Pica 1/5 Scale Mustang Build 2015
 

I started a "bucket list" project, the build of this Pica kit I bought over 20 years ago. I've been out of the hobby for awhile and decided to jump back in. I've used this forum extensively to look for building ideas and to get caught up on newer technologies. After restoring an MGB, one thing I learned was to have as many parts on hand before you start so that you can avoid waiting for parts and maybe shorten the build process a bit. Besides, some of the planning is fun, anticipating what's next and dreaming of how it will look. I found the RCM magazine review on line and I wanted to mimic the picture posted in that review. On top of that, I found I couldn't fit all of "stuff" in one shot. I couldn't get high enough! See the attached pre-build pictures. I managed also to email and correspond a bit with one of the designers of the kit, Jon Tanger. He was gracious enough to take some time and answer some basic questions I had about CG and overall weight. My thanks to him and he seemed to get a kick out of the fact that his efforts were still being appreciated. I like to build. I think it's half of the fun of this hobby, not just the flying.

I've already started the build and thought I'd share this effort to see if anyone else is out there. The kit is well organized and is an intensive build, There are some minor things to improve upon like the control linkages, yet that is a fun challenge also. If anyone cares to share comments, great. At 65 being "tired and retired" I know you are never to old to learn. At worst, this becomes a diary that might be fun to look back on in years to come. I've found about 40 forum members who built this kit over the years. Some have responded and I am grateful for their encouragement. I also appreciate the long summaries I've found with good suggestions of what to do if given a second time around to do it again.

My build started the first week of January, 2015. Let's see how long it will take. I've kind of locked into a color scheme and plane to try and scale, "Bunnie" flown by Pilot Roscoe Brown Jr. (March 9, 1922 – July 2, 2016.) I'm hoping the red tail scheme will help with visibility if and when I actually get to fly it.

Regards, Wally

Fin, Rudder, Stabilizer and Elevator Build
 

The Fin, Rudder, Stabilizer and Elevator were built per plan instructions. I'm anticipating elevator linkage changes to eliminate a gaping hole in the fin to make it look more scale like.

First thing I noticed is that you build 1/2 of the item at a time. Lay the sheets down and then add support structure for the skins. This theme is carried out throughout the build of the features and being such a large model, that works well. Once again, the build is intensive, but I am really enjoying the build.

I planned to build in the elevator and rudder counter balance features. I thought it best to build without and then cut out the features and glue them back onto the opposite location. It was tedious to build a box out of the cutouts. Maybe building them in initially would work better. I didn't add the triangular hole at the base of the fin as will be seen why in the next post group. After skinning, I rough sanded and planned to hinge after I put in the counter balance features. I'm new to posting so this is an experiment with adding pictures.

Elevator Linkage
 

A friend recommended using Sig Manufacturing's centered control horn as I lamented about the big hole I found in other Pica Mustang builds found on the net. After building per plan, I carefully drilled holes for SIGSH554 and I epoxied it in place. I gouged room for the nylon horn and strove to make sure I was at the centerline of the hinges. I used heavy duty hinges and thought I would install using one continuous length of .047 piano wire. This way I could install the hinges inline and then remove wire to cover the surfaces and then add back. I then hinged / sanded the control surfaces to ensure adequate throw. I measured / checked fitment of the elevator joining rod through the fin area and I used a Dremel tool to round out the plywood around the rod area that passes through the fin to about 1/4" or less.

The fin is buried about 1/4" into the stabilizer per plan. You are asked to cut away this top stabilizer surface. Making room for the center line of the rod through the fin was easy enough and the results were good. At this point, with trial fitment, it was easy to see that I could fillet the elevator by adding a triangle and skin to make this area fit closer to the fuselage as it is on the full size plane. I've added a picture for comparison.

Striving for hidden linkages on a scale plane is a nice goal. This design already called out for hidden elevator linkage. The use of this type of horn, a small design modification, made for a cleaner look.

Top Fuselage Build and Skin and Engine Mount
 

I'm into the 6th week of the build, about 30% done. I'm beginning to appreciate the build / design of this kit more and more. The build scheme of 1/2 at a time works really well on such a large plane. The top half of the fuselage is built by laying down a spliced 1/2 x 3/4 balsa strip on each side of the fuselage. It's called the F22 "crutch" and in reality it becomes a datum line to the fuselage build. Stab incidence, engine location, pushrods, all can be located using this feature.

