DragonLines

My Feedback: (13)

Does anyone have a spare main landing gear for this plane? I picked one up at a club auction but it is missing the gear. Or can anyone point me to a place to get a replacement. Tried CMP but they never answered.

Twin_Flyer

My Feedback: (4)

Is China Model Products even around anymore?

What about a set from the Great Planes/Top Flight ARF edition? Maybe they would be close enough to get the job done?

DragonLines

My Feedback: (13)

CMP is still there. Customer service isn't.
I have been looking at the Top Flight set. May be my only choice at this point. I'm sure I can modify the plane to accept them.
Thanks

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

Check with these guys if you can give them some basic measurements they can custom make it.

http://www.tntlandinggear.com/welcom...ne_catalog.htm

DragonLines

My Feedback: (13)

Thank you I will check them out

fox02100

Quick message to say that I made the 1st flight today

80mm for cg is really stupid idea !
Plane has noise too heavy

2nd flight with around 90mm, better but still heavy noise

Very surprised to see 50 pages and not able to find the correct cg

I will let you know if I can improve it

fox02100

3rd flight with 100mm cg, much better !
Landing was easier
I am sure that next flight with 110mm will be better again ( I think that it will be the final setting )

Sorry to say but 80mm is completetly impossible to understand for me

HUNTERANDJEFF

Did you ever get main landing gear for your plane? I really think the Topflite ones will work. I have a set but The pants aren't the best.
J

HUNTERANDJEFF

My Ground up on my Cessna is complete. I started in February and finally got her finished in July for flying off the ground. I had to wait forever for the new hangar 9 5th scale floats to come out. Heck, they were on backorder for 6 months! I finally got them and after some serious mods, they look great and are very sturdy.

HUNTERANDJEFF

Here is the progress of the rebuild.
Here is how it started. This center piece was in terrible shape, the wingtips had to be removed and the china coat had to be removed. Pretty easy with a heat gun but those faux corrigations were very difficult to remove without breaking. Good thing I found about 5 bags of them at a rc swapmeet!

HUNTERANDJEFF

The corrigations took a ton of time to remove without breaking anything. I stripped the wings, sanded them with 320 and started covering. I used Ultracote by hangar 9. Monokote is not my friend any more lol. The slots that are cut into the covering are for the pin hinges. That was difficult too because the flaps and ailerons are in a pocket. I was not going to remove them!!

HUNTERANDJEFF

Here is the newly covered wing. On the wingtips, I wet sanded until I could not see any lines from the previous paint. That paint is SUPER Tough!!!! Laquer thinner or acetone will not lift it. Since it is fiberglass, I did not dare use a paint stripper. Just good ole elbow grease, wet sand, warm bucket of water and a sponge. Then I tacked and pained them with model master paints.

HUNTERANDJEFF

Next came the fuselage. The windows are totally ugly! It was caused from smoke entering the fuselage from the old crappy, heavy fugi 24cc I had in her. Ran good but wasn't very powerful. And at 4 pounds, it was just an anchor. The original cowl was really bad having 2 different engines adapted to it so it was discarded. In it's place, a new cowl from Topflite. This cowl was exact in the length but the width was too wide. I had to cut out the bottom for the engine to clear so that was just brought together and it fit like a glove. heck, it even had more detail than the last one.

HUNTERANDJEFF

Here she is after I installed the engine and was doing the cowl final. Believe it or not, I shoehorned a DLE 35ra in it! It fit like it belonged! Too bad I didn't get any pictures of that. The firewall was really mushy from a bunch of crappy landings due to unreliable engines and I mixed epoxy and fiberglass to beef up the back end of it. I wasn't worried about weight in the front end of this because the DLE engine is so light and these fiberglass CMP planes are always very tail heavy. But in the end, the cowl, and the spinner turned out great.

HUNTERANDJEFF

A couple of pictures. The first one is what I started with. The second pic is that I took some fiberglass struts from Topflite and used them. I don't really recommend that because it was a lousy fit but I really had no choice because the tabs broke off the original ones and well, you know the sellers of CMP, they have 0 product support. The black washer between the plane and the strut is neoprene.

