tiggerracing

Does anyone own this plane or have any good info on it?

still looking for a 50 sized warbird and the P40 is a simple favorite of mine.

da Rock

Yeah, and it's going on 2 years old now. Hmmm, might be 3. Yup, maiden pictures are dated late 2006.

Good flying plane.
The covering faded pretty badly the 1st year. Some red shows through places?
It really didn't get much air time until summer '07 and darned if the stab didn't flutter and fail.

Turned out the stab design uses very little wood and the LEs were too soft/weak. I got the plane down and stripped the underside covering. Braced it all and it's been going strong(er) ever since. It still doesn't get a lot of air time. Guess the faded covering bothers me. The cowling hasn't faded a bit and the combination sucks.

Pix taken just before maiden. Yeah, the rudder was redone to make the sucker look a bit more colorful. Also added the red balls in the stars for the same reason. That's not really scale, but a number of things aren't.

tiggerracing

Cool! I remember seeing a HUGE thread on this but a cant find it. it was on a different site.
da Rock cant you spray your cowl?

da Rock

Sure, and I could also recover the airplane with better film, but I didn't know either would be necessary when I bought the sucker. I mentioned it as info on the plane and mfg. Kyosho needs to use better film.

mike early

Of course you boys know this plane has been re-released....


http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_83...tm.htm#8328434

tiggerracing

Ok, i saw it first with the covering shown in that picture and saw the second one (SQS) in camo covering. Are you saying its back to the all OD?

chistech

The "Trixie" version Mike has showing is the current version offered. You might find some of the second generation ones still at the hobby stores. I have a first generation one still in the box that I will be building with a Saito 65 then offer it for sale. I will strip the stab and cover with 1//64 ply top and bottom to keep if from failing due to flutter. Even on the new "Trixie" I would recommend using a split pushrod to both elevator halves to help stop any flutter. I did a build mod thread on the "Trixie " here in the warbird forums. Great flying plane. You will enjoy. By the way, if you wondering about the 1st and 2nd generations, the 1st has a shelf paper like covering. The 2nd has a plastic film covering like a monocoat. The 2nd generation also has a better stab construction but the stab can still fail especially when using extra large engines.

da Rock

My 2nd generation stab failed because the LE balsa was poor, and the LE support is woefully inadequate. There is a center piece in the stab for glueing the stab to the aft fuselage, but it barely extends beyond the fuselage side. There is a very short brace that extends one rib bay, which isn't nearly enough. So the forces on the LE concentrate very close to the fuselage side. It's a really bad design for a model airplane that's going to be built in a factory by workers who know next to nothing about wood selection apparently.

tiggerracing

Awesome...well not awesome on the problem but i love the color. Would an OS.46 fly this plane well?

da Rock

It's basically a 46 size model.

tiggerracing

Ive herd many people putting saito.82 and others in that size. Is that for extreme performance or does it fly better with that sized engine? I dont want to put out alot of cash for my first glow engine, thats why i was woundering if the .46 is a good size. I would like it to fly scale.

tiggerracing

Forgot to mention...
Is this plane fairly stable and is the OS.46 a stable engine?
thanks again

da Rock

The 46AX might be the most stable engine you every buy. Having dealt with a bunch of them since they came out, they're the most uniformly easy to use new from the box of any I've ever seen. Good power and great for that airplane.

The Saito82 is a 4cycle and as such should give power comparable to a 50-55 two cycle. It's about the same weight as the 46AX and 55AX which are about 18oz each. The Saito will turn a larger diameter prop, but that's how 4cycles match up. Nothing special about the choice.

da Rock

Oh yeah, my P40 has shown no nasty habits at all. As for stable, yeah. It's typical of lots of scale tail draggers in that taxiing is sort of a special skill. And you really don't want to balance with the CG forward. That makes 'em oh so easy to nose over when taxiing. And it actually doesn't make 'em truly safer. They're just as safe with a sensible CG and the throws the mfg suggests.

Should mention that the "stability" of the P40 very often has a unique aspect. Until the last couple of versions, the airplane suffered from too short a tail moment. So it gave pilots a bit of a challenge. It wasn't exactly rock solid on the yaw axis. And being a tail dragger made them pay close attention when taking off. Good thing with our models is that we can easily hold back advancing the throttle on our take offs and that's way more than enough. It turns out that I notice mine hunting when I look for it. It hunts in yaw, not pitch. And in fact, the original changes they made as they developed the sucker was to leave the horizontal tail where it was and move the horizontal aft a foot or so. I think it's pretty cool to see in my model. It's no real worry. Just cool to notice.

tiggerracing

Very nice advice. For the most part im used to the tail draggers. I have a super cub and a Parkzone F4U. This would be my chioce for a first glow powered plane. Now all i have to do is take my solo on a .40 trainer at the club and i'll be set.....i think.
Thanks again for the great info!
max