My CMP Zero has the H-9 P-47 retracts on it. At this time they are not setup to retract, just to supply gear for landing (Warbirds over Indiana coming up) that I needed quick. I tried them and found the fit very close. The retract side bolt heads hit on the sides of the wood blocks, so I cut groves for them and they dropped right in. I skipped the servo install and just wired the lever for "Always Down" operation. When I have more time I will decide if I want to cut and angle the H-9's forward or recut the wheel wells to the H-9 location. The stock ones are set up to angle forward and mine go straight down. I have not had any trouble with nose in's because of the lack of forward angle.

*** SIDE NOTE!!! ***
The H-9 retracts break after a few grass landings. They have a hole drilled into them for the cover mount and a crack starts there, then it slowly works it's way on around. This is due to flexing of the metal. I went to the LHS and bought steel sleaves a hair larger than the H-9 shafts and slid them over the exposed part of the landing gear covering the hole and reducing the flex on the area around the hole. So far I have gotten 3 times the landings with no breaking (I broke 2 sets of the stock/no mod ones) on both the zero and P-47. Not sure if this is a fix or just a bandaid to make it last a little longer. Jon

Thanks for your side note on the H9 retract. Several of us have swapped out the H9 struts for the Shindin Machine alternative, and like em!

He guys,
My H-9 struts are working just fine on grass. I put the sleeve on the outside and jamed a 3/16 piano wire down the center hole. This more than trippled the strength.
Geo.

I've managed to get some work done on the engine mount. The first pic is of the provided firewall offset to the left .175in to the left, with blind nuts on the engine side. The second picture is the provided engine box slipped over the firewall mounted in picture one. I've added some of the box cutouts back in, three to be exact. then glassed across the box firewall and down the side of the box. The next step is to masking tape over all the blind nut openings that will be inside the box. then epoxy the firewall from pic one into the box, fiberglassing it just like theone on the other end ofthe box. Lastly foam the area between the firewalls.

Joe

this shows the foamed box.

Hi Guys,
My Zero finally came in at 20lbs 7oz and it is a real floater. I had a problem with my Specktrum receiver picking up interferance from the battery mounted on the firewall. I had to move the battery inside the plane and went to a 3600MA so I wouldn't have to add any lead to balance. I have trouble landing it without full flaps. What a surprise. I was really scared after the instructions say it should weigh 14lbs. The H-9 gear is holding up excellent on our grass field. I sleeved and filled the center with a steel rod. I have a US-41 in it and I couldn't be happier with the project. What a great bang for the buck. Happy flying.

Geo.

Great Geo.!

Hows the vertical?

where is the CG?

Joe

I flew my Zero 50 the past 2 weekends. Now have 3 flights on it. Mine has a ZDZ50 ng, robart retracts and struts. Weighs 20 lbs, 2 oz.... needed soome nose weight to balance and flys great at 155mm from leading edge of wing at root. This airplane flys as good as it looks. I was afraid of the 20 pound finished weight but as mentioned this airplane is a floater. It lands like a trainer and is rock solid. I set the elevator at 18mm up, 18mm down on high rate, 60% on low rate. First flight was on low rate but went to high rate and seems like 18mm is perfect. Aileron set at 12mm up and down on high rate, 60% low rate. For my taste I want to increase the aileron quite a bit more. Roll rate was a little slow for me... but 12mm is a good starting point. I set rudder to max left and right on high rate and 60% low rate. Vertical with the ZDZ 50 is excellent, much better than with a US 41. The ZDZ 50 swings a 22 x 10 Zinger Pro at about 7300 rpm....and pulls very hard!
Again this is a beautiful plane in the air, on the ground, and priced right too! I have photos I would be happy to send anyone interested.

Hi everybody

A very interesting thread!

Some weeks ago I also received my Zero. It's a very beautiful model [X(] I already started working on it: http://www.wegier.ch/Modellbau/Baube...7/Default.aspx (unfortunately only in German). If you wish I can publish some of the pictures from my blog here.