With the crutches laid down, all formers are added per plan, perpendicular to the building table. I am anticipating a different engine mounting scheme than showed on the plans. When this plane was designed, the ST 3000 was a rail mount option. Today an EVO gas would rail mount. I chose the DLE 35RA for my plane. I received good recommendations from guys in the club who found this engine to work well and have enough power. Besides, at worst case, I should be able to swap out with a DLE 55RA if it build too heavy and I need more power.

My thanks to a Brit, Phil Fearn who documented a nice build project of the Pica Mustang. http://forum.medwaymfc.org.uk/view_t...m_id=42&page=1 He made and used a box technique as an engine mount and I'm going to copy that. For now, I decided to leave the crutches a little long anticipating movement of the engine mounting box. Why? To build (pun intended) on Phil's idea, I want to wait till the last possible minute to install the engine firewall so that I might be able to balance the model by moving fore or aft a bit. Every once in the tail has to be offset by lead in front. Since I will add a retractable tail wheel, I can account for this weight moving the whole engine forward. We'll see later if this strategy bears out.

The box I built is 4 H x 5 W x 10 3/4 L. It fits all the way back to the F7B, so for right now, that seems plenty long enough. Gluing in place may become a challenge. We'll see later.

I'm making another small modification to the instructed build. I'm anticipating installing a cockpit from www.dbalsa.com and I'm not yet sure where to floor will go. I'm leaving out the balsa floor detail to add later as determined by the kit once it arrives. (A side note here. None of the cockpit vendors give you real good guidance as to placement of these parts. i.e. where does the seat go, the control stick, the canopy crank etc. relative to the plane? You've got this big hole to put something into, but no dimensions from the nose or tail. I found a see through drawing on the web and I had it blown up to 1/5 scale to use it as a guide. Again, we'll see about that later.)

Skinning and sanding the top half went well. All is being prepped for checking engine box placement, and per instructions, gluing on the stabilizer at 0 incidence to the building table.

Tail Wheel Setup
 

The tail wheel retracts forward. Making it steerable presented a problem. The retracting arc suggested the need for springs, but that didn't work as well as I've seen in other posts. I received a suggestion to hook up toward the rear and steer from rudder. I set this up with cables and after trial and error, it worked well. I did this while I could get my hands in there to make changes before I sheeted the back end. I started with a larger G-10 horn, but I'll cut it off since the closest hole works well.

P51 Sliding Canopy
 

Before I sealed up the back end, I thought it prudent to work on the sliding canopy. My thanks to forum members who responded for suggestions, especially Leroy Gardner. I goaled to use the canopy itself to form the turtle deck. I used balsa sheeting to form the bottom. The drawings give and idea how I did it. I insert molded 1/2" x 1/16" aluminum frame work into a lite two-part epoxy mix from Smooth-On. Very nice product and can be colorized black. The canopy rails are slit 1/4" sq. aluminum. The canopy split area will be cut once the canopy is glued in place. A separator piece of plastic will allow the framework to come apart. I found some small 2x5x2.5 mm bearings that fit nicely onto 2-56 screws put into cut-down control horns. These fit nicely into the 1/4" aluminum rails and helps the framework slide easily. I decided to use a Firgelli linear actuator and that fitment prompted me to dry fit the Dbalsa cockpit accessories. Again, all this was done so I could figure out the actuator travel before I closed up the back bottom end with sheeting. Building the sliding canopy prompted a side build excursion into the details of the cockpit interior. This will be a post by itself.

