Bavarian RC – Heinkel 219 night fighter design and build

[Bavarian_RC]

Looks fantastic!😎😎👍😎👍😎 I know what you.mean about the weather😕

The forecast isn't too bad, around 0°C (32°F) and sunny in the morning. The risk is to have fog (quite often the case here).

 

[mach1 rc]

The forecast isn't too bad, around 0°C (32°F) and sunny in the morning. The risk is to have fog (quite often the case here).

Over here it feels about 60 degrees but everything is soaked from a downpour last night

 

[Bavarian_RC]

I maidened the Heinkel 219 today. We had cold but very calm weather (and no fog), pretty much ideal! The good thing first: it is still in one piece! The sketchiest part of the whole flight was the launch. Right after the start it pulled up almost vertically and I had some scary moments until I had the trimming done and the Heinkel back under control. After that it was behaving really nicely.
It showed no bad tendencies during the flight. I would even say that it is incredibly stable. I was trying to stall it, but even with full up elevator it was not stalling, but only sagging slightly.

Last impressions taken before the flight (you never know )


And some pictures from the maiden flight

I also did a short video of the maiden flight

I am still wondering what caused the high amount of down trimming that was necessary to fly level. I had to use all the travel of the trimming which is about 3mm down at the trailing edge of the elevator.
When I tested the CG in flight (vertical dive without power) it was not recovering on its own but even going more negative. This is typically a sign for a CG too far back. But I was on the forward edge of the calculated CG range at 55m from the LE. Maybe I need to check again the difference of AOA between wing and horizontal stabilizer. I will do some investigations and more test flights in the next days. But for now I couldn't be happier with how the maiden went.

 

[Grifflyer]

I maidened the Heinkel 219 today. We had cold but very calm weather (and no fog), pretty much ideal! The good thing first: it is still in one piece! The sketchiest part of the whole flight was the launch. Right after the start it pulled up almost vertically and I had some scary moments until I had the trimming done and the Heinkel back under control. After that it was behaving really nicely.
It showed no bad tendencies during the flight. I would even say that it is incredibly stable. I was trying to stall it, but even with full up elevator it was not stalling, but only sagging slightly.

Last impressions taken before the flight (you never know )
View attachment 154320 View attachment 154321 View attachment 154322 View attachment 154323

And some pictures from the maiden flight
View attachment 154324 View attachment 154325 View attachment 154326 View attachment 154327

I also did a short video of the maiden flight

I am still wondering what caused the high amount of down trimming that was necessary to fly level. I had to use all the travel of the trimming which is about 3mm down at the trailing edge of the elevator.
When I tested the CG in flight (vertical dive without power) it was not recovering on its own but even going more negative. This is typically a sign for a CG too far back. But I was on the forward edge of the calculated CG range at 55m from the LE. Maybe I need to check again the difference of AOA between wing and horizontal stabilizer. I will do some investigations and more test flights in the next days. But for now I couldn't be happier with how the maiden went.

Awesome!! That picked up speed pretty well!

 

[Bavarian_RC]

Thanks! I am really pleased with the way she flies. I was hoping for a bit more speed, but I will first investigate the down trim issue before thinking about more speed

 

[Daniel Liutan]

Thanks! I am really pleased with the way she flies. I was hoping for a bit more speed, but I will first investigate the down trim issue before thinking about more speed

Incredibly beautiful! congratulations! Just waiting for the plan.

But forget about the speed Even you put on tons of power on it, a twin engines warbird won't looks fast.
Below is my Grifflyer XF5F. it's double powered than same size single engine one. It flies a bit faster, but you hardly can feel it.

 

[Rhaps]

I maidened the Heinkel 219 today. We had cold but very calm weather (and no fog), pretty much ideal! The good thing first: it is still in one piece! The sketchiest part of the whole flight was the launch. Right after the start it pulled up almost vertically and I had some scary moments until I had the trimming done and the Heinkel back under control. After that it was behaving really nicely.
It showed no bad tendencies during the flight. I would even say that it is incredibly stable. I was trying to stall it, but even with full up elevator it was not stalling, but only sagging slightly.

