Hi,

Come join my adventures of my first CMP plane assembly I choose the CMP P-26. Planning to use an RCV 91CD four stoke. This will be slow building, because I'm in the middle of flying season, but I'm planning to do a least doing one thing a night on the plane. Overall, my first impressions are favorable. The plane was well packed and the covering was not wrinkled. The fuse and cowl are beautifully done. Below is a few pictures that I took tonight. The only thing I did tonight was install hinges on the right wing. I replaced their CA hinges with Great Planes CA hinges.

Let me have your comments..

Dave

I had one a while back, and it flew fine, but the landing gear were so week that the wheels would rub on the back of the wheelpants and cause it to nose over on almost every landing. Also the welds gave out after 3 flights. This Caused a LOT of broken pants and engine cowls. Beef up the landing gear. Or perhaps the newer kits have better gear in them. I hope so. Beutiful bird, lots of fun at the fields. thanks for the build along. Jeff

Finish installing the hinges on both wings and started the aileron servos. I’m using two JR 517 servos. The servos covers are plastic. Used five minute epoxy and the screws mentioned in the instructions to hold the servo blocks to the plastic. I did notice I will to use long servo arms. The picture below shows one cover completed and the other ready to go.

I've been looking at the same kit at my lhs. I'd like to put a os91fs in it. I'll be watching your build up.
Mark

Antique_ope,

No problem, I'm using this kit as a test for me. I never assembled a CMP plane or used an RCV 91CD. I've read horror stories about CMP planes, but I always like the P-26 and CMP was the only company other then a kit cutter that offered one. As for the RCV 91CD, I heard great things so I want to try one for my self. As for looking ahead, I'm going to either make or purchase an elevator joiner wire, I don't want to use a Y pushrod for the elevator. If you have questions just ask.

Dave

OK thanks, I've read about the landing gear blocks. I wonder if you could drill dowel holes through them and epoxy some dowels to make them stronger. Maybe even move the blocks forward to put the center of the wheel at the leading edge of the wing.

Antique_opa,

The wing is made of foam and covered with 1/16 balsa. So moving the landing blocks would be difficult. To make them stronger, I'm going to soak them with foam safe CA. Also, I found out the covering is a low-temp. The pictures attached are of the aileron covers with their servos attached and the other two is the right wing with the hole drilled in the top for the servo wire and the servo mounted in the wing. One concern I have is the aileron cover is screwed into the 1/16 balsa sheet. I think I will fill the hole with foam CA for a little extra bit.

Dave

Folks,

Time for another update, I have been able to glue the wings together. But, when it came to mounting the wing to the fuse the picture directions were less then desirable. First, there is no hole in fuse for the leading edge dowel. Second, they don't give any measurements for the dowel. Third, I was missing my dowel in the kit. It was time to fall back on my 20+ years of modeling building experience. Starting with a 1/16 drill bit I begin drilling a hole in the middle of the wing to mount a 5/16 dowel. Once I got the whole drilled in the wing I cut a length of 5/16 dowel to glue in the center. I made my dowel 2 inches in length and marked it so 3/4 would protrude out. I then cut a smaller piece of dowel and pushed into the hole so only about 1/16 was visible. Next I placed the wing on the fuse and centered it. By leaving a little bit of the dowel exposed I was able to determine where to drill the 5/16 hole in the fuse. After the front dowel process was completed it was time for the hold down bolts. Again I had to use my experience, CMP installed "plywood" plates on the inside of the fuse to support t-nuts. After determining the center of the plates I drilled holes from the bottom of the wing through to the fuse and into the plates. But, instead of using t-nuts, I tapped the holes for 1/4 X 20 bolts.
The pictures attached show the wing mounted to the fuse. Next adventure will be the installation of the stab. Let me know if you have any questions

Any more updates? I'm still sitting on the fence, cant make up my mind to buy one or not.

Antique_opa,

Been busy flying, so I haven't made much progress. I did get the tail feathers mounted and strated to breakin the 91CD engine. I will post some pictures and update tomorrow.

Dave

I always loved the look of this airplane and its been on my radar for some time. Would go great with my P-6 Hawk

You build looks good so far, look forward to more reports

I went to my LHS today and bought the nib p-26. Its the same one you have. I'll check it out tonite.

