An absolute beginner scratch builds an FT P-40. Now with maiden vids

Colorado Jim

New member
So Dunfielder,
I've been flying for two weeks now. I bought the E-flite Apprentice STS kit, assembled it, bought a good charger and headed out....oops, for got to mention that I spent a bunch of time during the Covid season flying a simulator on my iPhone: Electric RC Lite. It's free. Took me like a month to take off, circle the field, and land with crashing...I'm a slow learner. Anyway, I heard stores about RC groups and decided to go it alone. So far so good. I have a dirt road in the middle of know-where for my private landing strip.
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Ketchup

4s mini mustang
So about the club, if he thinks that it’s about money, then why not tell him that it isn’t about money for you? Also, another reason for why he probably wants you to practice with an instructor is that if something goes wrong a person could get hurt. Just a couple days ago I was in a situation where I thought that I had lost control of my plane (it was flying towards a person) and I have seen new pilots not know what to do in those situations. If you have a big open field without people though, you can probably train yourself and your instincts before deciding to join the club or not.
 

basslord1124

Master member
Honestly, I have heard some club rules be pretty extreme as well. I am kinda thinking this is an older fellow who is the club president and may be more old fashioned. I would honestly suggest having a more open conversation with him...he may not know much about how cheaply things can be done nowadays.

Here's another thing too... pick you out a micro size FT plane and build it. Get some practice on it and where it's smaller that may open up more places that you can fly. Small parks, ball fields, etc. Just fly it in calm winds.
 

Dunfielder

Active member
Honestly, I have heard some club rules be pretty extreme as well. I am kinda thinking this is an older fellow who is the club president and may be more old fashioned. I would honestly suggest having a more open conversation with him...he may not know much about how cheaply things can be done nowadays.

Here's another thing too... pick you out a micro size FT plane and build it. Get some practice on it and where it's smaller that may open up more places that you can fly. Small parks, ball fields, etc. Just fly it in calm winds.

You are mostly right. The club prez/instructor is probably a couple years younger than me. They are a maac club, so they follow maac rules to the letter. Where your right is these guys out there don't fly DIY aircraft. Bunch of dudes with planes that cost a fortune. When they asked me what I was building and I told them, they were scratching their heads saying what's Flite Test? I still may go back but not until I've taught myself to fly some simple patterns, take off and land. Once I can just take the silly wings test and pass it the club would be of more use to me. But as I have said I'd be forever getting enough practice to pass. I don't feel like paying 140 bucks for maybe 10 mins a weekend and not being able to fly my own plane anytime soon.

The micro size would be a good idea but here in northern Alberta there is usually a wind blowing. Going too small would mean no flight time either. In Canada your plane fully loaded must weigh 249 grams or less to be allowed to fly anywhere without a license. Over that and you need a basic "drone" license from the gov or you need to be a maac member. You also have to get out of town due to the restricted airspace once over 249gr with a basic license. Flying RC is a bit of a pain in the butt up here since 2019. And the fines are fat. 1000 dollar fine for no license, 1000 dollar fine if plane isn't registered, 1000 dollar fine for flying where you shouldn't be. So get caught having fun where you shouldn't be and without a drone license or registration, your out 3 grand.

I will either get a maac membership or take the online test for my license. Unfortunately the test is pretty hard and you need to know things that a pilot of full size aircraft needs to know and a hobbyist would never need to know. It's kind of a mess. No study guide your on your own. Very non conducive to getting people into the hobby if you ask me. But that's the law of the land up here.
 
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Dunfielder

Active member
Dry fit my wing on the fuselage while waiting on my electronics and took some pics. I think she is gonna look pretty good. cannot wait to finish it!! I have the hatch slid in place. wish I had remembered to remove the back paper on that long section of turtle deck. other than that so far I think she looks purdy lol.
 