Last impressions taken before the flight (you never know )
View attachment 154320 View attachment 154321 View attachment 154322 View attachment 154323

And some pictures from the maiden flight
View attachment 154324 View attachment 154325 View attachment 154326 View attachment 154327

I also did a short video of the maiden flight

I am still wondering what caused the high amount of down trimming that was necessary to fly level. I had to use all the travel of the trimming which is about 3mm down at the trailing edge of the elevator.
When I tested the CG in flight (vertical dive without power) it was not recovering on its own but even going more negative. This is typically a sign for a CG too far back. But I was on the forward edge of the calculated CG range at 55m from the LE. Maybe I need to check again the difference of AOA between wing and horizontal stabilizer. I will do some investigations and more test flights in the next days. But for now I couldn't be happier with how the maiden went.

Flies as awesome as it looks.. which is super awesome
Need more nose antennas though

 

[mach1 rc]

I maidened the Heinkel 219 today. We had cold but very calm weather (and no fog), pretty much ideal! The good thing first: it is still in one piece! The sketchiest part of the whole flight was the launch. Right after the start it pulled up almost vertically and I had some scary moments until I had the trimming done and the Heinkel back under control. After that it was behaving really nicely.
It showed no bad tendencies during the flight. I would even say that it is incredibly stable. I was trying to stall it, but even with full up elevator it was not stalling, but only sagging slightly.

Last impressions taken before the flight (you never know )
View attachment 154320 View attachment 154321 View attachment 154322 View attachment 154323

And some pictures from the maiden flight
View attachment 154324 View attachment 154325 View attachment 154326 View attachment 154327

I also did a short video of the maiden flight

I am still wondering what caused the high amount of down trimming that was necessary to fly level. I had to use all the travel of the trimming which is about 3mm down at the trailing edge of the elevator.
When I tested the CG in flight (vertical dive without power) it was not recovering on its own but even going more negative. This is typically a sign for a CG too far back. But I was on the forward edge of the calculated CG range at 55m from the LE. Maybe I need to check again the difference of AOA between wing and horizontal stabilizer. I will do some investigations and more test flights in the next days. But for now I couldn't be happier with how the maiden went.

That plane looks like it flies as good as it looks. In other words it's awesome!!!

 

[Bavarian_RC]

Incredibly beautiful! congratulations! Just waiting for the plan.

But forget about the speed Even you put on tons of power on it, a twin engines warbird won't looks fast.
Below is my Grifflyer XF5F. it's double powered than same size single engine one. It flies a bit faster, but you hardly can feel it.

View attachment 154334

Thanks a lot! I will need to do some more test flights to see what modifications I have to make before releasing plans.
You are probably right about the speed. Anyway if I think about the 1:16 scale the speed is more than fine. GPS says an average speed of 65km/h and top speed horizontal around 85km/h.
BTW the XF5F looks sweet 👍🏻

 

[Bavarian_RC]

Flies as awesome as it looks.. which is super awesome
Need more nose antennas though

Thanks!!! Yeah definitely need some nice dipole antennas 😜Maybe I will do some just for static display... would look super cool 😎

 

[Bavarian_RC]

That plane looks like it flies as good as it looks. In other words it's awesome!!!

Thanks!!! I am more than happy about how it turned out 😁

 

[Daniel Liutan]

Thanks a lot! I will need to do some more test flights to see what modifications I have to make before releasing plans.
You are probably right about the speed. Anyway if I think about the 1:16 scale the speed is more than fine. GPS says an average speed of 65km/h and top speed horizontal around 85km/h.
BTW the XF5F looks sweet 👍🏻

Just had chance to see the video.

Yes, it's already pretty speedy

 

[Bavarian_RC]

I did some more test flights today. During these flights I tested the effect of moving the CG further forward. Nevertheless the amount of down trim could not really be reduced a lot. Instead it was starting to fly bad with the CG too far forward.
Therefore I tested the effect of reducing the difference of AOA between the wing and the horizontal stabilizer by putting wedges with 0.5 degree and also with 1 degree under the wing. Strange enough the effect on the amount of down trimming was quite little.

Landing:

Back home I did a real thorough measurement of the AOA of the horizontal stabilizer. This revealed that the stabilizer was slightly twisted and not as I was hoping at 0 degree, but at approx. 2 degree!
Shame on me as I had even built a jig to avoid this. I think my mistake was to press the stabilizer onto the jig when glueing and by that I was also bending the fuselage a bit. Without the pressure the fuselage must have returned to its initial position giving the stabilizer a little up-tilting.