P51 Cockpit Details
 

I ordered (twice) the dBalsa cockpit interior. At first the Topflite ARF version seemed too small. The Ziroli version was too big and so I re-ordered the smaller one. I have to say that the documentation that came with both versions was edited from other kits, had errors and basically no guidance relative to install location. The problem comes when you try to locate things like the seat, the control stick, the instrument panel etc. I used a "see thru" jpeg of the P51 blown up to 1/5 scale to try and use features on it to locate the components. Being a technical writer, I know I'm not perfect, but I struggled for hours through the written instructions finding one mistake after another. The graphics are poor with a few errors. The side control box has rudder and Aileron control graphics, not ELEVATOR. Regardless, I used what was given and augmented some details. I found some full size P51 graphics being sold and it was easy to put into a Word Document and adjust to 1/5 size. Since I dry fitted everything, I proceeded to paint all as suggested in dBalsa pictures. I started to get consumed by the detail and had to quit. I began to feel like the ghost in Beetlejuice who built a replica of the small town knowing he couldn't visit it any more!

Fueselage Rear
 

The pics show the rear bottom being sheeted and closed up. I'll still have to add tail wheel doors. There's going to be a lot of sanding to shape the whole thing after I finish building the front end. If you notice inside, I used some large straws wrapped in duct tape to make conduit for the wires. It would be tough to route wires after the fuse is sheeted.

Moved to appropriate forum

Love it, looking great, keep us posted on the progress!

this is one kit I wish I had...its also on my bucket list It is or was probably the most scale of the mustang kits on the market, definetly more scale than the TFGS Mustang. I will be watching with great interest..

Built one 'way back' in the 80's I believe...never did finish it - sold it 3/4th done! Wonder if it ever flew....

Engine and Cowl
 

I turned my attention to the engine mounting and cowl. Following advice from fellow club members, I decided to bite the bullet and fit a DLE55RA. I built a new firewall and added it to my original box. The resulting engine box I built with the DLE55 was set as far back as I could without losing glue support on the front former. The net result was that I had to build out the fuse just a bit with an extra cowl ring mounted to the fuse. I had to account for the engine thrust angles about 1.5 deg down and 1.5 deg right thrust. This meant I had to affix the spinner plate, with a 1/8" spacer to the front of the cowl so I could mount to the engine and lock in the position of the rear cowl ring, the new one added to the fuse. I also installed the F1 plywood nose ring because I haven't yet decided to slit the cowl horizontally. The cowl is built with 8, 10-32 nylon wing bolts that will go into the fuse. This cowl attachment allowed me to close up the front, add filler sheeting to account for the cowl offset and then rough sand the entire fuselage.

Nice 'recovery' :)

Tailskid, yes that seems to be a pattern on the forums. People start them and don't finish them. The kit is labor intensive, but I am enjoying the build. It really makes the Winter season go fast. At the pace I'm going now, I just might get it flying this next Summer. It will all depend on how bogged down I get on the covering and details.

My trouble was I was moving and had it about 90% complete - even with panel lines, full cockpit, etc.....broke my heart. I did build and fly their 1/5 T-28 AND the 1/6th T-28.....and as a matter of fact have a NIB 1/5 T-28 sitting in the garage! Doubt I will ever get to it :(

Jerry

Nicely done.

Cheers,

Tail Wheel Doors
 

I found and used and old set of Phoenix gear hinges for the tail wheel. I made a slot that fits two planks of balsa sheeting that I first glued to the hinges. Then I fitted to the plane and checked for easy movement. I won't glue these in till I fiberglass the fuselage. I'm having trouble with my electric retracts. I sent them back for repair. Funny how just cycling them for trial / fit purposes could cause them to go bad. Maybe I just bought a lemon. We'll see. Now I'm going to work on decorative exhaust stacks and start building the flaps.

Flaps Geometry Test
 

My first question looking at the Flap design was "Why is there a difference in the pivot point at the root vs. the wing tip end of the flaps?" I couldn't wrap my head into it so I decided to make a prototype out of cardboard and hinge music wire. I kept the tip pivot at 11/16" and made two holes at the root, 1 1/16" and 11/16" set back from the leading edge. The distance from the bottom was 5/16" on both sides.

Well the answer maybe obvious to some, but I determined that the pivot points on the plans account for the wing's taper and change in radii. The pics show the results. If not hinged offset at the root, the lowering of the flaps won't stay parallel to the top of the wing's trailing edge This let me start the build. The flaps won't be exactly scale like but it will use the hardware given, a large nylon L shaped bracket. Other forum comments suggested adding a third hinge rather than pivot at only two points. I figured out a way to do this.

