rocketboy8690

Is it possible to convert a free flight Guillows glow kit to an RC Electric? Im really thinking about it.

Matt Kirsch

My Feedback: (21)

Yes.

What kit are you thinking of converting? The larger kits make decent conversions, but the smaller kits are too small and built too heavily to take the extra weight of a power system and radio. A friend of mine built a 21" span Piper Cherokee with GWS Pico gear. Came out at 3.4 ounces, for a wing loading of something like 30oz per square foot. On something that tiny, 10oz per square foot is heavy...

Depending on the kit you get, you may need to cut all the parts out of lightweight balsa. Guillows has a reputation for cutting their kits out of rock-hard heavy "balsa."

rocketboy8690

A Guillows F4U-4 Corsair.

Red_Bar0n

Finally i'm not alone!
I have the same kit and i'm thinking of doing the same thing i really want to know!

the only thing is i'm a Newbie at R/C planes.

Red_Bar0n

Are u sure i'm in the process of building my kit and it feels pretty light, although all the pieces seems to be made from different balsa wood.

Mike Taylor

My Feedback: (1)

Guillows models are notoriously heavy. Many people feel they are not 'flying' models at all. I do believe that they fly. I built a bunch as a kid and they flew, even with crumby rubber. There are a number of people who have done successful guillows conversions. The secret is 1) a large enough model (biplanes are a good choice), 2) light enough gear. For option 2) you really need to consider lighter radios than the GWS stuff and sub-micro servos. Gear like the Cirrus MJ will work at a 10 gram flying weight for RX, ESC and 2 servos, and LiPolys are a must. The MJ ESC is rated at 5 amps and can give you a lot of motor options.

Other brands of kits build lighter to begin with and may offer better choices for conversion to R/C. Models meant for FF are always good candidates...

I really like Dave Cowell's models (DPCModels at http://www.dpcmodels.homestead.com/ for beautifully laser-cut WWI kits of normal and unusual subjects). His models are about 18" WS and the biplanes finsih out at 2 ounces or less, including radio, motor and batteries. Cost is the same or less than Guillows of comparable airplane kits.

Dave Diels (Diels Engineering at http://pageproducer.acninc.net/dielsengr/index.html) produces very nice, flyable kits of golden age and WWII (and later) subjects. His are print-wood and require cutting, but the planes are meant to fly. There is a FF cook-up of some of his kits going on over at the Yahoo FF Cookup group area (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ffcookup/) and some very nice models are being produced.

Both the above makers provide good wood which you can use to make a reasonably rugged plane without the furniture grade wood often found in Guillows models.

Dumas Products' (http://www.dumasproducts.com/cgi-bin/dumas.storefront) kits are also good fliers, but the wood is sometimes on the light side for a model conversion made harder wood may need to be substituted in some places.

In any case, make the lightest model airframe you can manage. Put away the CA and wood glue and get some 'Super Phatic' glue. It is light, strong and goes a long way. It is like thin white glue, but it is made without all the heavy filler that normally goes into carpenter's type glues (Titebond, Elmer's, etc.). Dope, especially colored dope, adds a LOT of weight. Some of the covering films, like RA MicroLite, are lighter, stronger and more tear-resistant than doped tissue. Both of these are available from Dave Lewis at Homefly (http://www.homefly.com/). Here is a chart of typical covering material weights: http://www.homefly.com/reference/mylar.htm

Red_Bar0n

Thanks for all the advice i found it very informative.
Everyone i've askes so far about this subject have told me the same thing "Guillow Kits are too heavy" or something close to that so i've decided to just finish the kit and keep it as a display model however i wont cover it i will just finish the frame and hang it up on my ceiling for now.

Thanks for the tips on the Dave Cowell website i really like that, when i get better at R/C planes i'm definitely gonna get that Fokker DR. lol

Mike Taylor

My Feedback: (1)

Dave does make some nice kits. He doesn't crank out a batch, he cuts and assembles each kit when it is ordered. He also takes all the builders comments and integrates them into future kits (CAD is a wonderful thing). When you get a kit, it contains all the latest updates. The plane I used for my avatar is one of his models. Here's a closer look...

Tim Wolff

My Feedback: (4)

Problem with model Corsairs is that they fly like Corsairs

That said, I have a Dumas walnut scale Corsair kit in the "pile"...someday.