To correct this I cut a flat triangle out of the fuselage under the horizontal stabilizer, bent it down and glued it together again. The picture shows the cut after glueing. At the rear end I cut out about 2mm.

It didn't correct the twist of the stabilizer of course, but one side is now at 0 degree, the other side at around 0.8 degree.
I hope I can do more test flights tomorrow to see the effect in flight.

 

[Bavarian_RC]

More test flights today with the repaired horizontal stabilizer. For these flights I removed the wedges from under the wings.
In the end I was able to reduce the down trimming a bit, but the elevator is still not neutral (about 2 mm down at the TE).
Finally I tested going vertical and checked what was happening. The more she was hanging on the props (with low air speed), the more she was wanting to flip backwards. So I will try to add some motor down thrust. Hopefully this will also solve the down trimming issue of the elevator.

In parallel I was testing the on-board video, by mounting the RunCam Split 2 on top of the fuselage wing cover. It is positioned right at the CG, so no extra balancing was needed. 3 mounting positions are possible, looking forward, to the side and backwards. I'll try to post the video later that week...
Installation of the RunCam (with 3D printed case):

3D printed mounting frame glued to the inside of the fuselage wing cover:

 

[pajaar]

I did some more test flights today. During these flights I tested the effect of moving the CG further forward. Nevertheless the amount of down trim could not really be reduced a lot. Instead it was starting to fly bad with the CG too far forward.
Therefore I tested the effect of reducing the difference of AOA between the wing and the horizontal stabilizer by putting wedges with 0.5 degree and also with 1 degree under the wing. Strange enough the effect on the amount of down trimming was quite little.

View attachment 155067
Landing:
View attachment 155068

Back home I did a real thorough measurement of the AOA of the horizontal stabilizer. This revealed that the stabilizer was slightly twisted and not as I was hoping at 0 degree, but at approx. 2 degree!
Shame on me as I had even built a jig to avoid this. I think my mistake was to press the stabilizer onto the jig when glueing and by that I was also bending the fuselage a bit. Without the pressure the fuselage must have returned to its initial position giving the stabilizer a little up-tilting.

To correct this I cut a flat triangle out of the fuselage under the horizontal stabilizer, bent it down and glued it together again. The picture shows the cut after glueing. At the rear end I cut out about 2mm.

View attachment 155050

It didn't correct the twist of the stabilizer of course, but one side is now at 0 degree, the other side at around 0.8 degree.
I hope I can do more test flights tomorrow to see the effect in flight.

It's stunning. Keep doing whatever it is that you're doing.
Is there (are there) notches in the fuselage to anchor the horizontal stabilizer? I really can't tell from this shot.

 

[Bavarian_RC]

It's stunning. Keep doing whatever it is that you're doing.
Is there (are there) notches in the fuselage to anchor the horizontal stabilizer? I really can't tell from this shot.

Thanks! There are no notches. The horizontal stabilizer is glued flat onto the fuselage. In post #32 you can see it better (Together with the jig)

 

[Bavarian_RC]

To make the canopy look a little better I cut out pieces from black vinyl foil and attached them to the nose.

I was able to do another test flight today with 1.5 degree motor down thrust. For that purpose I 3D printed thin discs with a 1.5 degree wedge shape and put them between the firewall and the motor.
This reduced the amount of down trim needed to fly level. Also during a vertical climb it had less tendency to flip backwards. For the next flight I will test it with 2.5 degree.

 

[Bavarian_RC]

Finally the increasing of the motor down thrust did the job. With 2.5 degree down thrust she flies much more balanced. All in all I am quite happy now with the overall setup.

There are just some minor improvements that I will incorporate into the plans, before making them available for the community. I’ll need a few more days to finalize the plans and the build instructions.

I still plan to do a complete step by step build video later that year. Until then I hope the build instructions will be OK.

 

[Michael9865]

Congratulations on getting it fine tuned.

 

[Bavarian_RC]

Finally I found the time to edit the promised video with the RunCam Split 2 installed on my Heinkel-219. Enjoy!