Lipo Man

I may do the same. Everything is just taped up temporarily at the moment, and I’m going for cartoon scale only. I’ll try another balsa bird when I’m ready to do something fancy again! This build is only intended to have a short lifespan, as I may need the motor for something else if the Warbird Replicas factory puts another shift in…

Starting to skin the fuselage in the “Flitetest” style. Material is 6mm insulation foam, and it’s going to be pretty rough! Hoping it will look OK in the air some distance away…

Here’s a thought for all cheapskate modellers (the best sort!). Wouldn’t it be great to create a shared spreadsheet that matches common scale colours to the closest off the shelf emulsion match? It’d be a valuable service to ghetto scale modellers everywhere!

Ah yes. A good point well made. It’s 1/6th obviously, as the good lord intended. I made it to go in my FW190…

Structure for the fuselage is underway. It’s big… Formers are 9mm insulation foam from B&Q, and the skin will be 6mm thickness of the same stuff. The central box structure feels very stiff - I’m going to cut some holes in the rear half to help with the CG. It feels strong enough that I think I can afford to lose some material. The orange in the photo is for scale - we’d run out of bananas…

Starting the fuselage today. Simple foamboard box as a core, with formers and skin of B&Q insulation foam. Hoping it’ll be pretty light, but the motor is a heavy lump so there’s a limit to how light I can get it!

To be honest I wasn’t intending to build something quite this big, but it didn’t look as bad on the laptop screen… 😳

The spar felt very stiff and the intention was that this takes the bending loads. It feels easily capable of that. The hope was that the skin will add the torsional stiffness - and it does feel pretty resistant to twisting. With the skin glued onto the other side it now weighs 250g - so that’s 500g for a 1.7m span wing before servos are added etc. That seems pretty good to me?

Glue looked dry-ish so decided to take a look. Very excited about this - looks promising. Very rigid and only 160g - pretty good!

Simple jig constructed from the rib “off cuts” to hold the intended washout. Skinned with pre-shaped 6mm foam sheet glued with foaming gorilla glue. I’ve left it all overnight to see how it works - fingers crossed!

Back to the build this evening. Full depth foamboard spar feels more than sufficiently robust for the kind of flight loads I’m anticipating. Feeling optimistic!

Very true. However, very visible for orientation! Every cloud!

There is. And sadly, it's never me...

Crikey - what’s the yellow one. I didn’t read the labels (😳) and it looked very Typhoon-ish to me. As you will gather, this is not my area of expertise! 😆

As I’ve already got the FW190 I’m sitting this one out on the advice of the house finance committee. However, I happened to find myself in North London this afternoon with some time to kill, so for all you eager Tempest builders I thought I’d share these for inspiration!

In the interest of growing skills, retracts preferred. Single engine also preferred (I’ve already got motor etc.), Sea Fury would be perfect but a P47 razorback would do just fine. Twin would also add a skill so I’d probably go for it even though lower down my personal list, and a Mossie would be perfect in that instance. I'd add retracts if they were available.

Everyone at our club uses one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Battery-Capacity-Controller-Batteries/dp/B0C2TYRVZ1/ref=asc_df_B0C2TYRVZ1/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=676227278064&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7495944667474387272&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006534&hvtargid=pla-2265048467684&psc=1&mcid=c9820f8beda83f078ac27674ff206e44&gad_source=1

Was flying mine this afternoon in exactly the same way. Loads of fun!

The upside down insignia is correct if he’s flying inverted. Seems close enough to me? 👍

Having a rethink based on your feedback - will make the box full depth.

I’m sort of along those lines - but rethinking a bit based on the feedback here. I’ll deepen the spar to add some strength.

Wow. That’s a stunner. This build is going to be more in the Flitetest realm - not going for much in the way of realistic scale detail, and weight target is about half what your Spitfire is flying at. However at that weight could be a nice easy flyer. Congrats on the Spitfire - lovely build!

One thought on cheap batteries. I built a large ugly stick out of foamboard - about 1.7m span with a 5065 sized brushless motor. Flew brilliantly until I took off with ailerons reversed… Anyway - avoided the battery problem by using two 3s batteries in series to give me 6s. Worked brilliantly until I destroyed it, so I’m about to build something sketchy to re-use the motor. And once that is destroyed I could always put the motor in whatever comes out of this discussion… This is the stick before (and after…) its’ untimely demise.

The wing will have a foamboard box spar, and then insulation foam ribs and skin. There’s a sort of building jig from the rib “offcuts” to hold them in place while the skins are glued on - that’s an attempt to build in some washout and make both wings the same. Not sure if it will work - we will see!

Just starting an experimental build of a Grumman F8F Bearcat. If it gets finished it will be 1.7m span and very approximate in terms of scale detail. The payback will be that it should be a very quick and cheap build. Material will be a mix of Hobbycraft foamboard and B&Q home insulation foam sheets. Plans are being done extrapolating from a 24in span balsa control line design, blown up to 270%. Tomorrow I’ll try building one wing and see if the design works. If it doesn’t I may park the idea. Here goes nothing!