Hi! Im building a guillows spitfire right now with the 28 inch wingspan. I have made servo controlable (still need servos really small servos any reccomendations?) ailerons, elevator and rudder. I would like to know which size engine to use (not electric) and is there someway I can control the throttle with the little gas engines? Also I would like to know if there is a website with plans on how to make retracts... if not i guess ill just find some other way. Oh and what should I use to cover my plane?
thanks!!!

Build your kit and put it on the shelf to look at. Yes some folks have made these small kits Radio controled but these are very experianced builders and flyers! Retracts? Not on so small a plane. Electric is a lot better chioce for such a small plane also. "Bigger is better" Easier to build and to fly. 6 foot wingspan is a nice size to learn with and you can use electric ,glo or gas. Graduate to smaller(harder to fly) planes after you learn to fly larger ones.

Flyboy, your message sounds like a lot of typical newbies to RC scale flying. A LOT of people only want to spend the money to have the !QUOT!perfect!QUOT! scale model without going through the basics first. There isn't a single fighter pilot alive that started out by flying the fighter he's (she's) famous for. THEY ALL STARTED OUT IN TRAINERS. Likewise in RC you NEED to start off with a trainer. Yes the Guillows airplanes have been successfully converted to RC some even with retracts. But YOU are wasting your time and money if you don't know how to fly RC already. YOU WILL End up with a crumpled mess of balsa wood and tissue! Look for a GWS slowstick, learn to fly that then move up to a GWS Spitfire. IF you can master those two then you can go back to the Guillows spitfire, and you can use the radio out of the GWS spit to fly it.

And you cover the Guillows kit with silkspan or tissue just like it says to in the kit!

Tom

the 28 inch span Guillows Spitfire... that's going to need to be kept LIGHT or its going to be a brick. Maximum I would do with off the shelf would be 3 channel elevator, ailerons and throttle, and it would be electric power. (a bit hard to throttle control a Cox .020 even with the gizmo that someone sells to do it.)

I'd use a rewound CD spindle motor (size and weight compares well to 3 quarters stacked on each other) and brushless ESC, and 2-cell Lithim batteries. and GWS "Naro" or Tower TS-5 servos. (just 2 servos) GWS's micro 4 ch RX or some other RX that barely covers a postage stamp.

Forget retracts at that scale. they will add too much weight. the retract mechanism an servo make the landing gear 3 times to 5 times as heavy as using wires and wood blocks for fixed gear.

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Since it is a FF model conversion... if the control throws are minimized... it actually can be used as a trainer. It would not be a great one (small and a bit fast for its size). FF models tend to level themselves out if left alone. That is the main idea behind a trainer design... it WANTS to fly straight.