Originally Posted by
Jethead
George, forgive my ignorance, I see the beautiful and somewhat small F-4's on the white shelves in the background of the pics you posted in post # 2 pic # 13 of this thread.
Are these planes your kits, plastic models, what if anything are they powered with. They look very nice.
Thank you. Love this thread!
Thank you "Jethead", glad you are enjoying the thread.
NO, they are not my kit F-4's that I used to sell. They were 74" long and used a single Byron fan. They were awesome. I manufactured and sold over 1000 of them. And I have over 1000 flights with them over almost 20 years of attending 10 to 15 fan flys a year.
I think just about everyone who watches movies has seen one of my R/C F-4's. I built two of them for "Die Hard II" along with some other aircraft. And if you watch closely at the end of the movie, you will see me too.
And I give a gold star to anyone who can tell me what this aircraft is:
Photos of my kit F-4's
The one's you see in the back ground are my EDF F-4's. I do not like any EDF F-4 that is out on the market. Just too out of scale for me or too big.
I am not into this giant model aircraft craze. I do not want to haul a "Featherlight" trailer to the flying field and have aircraft that are too big for my shop.
I was two years developing my EDF F-4. My first was 45" long and had two fans from Hong Kong. When finished and tried to fly, I discovered these cheap fans had thrust, but not high enough tail pipe velocity to fly my F-4. Very disswapointed and it was not pretty in either of my two attempts.
I then decided to go back to my old school and fit a single fan in it. I used a 90MM fan.
I named this one "NO FUN". Who wants a EDF this size that flies at 130+ MPH and you spend the whole flight trying to keep it in viability range. It was scary. Even brought it to our club Fan Fly. It really impressed those turbine guys, but they didn't have to fly it. I sold it here on RC Universe.
Back to the drawing board. How big can I make a F-4 and still use a 90mm fan?
I like the 90mm because it is the largest fan one can get and still use a 6 cell battery and also get a 7 minute flight out of. Any fan bigger takes a monster amount of cells , a huge ESC, gives a very short flight time and cost a fortune.
My calculation came to 55". I actually wanted to make it 58" for 1" scale, but the overall proportions that size just didn't work.
So here I go again. Making a plug for a F-4. Just about one of the hardest aircraft to make there is with all those different shapes and angles. And the F-4 is not one that can be glassed off a plug. I have to make molds again.
Now I have only done this job about five times. I did my Kit F-4 three times, adding more detail and scale to it until I got it totally correct.
When finished I decided to make three F-4's at the same time because I had a couple fellow modelers who wanted to get in on this project.
I flew the first one before it was ever painted. No sense to do all that work until you have it tested out.
I want you to know it left the ground and I was amazed. I really nailed this one. This F-4 performed exactly like I wanted it to. Total amazing ability to do any maneuver asked of it, the speed I wanted it to fly, etc.etc.
I am five minutes into the flight and this HI-Max fan I have in it goes up in smoke. I had this happen once in my little F-4, but this time the motor seized and fried the ESC too. (I learned about BEC's from that flight)
I have lost radio and it was not pretty from there.
However all I lost was the left wing and part of the nose. Built a new left wing and grafted a front section onto the fuselage and I am ready to fly again.
And I went to "lander's" 90 mm fan. Now that's a fan. Complete 6 to 7 minute flights and it is almost cold when you land.
It did not work out with my fellow modelers who wanted in on this project. One scared the hell out of him on his first flight and the other never found any time to finish his. I wound up with both of them back. sold one for a small fortune.
So I have two now. The VMF-531 "Grey Ghost" has been flown many times now. My son wants it when I pass on, so I do not fly it anymore.
VMF-333 "Flying Shamrock" is the one I am flying now. I wish I had more time for it but other projects keep me busy so it doesn't get flown as much as I would love to.
I hope you still like them even though they are not big enough for you.
Now fellow modelers who are watching this thread: If these types of post are not wanted by you on this thread, please let me know.