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danskis

Master member
Nice looking plane!!! Your last post was very informative to US pilots....especially the bit about fines. It sucks cause it looks like that's where the US is headed. I agree with you that a smaller plane would not be a good choice for stick time. You might consider the full size Flitetest F22 with some nose modifications to make the nose stronger. I'm pretty sure you can build it under 250 grams and it flys OK in the wind. Plus its cheap and easy to repair.
 

Dunfielder

Active member
Well got a package today but not from FT. My new venom lipo batteries showed up! I read somewhere it's a good idea to put a fresh storage charge on them when you first buy them if they won't be used for a bit. So that's what I'm doing. You never know how long they have been sitting around!
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Dunfielder

Active member
I got an email telling me my FT package is in town this morning. I sit around all morning and get an email at noon saying they tried to deliver it and nobody was home. Wife is still on hold with Canada Post trying to find out where the hell they tried to deliver it. I have a yappy dog, a working doorbell, and I have been sitting waiting so all I know is it wasn't here! Hopefully we get this sorted quick.
 

Dunfielder

Active member
Well got my FT power pack C this evening!! All I have left to do is glue the servos in the ends of the wings and do all the linkages. Programmed my esc. It beeped a whole lot when I did but it seems to be good. It was kinda notchy until I did this. All servos are plugged in. Should be finished tomorrow!! Too bad it's calling for rain all weekend. Oh well I'm sure a maiden isn't far off!
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Dunfielder

Active member
Well it's pouring in northern Alberta today, and looks like it will continue to do so for the next week or more. While I wait for a nice day to maiden General Whee, I figured I'd put up my noobie thoughts on building one of these FT planes from scratch for any other beginners.

It is not difficult. Don't be intimidated to try and build one from scratch to save a few bucks to use on your electronics. The cutting and folding techniques used in the construction are very easy to do. Don't sweat small mistakes. Will your first score cut or two go through the paper on the other side a bit? Sure it will but a little tape and your all good! After you've done 2 or 3 you'll have it down for sure. I forgot to remove paper from the foam on the longest piece of turtle deck. It wrinkled but I said big deal. Then I glued the nose piece of turtle deck on backwards lol. I had to cut it off and recut a new one from foam and put it on correctly. In the end it looks fine. Take your time. Dry fit pieces every time. It will go just fine.

When it comes to installing your electronics it is also a very easy procedure. Make sure you plug into the proper channels and secure your servo connections with tape or glue so it doesn't come apart in the air. My motor spun clockwise when I first installed it, but switching two of the wires around fixed that quickly. I also had to reverse the aileron channel to make it work properly. My i6x radio which came with basically no instructions was not too difficult to figure out. So reversing a channel was super easy. My control surfaces were almost spot on after hooking up the linkages. I recommend to get this as good as possible mechanically so you end up with more trim available. I also had to change the end points on all my servos to get the throws as close to 12 degrees as I could. I only eyeballed it, but I can tell you for sure they moved to like 45 degrees when first installed, which is way too much! Programming the throttle on the ESC was super easy as well.

Now all that's left to do is learn to fly lol!! I highly recommend building one of these FB planes to anyone who would like to try RC flying but not spend a lot of money. After Your first one it gets cheaper still since you have a radio already! They are easy to build and require no special tools to assemble. And because you built it, when you crash it you can fix it or replace it no problem. Don't be like me and wait until your 40! Go out build a plane and have some fun!!
 

Dunfielder

Active member
Checked my CG for the first time today. Looks like it is supposed to be about 1/2 inch from the leading edge. With the battery as far forward as possible i can only get it at about 7/8 or so back. What is a good way for me to weight the nose using stuff a person might have around? I also made up some wheels. I know that there should have been some wood in the wing for the landing gear, and I didn't do that, they were a bit of an afterthought. Does it look like they would work if glued to the underside of the wings? The base is 3/32 aircraft ply.
Also would the landing gear or could the landing gear help me sort out my CG? It doesn't weigh much.
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Dunfielder

Active member