39" Messerschmitt Bf 109 Swappable - Build Thread

localfiend

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Took my Mighty Mini design and made it bigger just like I've been doing with all the others.

http://forum.flitetest.com/showthread.php?24426-Mighty-Mini-Bf-109-Swappable-Build-Thread



This one is 39" instead of 42", but that's due to the super long fuselage. Big as I could go and still keep the fuse on one sheet of foamboard.









Plus, the Bf 109 was tiny compared to something like a spitfire or mustang. Even though it's smaller than my other full sized warbirds, it's still a bit bigger than it would have been if I scaled it with the others.





I've got some pretty big electronics in the prototype. Makes for a heavy plane (931 grams right now with 2650mAh 4s, might add a few more grams depending on how heavy duty I have to make the landing gear). Wing cube loading should be similar to the mighty mini, maybe slightly higher with the big stuff. Of course, it doesn't need the giant motor, and should fly great on power pack C.





NTM 35-48 1100kv and 80A esc. Heh, 338 grams just for the power pod.





If I can find some bigger wheels might have the maiden flight this weekend.
 
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PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Heh Are your planning to fly this or just drag it thru the air. That's a very big motor for a small piece of foam. But they again.. I cant talk about over powered stuff after putting a blown olds 455 rocket motor in a ford maverick body that when driven the front wheels never stayed on the ground having only a hand throttle and 2 brake pedals for steering.

They do have a real nice look to them for sure. Cant wait for the maiden videos.

One question I do have though. With the motor and prop so far out of the cowling wont that produce a lot of turbulence when bouncing off the flat face instead of drafting around the cowl that was set closer?
 

nerdnic

nerdnic.com
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Very nice! Your designs are looking very good man, keep up the good work. That's a fun motor just make sure your wing is reinforced properly.
 

localfiend

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Heh Are your planning to fly this or just drag it thru the air. That's a very big motor for a small piece of foam. But they again.. I cant talk about over powered stuff after putting a blown olds 455 rocket motor in a ford maverick body that when driven the front wheels never stayed on the ground having only a hand throttle and 2 brake pedals for steering.

They do have a real nice look to them for sure. Cant wait for the maiden videos.

One question I do have though. With the motor and prop so far out of the cowling wont that produce a lot of turbulence when bouncing off the flat face instead of drafting around the cowl that was set closer?

Hehe. If the small version is any indication, I think this one will fly quite well even being rather heavy. I'm not sure if there will be any turbulence issues. The big motor is for another project, but having it sit there in a pod was too tempting. I have a different prop adapter on order so that I can flip the motor around, which will keep it inside the cowl and the prop in a better position, just don't know when it will be here.

The pod cutouts right now are setup for something more sane, like the C power pack, and prop spacing should be good for that. May maiden it with a C pack first so that I can get a feel for how it handles both ways, dunno, we'll see.



Very nice! Your designs are looking very good man, keep up the good work. That's a fun motor just make sure your wing is reinforced properly.


Thanks. After flying the mighty minis around I think I've been bitten by the speed bug, so I had to drop in the big motor.

This is just a bigger version of the mighty mini wing, no streamlining, but I did install an aluminum spar when I decided to try out the NTM. Should be covered strength wise if the wingtips themselves don't rip off. Maybe I should glue in a BBW skewer or two.

You ever try one of these motors on a wing with undercamber tips?
 

nerdnic

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Yep! On my nnChipmunk:


What you'll notice is that at high speed the plane will balloon. Some down trim will be required. The wing tips should be okay for a while but they will stress after sometime if you fly hard.
 

localfiend

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Yep! On my nnChipmunk:

What you'll notice is that at high speed the plane will balloon. Some down trim will be required. The wing tips should be okay for a while but they will stress after sometime if you fly hard.

Ah, cool. Figured the chipmunk had a speedwing like all your others. Sounds like I should be fine then, I'll add a BBQ skewer and we'll see how it does.
 

localfiend

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Bent up some landing gear. Only big wire I had was some tig welding rod, and it's a bit softer than ideal, so I attached some supporting wires.

The small support wires are some stiff piano wire that I wire wrapped and soldered in place. The wire wrap is just copper strands I pulled from some 12 gauge electrical wire.



Final weight without battery is 707 grams. Even got a steerable tail wheel on this one.



