So, following on from the Leader Hobbies thread... I got a ME109 for under $12. It's EPO, fully painted, complete with hardware but no electronics. Like Guan Li and Lanyu, this is a GWS clone. I've had a Guan Li P51 before, and it wasn't too bad.
The first impression of the plane out of the box was good, but as I picked it up and inspected it, the foam is pristine but the paint is hard, glossy stuff. There are cracks in the paint all over the plane, where under a small amount of stress it has flaked off. Aside from that, the pushrods are a nice heavy gauge and the clevises are reasonable enough to not bother changing. As I installed the servos, I was even more impressed that the clevises needed very little adjustment to bring the control surface to neutral.
The build was very straightforward, although I built without a ruler and got the horizontal stabiliser wrong by a couple of millimetres. I don't think it'll hurt the flight too much and it's too hard to unstick and reset. Some sort of centre guide would have been nice, I guess (most planes I've done recently have just screwed together or had nice and tight fitting grooves).
Two issues arose from the origin of this plane in GWS plans... It has a stick mount, on which most common motor mounts won't put the motor in the right place (designed for a geared brushed motor system). I improvised using an aluminium stick mount and gluing various sections of the mount to the firewall to make it, in my opinion at least, sturdy. This also let me fix the next problem: CG.
The combination of a geared brushed motor setup and NiCads must have balanced this plane, but to do it with a brushless system and Lipos, you either need to add lead or remove some foam to get the battery forward. I hate dead weight, so I removed the foam. Trouble is, you need to remove a lot of it from a very tight space. I used a very long handled screwdriver, heated using a stove element, to melt away the foam, a couple of cm at a time. I ended up removing all the foam so that the end of the battery is sitting flush with the motor bay firewall! I can fit a 1600 3s with a cg of about 48mm from the leading edge (found the ruler today...). I can even get a 2200 in there, although when I tried this with my (late) P51 it significantly degraded flight performance.
The 10x4.7 props that come with the kit feel a bit fragile, but they're balanced to perfection right out of the box! With the KD-A2210 1200kv motor I'm running, the plane tugs hard with loads of torque. I'm using a cheap 30A ESC from Leader Hobby, which doesn't like turning the motor from stationary, no matter the timing or start settings. This can be worked around by rapidly moving the throttle between off and half until it catches the rotation properly. In regard to servos, I'm also using a very cheap set sourced from Leader. I wouldn't test them out on much other than a scratch build or a cheap airframe like this, but so far so good, noting I haven't flown yet...
Fitting all the electrics in was a bit of a challenge too. There's space for everything except the rx... In the P51, the centre tray was ply, but this one is foam and leaves little room for even the servo leads. I took inspiration from my Mig-15 and cut a hatch into the canopy to fit the bulky 8ch 9x rx.
It's been windy here all day and is likely to be tomorrow, so the maiden will have to wait. I did a taxi across the lounge room floor and got an awful wobble. Upon inspection of the wheels, I discovered that the tires were really uneven, so I changed them over to another set and it's tracking fine now.
The first impression of the plane out of the box was good, but as I picked it up and inspected it, the foam is pristine but the paint is hard, glossy stuff. There are cracks in the paint all over the plane, where under a small amount of stress it has flaked off. Aside from that, the pushrods are a nice heavy gauge and the clevises are reasonable enough to not bother changing. As I installed the servos, I was even more impressed that the clevises needed very little adjustment to bring the control surface to neutral.
The build was very straightforward, although I built without a ruler and got the horizontal stabiliser wrong by a couple of millimetres. I don't think it'll hurt the flight too much and it's too hard to unstick and reset. Some sort of centre guide would have been nice, I guess (most planes I've done recently have just screwed together or had nice and tight fitting grooves).
Two issues arose from the origin of this plane in GWS plans... It has a stick mount, on which most common motor mounts won't put the motor in the right place (designed for a geared brushed motor system). I improvised using an aluminium stick mount and gluing various sections of the mount to the firewall to make it, in my opinion at least, sturdy. This also let me fix the next problem: CG.
The combination of a geared brushed motor setup and NiCads must have balanced this plane, but to do it with a brushless system and Lipos, you either need to add lead or remove some foam to get the battery forward. I hate dead weight, so I removed the foam. Trouble is, you need to remove a lot of it from a very tight space. I used a very long handled screwdriver, heated using a stove element, to melt away the foam, a couple of cm at a time. I ended up removing all the foam so that the end of the battery is sitting flush with the motor bay firewall! I can fit a 1600 3s with a cg of about 48mm from the leading edge (found the ruler today...). I can even get a 2200 in there, although when I tried this with my (late) P51 it significantly degraded flight performance.
The 10x4.7 props that come with the kit feel a bit fragile, but they're balanced to perfection right out of the box! With the KD-A2210 1200kv motor I'm running, the plane tugs hard with loads of torque. I'm using a cheap 30A ESC from Leader Hobby, which doesn't like turning the motor from stationary, no matter the timing or start settings. This can be worked around by rapidly moving the throttle between off and half until it catches the rotation properly. In regard to servos, I'm also using a very cheap set sourced from Leader. I wouldn't test them out on much other than a scratch build or a cheap airframe like this, but so far so good, noting I haven't flown yet...
Fitting all the electrics in was a bit of a challenge too. There's space for everything except the rx... In the P51, the centre tray was ply, but this one is foam and leaves little room for even the servo leads. I took inspiration from my Mig-15 and cut a hatch into the canopy to fit the bulky 8ch 9x rx.
It's been windy here all day and is likely to be tomorrow, so the maiden will have to wait. I did a taxi across the lounge room floor and got an awful wobble. Upon inspection of the wheels, I discovered that the tires were really uneven, so I changed them over to another set and it's tracking fine now.