Configuration:
- Engine: MVVS 45 (in US sold as EVO45) with a Krumscheid muffler
- Retract: Eurokit classic air pro 15kg (30lbs)
- Maingear wheels: DUBRO 4"
- Tail gear: KDH
- Servos: JR C-5191 (flaps and aileron), JR C-5077 (elevator; maybe I replace them by C-5191), BlueBird BMS-660MG/HS (rudder and tail wheel)

I placed the servos for the rudder and the elevators close to the CG in the fuselage. I hope to be able to adjust the CG only with the two batteries (two 5-cell 3600mAh NiMh batteries) and without any lead. Does anyone have expirience with that? Can the lead be avoided when the servos are not placed in the tail? I hope to get the weight below 9kg (18lbs)

Currently I'm working on the integration of the retracts. Therefore I removed the attachement for the retracts as described by Joe [sm=thumbs_up.gif] I hope to get the Zero on her own legs until the end of next week

Best wishes from Switzerland

Richie

Hi again guys,

Richie don't even worry about the weight. This plane flies excellent at 20+lbs. My CG is at 150-155mm, hard to tell. I fly off grass and all landings have been on the mains and look great. Use all the flaps with a little down elev. for landing. With the US-41 it flies scale, not a verticle powerhouse. Rolls are barrel, loops are smooth and all other normal attitudes for this type of plane are fine. If they made another model of trhis size I would be on it in a heartbeat.
Geo.

Hi Geo

Thanks for the feedback!

I already heard from guys that the Zero also flies great at 22lbs. But I thought I could at least avoid the lead as I hate it and I do not have 2lbs of it at home The lighter the model, the better it flies

The gear is constructed for models up to 30lbs. Therefore I'm on the save side. Further the EVO45 has power as a Zenoah 62. Therefore I guess I should have more than enough power

Do you maybe have some pictures of your flying Zero?

Cheers,

Richie

Richie
nice blog and construction photos. It seems to me that the landing gear is a little too angled forwards, maybe a couple of degrees, otherwise it looks great! I bought the same Eurokit retracts and Dubro wheels, but Robart struts. I'll change the tailwheel original position, and hardpoints to a more scale location, with Robart retractable tail unit.
Keep the building bolg coming...
Regards
Pierluigi
Italy

Hi Pierluigi

Many thanks for your comments!

Yes, the forward angle is not scale. But after some discussions with my collegues (who already fly a lot if warbirds) I thought, I decided to do that, to avoid nose-overs.

BTW: I did the change of the angle as Joe

As the camera is in Amsterdam together with my girlfriend I'm not able to make any pictures. But I will continue the blog at the beginning of next week. This week I orderer the Krumscheid muffler and spinner and a set of props

Best wishes,

Richie

I've been trying to reactivate my competition Platt Focke Wulf 190 D-9 from the 1980's. I retired it in the 90's because it was built with ambriod and epoxy and things were getting a bit loose. In the early 00's I noticed the nitrate dope had tightened up so much that it was cracking at all the balsa sheeting seams. It was sad at first because it was a horrible end to probably my BEST FLYING plane ever (I've built 120 planes in my modeling carrier). Then it struck me! If the covering is cracked, the crack may extend down to those questionable bulkheads that were unreachable before. With a 20mil drill I was able to break through to the open area in front of the bulkheads, insert one of the CA tubes and glue everything back together. The original Rossi .65 RE was long gone so I tried a Saito 1.5 but it was just to rough for the all balsa front end of this plane. Then I had a Super Tiger G-90 free up so in it went. All this took place over a three year period, finally culminating in a maiden flight (on a plane with 200+ flights on it) this august. The first flight had one gear that did not come up all the way, but other than my nerves was flawless. Upon landing the retracts worked flawlessly (of coarse), so I opened the wheel collars a bit and reflew. The same wheel hung up then I knew the problem was not in getting air to the cylinder but in letting it out. In some point in the landing I picked up a glitch in turns 2 and three the far ones so I landed prematurely. Once on the ground safely I looked the plane over and noticed the 70's vintage spinner was missing a screw, and was fatigued and cracking. I stop cracked it, replaced the screw and noticed that area had deformed. One more flight to see if these actions had solved the problem and it did not.

