Well I was considering getting one of these but have never had an arf from modeltech. I was wondering what the quality was. Building, flying and overall impressions.

They have this plane listed for $199 in stock and thought It would be a nice addition. They also have a 60 size spitfire and p-40 . It looks a though a few mods would be in order but the p-47 looks good. Saito 100 for power. Any thoughts on these? Online manual is a nice preview.

Check it out
http://www.hobbypeople.net/gallery/123745.asp

Dave

Come on now, I can't believe no one has a modeltech arf. Guess I"ll just order the plane and be the first.

Dave

I have a Modeltech ME109. It's built well but they used shelf paper covering. Flies great and is veerrryy fast with a ST51. I would say it rates a 7.5 of a possible 10.

My LHS called Friday to let me know they had the MT P-47 in. I had told the owner I was interested. I went down and opened it up and it all looks like quality stuff. I passed on it though only because I was busy putting the finishing touches on the UCD3D I bought from them Thursday.

According to Hobby People the covering is real iron on type. Didn't say witch brand though. I went ahead and ordered one, they have a deal on shipping that ends tomorrow the 17th--3.99 ups ground. Should have it later this week and will post pics of it when it arrives if anyone cares.

Dave

I have been looking at this plane for a while, and I finally ordered it and it just come to the door about a hour ago. I also would like to know if anybody out there has had any experience with this plane. It looks like fairly good quality at first glance. Let us know if anyone has any comments.

I had a posting about a month ago and not a single response so I didn't buy one. I'm looking for a first warbird for my 12 year old. Please let me know how this plane rates.

I to have been looking at that P-47 for awhile, bit while it was on backorder I started on a couple other projects...

I HAVE NOT seen the P-47 but my Dad just bought a Modeltech Piper Cub and It seems to be a quality ARF. The covering is ULTRACOAT, and it had no wrinkles or bubbles out of the box..

My .02 on the covering, keep us posted y'all!

james

Hi Guys,

I received mine last Friday. On first inspection it looks good, real good. Well packed, no shipping damage. Covering looks first rate. Build seems strong and light. I haven't started on it yet because I don't have the engine (Saito 100) or flight pack yet.

I haven't decide how to mount the engine yet either. 90 degrees out the side, at a 45 down or inverted to keep the engine hidden. Any thoughts?

I had the .40 version of the P-47. I installed retracts and used an OS .70 Surpass. Out of the box it needed a lot of Heat gun TLC to get all the wrinkles out. The firewall must have had some up thrust in it as I had to shim the engine using down thrust to make the plane fly straight and level. The combo was awesome. It flew well and landed like a warbird should. (not a floater) I sure got a lot of attention at the field when I flew it. I saw the larger P-47 in the catalog and was thinking it would be fun to have, but I have too many planes now.
Good luck with it and if you need any more info on mine let me know.

I'm on the edge on buying this plane. I looked at Sheldon Hobbies and I think they have this one for $179.99. Am I right on this? I know Hobby People have it for $199.

Hey autopilot
You can check and see if sheldon has it in stock, two weeks ago they told me it was on backorder. I looked it over pretty good and I think it looks as to be good quality.

That is blasphemous. You can NEVER have too many planes!

AMEN to that!

Jerry

Got it, get it!

I would mount the engine inverted to keep it inside the elongated cowl. The plane would look like crap if you mount the engine sideway or at a 45° angle with the head sticking out. The cowl is big enough to house a nice four stroke engine.

I have the Model Tech 46 size P-51D. The covering is pretty good. However, the plane has some fitment issues.

