Hi all, A few weeks ago Polk Hobbies was selling off all of their ARF planes for $25.00
I got a C-47 and a DR1 and they are good size planes. The C-47 has a 72 inch wing and the DR1 is a 40 inch wing. Not a bad deal for 25 bucks each. The bad news is they are all sold out of ARF planes. Well flew my C-47 last Saturday and it fly's very nice. Did it up with 2 Atlas 2915/08 motors that are 1710Kv. 2-50 amp ESC's and a UBEC to power the 4 servo's and 2-APC 8x6E props. Readings on the motors are 675 watts at 71 amps total for both motors. I did have to mod the motor mounts a bit to make them fit. Not that hard just a bit of sanding off the inside of the motor mount rails so they would not rub. As you can see in the Pic's I mounted the ESC right on top of the nacelles so they stay nice and cool. I just cut out the size of the ESC's and put a small piece of control rod under them to keep them in place. Also zip tied the wires so they would not rub on the motors. I did not change the springs in the landing gears as it's only a 5 lb plane and if you land it right it won't bounce on you anyway. I did add wing and fuselage lights and also have landing lights that I can turn on and off from my transmitter. I also cut a hatch at the bottom front of the plane to make it easy to get to the battery's. The decals don't stick to the body of the plane that well so I did not add the back stripes. Might paint them on later. The wing stripes go on good but do tend to lift after a bit so I used some clear packing tape on the ends of the decals. The only glue I used to put it together was slow CA on the screws to hold the tail in place other than that no glue is needed on the plane. As for battery's I run 2-3 cell 30C 2200 packs in parallel and get about 7min flight time without hitting LVC. I also run 2-3 cell 30C 2870 packs and get about 8 to 10 min. I used all the stock hardware even the wood push rods I just added some heat shrink tubing over the ends were they were CA on to the metal rods. As for servo's I used 2- standard size Airtronics servo's for the rudder and elevator and 2-Cirrus CS-30BB servo's for the wings. I did not glue the wings together I just used clear packing tape as per the book works just fine. Now as far as the CG goes it was right on the money as per the book for me. I did not have to add any weight to the plane. I left the foam in the nose and cut out some of it to fit the 2 3-cell packs. I also have a 9 volt battery in the nose for the wing lights. I also did not mod the tail wheel it is free wheeling as the rudder is more than enough too steer the plane. I did cut away some of the plastic by the top wheel collar to make it turn easier. Now as for flying I fly at a grass field and with this set up the C-47 will take off in about 10 feet if I hit the power full on from the start. But I like too make it roll out nice and slow to make it look just like the real thing. It will do inside loops and also do outside loops and rolls very nice. It fly's inverted just fine and make sure you keep some power on in your turns. It lands just fine but I might add larger wheels because on a grass field it will stop real short not much roll out with the stock wheels. Other than that it's a great flying plane.
Keep em flying
raido56/ Herb