Hello all, I am finally getting around to building my Phoenix kit. I will be powering it with a PST 1300R and intend to install a smoke system. I will also be installing gear doors to clean her up a bit. I would appreciate any info on the plane from those of you that have built and flown one. I will start construction tomorrow and will post pics. There will be lots of photos all the way through repainting. I have a lot of ideas, plans and mods for this bird so it should be fun!

Chris

Chris

If you enter AD Phoenix into the search engine you will find my original thread and build info on the model. Hope you will find some useful information, the Phoenix is a great flyer.

John

Thanks John, I read through it and found some good info. I had originally planned on the full size servos for the surfaces, did not like the idea of minis on a large airplane. I plan on using an 8411 on the elevator, 8311s on ailerons, 2721s on the flaps and 3421 digitals on the rudders. I will be firing up my laser cutter to make new servo mounts for the wing. I am going to reinforce the forward fuse with carbon cloth before I cut the door out. I did not like the flimsy glass at the front of the fuse. I have a damaged rudder hinge so I am going to cut them off and use robart hinges on the them, the rest of the hinging looked pretty good. Does the plane have any bad habits? I am coming off of a hopped up Stingray so this should be a bit easier to fly and maintain. Thanks for all the good info in your thread. Do you have any more detailed pics that you can share with us? Thanks

Chris

CHRIS I too am impressed with your comments , the Phoenix is a great flyer and lands beautifully i am concerned that you want to power it with a 28lb turbine the plane was designed to fly with small turbines from 12lbs to 20 lbs. and my own plane had a PST 600R for power and it flew fast and had plenty of vertical and if you have seen the SKS video of Florida jets 06 I'm sure you would agree , so please strengthen it where ever you can and fit the larger servos ... my plane weighed in dry at 17,8 lbs and your 1300 r will probably make it weigh a little more plus noseweight to compensate for the heavier engine, still it will be a rocket ship !! watch out for hot starts with the PST I had one and lost the plane as a direct result because i failed to check under the tailplane for any signs of damage to the elevator hinge which was directlly in the line of fire for only 1/2 a second, but it was enough to melt the hinge to a an uncrontrollable sticky hard goo, hence no elevator..... i had 61 flights with my second one and loved the way the plane flew..... great value.....MK

Chris

Sorry, no more photos as the Phoenix went to the great hanger in the sky due to failsafe lock out. I only had about twenty flights on mine but it had no bad habits and flew and landed beautifully. Mine had Wren SS for power which was plenty, it is a very slick airframe.

All your ideas for strengthening sound fine, I would maybe back off the power to 22lbs or so for the first few fights to see how the airframe handles it.

John

Thanks for the pics Malcom, I will be detuning the engine to around 22 lbs. As far as the hot starts go, I will be making a start up tube that fits over the exhaust so the fire will be well out the back of the plane if a hotstart occurs. To compensate for the extra weight, I will have redundant high capacity batteries at the nose, I just hope that it will be enough! There are a lot of unknowns right now, I will have a better idea once I get farther along in the build. I will be working on the fir and finish of the hatch today, and will move on to landing gear doors after that. More to come!

Chris

Chris

As you are working on the hatch it is pretty flimsy, at least mine was! I stiffened it up with a couple of half round 1/4" balsa formers epoxied to the underside, it made a big difference for very little weight.

John

Well, here is the the progress for day one. I wanted to mess with the hatch and get the fuse bottom reinforced so I can cut the doors and mount the landing gear. I managed to get quite a bit done. For the hatch, I was not happy with the fit or the idea of having one wood dowel. I fired up my laser cutter and made a drill jig for two pins and then machined some aluminum pins to lock the hatch to the fuse. I ended up with a considerable gap at the rear of the fuse so I shimmed the back of the hatch with G10 fiberglass to fill the gap. I spent a lot of time sanding and fitting the hatch and am very close to getting to fit the way I like. I still have to install the latch assembly and then do final filling and sanding to perfect the fit, more to come on the hatch.
For the fuse reinforcement, I first removed the radio tray and broke the rear former in the process, but that is ok since I will lasercut new ones anyway. The main purpose for removing them was to gain acces to the fuse bottom so I could lay the carbon cloth in without having to fight the wood pieces. I wanted to get the bottom really stout since there was not much there to begin with, plus I will be installing a nose door and cylinder. The top of the fuse strakes will get a layer of carbon as they are real flimsy too. The main gear door area will have a carbon layup to reinforce them for the doors. That is it for now, this post was kind of rushed. I will post more pics once I get the hatch fitted the way I want and then it is on to gear doors, I think???

Chris

After heat curing the Carbon at 110 dgrees overnight, the fuselage is now extremely rigid. I am not worried about the fuselage buckling anymore! I hope to finish the hatch today and get the rest of the carbon installed so it can cure overnight again.

Chris

oh my oh my,...chris you're rebuilding the plane like it should have been built in the first place and you obviously have the equipment and the talent and the time to do it right....good on yer ! when you have finished with it , it won't matter how much power you put in it..........go for it buddy ! show em how it should be done.............................................. .MK

Thanks for the nice comments Malcom! I have a lot of ideas that I want to employ in the plane, there will be a lot of laser cutting and machining! I am not so scared of putting the large engine on it anymoreI think sh is going to be plenty strong. I am off to get that hatch finished up so I can move on to something else! will post more pics of it when I shut down for the night.

Chris

Progress was a bit slow today, between going into work for a while and laser cutting I did not accomplish as much as I had hoped. I continued with the hatch fitting. The front and rear gaps are starting to come into where they need to be but are not quite there yet. I got the hatch latch in place and is working well. The hatch snaps into place by itself but is locked down solid. Once the glass and carbon strips cure up, I can do final fitting to get the tolerances tightened up.