Easy Flap Build With Hidden Linkage and Removable Flap
 

A friend of mine, a master builder, acquainted me with scale hinge building techniques, adaptations from an article that was in Model Airplane News. He also modified this technique to include a carbon fiber tube as a hinge and CF rod (or music wire) as the hinge pin. It's a bottom type hinge with a 4-40 swivel link I figured that if I made a balsa strip laminate of 3/32 and 1/16" thickness, I could lay the 1/8" CH tube on top and then surround it with 1/8" balsa strips. I would use the locations of plan's hinge points as a guide. The height off the bottom would be the measure 5/16" noted on the plans side view and as done in the flap test. I made the laminate 5/8" wide and could easily cut pockets in the ribs to glue in place.

I picked a spot in the middle and made a G10 hinge. It will be glued once the first two pivot points are set. The CF tube is cut out at this point and rod or wire used to hold the hinge in place till the glue sets.

The two ends call for poplar blocks to be glued, attachments for the L bracket the root and pivot support at the wing tip end. I cut those back to account for the CF balsa laminate hinge.

Flap Servo Location and Hidden Horn
 

W2 Rib already had some notches in it if one were going to put in one servo controlling both flaps with a bell crank. I transferred these holes to W3 Rib and decided this was good spot for the servo linkage.

I took a WAG at flap throw thinking I would have 7/16 - 15/16" of servo throw on the control arm and an arm length of 5/8" to 11/16" which would allow final adjustments once the servo was installed for real. The drilled horn hole will be slightly ahead of the hinge pin to minimize vertical travel of the connected linkage. I easily get 40 deg flaps with this setup. Careful not to get too short an arm since you can get more throw than you bargained for. I drilled the arm closer to 9/16" by mistake. Still plenty of adjustment, especially if you add in servo travel limits by the radio.

I planned the horn's location and made some G10 ribs and cut them to fit the balsa laminate. I epoxy glued them to some extra balsa ribs. Maybe over-kill, but I thought it would be easier to glue them to the sheeting. The spacing between the G10 accounts for the 4-40 swivel assembly.

The pics show the near completed flap, trailing edge sanded down to accept the sheeting. I just have to layer on the top sheeting. The front shows the swivel rod sticking out an oval shaped hole. I used a lock nut and epoxy for the swivel screw as there is no good way, short of surgery, to access this connection after sheeting. My friend says it is robust and will outlast the plane! I hope he's right. What we do for scale appearances!

I'm happy with the results so far. It was an easy build, a blend of Pica's design and a more scale like finish. I now have 3 hinge points and an easily removable flap. And in case you are wondering, I'll either use a little L bent into the end of the music wire captured by the large nylon L bracket or I'll drill a guide hole in the L bracket to hold a CF rod. Either way, the flap can be glassed, finished and re-installed at will, a nice feature.

Nice project!

Wing Build
 

I took a day to cut and lay out the plans for the wing. I decided to use the lite ply ribs, but cut out rib holes to lighten up a bit. Others recommended making the ribs outboard of the landing gear out of 1/8" balsa. It would be lighter, about 9 grams a rib. I also planned out holes for servo wires and yes, navigation lighting. I made landing gear front ribs W4, 5 and 6 out of 1/8" plywood to strengthen this area per build recommendations of others. I used plywood webbing here also. More people recommended that you add balsa webbing to the rear of the main spar, which I think is a good recommendation.

Surprisingly, the build without the sheeting took about 2 days, (I work slow) but overall much faster than the fuselage. I thought I'd try the RDS hidden linkage for the ailerons. I ordered the 30 degree wipers as the aileron throw travel is recommended at about 15 to 20 degrees. I laid out the location on the plans. I'll be able to servo limit or have adjustable rates if needed. I'll build access doors from the bottom and use the HEMS (Harley's Easy Mount System) servo mount technique recommended by the website. I'll build in plywood platform and likely blind nuts to secure.

Overall, I now get an appreciation for the size of this plane. I have home-made 8 foot x 40 in. work tables. BTW, I bought a sheet of 1/2" Homoste 440 sound board from Menards to be able to pin to the table. I saw this on the forums and it is a great idea.

