Pitts S2 scratch build

TDL

Active member
Some background of myself: I have been on and off flying RC for long time. Started with Cox .049 control lines at 12 years old and then quit after running out of money; reassumed this hobby and went all electric in 2011, flew lots of warbirds from GWS and FMS but got bored after one year. Moved into 3DHS and ExtremeFlight 3D planes in 2012, but after my kids started school at 2014, I just no longer had the time to haul my large balsa planes to a club an hour away and flew in between other warbirds. So all my planes just sat my basement collecting dusts. Fast forward to four months ago. My now 10 years old son found FT channel and asked me if he could fly my planes. Well, I don’t even want to fly these $600+ balsa planes anymore due to all the new regulations so I watched a few FT build videos and think I could reuse all of my leftovers to build some park size planes with my son, but most importantly, I could drag my kids away from video game. So I stared building some planes with my own designs and some modified FT planes. My son and I had a great time together, build, crash, repair and go over again. And then I saw the FT Edge 540 and the master Spitfire, I thought I could use their techniques and build a bird I like the most- Pitts special. I had a 31” balsa Piits S2 from Nitroplanes back in 2011, that plane never flew right but I just love it. It crashed many times beyond repairable and it was discontinued So I decided to use the parts of that plane and build a new one. I downloaded a drawing of Pitts S2 and used LiberCad to design my plan. It turned out Nitroplanes’ Pitts is 95% scale! Anyway, here are some pictures of my build. I maidened her today and she is a sweet flyer.
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shadeyB

Legendary member
Fantastic, successful maiden and landing in the same day 😂 true pilot
great build also she looks great, always fancied building a Pit 👍
 

TDL

Active member
My son totally lost her after taking off. So I edited out the middle part.
On the second flight, I was trying to do some 3D, however the scale ailerons and elevator are too small for 3D, the roll rate is not fast enough. rudder is pretty good though. Inverted flight is easy. I am using 3530 1100kv motor with 10x4.7 prop, 3s 1800ma. AUW is 1.6lb, a bit heavier than Nitroplanes Pitts, but I could only fit a 3s 1300 in my balsa Pitts in the past.
 

TDL

Active member
Yes I do have the plan but it is in .dxf format. And I had made some changes while I actually building it. I need to revisit the drawing and finalize it if anyone is interested.
 

billyshaw22

Active member
here is my 5th scratch build of a s1 in the last 5 years, i have a couple indoor about 32-40 inch spans, i have a 1/4 scale and this one (65% 126" span) all out of foam. love seeing your build!
 

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billyshaw22

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TDL

Active member
Wow.....I am speechless! I think my son can sit in that 65% one. Amazing build.
I saw big (120cc?) in the background. What is the power plant in the giant Pitts? Also, how do you deal with coupling while knife edge on Pitts? I found it is almost impossible to dial in on Pitts, but not so much on Ultimate. Maybe I should build an Ultimate as well.
 

TDL

Active member
Billyshaw22: I felt that I had heard your name before, now I know! Back to my 3D day I watched tons of videos of you guys in competition. AJ, Joe Smith, and the kid (can’t remember his name) who became a full scale pilot and moved to Alaska, etc. no wonder you have crazy skills! A lot of people will benefit from the flying/setup/building skills for you.
 

billyshaw22

Active member
Billyshaw22: I felt that I had heard your name before, now I know! Back to my 3D day I watched tons of videos of you guys in competition. AJ, Joe Smith, and the kid (can’t remember his name) who became a full scale pilot and moved to Alaska, etc. no wonder you have crazy skills! A lot of people will benefit from the flying/setup/building skills for you.
I'm going to use a turnigy 150cc brushless motor, as far a knife edge coupling, there is a fine line on working it out with moving the wing incidence and just having good natural reactions. i usually try to get my top wing under 1/2 degree of negative incidence, from testing smaller models i have got it close enough to deal with ( a lot of tinkering) as for the ultimate, you really can't go wrong with that. i have been working on designing a 60-80cc ultimate, but i get sidetracked easily and i also have been working on 3 other giant scale designs. hopefully i will get back to the ultimate. ( the 3d days where some good ones! )
 

TDL

Active member
Billyshaw22: thanks for the tips!
Never thought about tinkering with incidence, especially for top wing only! Since my both wings are hot glued so it’s hard to change incidence now. Can I achieve the same result from reducing the lift of the top wing by adjusting the top ailerons to negative angle? I used to try mixing the coupling out but never fully succeeded. Would try the incidence next time! BTW, did you get that 300amp ESC from Tesla? Just joking. Can’t wait to see 65% electric Pitts flying!
 

billyshaw22

Active member
Billyshaw22: thanks for the tips!
Never thought about tinkering with incidence, especially for top wing only! Since my both wings are hot glued so it’s hard to change incidence now. Can I achieve the same result from reducing the lift of the top wing by adjusting the top ailerons to negative angle? I used to try mixing the coupling out but never fully succeeded. Would try the incidence next time! BTW, did you get that 300amp ESC from Tesla? Just joking. Can’t wait to see 65% electric Pitts flying!
that won't be the same, that could act like a spoiler to the top wing and can make it do some strange things if the top wing is stalling at a different speed then the bottom wing. this could cause some issues when doing slow speed flying or landing could get scary, i had to do some tinkering with my first design to get it right ( cut apart reagle and re-glue) my question to you : When you roll it to the right and put it in knife edge what does your plane do when you add rudder? side note: my esc is made by Alien Power Systems.