Chris

In order for me to finish final filling and fitting of the hatch, I needed to finish reinforcing the fuse and hatch. I wanted everything to be cured before I applied filler to the seams just in case the hatch changes shape during its curing. It should not not change shape, but I have that kind of luck! I added the triangle strips to the fuse top, it was almost as flimsy as the bottom. The hatch got some TLC as well, as John stated, they are somewhat flimsy in areas so laid up some glass and carbon strips where I will be handling the hatch during removal and installation. Once all the cloth was installed and wetted out, the fuse and hatch went back into its little oven to cure overnight. Tomorrow will be a short day for building, I should be able to have the hatch seams filled and blended the way I want them.

Chris

Chris

Excellent work, just what this airframe needs. The dissapointing thing is that a few hours more at the factory could see all of these issues resolved before the models are sold, I am sure the additional cost would not be excessive. To me it points to a lack of thought in the design process. These models are not cheap and in my opinion are not a patch on Jetlegend etc. for quality / value for money.

John

I have to agree with John. But in this case apply this? < you get what you pay for >

Don't want to deviate this post. But if I have to do all that job reinforcing a suposse great quality kit from a well know manuf. Then I prefer to buy those cheap new chinese arf and reinforce wherever they need.

Absolutly great job on your plane. You can continue with your progress. Don't forget to tell the total weight added.

Rgds

I agree, there should have been a little more reinforcing in the fuse. I have a very early kit so I am not sure if they have done anything else to the plane since then. I do not mind doing all of this work, I have all the tools I need to make it happen so it is not that big of deal for me, plus I just enjoy building and doing things different. The plane is really nice, I am just extremely picky when I build my jets, I am on my third day of just fitting the hatch! I use digital calipers to measure drill bits so I achieve the tightest tolerances for fasteners to give an example how retarded I get with details. With all of the CAD and laser cutting that I do now for my models, I don't settle for anything much less than perfection, I think it is a sickness! I appreciate all of your inputs and thoughts. I know stuff is pretty boring right now but there is some really cool stuff on the horizon! I actually did not weigh the fuse before I started so I am not going to know the net gain in reinforcement weight, I thought about it but did not do it. I figured the plane was going to need nose weight anyway so I wanted to make it useful weight instead of just lead. I am really hoping to get the hatch finished today but I have a lot of laser files to run for a friend.

Chris

I started filling and fitting the canopy over the past two days. The canopy fit was a bit on the undesireable side so I figured since I was painting the whole plane, I would make it fit a little bit better and cleaner!

With the front pins and rear latch installed I could now see where things needed to be filled and sanded to get a good fit. As you can see in the pictures the front of the hatch hung out a bit so I used G10 fiberglass to shim the rear vertical portion of the molding to draw the front back where it needed to be. Once I had the rear shimmed to fix the front there was a large gap (approx .062") along the rear half of the hatch.

I continued to lay strips of G10 along the fuse side of the hatch molding and sanded it to the body contour. Still unsatisfied with the gap left with shimming, I trued the gap until it was opened up enough to accept strips of .020 G10 fiberglass. I glued these strips to the hatch side molding making sure that that the strips were mate against the previous strips applied to the fuselage. I then sanded and filled these strips with the hatch installed to come up with the final clearance seen in the last three photos. I decided to stop there, I gotta have a little room for paint! I still have a fair amount of this process to complete to finish up the perimeter. The front of the plane is going to have white on it so I think the extra time spent here is going to pay off big in the end.

Chris

Progress on the Pheonix has been slow over the past coupe of weeks. Work had me tied down so I did not get to play with the toys much! I did however finally finish up closing the gaps around the hatch and am happy with the overall fit now. I still have to fill pinholes and such but that can wait until final finishing. Hope to post more pics soon of something else other than a hatch!

Chris

The next step in my build was to be cutting and hinging the doors but I needed my wheels and tires first so I could accurately cut the proper size of door. I decided to machine my own wheels and brakes nad mold my own tires. I drew everything up in CAD, chucked up some aluminum and started turning down a main wheel and brake hub. I still have to mill the hub out to fit my strut and make the bushings and one main will be complete. Once the wheel is complete I will do the tire mold and mounting jig to make sure it is going to work before I complete the other main and nose. I hope to have a tire molded in the next two weeks. Anyway, here are the pics of the progress.

Chris

It took me three days to get from the box to the air.
The only mod was the flap control horn.
I don't like crossing radio equipment so I used Futaba S9650s on the flaps, rudders and ailerons.
the power is a duralite reg. to 5.1.
No probl;em so far.
I wish AD would use the larger srevos but the small digitals work just fine.
I have 100 oz. on bnoard , and can fly 10min. and stillhave 1/4 than afthe landing.
I have a Jetcat P-80 ECU5.1 I sure wouls like the snow to go away fast,
Thiis plane is the same as a Bobcat and flys with the same programs.
The radio i use is a Futaba 14 MZ.
I am going to buy an Angel in about a month.
I have an electric start AMTUSA for that one.
I puts ou about 32 lbs of thrust.
Looking foward to the new flying season.

Here is the latest progress on the main wheel that I started a while back. Tire molding will happen very soon!

Chris

Landing gear door construction under way.

Chris

looking great my man ! keep up the good work ,,Malcolm

I finally finished a wheel! Tire mold construction begins tomorrow and hope to have a tire mounted by the end of the week.

Chris

Finally, a complete assembly. I will finish the other main and the nose and then it is on to fuel tank molding.

chris