Hi Guys,
The landing gear fix is possible, but you will need to remake it entirely.
The main problem is that the original gear design in the kit does not absorb any shock, but transmits it right into the wings, causing erosion of the mounting holes.
I redesigned mine to allow the gear to "torque" and absorb some of the shock as you can see in the attachment. I am no artist, but I hope the drawing gives you the general "drift" of the science.
The other problem I faced was that the slots for mounting the wire were different on each wing. That did not help and my 1st attempt was a failure. Had to re do it and carefully measure each side and bend and cut to measure.
Overall, the kit looks great, flies o.k. but needs some getting used to. It is a Warbird, not a general Sports Model. Landings need to be "hot" because that big blunt cowl acts like a flying brick when you slow down, and there in lies the problem with a weak undercart.
Quality wise, the little things like the lack of uniformity of the landing gear wire slots, the small quality things like what pdansalvish is finding, bits missing from the kit etc (mine was missing the cockpit windscreen and the flying wire) are a turn off for me from going with this manufacturer (CMP) again. (Not even VMAR gives you those issues.)
It was marketed in the USA by "Giant Scale Planes" at one time. I am not sure who markets it there now.

N.B. I used plastic covered wire fishing line for the flying wires, also fishing traces in lieu of turnbuckles (easier to unfasten when removing the wing from the fuselage) and did NOT mount the ones on the tail, simply because the real thing never had any wires or bracing on the tail anyway.

Hi folks,

Sorry it’s been awhile but I finally have a bunch pictures to show. The first two pictures are the elevators when mounted to the stab. This first picture shows the elevators extend past the stab about 1/4. I had to "peel" the covering on the tips and sand them down to size. Once done, I re-ironed the covering. The stab is centered on the fuse; CMP just made the elevators too long. Also, I made an elevator joiner wire so I wouldn't have to use a "Y" connection. I painted the engine and did the initial cutouts for cooling. I did found the silver paint peeled. I might have to repaint the sliver. Also, CMP provided a wooded cowl ring. I'm painting it white before mounting it into the cowl. Otherwise, the wood would not be protected from fuel. The other pictures are the pushrods. The pushrods seemed to be made of carbon fiber tubing. But, I'm going to use Dave Brown pushrods instead. I've started to break-in the 91CD. So, until next time, take care and keep the questions and comments coming.

Dave

Dave, My kit looks great. The elevators fit on mine. I'm going to make a set of landing gear. The ones in the kit look weak. A plane this size needs 3/16 gear. I'm also going to move it forward and larger wheels. The yellow covering is kind of transparent. I might have to recover it anyway when I fix the landing gear. Does anyone know where I can find 3-views of the p-26? I'd like to make it look a little more scale.
Mark

Good thread here. Interested in the P26 and the RCV engine, so I'll follow along if you don't mind.
Al