E-Challenged

Conversion of small stick and tissue rubber kits is a popular subject in many threads on E-Zone's Scale Modeling section. I have converted the Guillows PT17 with fairly good results but would not recommend this kind of project to a newish modeler. There are a number of easy to build laser-cut scale kits that are a little larger with more wing area and ability to carry the weight of common micro R/C gear, and lightweight motor and battery packs with good stable survivable flight performance.
Examples: Mountain Models Cessna 180, Dumas 35" w/s Waco SRE. Another good idea is to fly some GWS foam ARF models like the GWS Tiger Moth and then the WWII models ( they have a Corsair) before you jump into balsa electric scale kits.

Nitrocharged

I've converted the Guillows 20" DR1 to r/c electric successfully. It was heavy but strapping a cd-rom motor to it sorted it right out!

Glacier Girl

My Feedback: (4)

Red BARon,
If you're a newbie to flight the last thing you want to be starting out with is a "stick and tissue"
plane. You're better off with something like an RTF slow stick or a foamy model. Much more forgiving.
Don't waste your time building a plane that will crush itself and your hopes on it's first not so perfect landing. Wait till you have some air time before trying this.
But on that note, I did the P38 Lightning, Needed a looooooong runway for take off, and as long as it was going WOT it would fly, something about the way Guillows designs the wing, more so for esthetic's, then for flight. And yes you need to make the plane as light as possible, and as little drag as possible.
Welcome to the Addiction.
BJ

nukem419

I am currently assembling a guillow's F6F-3 hell cat, after pining down the wings, and taking a few measurements i attempted to calculate the total wing lift using a close match to the airfoil design as the CL <effiency of the wing>. Yes, the kits are a bit heavy and you do need to alter the wing design slightly to reduce takeoff speed. I achieved this by changing the wing twist, and shifting the airfoil axis up slightly. I think it will work well, but it will also create a little bit more drag. NOTE: The main cause of drag on a object is not the leading edge, take much more care on the wing tips, and back edges of all flight surfaces, if the air does not mix right at these points you will get alot of "vortices" little swirlies that will drag down the plane. This is the first RC plan i have attempted to build, I decided not too use any of the landing gear parts that came with the kit, and am going to fabricate fully retractable landing gear for it <gear needs a little bit of shock absorbtion, origional design is too ridged>. also i felt that the flight control surfaces if assembled by plans would be restricted in there free range of motion, so i'm changing that too. yes, i am adding a little bit of weight but i believe i can overcome that with the right prop/ engine set up. this thing is going to scream

NateMan

I have a GWS tiger moth motor (IPS-a)... i think, a five amp GWS ESC, two Hitec HS-55 micro servos, a feather reciever and a NiMH battery pack. I was thinking about building a Guillows piper cub to convert or converting my Guillows P-47 to electric, is this a good idea or am I wasting my time?
Any input would be great, thanks,

Nate

OMG help me i am lost

we have a guillows giant size F6F-3 hellcat and we want to add build it so that it is free flying radio control and we need instructions to build it HELP!!!

the juicer

i have some guillows. That would be cool to turn it into an rc plane[8D]

pilot_UofD

Hey Flyers,

I'm new to pretty much everything here (RC Universe/RC Flying), however, I am not new to aviation. I have my private pilot license so I fly the real things. I am also not sure this is the correct way or forum to ask this question, but if this is the wrong area please direct me to the right folks.

I baught a Guillow Cessna Skyhawk 172 with a 36" wing span. I have done a lot of reading about building, converting, etc. I plan on converting this to an RC gas powered plane. I have most of the plane build and I am now in the process of getting an engine, radios before I can apply a skin.

If anyone has any information on what type of radio/micro servos I should use and any other information that would help me out...it would be most appreciated. Since I am new to this...and am not sure how to get my replys back from you all. If you want you may use my e-mail: [email protected]

Thanks for you help, and fly safe.

pilot_UofD

crashawk

here are some pics of a guillows arrow converted to 3 channell rc. used a lensrc 17t motor with cc thunderbird 9 controller, 2 cell etech 700 mah li-po and 1 blue bird 303 and one hitec servo with a blue bird receiver. flies great but a little on the fast side. mostly stock, only changes where lower spar material on wing and sheet tail surfaces. I would change all the spars in the wing if done again, the balsa crushes too easy and allows the wing to fold in a high g manuver.

