Shot a few photos of a gorgeous Yellow Aircraft F-18, owned by Lou (What's your last name?) from Los Angeles. power is an AMT Netherlands full auto AT 450. Flown at Fresno this weekend by Dave Presta.

Enjoy

I have to thank Lou for letting me fly his incredible machine. This is one awsome beast, and Lou is one incredible human....put them both together and it makes for one epic event. Thanks again Louie, DUKY, and Marky Mark for all the words of encouragment, and the good times. Nuttin like hearing MarkDam yelling "BUUUUUUTER BABY" in the background when you bring this bad boy home, and Duk Duk saying "ok, gimme back the transmitter" after doing a burner pass with the Oly Wide open down the pipe! WOO HOO, thats what its all about. Thanks again Lou for letting us take turns on your HO!
Dave

John
that late afternoon sun is the best ! Great shots
semper Fi
joe

Nice shot John.
Lou, is a happy man. I'm glad Lou wont 2 award for it.

And let's not forget you Tam. You did a nice build job on that baby! Congratulations to the both of you. And once again, Presta.....your are Mr. Cool Hands when it comes to piloting that beast.

Wow,

Those are awesome shots! One question though, is that wing flex I'm seeing, camera effects, or dihedral? Or my monitor ?

Thanks for posting the pictures.

Fantastic shots John. Always look forward to Lou's hornet flights. Nice work as always. Congrats to Lou for takin' the hardware.

wow awesome pics and awesome jet! besides the very discreat turbine hatch there is no indication that this is an RC plane...it looks rediculously real in the air

Thanks John for posting these awesome shots!!!!!!!!

Mr Presta nice job bro Butter is only screamed out when its butter soon youll say"parkay" about one of my landings lol

awesome plane and john you take awesome
pictures
vinny

I agree that sunset light is the bomb!

Lou beautiful plane, Dave great flying and John awesome pics. Thanks to all of you for sharing with the rest of us.

Sung

Lou's practicing his "NASCAR Pit Crew" Dance. Nice shoes!

David S

Evidence that three heads are better than one! Which one, though, I'm not sure? Great job of flying guys!

Hey,

What's the purpose of the dihedral? I know what the theory is behind dihedral, but I thought F-18s have anhedral in the wings. Is there a benefit to the flight characteristics with this plane? Fill us in.....

No benifit that I know of Shaun, I think there were some problems with the wing spars and thats just the way they ended up. This was not intentionally built this way.
Dave

On some of the early carbon reinforced kits, the spar receiver holes in the bulkheads were not drilled right. I had to fill the stock holes and re-drill new ones to get the proper anhedral. I was lucky enough to get a tip about this from the Austin Gang (Dan, Doug and Roger)

The best way to check this, is to install the spar receivers onto the bulkheads before they are installed in the fuse and check them with a straight edge.

This was corrected in the later kits.

Ah....


On mine (an early carbon one), the spars themselves end up straight out (no anhedral), but the cut of the wing root and the corresponding angle of the mating surface on the fuse had the proper anhedral angle built in. If you taped the wing down without the spars in it, it was perfect. When you put the spars in, the wing doesn't slide all the way on without the spar hitting the upper surface of the wing skin. I had to grind stock off of the upper side of the outer end of the spars. I wonder if this was the same issue.

Beautiful jet, though.

That is exactly what the Austin guys had to do.

Few more Chippy shots here, along with some Tamjet F-18 shots.

[link=http://www.putfile.com/jcmti]Various jet photos[/link]

Dave & Shaun

Thanks for mentioning the Dihedral. I have a few Videos of Lou's Hornet shot by Joe and I always thought I was seeing things.

Finally the mystery is solved.


PS Shaun that ARF paint job is incredible.

Ian

see this scheme B4?
or just photo editing trick! enlarge decals?
beside the plane is real one.

Albert

truly beautiful

Hi Albert,

No, not photoshop work. This is the way the CAG aircraft has been painted since 2004

And here is an earlier version with a big eagle head on the nose and talons on the droptanks