warbirdfanatic

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Hi All,

First post in a good few years! I've recently acquired a 1/5th scale F16 in the Royal Netherlands paint scheme. Now, I got this jet cheap because it had a bad landing by the previous owner....

Cosmetically she's in good condition, various hairline cracks here and there, scuffs / hangar rash etc. Now, the damage:

• Nose cone internal wooden structure is a write-off. It's obviously pranged the nose on the landing which cracked all of the Plywood and smashed out the framework. I'll strip this all down, design it and cut a new set on my laser
• One of the wings took the main impact, from what the previous owner said, it hit the deck hard and looks like it hit the wing with such force that it fractured the leading edge, and subsequently smashed the aileron. Thankfully most of the damage is cosmetic and will require taking back to the fibreglass layer and reinforcing it where possible. The spars and tubes thankfully are not impacted.
• Fuselage has a few dents here and there which has resulted in some delamination - thankfully I can reinforce from the inside and repair easily
• All the landing gear doors were smashed out, thankfully they're only damaged on the corners so I can shape and reform, and add new hinges and repaint them
• The front retract is bent to buggery - I can repair most of it, it looks like someone made an attempt and made one of the spars out of steel which is why it's so rusted. I've had a look at some images of the original FEJ kit and I think I can make a new one out of alu.
• All the landing gear, and doors are air powered. I want to convert to electric on the retract units themselves. Now annoyingly it's not a case of buying standard trunions and linear actuators due to the shape of the F16 gear. I am currently looking at some electronic actuator kits that run on 6v that I can put in place of the air actuators. I just need to fettle with the stroke length to ensure I don't burn out any of the electronic actuators. There's absolutely no need for air assisted doors on this now, so I'll add a sequencer and use some micro servers to open the doors using a scale speed to suit her size - she's huge
• Engine bay plywood bridge is absolutely pants, looks like it was cut by hand and doesn't actually offer any strength considering the wing load and engine is reliant on this

I reckon 2 months of weekends on this and she'll be like new. What I have noticed is while FEJ has great attention to detail, the internals are not what I would expect for a bird of this size and especially its category! Epoxy and layup work is good, but where some wooden sections are fitted - there was no duty of care to check that there's a full epoxy bond around all of the ply! The cockpit is made out of ceramic resin - the stuff that you normally find statues and house hold crap made out of, so it's very heavy and very dense. I intend to design a cockpit in Fusion360 and 3d print one to replace it and save some weight.
On the surface controls, Savox Titanium 20kg servos are fitted - what are peoples thoughts on these? I'm curious about the load on the elevators, would high torque units be better? Also need to confirm about engines, I thought I had a spare P180 but it's actually a P140RX, I know it'll fly on it, but full vertical and aerobatic performance won't be the best so I'll probably change this. I just need something to test it first off.

So, questions for you guys - anyone done an electric conversion of F16 landing gear? Also, I need the manual! I noticed FEJ's emails bounce back now so I'm out of options there. I also need to get some paint matched to cover the repairs, anyone know of paint codes at all?

Will do a log as I continue to update and repair :-)