Nose mods on the FT Spitfire
- Thread starter BATTLEAXE
- Start date
BATTLEAXE
Legendary member
So I have an update on the Spit... I have retired this one as of two days ago. It was one of three casualties I had in one day. It took a nose dive after a loss of signal event right after hand launch from 50' up. Lost engine and all control and bee lined straight for the dirt. it ended up taking similar damage to the previous crash where the removable wing did most of the damage laughing forward tearing into the bottom of the nose. Since I already had fixed that once I was in no mood to fix it again not even 30 seconds into the next flight.
Plus there are some things I would change if I was to build another one. First thing would be to glue the wing in solid. the removable option was nice for ease of access into the internals of the fuse but the free moving post impact damage of the nose was the deciding factor to make the change. Second would be to do a similar top hatch/dedicated firewall mod like I did on my Scout and eliminate the power pod all together. In order for me to change the battery i had to remove the wing, unplug the ESC from the Rx, pull out the power pod, replace the battery and reassemble. It was quite the operation. A lot of time lost and room for things to go wrong, sometimes by the time it all got back together the Rx would drop the signal, etc.
Beyond that I loved flying the plane, it was graceful in the air and had a nice presence, easy to handle and had a wide speed envelope. She treated me good but it's time to move on. My next Spit may be the Overstreets version, can't wait for that one to be released. I know i will need to cure my Spit fix in the near future.
In the meantime i am currently looking at the MIG 3 as my next warbird. It seems to have all the mods I want to do on the next Spit built into the design plus It has the @nerdnic stamp on it as well. Thinkin that might be a natural progression. Anyway thanks for following and stay tuned for my next project.
Plus there are some things I would change if I was to build another one. First thing would be to glue the wing in solid. the removable option was nice for ease of access into the internals of the fuse but the free moving post impact damage of the nose was the deciding factor to make the change. Second would be to do a similar top hatch/dedicated firewall mod like I did on my Scout and eliminate the power pod all together. In order for me to change the battery i had to remove the wing, unplug the ESC from the Rx, pull out the power pod, replace the battery and reassemble. It was quite the operation. A lot of time lost and room for things to go wrong, sometimes by the time it all got back together the Rx would drop the signal, etc.
Beyond that I loved flying the plane, it was graceful in the air and had a nice presence, easy to handle and had a wide speed envelope. She treated me good but it's time to move on. My next Spit may be the Overstreets version, can't wait for that one to be released. I know i will need to cure my Spit fix in the near future.
In the meantime i am currently looking at the MIG 3 as my next warbird. It seems to have all the mods I want to do on the next Spit built into the design plus It has the @nerdnic stamp on it as well. Thinkin that might be a natural progression. Anyway thanks for following and stay tuned for my next project.
Sweet idea! I kinda want to build a mig-3 as well. What was the first plane you ever tried to fly, and how long did it take until you were finally able to fly it? Was it the same plane that You had your first successful flight on? I watched part of your mini scout maiden - and if hat was your first successful flight, you were doing pretty well! You were flying the spit great! I jokingly challenged a buddy to fly between two trees and he did it - twice. I was amazed so then I did some super low inverted flying and crashed... that is why I plane on building the FT-22 soon so I can practice inverted with less damage. Those things are SO TOUGH! I’ve nose dived my previous ones SO hard - would have demolished my cub or spit - but all I did was pick it up, kinda bend the nose back and toss it into the air and repeat. The prop didn’t even break! I should do a group build on that too...
I think I got the jet bug😂
BATTLEAXE
Legendary member
My first plane was the Sport Cub S by HobbyZone, the one with the SAFE mode, did that for awhile in the back yard but since the plane was so small and had the SAFE mode it got kinda boring. Wanted something I could fly in larger spaces then the back yard and handle more wind to open up my flying opportunities.
So I spent 6 weeks building a 1/12 scale Dehavelland Beaver out of construction foam and by the time it was done I was so proud of it I didn't want to fly it for fear of wrecking it. And wreck it I did. It was way to heavy and took so much speed to get it off the ground. Cartwheels galore and finally there was no coming back. Needed to find a different option and found FT. The Mini Scout was my first real unassisted successful flights which happened to be my fifth or sixth FT plane. A lot of dead soldiers in between... and since.
Watched the Mig 3 vids and printed off the plans today. I have just enough servos to make a 4 channel out of it, replacing the Spit... and there is the Viggen build too. To many decisions to make and planes to fly.
What plane was your cherry popper
The mig 3 is a fast plane at the top of my skill level or just a little higher. If you are building it double the foam under the power pod in the nose area. The long nose is a weak area. Also if using the C v2 power pack, add foam inside the power pod so that the battery can not hit the motor shaft. I do like the top loading battery. I used that design on a mustang and spitfire
I started off with the simple cub. However I couldn't even fly for 30 seconds without crashing. Then a friend buddy buddy-boxed with me with a Eflite radian, and I got the feels for the controls. Then I continued on the old speedster until I could fly the scout, and now I can fly pretty much anything (I'm saying this before the viggen maiden
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