HUNTERANDJEFF

Ok, here comes the fun part....NOT! Sand, Sand and more sanding. You have to sand ALL the lines out or it will show through the next paint! This paint is so tough!, did I mention how tough this paint is? Holy heck, it takes a lot to cut through it. I used wet dry 220 and then down to 320. I was very careful not to sand the back horzontal stab and rudder. I ended up scuffing the original china cote with a scotch brite and painted over it. The reason is because the paint would match better in the end.

HUNTERANDJEFF

I cleaned everything up from the sanding and here is my first cote of paint. I didn't use primer because of two reasons. 1, I was really trying not to put too much weight on this. 2, The underlying paint was impervious to any other paint, therefore no compatibility problems. I ended up with 3 coats of this white. Believe it or not, this paint is Ace appliance epoxy!! I've been using it for years and it is some awesome stuff! Not the rustoleum appliance paint (that stuff isn't as good).

HUNTERANDJEFF

Here are a couple more pics. I couldn't wait to get the wing on, just to see it! Also, I had to rebuild the rudder, the top of it was broken and I had to rebuild it. I covered it with ultracote and scuffed the crap out of it, then shot it with the paint. On the masking though, I could not mask anything over the covered pieces because the tape would just peel it off. Grrrrrrr! So I used Omni paints 2 part urethane clear and shot the whole thing with 3 coats then let it set for 2 days.

HUNTERANDJEFF

After the Urethane was all set up, I was able to mask my paint scheme. This paint scheme too me months to decide, I thought it was beautiful! Besides, it is very easy to see from a distance. The masking took hours!!
Doing one side was fairly easy but to do the other side exactly the same was the hard part. Everything was done by eye and a ruler. It wasn't perfect, but close!

HUNTERANDJEFF

I shot the maroon first. Because of the gold flake in it, it looks dull before the clear...
Then I shot the other smaller and different colors with my Omni/Vega airbrush.

HUNTERANDJEFF

Here it is after I got the other two colors on and removed the masking. This is before the final clear coat.

After this point, I had no pictures of the final assembly.

HUNTERANDJEFF

here she is almost completed with just a few things to do... 3 coats of Omni Urethane 2 part clear. The windows are now tinted. I used automotive tint on the side windows and airbrushed inky black on the back window. I tried topflite's windows but they didn't fit. Makes ya wonder who's model is really scale lol. I didn't build this to be a total scale model. I wanted something unique that not many other people had. It will not win any scale awards but I like it.
I did install a light kit on it. The landing light lenses were made from a $1.00 flashlight lens from walmart and fit great. The light kit and controller was from Mytrickrc.com I have mixed feelings about that lighting system...
The vertical stab light beacon was just a light from radio shack and the stobe on the bottom was from Maxx i think. It is super bright when it goes off. I molded and casted the lens that goes over it.

HUNTERANDJEFF

Weigh in time! Heavy but she is balanced and ready to go!
I did take her to the club and she flew great off the land. I thought at that weight, it would be a heavy pig and not very agile. I couldn't be more wrong. She is super fast and doesn't really like to slow down but will glide forever so the landings are sweet. So, patience on the landings are a must. I found that half flaps work the best for both flying around and for landing, but I only got 2 flights off the land before I did what comes next!!!

HUNTERANDJEFF

This is why I did this project! These are Hangar 9 1/5 scale floats They look great and there was quite a bit of fabrication to get them to fit right. I need to bring them back about an inch but I would have to make a plate at the attachment points or bend the ends of the gear to get them to work. They are designed for a 5th scale cub and a 182 cessna is a lot different. The side braces had to be built and fabricated out of new material to work. The end results are great, and the plane floated well. This winter, I will probably do that along with glassing, panel lines and rivets and matching paint...
I you all have any questions on this plane or this build feel free to email me at
[email protected]
J

HUNTERANDJEFF

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfFow02qmVA Here's the video. She flies very well.
[email protected]
J