A comment on the instructions. The leading and trailing edges should be "symmetrically" glued to the ribs. I had to catch myself as the building tendency was to pin to the plans and glue wood. I just supported the edges with wood blocks and glued on as instructed. Also, I don't know how you can "pin" lite ply to the table. Perhaps someone with stronger thumbs than me! I just weighted the ribs down onto the trailing edge jig. There's enough wood to trim, cut and sand to size to the ribs.

Wing Center Section
 

The rib building of the right wing half took about a day. Joining the wing and figuring out how to finish the front center section took a lot longer. One thing about this kit is you get a lot of block wood that needs to be carved off. A word of caution in that there are not enough instructions on placement of the front blocks. Also, the "sand and shape to the plans" instructions leaves one wondering how. I just imagined that the sheeting needs an almost flat surface to glue on. I also reflected on the fitment to the fuse. I still got in wrong and cut too much off. I had to glue on more block wood and reshape. All I can say is favor the bottom of the wing while adding the blocks. This part must blend into the bottom of the fuse and be rounded to match the contour. You end up with a hump on the bottom front of the wing. After I glue on the sheeting, I know there is some fillet area that will have to be ground off, but I didn't want to again take off too much wood at this time. You don't round out the leading edge till sheeting is added anyway. You also have to shape the leading edge in the center so that you can judge how much to sand/carve off.

Flap and Wing Linkage Fitment
 

With the sheeting still off, I thought it be a good time to add the pivot points and flap linkage while you can easily get your hands in there. The front leading and trailing edges are sanded to match the rib contour. I added the flap's L brackets and drilled out the tip-end hole to accept the 1/8" CF tubing I cut off from the flap. I was tempted to drill the L bracket differently, but I stuck to the plan's location as seen from the top view. This worked out well for keeping the rotation of the flap parallel to the top of the wing as I tested this before with a cardboard model. I drilled pretty close, but still likely a 1/32 off. Mounting the L brackets accurately is tough and drilling the tip-end pivot hole required a piece of oak drilled as jig to make sure you drill 90 degree square. Luckily I have a small hobby drill because getting in a normal size drill is not going to work here. I installed the servos and tested the linkage. My WAG stated on an earlier post for the horn connection wasn't too far off. If I would change anything, I'd favor adding more arm length, as much as possible, yet still be able to connect the swivel linkage. Also, the linkage bound up a little and I couldn't get enough flap angle deployment. Using the existing hole in the W2 rib turned out to be futile. I had to relocate the rails so that the rod linkage was centered more to the attachment at the horn. This puts the servo as far down into the wing pocket you can get. If you go too far, your sheeting won't cover. I'm getting about 40 degrees now. I'll test again later. Maybe I'll post a YouTube video. I'm setting up my Taranis radio with an sbus for flaps and ailerons on channels 9 through 12 and mixing in some elevator trim with slow flap movement to make it scale like.

Bottom Wing Sheeting
 

After the wing was sanded to accept the sheeting, I made the 4 wing panels per the instructions. Maybe the wood shrunk after 20 years, but one panel on one side was a little small. Either that or the wing is too big. It really looks symmetrical and measures out ok. I added 5/8" to the front and figured I'd patch any missing areas once it was glued on. One could use another 1/2" to one of the 42" lengths. Maybe the curvature was not accounted for when sheeting materials were picked. Nevertheless, easy to fix. I used pins, wood glue and tacked down with CA. I wetted the wood a bit. The curve over the ribs isn't too bad except for the center front which had to be clamped down and it cracked. This fillet area will likely be sanded off anyway once I fit to fuselage.

The bottom sheeting gets trimmed to the ends of the leading and trailing edges. The top will overhang to create a fairing.

I ran large soda straws as lite weight conduit for the servo wire and I am planning for navigation lights. The Mustang also had "recognition" lights on the right wing. The straws are taped with aluminum duct tape which from experience, sticks well over time. Now's a good time to check wire lengths. All will enter the center of the wing and eventually connect into the fuse.

I'll prep and try building landing gear doors out of fiberglass and CF sheeting. I'll use the lite plywood die cutouts as a guide.

I don't want to seal on the top sheeting till I install the landing gear. They are still out for repair. I called and was promised an expedited look at fixing them.

