8/6/07
With my RC club’s Warbird fly-in scheduled for October 20-21 decided that maybe I should build myself a Warbird. The ease of today’s electric flight has opened up a whole new venue of ideas, too. I’ve always liked the P-38 Lightning but was always afraid of them on glow power. All the aggravation of trying to synch twin engines not to mention the nasty things that can happen if one engine dies at an in-opportune time. Electric flight pretty much eliminates those hassles.
I did some shopping around and considered the GWS P-38. Then found I liked the E-Flite better. But, those are both foam flyers and I really wanted wood. That’s when I ran across the Richmodel P-38 at Hobby E-store. A genuine balsa & lite ply ARF with a 51.6” wingspan. About 3 inches bigger than the E-Flite and at $98.90 compared to $129.00 for the E-Flite, made my choice pretty simple. Both kits require the purchase of about the same additional items to complete so made my purchase.

8/13/07
My kit arrived today and I was a bit nervous when it came off the UPS truck since the outer box wasn’t exactly in pristine condition. The inside box wasn’t too pretty either (attractive package but a bit beat up). Luckily an inspection showed no damage to the parts inside. I have to say that this is an impressive looking ARF (quality of wood and component construction). I’ll find out more about the assembly later. Although I did pull all the parts out of the box for damage inspection, I didn’t even open any of the plastic bags they were wrapped in. Instead I put them back in the box (yes they did all fit back in) and set it aside for now. I’m currently about waist deep in a scratch built Eurofighter EDF that I want to finish, and the fly in is still over a month away. I did go ahead and order the motors and ESC’s for it today though. More thoughts on those once I get them since this was a new place where I’ve never shopped before.

8/19/07
Being the frugal (cheap) modeler that I am, I try to find possibilities of using the same equipment in more than one project so got back into the box again. Since I’m going to be buying 2 batteries for the Eurofighter wanted to be able to use the same packs in this one. I’ll be using Dual-Sky 3s 2200 ma 25c lipos in the Euro which is quite a bit more than needed for the motors in this plane, but would rather have too much battery than not enough. I temporarily assembled the motor mounts and checked the dimensions for the pack. It required a bit of cutting on the front bulkhead (see photos) of the engine booms but with this minor modification, the 2200 pack will slip right in with no problem. I’m still impressed so far with the quality of this kit. All the lite ply motor mount pieces are laser cut and fit is precise. I might mention that the motors & ESC’s I ordered from Grayson Hobby arrived Friday. Don’t know yet about the quality of the pieces, but the service was prompt and that’s a positive in my opinion. I had planned on using the Richmodel motors but they were out of stock at the time. The motors are Welgard 2217-09’s which had the same dimensions as the Richmodel motors and claim to have more power. I’m going to run counter rotating props and using APC 9x6 EP (pusher) on the right wing (clockwise rotation) with APC 9X6 E on the left (counter clockwise).

8/31/07
With my Eurofighter completed a couple of nights ago finally started construction this evening. I’m still impressed with the overall quality of this ARF. The fit of parts has been great so far but have only built the motor boxes and epoxied them to the booms, attached ailerons to the wing and installed aileron servos. I’m guessing that the Richmodel brand of servo must be a bit smaller than the Hitec 55’s I’m using since I had to enlarge the servo cutouts slightly to get them in.
The wing is a crowded place with all the wiring that has to run through it and will have total of 4 “Y” harness’ attached just to it. 2 ESC’s, 2 elevator servos, 2 aileron servos and 2 rudder servos. Add in the nose gear and it becomes 5 Y’s The right wing will also carry an extra wire for the UBEC that will feed power to the receiver. With 7 servos total I’m not about to trust an ESC to run them. With all that wiring, this is not going to be a model that can be easily taken apart (wing removed) for transport or storage. So far, that and a manual that leaves much to the imagination are the only things I don’t like about it though. It might not satisfy a scale purist, but for the average “Sunday Flyer” like me, looks great so far. There’s no putting it back in the box now.

9/1/07
After taking part in a 5 hour work party for my RC club didn’t really feel like doing much when I got home but still managed to get the wing and engine/tail booms assembled before calling it quits for the day. I chose not to follow the instructions for installing the elevator & rudder pushrods. The manual shows them with the “z” bend ends going to the control horns and quick connects being used on the servos. Not only would it be difficult to hook the bends into the control horns, but would also require removal of the wing to make any adjustments. To me, it just made more sense to go this way and you can find my own version of an assembly guide supplement on the photo page .

9/3/07
Decided to take a day off yesterday and relaxed a bit after coming in from flying. Today I put in a few hours on it and ran into a couple of things I didn’t like. Nothing that couldn’t be overcome though. After rigging the cockpit pod, found it more or less impossible to get all the wires from the wing stuffed inside for assembly. There is a former in the pod that is directly between the receiver location and the wire exit holes in the wing halves. A rotary tool with cut off wheel took care of that by removing the top of it so the wires could be laid in. Next little aggravation was the wing bolt holes that didn’t line up quite right with the preinstalled blind nuts. The left wing bolt actually did line up but had to enlarge the hole (forward) a bit on the right wing half to get it in. The manual shows the kit to have nylon bolts for attaching the wing to the booms & fuselage but mine came with metal ones. Not a bad thing since they should be stronger. However, they are more likely to loosen up from vibration. I added a little blue Loc-tite to the threads on mine to make sure it doesn’t come apart in mid air.
Next I installed the motors and landing gear. Then, took it out to the parking lot for some taxi testing to get the steering centered before re-installing the nose cone. Tail feathers got attached and the radio install (control linkage) completed. I did good. Everything is going in the right direction.
I couldn’t install the motor cowlings today due to the prop adapters not being long enough to handle the extra thickness of a spinner back plate. Going to have to find some that are at least a 1/4” longer. There are still some odds & ends (cosmetics) I could finish up but will save them for another day.

9/8/07
Guess I’ve put in another hour or so of time on the model now. The decals have been applied, the rear scoops attached to the booms and, the canopy installed. Last night I decided to check battery flight time and ran it in the living room floor with it nose butted against a book case for 10 minutes. Mostly a mix of half to 3/4 throttle since at that setting the 9’ X 5’ rug in my living room would start to flap behind it. I did throw in a couple of 1 minute full throttle hits but had to stand on the rug when doing it. Otherwise I could have had a flying carpet. It makes some serious prop wash. The 10 minute run dropped the batteries to about a 3.3v per cell average but didn’t heat them up.

9/11/07
With the prop adapters arriving today, finally got the cowlings installed tonight. I also found that it was very nose heavy after adding the battery packs. As a result I wound up adding about 3 oz. Of lead to the tail to get it to balance. Balanced AUW on mine comes in at 66 oz. or 6 oz. over the weight given in the specs. (the price of using the bigger battery packs) Although the real proof will be in the flying, I’m still quite impressed with the amount of finish work that’s pre-done and overall quality of the kit for the price. Even the canopy was pre painted. Let’s hope our good old EPA doesn’t decide that it’s lead based paint or something. I really don’t want to give mine up to a recall. <grin>