Jason

sharpshooter223

im not sure how heavy the frame to the 172 is but i do suggest using micro light film if you havent allready covered it. and for a plane that small i would have to say a cox 0.49 or maybe if its light enough a cox 0.20. i would use a gws micro 4 ch reciever and the smallest servos that they sell. if you go with gas with that small of a plane you also wont be able to have a throttle but with a beginner that might be good so you can set it to a lower setting. for a battery if your using gas you wont need a huge one. i would suggest maybe a 4 cell aaa nimh. all you should do for servos though is two. one for elevator and one for rudder. all of these are just suggestions though. i havent worked to much with micro planes or anything but thats what i would do. you should check in with a local hobby shop or somebody else before doing anything. also if your a beginner to the hobby you might want to buy an electric rtf to learn to fly on before you spend money on this and maybe crash it. cause alot of people who do that end up just giving up the hobby completely.

sharpshooter223

i have also heared that guillows airfoils dont acctually creat lift for whatever reason. i heared that they are there only for decoration. it might be an idea to make your own wing that is lighter and known to creat lift and test the two designs out to see if this is true.

dynoflux

Just completed initial flights on 24" Guillows SE-5a 4 channels.[img][/img][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img]

dynoflux

Can not figure out how to attach images; please help!

gwong

My Feedback: (1)

Gents,

A friend converted a Guillows DR-1 to an RC Plane and flys great. I was inspired and decided to convert a Guillows Nieuport to RC.

This is my first Balsa kit ever and found the conversion not that difficult.

The setup is as follows,

Fieago 12mm BL motor 1208436 (4100kv)
GWS IPS A Gear Box
GWS 9x7 Prop
3 GWS Pico Servos for Aileron, Rudder and Elevator
CC10 ESC
Kokam 3S 640mah 15C Lipo
AUW about 8.9 oz...so if my math is correct...wing area is 127 sq in / 144 sq in = .88 sq ft.....8.9 oz / .88 = 10.11 oz/sq ft wing loading.

Hmmm could be a bit lighter I guess to keep her under 10 oz / sq ft of WL...but like I said it's my first balsa kit and a conversion attempt...I think I did okay....anyways.

It flies pretty good, needs a bit of tuning to get her to fly a bit more stable other than that, I really enjoyed the build and conversion.

The best part was learning what not to do when building a Balsa kit.....I took this experience and currently converting the Guillows Stearman PT-17.

Having said this...I think my next build will be a plane that is designed for RC Flight.

Cheers,

Gord.

kirknkatie

Inspite of the notion that the Guillows Corsair doesn't fly, I'm attempting to build it for electric RC flight as well. I'm using almost all Guillows balsa and I am modifying very little. The changes I have made are minor reinforcements, and a main spar in the wing. I've got the standard 4ch set up going in. (no flaps, no retracts) I plan on using the GWS pico servos(6.5g) because they are a little lighter than the HS-55's(7.8g) and can handle adequate voltage beter than some of the lighter servos (CS-5.4, 5.6g). I'm covering with "Ultracote" (as suggested by LHS) because it's relatively light, and still strong. The disclaimer is that you don't heat it up supertight because it will crush your wing. I'm also planning on using a LiPo battery pack, and I haven't decided on a motor yet, because I don't have a total weight. For those of you who have the model there are 3 different designs for the tail surfaces. 1) The fixed tail surface, that has an airfoil design. 2) The Scale display design, that has an airfoil and moveable parts. 3) The U control design, made up of 3/32 sheet of balsa with moveable parts. I chose option #3 due to it's light weight (although I was have a grand time assembling #2). After reading several reviews, tail weight is very important. As I stated earlier, I have ailerons, and the gull wing design poses some difficulty with installing torque rods to allow movement. I saw another post where a guy used cable (heavy) and a bellcrank to control the ailerons. I'm going to do this but tweak it a bit and use piano wire between the servo and bell crank to save on weight. For the landing gear I replaced the white nylon piece with 1/8" plywood for needed support, and I'll just attach my piano wire struts right to the plywood. If anywone is interested I'll attach pictures in the future.

Wez

Hi,

I´m building a 16,5" Guillows P-40 Warhawk for e-flight. I have been working on it for two years or so since I want to have retracts and flaps (yes I know, it´s a crazy idea). It took me about a year to develop the retracts since they have to be ultra-lightweight and since they have to turn around its axis 90 degrees while retracting... now I have a working prototype and I am currently building the final versions of the l.g. I will cover parts of the plane with 0.4mm balsa for strength and cover the whole plane with tissue. Since it will be quite heavy, it will probably be quite fast and demand relatively much power. I will probably install a miniature brushless motor and Kokam 360mAh 20C Lipos.

Andreas