Originally Posted by WestTexasKing

Joe, you're lucky...you've got the newer JPower P-38!
Mine is one of the knockoffs, which is what most all of us have but either way...
Your P-38 has good motors, motor mounts, retracts, and goes together much easier than mine did.

Where did you order yours from?

confused
Actually, I bought mine Pre Order from Banana Hobby over a year ago when they first came out. I got it like last Jan or Feb was it? was the first shipment - I took silver as they ran out of the green at the time - so I was trying to sell it so I could buy a green one, and it's been sitting for a year. so mine should be one of the very first.
I have the std retracts, my gear door hinges are sprung to open with filament string to shut them, I have those cheap looking brushless motors, pic of my esc's posted above.

all photos from when I got it last year. dated 02/2010

Originally Posted by WestTexasKing

The nuts that come with it are trash...I stripped out two of them just trying to tighten the hub down so it wouldn't come loose again.
Sometimes a simple star lock washer and adequate torque is enough to hold them in place, but it didn't seem to help much.
Finally bought some nylon lock nuts at radio shack and that solved the problem entirely.
I went ahead and gave the ones on the rear a dab of loctite just to be in the safe side.
Suppose you could just keep adding nuts until you've spaced the backing plate out far enough too LOL


Oh, I forgot to mention, after some trial and error I found that a plain washer between the two nuts on the rear prevents over-tightening the hub/backing plate and allows more torque to be applied to the forward nut without damaging the backing plate. It seemed like the torque needed to keep the plain nuts from loosening damaged the hex on the backing plate and kept driving the nuts deeper into there. The washer stopped it and gave it some surface area to spread out that load. Good luck Aros!

Great info! Thanks!

Originally Posted by Hornetnz

Can you review how you set this up?

I wanted to do this on my older e-flite P-38, but the Dx6i does not have enough mixes to do it. I think you need like 3 mixes if memory serves me correctly?

Originally Posted by WestTexasKing

Joe, you're lucky...you've got the newer JPower P-38!
Mine is one of the knockoffs, which is what most all of us have but either way...
Your P-38 has good motors, motor mounts, retracts, and goes together much easier than mine did.

Where did you order yours from?

The original one from Banana Hobby came with plexiglass mounts. Early in this thread I detailed all the repair work necessary to manage motor & motor mount issues.. If you follow that process it should relieve you of the mount issues..

Anyone know where I can find the programming info for the stock ESCs that came with the Hobby King P-38? The brakes are defaulting to on and I need to turn them off (and check on some other settings while I'm in there)...Much thanks!

Originally Posted by Hornetnz

Can you review how you set this up?

It's really simple, though I don't know if the process on a Turnigy 9X is the same as other radios.
The only physical work I had to do was make another plug for the other motor lead (cut the Y and added another plug) and plug it in an aux channel on the receiver.
From there it's all transmitter programming, there's three mixes you need to program.
Go into the prog. mix menu and start programming:

1. Primary - Throttle
Slave - Aux

2. Primary - Rudder
Slave - Throttle

3. Primary - Rudder
Slave - Aux

All up and down travels need to be at 100%

To test functionality, hold the model up and apply left rudder.
It should spin up the right motor.
If the motors work opposite of what they should, switch the two throttle leads around (throttle to aux, aux to throttle) and that should get them working correctly.
At full throttle, left rudder decreases the RPM of the left motor.

Now, just remember that when you're checking control travel the rudder will operate the motors...so be sure to stay clear of the props.
Alternatively, set mixes 2 and 3 so you can turn them off with the three position mix toggle and you'll be able to turn the differential thrust off whenever you want.

Thanks for the details. You should get a video of it inflight for us!

Originally Posted by Aros

Anyone know where I can find the programming info for the stock ESCs that came with the Hobby King P-38? The brakes are defaulting to on and I need to turn them off (and check on some other settings while I'm in there)...Much thanks!

Todd,

here is the blitzrcworks ESC manual. If the ESCs are not Jpower or The Blitz ones this might not work for you..

Originally Posted by Hornetnz

Thanks for the details. You should get a video of it inflight for us!

I would, but I need a new motor now

Dangaras- Thank you for the .pdf!

Well with the stormy conditions outside today it's been a perfect opportunity this weekend to transform my Cutie into "Marge". It's coming along great! I'll post pics later today...

The clevis on the front retract just broke. had a problem with them breaking way too easy on my J-Power 49" A-10 too. they look like the same one's - and break like they are made of chalk. thinking now of just going with servoless retracts with 5g servos on the gear doors & sequencing them too. do it up right.
I'm not flying this big beautiful P-38 till the ice and snow is gone anyway.

I also need to paint the cockpit. that bright silver cockpit looks too phony/cheap/toylike. The yellow on the props and spinners is real nice, but the yellow on the cowl/motor covers is weak.

Man, I've been looking at photos of this plane for over a year now. but nothing like piecing one together in person. it's so nice looking in person, 1000x better than photos.

After several hours over the weekend of prepping, masking and painting, Californi(d) Cutie is now officially "Marge". Decals were supplied by the wonderful Callie of Callie Graphics. It turned out much better than I thought. I still have to do some fine tweaking detail work but all-in-all I am very happy how she turned out. Hopefully somewhere Richard Bong is smiling!

Dude, that thing looks F-bombing SWEET!!!

Originally Posted by PositivelyJoe

The clevis on the front retract just broke. had a problem with them breaking way too easy on my J-Power 49" A-10 too. they look like the same one's - and break like they are made of chalk. thinking now of just going with servoless retracts with 5g servos on the gear doors & sequencing them too. do it up right.
I'm not flying this big beautiful P-38 till the ice and snow is gone anyway.

I also need to paint the cockpit. that bright silver cockpit looks too phony/cheap/toylike. The yellow on the props and spinners is real nice, but the yellow on the cowl/motor covers is weak.

Man, I've been looking at photos of this plane for over a year now. but nothing like piecing one together in person. it's so nice looking in person, 1000x better than photos.

Joe Testors dull cote works wonders on this plane. The garish shine on mine was pretty bad but with dull cote it looks pretty darn good.


Todd that plane looks fantastic. Is it stock or did you go with electric retracts?

Regards,
Alan