So this has been in front on the CMP Zero on the work bench for a while now, I put a new Sky Shark spinner on it and switched to a DX7 RX. All is done and ready for a test flight which hopefully will be tomorrow.

During this time I mounted the engine box on the CMP Zero and the engine only to find out that my pylons were to short and pushed the muffler into the scope on the bottom of the fuse. I've decided the most prudent method for fixing this is to add another washer to the pylons. So I need to remove the engine ad a washer to each pylon re R6000 everything and screw it back down. I ruled out dremeling away the fiberglass causing the problem because that could cause stress cracking once I start running the engine.

Hey Richie,

Nice build. I have one of these as well but am only now getting all the "stuff" for it. I'm going to use an ASP 5 cylinder radial so I don't have to add much if any lead. We'll see once I begin the build. I'll try to mount up the engine on the test stand to begin the break in process this weekend.

Where did you get the spinner you are using? It looks quite good.

Hi,

The spinner ist from Krumscheid ([link=http://www.krumscheid-metallwaren.de]www.krumscheid-metallwaren.de[/link]) where I also got the muffler.

Please post some pictures when you have mounted the radial

Best wishes,

Richie

Thanks for the link Richie! Here is a link to some pic I posted a few days ago of the radial inside the cowl for another thread. It's a tight fit and the cowl will have to be enlarged just a bit but will need to be a two pice anyway.

There is also a thread on RCU of a rework of this plane.....the guy is doing a great job on her and I think you might find it interesting.

http://gallery.mac.com/geod1#100066

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_64..._1/key_/tm.htm

Some pic's of the engine install, cowl mount bulkhead.

Joe

Added T servo pretty much a standard installation, I used a plastic clevis, aileron trunion, and servo output arm.

Joe

I plan to take this one to flyinns and I like to have 15minutes of fuel onboard for flyinns. I know that 16 oz of fuel in this g-62 lasts 10 minutes, the provided tank is less than a 16 so I added a second 8 oz tank. that should be enought to fly 8minutes and leave 6 for the clear to land. the tanks are built just like they were the only tank in the plane. i hooked the carb to the clunk in the larger tank, ran the overflow of the larger tank to the clunk of the smaller tank, and the overflow of the smaller tank becomes the overflow. I then mount the smaller tank above the larger and as far forward as posible.

Joe

The hole in the firewall will fit the fuel tubing and the servo lead, 3/8 drill. when the install is finalized I will push some R6000 into the hole to act as protection against vibration, fiberglass and vibration cuts through anything in notime fast.

Joe

Here are some photos of mine at the flying field. I made my own scale exhaust stacks. I have to say it is a great flying airplane. You will enjoy yours when you get it flying....

Joe , I am new to gas engines , I thought you were supposed to keep the throttle servo far from the ignition module ?
remember this is not a critisum , but a newbe to gas question

Proper installation is key....not location. Well-grounded ignition systems, be they EI or Mag types, assists greatly in preventing RFI. Isolating metal to metal contact with ball links, or other equivilant options using plastic connections between the metal parts is necessary.

I’m no expert on gas!!!

But this setup worked on this Zenoha G-62 in the last plane it was in. I’ve used as much plastic in the pushrod chain as possible (one of the places to use nyrods). Quite frankly the first time I fire it up I’ll be looking for any kind of glitching. If I get any It’s a toss up move the servo back and go to a non conductive pushrod, but the real problem is that it has picked up a RF noise somewhere. I look at moving the servo back as a Band-Aid, the real fix would be a new coil and sparkplug wire/cap.

Joe