Flying buddy and I have had a number of ModelTech ARF's and have been favorably impressed with them all. Big DragonLady is still one of our all time favorite planes and we're hoping they come out with them again. Just got the MT Giles Mon and haven't started on it yet (waiting for the Saito 100 to get here) but we're still impressed with MT quality.

yes, they are supposed to be coming back out with the Dragon Lady

Well, the brown airplane truck showed up today but unfortunately I was headed out the door for work. I went ahead and took a quick look inside. This plane is covered very well with not a single wrinkle or bubble.
The tail surfaces are either fully sheeted with thick balsa or made from a solid block. They are very tough and hefty. In fact the entire plane looks well built. The rear hatch for the steerable tail wheel looks large enough for the small robart retract to fit.
Wings looked to be good also.
The cowl and belly pan are made from somewhat stout(compared to others)fiberglass. The cowl looks like it might completely enclose a saito 100 but we'll see. Also includes a thick manual. About the only thing I didn't like was the sight a hot melt glue. So I would think it would be wise to go over it with ca.
This is just what I noticed after tearing through the box quickly before having to leave. I will go over it more tomorrow and post some pics along with a few of assembly as I go along. First impression of weight; looks as if it may hit the 8lb mark easily. Saito 120 may be a better choice.
I will weigh everything included in the box on my digital postal scale and let you know.

Dave

Hello to all,

Just got my Modeltech P-47 in the air yesterday, and it flew great. Powered by an O.S. 1.20, the plane only took about 20 feet to get off the ground. The added weight of the larger engine kept me from having to add lead for nose weight. The plane balanced perfectly with the 1.20 on the nose. It looked great flying by with the retracts up. The landing characteristics are phenominal. It will come in slowly, and never attempt to stall or drop a wing. I give this plane an A+ for flight characteristics.


Now for the kicker, on my second landing, I landed in the grass instead of on the asphalt runway.Why?, because the wind was gusting to around 20 MPH with crosswinds, so I pretty much tried to get as close to the asphalt as possible. As soon as I touched down onto the grass, the right gear just curled under. After inspecting the damage, I noticed that the gear mounting blocks were glued in with a small amount of wood/hot glue. And, the blocks were glued to balsa! Now, I'm no expert builder, but I would think that the gear "should" come out when the blocks are installed like that. Overall, the damage was minimal and will only take an hour or so to fix.

Why did Modeltech use such small wheels on this plane? Unless you use the fixed gear, you've got to use the small wheels. It seems that they would have put larger ones on the plane, so that even people who used the retracts, could fly off of grass with ease. I can see that a plane with the supplied wheels has no place on a grass runway, and the gear is probably going to come out.

Overall, I give the Modeltech P-47 an "A". It flies great, lands smoothly, and looks great in the air and on the ground. It's just those small wheels and weakly-mounted gear mount blocks.

Give me your input on this bird,

John

Hi All!

I have built two of the Model Tech P-47 ARFs...one for me and one for a friend, "Rat Ear". The tail feathers were stripped and recovered with white Monokote & red stripes like a squadron that flew in Italy during WWII. We drew up the nose art, graphics & numbers then a local company printed & cut them out. By the way, Rat was born in '57 and I was born in '51, so that was the numbers we used on our Jugs.

We used Saito 91 engines inverted with Slimline Pitts mufflers which allowed the cowl to remain uncut except for the holes for the mounting screws and two holes to enable the carb to be adjusted. Onboard glow drivers were used and I installed a Robart retractable tailwheel in mine. Of course, my friend is upset with that!

The Saitos haul the Jugs around just fine and we did not have to add any weight to get them balanced. The Saito with the Slimline inverted Pitts mufflers put out a nice, deep, throaty sound that is a lot better than the stock mufflers. These T'Bolts are flown in formation and look great on a low fly-by!

Smooth Landings,

Jake

I 've had 5 flights on mine and all were fine. Well sort of. I run my engines inverted. I have 3 engines inverted. two are OS 1.08s and one is a BGX 3500. The main thing here is to lower that tank at or below the carb line or your going to have problems. I decided to leave it on the P-47 to see how it would run and it was not good.
So I did some carving and such and lowered the tank and all was fine and ran like a top.
I'm using the standard retracts and Kavan wheels. Reason for Kavans is the hard plastic allows the plane to slide when you run out of runway without that bad wheel hopping which in turn rip out the gear.
I also slopped a lot of epoxy inside the retract mounts. I do this on all my planes and those babys hold up great. Nice plane

I fly off grass so any advice will be appreciated

so do i...although i have the .40 size model....but i was/am worried about the gear... it is not the spring loaded type...i am using fixed gear...i did however, go for a larger diameter/width tyre...

anyone else fly the 40 off a grass strip?

cheers..