MicroWarbirds P51 and FW190 - Ton's build blog and chat

[Ton van Munsteren]

Hi Roy,

Sorry don't know what you mean by prices , could it be that you mean the steering piano wire.

Cheers

Ton

[roy hill 2]

I mean the pieces for the horn connecters before you put them together and the aileron connecters and how you put them on thanks

[Jon Gee 1]

Would like some more details on the aileron and rudder linkages (before heatshrink if possible) as fixing to the surfaces is the bit that is the challenge for me at the moment on my first build...

Any assistance would be welcome thanks. Jon

[Tommy Soderstrom]

You mean like this?

I used a sullivan cable for the ailerons, just a 90 degree bend at the end and it works fine with the small retainers.
1mm pianowire for the elevator, I put it inside the fuselage.

Control horns are 1mm plywood simply glued to the control surfaces using medium CA. Don't forget to remove a strip of covering efore you glue them in place though.

[chris barnes 1]

Hey Ton, what is the wingspan on the Mustang? I'm still waiting for my local bookstore to finish putting the new magazines up on the rack. They still have the January issue out right now.

[Ton van Munsteren]

Roy , Jon ,

In the elevator and ailerons there is a 2mm spruce spike glued in.

From the elevatorservo to the elevator theres a 0.8mm pianowire, which than will be connected with heathshrink to the elevator spruce spike.

From the aileronservo there is a 0.6mm pianowire which will be connected to the aileron spruce spike with heathshrink.

Its best to bend the and of the pianowire or thicken it up a little with thick Ca so the heathshrink will hold on the wire.

Push the wire and spike till it stops

The aileron connection, glue the spike in the aileron , cut the pianowire to length slide the heathshrink in place and shrink it. After that the connection is done and you can put an extra drop to make sure.

I hope its clear if not just let me know.

Tommy,

Very nice pics thanks for posting and yes that would also be an good option.

Chris ,

The winspan on the P51 is 640mm.

Cheers

Ton

[Andy Horsman]

Part way through building the FW-190 from 3 and 6mm depron. Using a KFm-4 wing with 6x1 mm carbon spar under the 3mm top and bottom panels. I just drew a line from the centre of the le to te of the fuse cutout and enlarged top and bottom to accomodate the revised wing section.Will top skin mostly with 3mm depron.

Plan to use a spare HK Funfigher 1950kv motor,30 or 40 amp esc and 800-1000 mAh 3s pack. Made the fuse wider so I can shoehorn in a 800 4s pack if required. Will use two 9 gram servos for the ailerons and elevator. No rudder on this baby!

Will use acrylic light/dark grey for top and light blue underneath. It's not the first time I've adapted a trad build to depron. Last year I built Alex Whittaker's Super Slinky out of depron and e powered to create the SlinkyE. See my photos and search for "Slinky E" on YouTube if you are interested.

I'll post pictures and video when I'm further along with the build

Andy

[Ton van Munsteren]

Finaly receive my Hk wing Camera not for placing it on the wing but along side my sunglasses.

Did that earlier with a Key Chain Cam and was good fun the new Cam is with an 120 degrees lens and much better to us.

Had no patience to set the Camera in the correct setting, so the date is not correct, but could not wait to show you guys how the Microwarbird fly even on a windy day.

Ton

[Stephen Jones]

Hi Ton ,

Does that have a throttle on it .................

It looks like you are as bad as me , i often get accused of only having a switch for the motor ,

And that all my models only have two settings on or off , i see an old petrol head at heart .

Nice vid

Cheers Steve ,

[Ton van Munsteren]

Hi Steve,

Yes there is a throttle somewhere but havend find it yet.

Must admit the Microwarbirds brings out the bad as in me, its just not possible to fly a straightline for more than 1 sec and its even more fun doing it very close to the ground

O yes an old petrol head but having happy time with E-flight , never an engine to rich or to lean always all the power there is at hand.

Thanks for the compliment on the vdo, good to know youve enjoyed it

Cheers

Ton

[Ton van Munsteren]

Andy,

Looks like an great project and looking forward to your pics.

Iam not an Depron modeller its not bad to work with, but only for my indoor models because I have to.

For me its balsa all the way, love your Depron SlinkyE and can't wait to see how the Microwarbird are going to take shape.

I do hope you will have the same performance as I have on my Microwarbird.

Cheers

Ton

[Andy Horsman]

Thanks Ton

It should move out ok bearing in mind the donor HK Funfighter does 80-90 mph on the planned power set up

It will be more draggy than my Rare Bear and SeaFury but should still be fun. I made the ailerons full span so will tone down the rates and add a heap of expo on my DX8

My brother plans to build your P-51 but using a more modest Blue Wonder 1700kv style motor

Andy

[IanN]

Just received this 1510/22 motor from China

**LINK**

looks to be same spec as at least one other already mentioned on here. Don't know what the quality is like but for £7 inc p&p it was worth a punt

I guess I'll have to build one of these now

[Ton van Munsteren]

Ian,

Yes thats the one to use for the P51 or FW190 or for both and for a nice price.

Good guess and looking forward to your build pics , what will be first the P51 or FW190.

Maybe good for your motivation my vdo of the FW190, not the best but it was the second vdo with my new cam.

Cheers

Ton

[NewBuilderFlyer]

Ever had one of those days.....?

