Here is the build thread for my 50mm F-35. The F-35 is a nice looking kit and has some room for a bigger lipo than some of the other kits in the 50mm series. So I decided that I wanted to use this F-35 as a test bed for a new 55mm EDF unit I have. I did a quick test and ona 3S1800 25C lipo inthe new fan the Wicked 4800 motor was drawing about 30-32 amps and in the 320-350 watt range which is comparable to the Wicked 6000 in the Wemotec 50mm fan.

Here goes the build!

EDIT:

Here is the new 55 mm fan unit:
http://www.donsrc.com/cart/index.php...&productId=102

What power system you going with Don? I've got an L-39 on the way from HC and am still tossing up between a 3S or 4S setup for when I get bored with the stock power system

Originally Posted by Frenche

What power system you going with Don? I've got an L-39 on the way from HC and am still tossing up between a 3S or 4S setup for when I get bored with the stock power system

Actually I am going to start the L-39 build in the next day or so here. I am putting the Wicked 6000/wemo in the L-39, in fact I just assembled and balanced the motor fan combo for the L-39. The F-35 is going to be the testbed for a new 55mm fan unit I am playing around with.

The first thing I did was use my foam cutter and started to melt some foam away. The difference between the two fans is about 5mm so you need to cut away half of that which is 2.5mm or about .1" of foma away so not much is being removed.

Several melting cuts were made to the fuselage to remove the foam that was needed to get the housing to fit. Once you have that done you also need to blend the foam in front and right behind of the fan housing. To do this I used a combination of my Dremel tool with a ball stone, the hot cutter, and an Xacto with a brand new blade. With all of these tools I sculpted the foam a little so the air coming into the fan and going out the fan has a smoother transition since we have a bigger fan unit. It is really not that difficult and in a matter of about 5 minutes it was modified. The same needs to be done to the EDF hatch cover. Cut away foam then smooth it with the Dremel and Xacto if needed.

The one benefit of the 55mm fan is that the stock out et is 80% FSA so no nip and tuck needed on this jet!

More to come!

Don

It looks like it was made to fit a 55mm fan and should move out pretty nicely with that setup.

I was torn between the F-35 and the L-39 but I already have a 70mm F-35 (the cartoon-ish Guanli one, it's in the build cue complete with a BI-3600 HET 6904 combo) so wanted something different. Also James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies was on recently and the start sequence has some nice footage of a L-39 so that clinched it, looking forward to your build thread

Personally I think the L-39 looks much nicer than the F-35

Same but I had read some good flight reports on the F-35 but hadn't heard much on the L-39, but I love straight wing jets, if the L-39 flies as good as I hope it does, I'm going to downsize a set of Chris Golds 70mm Attacker plans I have (have also upsized them to 90mm, that's also on the build pile), should be a good flyer

Are you going with the standard single servo for ail and elev on the F-35? Personally I've never liked the idea so that threw me a bit (yes I know it's easy to mod it for separate but I'm a lazy uni student) but if it fly well then why mess with it?

Originally Posted by Frenche

Are you going with the standard single servo for ail and elev on the F-35?

I am going to pin them and fly tailerons. The little Freewing F-35 flew just fine with tailerons only and it is was not much bigger than this one.

That'll work a treat! less weight than 4 servos, less weight that the original setup and less stress on the servos, a win win

Is that 55mm EDF unit the GWS one, or an identical copy of one? Looks just like the GWS to me. I have several of those lying around from when I built my GWS A-10. It was hard to find a vendor that had the GWS 55mm units in stock, so when I finally found a place that had them, I bought all the impellers they had.

This is not a GWS fan. Is has a mounting plug similar to the EDO 64mm fan I sell.

Don

Here are some more photos of the build. Trying to install the ESC is a pain in the rear so I cut an access hatch on the bottom so I could solder the ESC to the motor. Once that was done I hot melt glued the fan unit into the fuselage (make sure the EDF motor is centered on the exhaust). Mow here is where I messed up, I glued the wings on before installing the tail servos, and had no place to route the servo wires. It seems there are molded channels that you can not access if you glue the wings on first. So I had to improvise and run the tail servos as seen in the photos. Before I glued the wings onto the fuselage I did take some 320 sandpaper and sanded off some of the paint so the glue has a better place to adhere to. Next on to the tail installation.

Here are the rest of the assy photos I took. The tailerons were hinged with regular CA hinges. I did this for two reason. One they are very tough and two I wanted slightly stiff movement since they are full flying tailerons. The ailerons were both pinned like I usually do. The foam in the cockpit had to be removed to get a 3S1800 mah lipo to fit but it does fit perfectly.

Don

Looking good Don are you worried about those taileron horns catching on landing?

Does not seem to be an issue. Here is some video form my test flights yesterday.

Don

Wicked Powered F-35 Test Flights (5 min 19 sec)