Nice work. In November my Pica, mustang finally after a couple of decades died as a result of my over confidence. Pica flies better than the top flight mustang. I also did the "Bunnie" scheme. Good luck with your build.

Thanks for your comments. I am enjoying the build albeit intensive, but that is 1/2 the fun for me. I am struggling, but have nearly completed the gear installation. The CJM gear I bought didn't "drop in" as predicted on the forums. I suspect they are "thicker" and perhaps upgraded. Can you share what you used and what the gear thickness might have been? I had to lower into the wing about 1/8" and I am now reinforcing the ribs as they seem too carved out just to make the wheel flush with the bottom of the wing. I'll post shortly.

First one had CJM Gear, still have them for sale on RCU, the second used robart gear. The gear on mustangs is a very weak point. once you are done building the wing reinforce the ribs and mounts with fiberglass cloth. The gear on the Pica are long so they transmit a ton of force to the mounts if you are a little sideways. I would also recommend making your tailwheel trail, rather than the scale setup.http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2148010

Main Gear Doors
 

There's a lot to do with only the bottom part of the wing sheeted. I finally received my repaired retracts. It was a bad gear motor. While waiting however, I laid up fiberglass doors.

I first used the lite ply stamped out pieces to carefully trace the shape in position on the bottom wing per plan. I used some scrap see through Monokote and covered the area. The next step was to use thin 1/16" 3M masking tape to outline the doors. This would make a nice indentation in the layup from which to guide the final cut.

I laid up the fiberglass I had. I also had some carbon fiber sheet. The sequence and weight (ozs.) was .75 / 2 / 2 / CF / 2 / 2 / .75 using West system epoxy resin, 105/206. The final thickness measured about .050" to .055".

I carefully pried the layup to prevent distortion and with minor difficulty, it popped off. The 3M tape was pulled off and it was easy to trim with a band saw.

I also took some time to try and model the inside of the gear doors. Not yet sure I'll use them. Worse case I wasted some time. Best case is they stiffen up the fiberglass a bit. It will all depend on the gear installation.

Retracts Installation
 

As mentioned earlier, I am using Century Jet retracts prescribed for the Pica kit. Hopefully the bugs are worked out now and as I said in another posting, you pick a vendor that you sense will work with you through problems. Someone told me that electric retracts for our small planes are not yet up to the reliability you have on full size aircraft. It takes time and commitment to get there. I've known CJM to be cooperative and respectful of my issues and I will continue to work with him and his products. Enough said, this is not a commercial as there are many vendors to choose from. The chosen one just has to be big enough and responsive enough to fix the problems when they occur.

Contrary to my forum research on other posts for the Pica Kit build, these retracts did not "drop in" following the Pica Kit's rail design. The Pica design accounts for the proper angle and assumes that the gear rotates 90 degrees as does mine. If you use Robart 85 deg retracts, you'd best cut the proper holes in the ribs before building the wing. I don't know what gear was used in the past, but these gears are perhaps beefier, or thicker such that they would not fit into the cut out wheel wells. I had to do two major things differently that took a lot of time. One, I had to lower the maple rails deeper into the wing rib by at least 1/8". I'm just glad I did not cover the top of the wing with sheeting as yet. It would have been a nightmare. At least I could get my hands in there.

Second, I started to favor the pivot point (and thus the gear) to be closer to the center of the fuselage. This inherently gives you more depth to bury the 5 inch wheel. Maybe the DuBro lite wheel is too thick? Yet even with that I had to hog out a lot of rib wood. So much so that I decided to reinforce Rib 5 with a sheet of G10. I also added triangle stock bracing. All was installed using Hysol. When I fiberglass the wing, I may also add some CF sheet in the gear area. All the forum posts say that the landing gear installation is the weak link on this plane. Hard landings can chew this area up How far can / should you go to build in strength? We'll have to see if this is enough. Maybe more experienced modelers of large planes can chime in?

One thing I know for sure is that I will have a lot more tinkering with this installation before all is said and done.