I've been building the P51 for a few weeks now and everything has been just fine - except today. I bought the wood kit and was impressed with how quickly it arrived and the quality of the wood and cutting. All the parts went together well and I was even looking forward to the wing covering - something I don't do so well at. Even covering the wing was without stress and today I planned to finish everything off for a quick test flight whilst the weather was fine. In hindsight I should have just walked away but here's what happened. I must have kinked the aileron tubes as the rods I used didn't feel all that smooth and the servo seemed to have limited travel - but it looked ok. I assembled the wing, wired up the motor to the esc and fitted the receiver. With the transmitter fired up the ailerons were fine, but the elevator servo refused to work and made that horrible sound of something that had just stripped its gears. And that's a problem because this servo is glued inside. I quickly figured out that I could simply glue a new servo to the side and cover it up later. And to tidy things up I cut off the lead to the broken servo. Except that it was the lead to the aileron servo that I cut off. A bit more soldering later (and my heat gun for the heatshrink died on me) I rushed to get the plane finished stuffing the battery and electronics inside and quickly checked the CoG which was about right. As you might expect the first flight was a disaster as once launched the battery moved to be quickly followed by a decisive crash into the rotary washing line which was lucky as only the propeller broke. And looking back I should have yet again retreated to the house, but I hastily fitted a new prop, secured the battery in place and tried again. After a brief attempt at flying the P51 fell from the sky into a muddy puddle as the elevator rod had decided to bend. Dejected I fished it out, stomped back to the house where my son greeted me with 'Dad - why did you make such a crappy plane....?' My wife added that I had wasted the last 3 hours in the garage when I could have been doing better things like helping her prune the trees. In the safety of the garage I was tempted to jump on the model but reflected on a couple of really obvious things;

1. I need to be in the right mood to do this model plane stuff and rushing doesn't help

2. Really cheap rubbish servos are best avoided (I won't mention what make they are)

3. It's all my fault really

4. Try again tomorrow

[DG3]

Sorry to hear about your woes. If it helps I too had hassle with the aileron setup. I ended up making micro bellcranks. Still not that happy with my work as the Ail travel is not much before the servo binds. Anyway my motor arrived today so I will finish it off.

Persevere and you will get there.

p.s. Re your no.2 point - please name the cheap servo that gave you hassle. It will educate us all. I'm using HXT500, seem ok.

[NewBuilderFlyer]

Having calmed down a bit I'm going to replace both servos and re-work the aileron servo position - the travel is not good with the way I have it. The inexpensive servos I used were from HobbyKing 3.7g miniman sourced from ebay.

[Ton van Munsteren]

NewBuilderFlyer,

Thats what I call a bad day, which best is to forget quickly.

Also had my share of problem servo's also with the HK HXT500 but test them always before placing and even than .

Using a lot of the HK HXT500 its a nice servo's for a nice price and always have some spare just to make sure.

Wish you luck sorting out the Mustang the model is worth all the effort and when its all working its great fun to fly and the good thing is that all the problems will be quickly forgotten.

Don't forget to post some pics would love to see you Mustang.

Cheers

Ton

[NewBuilderFlyer]

ok - did some major repairs today. The servos I was using were HobbyKing 3.7g and I've taken those out (the crash did most of that for me) and have ordered 2 x 5g HXT500 types. The fuselage has a large hole in the side - this is where the broken servo used to live - I'll add a balsa plate and cut a hole so the servo fits in from outside. I also had to patch up a few other places where the balsa didn't like hitting the ground in that hard and crunchy way. The unique silver effect is because I couldn't face covering the balsa, so I used 'Sand and Seal' then a can of silver paint. It'll look fine with a few decals on..... (it cleared up quite well despite the muddle puddle it was attracted to).

For the wing I've removed the tube for the aileron wires - I just couldn't get the servo placed correctly in the middle to get appropriate travel without binding. I'm going to use some bell cranks and figure out a different way of mounting the servo.

I'm a little bit more optimistic than yesterday - and by now the P51 could have been pride and place in our fireplace given the mood I was in.

[Andy Horsman]

Now finished my all depron version of Ton's FW-190. Just need to add some canopy lines and source some decals.Followed the plans apart from KFm-4 wing and a wider fuse to allow for larger lipo 3S pack. The planned HK Funfighter motor was a bit too heavy so I went instead for a 37g 1800kv motor. Prop for maiden will be a 6x5 fed through a 30 amp esc from a 3S 1000 mAh lipo pack.

Hope to maiden this weekend and will post video

Andy

Edited By Andy Horsman on 07/03/2014 22:17:45

[Andy Horsman]

Maiden flight went well today.

[Danny Fenton]

Went well Andy, well done

[Andy Horsman]

Thanks Danny

she needed a fair bit of right trim and she does torque roll to the left on launch. I'll try launching at less than WOT now that I know she has enough oomph

[Ton van Munsteren]

Andy,

Thats a great looking Microwarbird and looks like good fun flying the FW190.

It Go's like a rocket and the rolls are very fast.

Nice landings by the way.

Thanks for the pics and the video

Ton

[Andy Horsman]

Thanks for the great design Ton. It was an easy conversion to depron and the KFm-4 wing performed well. I made the ailerons full span to allow me to actuate from two 9g servos inside the fuse. I was flying most of the video at 70% rates (middle position on my DX8) and at the middle of the three control horn holes. I think rolls would be a blur if I went for 100% and the lowest hole

Might build another one with some dihedral and a rounder upper fuse of cold formed 3mm depron. My brother plans to build the P-51, which knowing him (he's a pattern maker), will be a work of art compared with my quick and dirty build. That's why I like 'em fast; less chance of spotting my imperfect build

Andy

Edited By Andy Horsman on 08/03/2014 22:04:59