I bought the CMP P26 from Giant Scale Models when this plane was first imported into the USA about three or four years ago. I did not have any problems building it as shown in the so called "construction book" The instructions were no better nor worse than what you get with most any of the Chinese ARF's. It just takes a bit of time to understand what they are trying to tell you to do. Pre-reading the manual a couple of times helps. I remember that the instruction book for the P26 showed a different type of arrangement for the L/gear mounting, with only a single wire mounting block. The updated version, which was on the plane I had and looks like on the plane that Pdansalvish is building, has two mounting blocks that accept a front and back wire strut. This was not particularly clear in the book. It seemed like the book indicated the twin wire system but all of the pictures and diagrams show a single setup. It was fairly easy to sort out though. I used the split pushrod set up for the stab and haven't experienced any problems. There seemed to be a lot of strange and unusual hardware left over and I believe most of it had something to do with the flying and landing wires. I did not use their servo arm push rod couplers nor most of the wheel collars. The clevises did not look very good either. I am using the original sized wheels and they seem to work well. I did try larger wheels, but they cracked the wheel pants because of clearance problems. I have well over 200 flights on the plane at this time and it flies quite well. I am using a very old, but rebuilt, OS FS90 and it has plenty of power with JR equipment for controls. Landing speed is fast as indictated by Woody 51. I also believe that the cowl acts as a massive air brake. The plane seems to quit flying at about a foot above the ground and you had better be ready for UP elevator to keep the the nose from skidding. It will not flair in. I have not had any problems with the gear pulling out or tweeking the mounts yet. There are a few minor problems. I found that the sheeting on the wing to be at bit soft and it is easy to crack it if not handled carefully. The mounting points for the screws for the wheel pants and aileron servo covers do go into balsa (soft)and need the holes to be CA'ed or the screws will come out. Even when they are CA'ed the screws still tend to come loose and disappear. I end up epoxing the wheel pant to the wing, and hope I won't have to remove them. Also the screws that go into the fuselage for the flying wire connectors will come loose or pull out unless they are backed by small squares of 1/8 ply inside the fuse. The instructions showed that some of them were supposed to be this way, but not all. A better or stronger windscreen needs to be devised. Every time the plane turns turtle or you are mounting the wing and are not careful, the windscreen will break. It is very important that you use the secondary plywood ring the the dummy engine mounts to. It needs to be well glued to the inside of the cowl. This ring supports the cowl from becoming egg shaped and breaking when ever you happen to make a "rough" landing and it noses over. The cowl takes the brunt of this and will skid along on it and cause damage. The plywood inner ring keeps the cowl from crushing. I learned this the hard way. Originally I did not install the ring, thinking it would effect cooling efficeincy. Needless to say the cowl was not looking to good after a while. The plane does need a lot of nose weight to balance properly. I'm not sure how much more "scale" stuff you would want to add, unless you really enjoy doing such things. As far as entering the plane into a scale contest, the proportions are wrong as compared to the full scale. The wings are sized wrong. I'm sure this was done to help with flying characteristics. It looks very good in the air and is very colourful. You will enjoy flying the plane and other than a little bit of landing tweeks, it is very predictable and will do most of the common aerobatics without a problem. I hope this info helps in some way.
Curt

Squadron Signal Books have an edition on the P26. It does have line drawings inside showing the position of panel lines etc, but as triflyer says, what it will also show is just how far removed from scale this model actually is. Stand Off Scale would be a better description.
The 2 most noticeable differences are the depth of the cowl (or Townend Ring as it is referred to in the Squadron Signal book) and the spacing of the main undercarriage.
As for the screws to hold the "bits" on. Try nylon screws instead of the metal self tappers. You will have to drill and tap into a small piece of plywood underneath, but nylon will not vibrate out (the screw actually stretches under load and locks into place.)

Thanks for the info. I'm not wanting to make the p-26 true scale. I have 3-views of the real plane. This kit is no where close. I'm thinking about adding landing gear blocks in front of the original ones. That way the wheel pants and gear will be more toward the leading edge of the wing. I'm wanting to find pics of a full scale for the markings and placement of them.
Also the p-26 didnt have flying wires on the tail. When you built yours did you use them? I saw a post about useing windshield wiper metal strips for the wing supports. I'm looking in to that.
Thanks
Mark

I did use the wires on the tail thinking that it needed the support. I realize now that they really weren't needed and I would not use them if I was to do this again. I used the Aerofax Minigraph 8 (stock #0208), "Boeing P-26 & Variants" by Peter Bowers, book for location of markings. I bought this book about 25 years ago and I am not sure it is in print anymore. It was distributed by Motorbooks International, located at that time in Osceola Wis. Phone # in 1984 was 715-294-2090.
Curt

Dave,

I have been following your thread. I'm not particularly interested in building the plane you are talking about but I did see that you are gonna use an RCV 91CD. I have one of those engines and just to make you feel better it is really, really good. It does take some time for breakin though. I ran about 3/4 of a gallon thru it before I put it on a plane (a 60 size Sig Twist). Breakin will continue from that point until you get 8-10 10minute flights. At that point you can get it to idle very good at around 2000rpm. It does like 15% nitro but will run well on 10%. I have not mounted it inverted so cannot say from experience how it would run mounted that way. The glow plug is mounted on the side (why am I telling you this? you have one to look at) which makes me believe it would run good. So, there is my .02 cents worth.

sonnytex