron-on fabric and then sprayed the model with standard cans of dove gray, and hunter green Rustoleum spraypaint. The model is a little over 5 pounds and you do need to keep the speed up on her when landing, but it does fly really well.

I had an issue with wide gaps in the control surfaces and could not seal them using standard films that were availble because it would not stick to the paint. I ended up using 1/8 inch red shrink tubing and gluing one side of each piece of shrink into the control surface gaps using a toothpick and "RC 56" canopy glue. When the gap closes with movment of the control surface, the shrink tubing goes flat and doesn't bind the surface. When you go back to neutral, the tubing expands again, keeping the surface sealed...

The photos can be blown up and you can see the red shrink tubing in the control surfaces

I used red because I did not want the sun to actually Shrink the tubing. My model was very difficult to fly on it's maiden because of the gaps. After over 9 years now, the shrink tubing is still working...

I have been flying my twin in our opening act of "Pearl Harber" with the Greater Cincinnati Radio Control Club's annual flying Circus since 2003. In 2009 I became the Squadron Leader and set the tone for the other 10 to 15 fighters that are with me when we recreate that part of history in our annual Air show. I just had it out on the 5th of October and a buddy of mine got some really nice video that I will be putting on Youtube very soon. In the mean time, I will try and find a small video that I know is someplace on RC universe that was shot on a Camera Phone back in July of 2007 and add it to the forum....

David