RDS Linkage for Ailerons
 

I wanted to have a more scale like appearance so I thought I'd try the Second Generation RDS system. I realized that with the pocket, a removable aileron using a long piece of ,047" wire was out of the question. So, I cut the slots for the large Dubro hinges, installed the aileron pocket on the centerline and then fit the servos in wing pockets on plywood mounts I made. I'll glue in place once the finish is applied.

The only thing I don't like is that the gap on the wing seems a little too big because of the hinges. I'm going to try to bury the hinge more. Perhaps when I'm done sheeting the wing and sand everything down, I'll try to fit some balsa fairing strips to also close the gap a little more.

The 30 degree wipers give more than enough throw per the drawing.

Just picked up one of these kits I hope to build sometime. Enjoyed your pictures and can't wait to see more.

Gear Door Fitting
 

Good luck to CapThis with his new Pica kit. I hope you enjoy the building as much as I do. A lot of what I'm doing is "first time" even though I've built many sport planes over the years. I'm struggling in areas that are new to me. Getting these doors hooked up and working correctly is a real challenge.

I'm back on the Gear Doors. I came across a problem with my intent of using HS 5065 MG Digital Servos and the Hitec Servo Programmer. I posted elsewhere and I received some good suggestions on how to fix. Basically the gear doors wouldn't open and close fully. The interface between the CJM sequencer was chopping the signal down and the doors wouldn't open and close correctly. I disconnected the mechanics and used the programmer to "overshoot" the servo through and when connected, the doors fully opened and closed. If interested in details see thread "Need Help with HS 5065 MG Digital Servo and Servo Programmer" on this forum.

I installed the gear doors such that they can be removed from the fuselage for maintenance. I used ball joints and clevis to connect the door. I built a small servo tray and slotted some wood so that I could also remove the servos with a couple of screws.

I'm going to focus on the attachment of the outer gear door and yet another new challenge. The aluminum block of the gear is sticking up too far. While trying to bury the wheel deeper into the wheel well, the gear rails could have been down further by about 1/16th of an inch. A cautionary note to new builders here. The repercussions of earlier build decisions affects the outcome down stream!

I bought some scale outer gear door arms from Sierra and installation of hinges and arms will be next. The flying season is approaching so building may wane till Fall. Way too much fun!

I do like building but this and the Vailly FW-190 kit I bought will be my first warbird attempts. I've always been a giant scale aerobat, or profile pilot/builder so this will be a new venture for me as well. I need to decide on retracts soon as well as a motor. I went with Sierra for my FW-190 project and probably will go with those for this kit as well.

I hear you on flying season coming up I have a few projects to finish so I have stuff to fly this summer! :)

Gear Door Finishing and Fit
 

Gear Door Finishing and Fit
 

Murphnator, (Post below) Thanks for the encouragement. I just started to remodel some of my basement so I got strapped for time. Since I have plenty of planes ready to fly, I'm going to rekindle the building effort and keep this effort going as much as possible. I used this spot to edit a double post I did by mistake. Maybe a little out of step, but hopefully all is forgiven.

Any questions, albeit what I would do different, or why I did what I did, just let me know.

BTW, I contacted web support because I'm running into a website problem. I can edit small posts, but seems like larger posts are problematic. The site won't allow minor edits by showing an editable "preview" screen with large posts. The entire screen is blank for some reason. I don't know if this is a CPU memory issue or what. Small posts will allow minor editing. I'm just a stickler for proper typing and I cut and paste off MS Word. Something is not working right. OK, just a small rant but I'd like to be clear on what I write. Maybe the website tech guys can help? Maybe not.

In the meantime, I edited this post problem by cut and pasting from scratch. The posts don't like the embedded pictures I had in post #36. All is well again.

Hey! Glad to see your back in the shop! I took on one of these that was partically built, had wing framed with LIKE gear installed, and the fuse was framed up with a tail wheel installed. This is my first giant scale build and my first gear door/sliding canopy build. The kit came with the Pica scale cockpit, vent door, after market nose cone and sliding canopy. I just sheeted the top of the wing today.
I too was struggling with the build, so I started to look for build threads and found yours very helpful, but I was disappointed when it stopped.
Keep up the great work I look forward to the rest of the build!

Hey Murph, welcome to the RCU forums!

Keep plugging away at the Mustang...

Landing Gear Door Fitment