Plane is ready to fly. Got to decide if I want to paint it before the maiden.
 

localfiend

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Looks fantastic, but you know what they say about painting before the maiden...

I may risk it. It's worked on my Zero's so far. Total build time may be a factor. If you only spend a few hours building the plane, it doesn't matter if you paint it or not. :cool:

Make that 708grams still need to add that FAA sticker.

When it actually comes time that I have to register, my number will be scrawled inside the fuse with goat blood, in Sumerian. No weight at all. :D
 

localfiend

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Was this ever maiden? :) Just wondering :)

No sadly. It's all painted up and sitting in my basement. Weather has been horrible for flying, and I've been too busy on the good days. I'm hoping the weather will warm up a bit next week so I won't be so busy at work, and then I'll have time to fly it.
 

localfiend

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Might try and fly this tomorrow.

Finally got around to putting decals on it. Changed the paint scheme as well. First go around, I used oil based minwax. After painting, it raised fibers up everywhere and looked horrible. So I sanded it all down, and decided to make it more horrible.




I hear that this paint scheme helped win the war. Hitler shot himself after they painted purple over green instead of green over purple like he requested. :D

Should be an excellent combat fighter. Hopefully with the added speed I'll get a lot more attempts in at cutting streamers.
 

localfiend

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Got the maiden flight in finally this last weekend. Got distracted with the PBY and forgot to post the video.

NTM 35-48 1100kv
80A ESC
10x10 APC Prop
2800mAh 4s 30C

Flight went great until my battery suddenly went dead. I set a timer for 5 minutes, and had a voltage alarm set to 3.5 volts. Alarm went off, and my plane died like 10 seconds later. One cell gave up the ghost. So either my alarm didn't work right, and I ran a cell dead, or the battery just couldn't take it and died.

Video might not be that exciting. I wasn't flying very low or close because of how high the rates turned out to be. Plus, it's so easy to see in the air, I was flying further away than normal.



Flew much like the smaller one. I'll have to get in another flight later with reduced rates to really put it through it's paces. Plane is fine, all that happened was I bent up the front landing gear a bit. Landing gear was just tig welding rod, so it's pretty soft and already bent back into place. Tig rod makes excellent energy absorbing landing gear.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
That looks awesome with that color scheme I think, but then again I am a fan of purple and green. It seems to fly nicely fast or slow. I expected with that heavy motor for it to just nose over soon as you let off the throttle. I guess the weight of the battery counters that as well as you having CG near perfect. Another sweet plane in the books good job.
 

localfiend

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That looks awesome with that color scheme I think, but then again I am a fan of purple and green. It seems to fly nicely fast or slow. I expected with that heavy motor for it to just nose over soon as you let off the throttle. I guess the weight of the battery counters that as well as you having CG near perfect. Another sweet plane in the books good job.

Thanks. I was surprised it slowed down as well as it did.

I'll have to try it with a bigger battery. The one I was using should have been able to put out 84 Amps, so it should have been fine. Oh well.
 

Budzo

Junior Member
Oblt. Wilhelm Schilling's Bf-109

Thought I should finally post a couple pics of my localfiend inspired 39" Bf-109. I used an enlarged jpg image of the plans - grainy, but useable. This is my 4th FTFB scratchbuild (FT Old Fogey, FT Spit, FT Storch), but my first post.

This is my take on Oblt. Wilhelm Schilling's Bf-106, circa February 1944, with a little artistic license (no swastika on tail - instead a German national flag with coat of arms, no flak splotches - instead a little more pleasing smooth camo). And no machine guns on the front cowl-didn't feel like cutting holes in what I thought was a nice rounded shape.
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I also tried out a rounded front lower cowl instead of the more typical FliteTest-type square front end. While it really cuts down on air circulation to the ESC, I like the shape much better. The entire bottom cowl comes out for access. I've been thinking of how to add maybe an air scoop on the bottom or opening up the oil cooler scoop and moving the ESC a little further back.
And, instead of the red devil on the front cowl of Schilling's, we have a red version of localfiend's buddy.
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And as far as the pilot, goes…..
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“I think you may have underestimated the power of the force!”

view of cockpit & instrument panel from outside the canopy.
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I also added a small removable access hatch to get to the servos right behind the rear of the wing, and added the radiator scoops as well.
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I know....there's no prop! (I broke it and need to get another). and I didn't like the slop in the aileron servo so I need to get some more wire.

hope you like it!
budzo