Another shot of the fins in position. Tomorrow night I can work on the rudders and then I can finish the elevator.


Hey George, Paul has decided to put this up on his sight as a project. I have a little better descriptions over there, if anyone wants to see it visit www.rcwarbirds.com and look for the project of the month, I will keep posting here also.

flying2bill

Yes, I saw it at rcwarbirds. Check my twin boom creations in the twinman section.
Looks fantastic and you are going to love this. I learned to knife edge outside circle on a similar design using the Long John as the basic model and used two booms. It is much easier due to two lifting surfaces on the two fuse's.
When you get to the radio set up, let me know and I could offer my poor ideas as to make this even more fun.
Good Luck, looks great,

have the rudders framed up, need to do the hinging and lotsa sanding and then I can sheet both assemblies. Wish I could use a router here, sure would save a lot of time sanding

Got a lot done today (by my pace) elevator built, and hinged, fins and rudders sheeted

Also got most of boom #2 sheeted Need to add filler blocks at the tail and then we can move back to the front of this baby

Small set back as I decided to redo the rudders, I built the originals with no taper to them, some local experts convinced me that was not good, so I built new ones.

have started the center section

Center mostly framed up need to add doublers inside yet

Trial fitting to wing, still need to build section under the wing to blend it all in

Couple of days getting things worked out building the landing gear. I had the mains made in a local machine shop (thanx to Keith @ Runde's Machine Shop) but bought the nose gear from Robart The basic parts of the main gear. I used my Robart zp38 gear as a pattern for the mains

The completed gear back home, ready to install

The Junk Yard Dog (new name for the plane) on it's feet for the very first time. The nose gear arrived after the mains were built, requiring a trip back to the machine shop to have the mains shortened, I did not realize the Robart nose gear was so short. Even after shortening the mains the center pod will still have to be modified so the plane will sit level.

Neat plane you got there. But sure is ugly.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.......Anything that resembles a P-38 is fine with me.. ( Hope he removes that orange in the middle) Tee Hee

Using the theory ugly flies better, the orange in the middle is actually the left over residue from peeling off the 25 year old monocoat, has soaked into the wood, am going to sheet the whole wing and try F4u5's method of envirotex to cover

most of the boom sheeting is now done, wheel well hatches are built as are the radio equipment hatches at the rear

shot of the radio compartment hatch

up on the scales for our first weigh in, when I started this I projected the weight to be between 30-40 lb. first weigh in shows airframe at 18 lb. this includes landing gear, wheels, half of the required servos, two batteries, most of the sheeting is done. Inset photo shows weight with the enfines, props and mufflers now 27-1/2 lb., now predict finish weight to be 35 lb.

Twinman-
You mentioned coupling the rudders to the throttles in your original post and I was wondering if you could go into a little more detail on how you did it.
Frank

If you have the Futaba radio, 8 channel, Don Ed???? has a book about how to program it. In the back of the book, he talks about how to do this program,,,,,,,,BUT!!!!!!!! Do not follow it exactly!!!
Per the instructions, the mix works from IDLE up. DO NOT DO THIS!!!
The problem is that while taxiing to the runway, every time you hit the rudder, one engine will speed up.This causes the plane to vere off to one side, now you counter and the other engine comes on the opposite way, and on and on!!!!!! You end up chasing the plane........NOT GOOD.
I cannot tell you exactly how to program each radio, but only allow it to happen above 50% throttle and retard one engine. Must set max limits to avoid over driving the servos.
Basically, using mixes, if the plane is going to turn right, as a hammer head, you input rudder to the right and the right engine retards a given amount. This gives left engine more authority to pull the plane to the right, and visa versa.
Imagine now a knife edge flight, the lower engine is at full throttle and the upper engine is 60% or whatever. This helps hold the plane in knife edge beyond only aerodynamic lift.
Now, imagine the flat spin. One engine pulling the plane round faster than a single engine couple do........worried to get out of the spin?.......reverse the rudder direction, and the thrust stops the spin and out you fly as the engines now are pulling in opposite direction to the spin. Neat!!!!!
I now use it on all of my aerobatic planes, but not warbirds.
It will work best on the twin fuse type bashes, but my Ultra Sport 100(2) also uses it. Now, in the past, I have warned against wide engine spacing, and still do for most planes and learning to fly twins, due to engine out problems, but with a plane that you plan to do aerobatics, the farther apart the engines, the more this mix will benefit the performance. There is of course a trade off with control with wide spacing. Choice is up to you.
One more idea, Morris Hobbies has an electrical mixer to do just this mix without the aid of a computer radio. Have not tried it, but have seen the instructions. He sells it for his fun fly twins.
Good Luck,
Twinman

well this thread suffered a set back some time ago, we had a little accident with the project

Shortly after the accident we moved, so everything was packed away and then during the summer was the project to build the new club runway, and having to turn an old garage into my new workshop and after many months of no building the old project started to call to me (yes I hear it calling me in the night) so we have started repairs, there will be more to come

Rebuild of the center pod is moving along, am trying F4U5's covering method, boy have I got a lot to learn. I am not real pleased with my results but this is my first try, and covering is not my strong suite to begin with. Problem may be in the cloth I am using, I'm using Sig coverall but not to thier instructions. I am making improvements as I go but still am not convinced enough to use on the Ziroli when I get back to it. Pics 1&2 show pod with bare covering, pic 3 is first coat of primer, wow lots of sanding and filling yet to do, pic 4 is a shot from last april "before" the accident, during the rebuild I changed the shape of the pod and I think it looks a little better now.

A base coat of Aluminum has been applied, some gray for the windows and the yellow nose stripe. Have been going through some photo books of late and not finding a particular subject to duplicate (this is not scale so what does it matter anyway) I have just borrowed from several schemes to paint this. Just trying different techniques I guess.

The anti glare panel has been painted as well as most of the khaki. The aluminum stripe at the front will eventually be painted red. I base coated in aluminum because I wanted to try some weathering however in recent reading I have discovered that P-38's had a black undercoat, lesson learned do research first. Will finish painting the center pod tomorrow and move on to the booms. WHile on the subject of research, does anyone have info on Richard Bong's mount from his flying circus days, this was before he married Marge (I think he was shot down in the plane I'm looking for). I want to use this scheme for my Zirloi