Well, due to customer orders and an upcoming vacation back home to Florida, my mini-me has been put on hold until mid-June. I'll come back and give an update once I get back to it again. I'd like to have them up on the website by July.

Pat

What material have people used for the spar across the top deck? I can't really tell from the photos, but I think it looks like carbon tube. What diameter would be best?

Thanks!

I usually use either 3mm tube or a 6mmx1mm flat carbon spar.

Cool, I've gone for the same flat carbon as for the wing. Figure it's mainly to add vertical stiffness anyway.

Flew the 75% again last weekend and was planning to get some video from my hat cam but was surprised to find out that I forgot to charge it the night before. Well post some vid next week. The 1806-2500 with GWS5045 running on 3S gives it enough power to do just about anything that my newbie thumbs can deliver.

Anyways, got myself an 85% printed but wondering what power system to put into it. I have some BW 1500 and 1700s lying around but I'm not sure if they would cut it. Norup posted an 86% a few pages back and he uses a 2216-06.

Way back up the thread you will find that the designer did not use a any thing
across the top deck. I did not on mine either.

It started showing up because guys just couldnt believe that the top deck would
hold up with just the bonding at the boss's.

A heavy built version might be a problem but when lightly built the F-14
should not need it at all.

Bob
http://www.balsabuddies.com/cutouts/bbshop.htm

I picked up and old kit on the e zone a month or so ago and just got it built. It went together quite well, and this thread was invalueable. I used what Maybz said to use for the swing wing, a Hitec HS 65 karbobite servo, and it worked perfectly. I used two Spektrum S75s for the elevons and a Spektrum AR500 receiever. Mine is powered by the trusty old Esskay 400XT outrunner that Hobby Lobby use to sell a few years ago, one of the motors the designer recommends. It has plenty of power with a 7x6 prop and a 1350 Thunder Power 3s LiPo, not screaming fast, but very realistic. A Thunderbird 18 is used for speed control. Test flight was tonight after supper and it went off without a hitch. A few clicks of right aileron and a few clicks of down elevator had it flying hands off. I used a servo slower for the swing wing and it worked flawlesly. It takes the wiings a few seconds to fold or open and looks very realistic in flight. And mine does the parachute maneuver as well. This is one of the neatest models I have ever built, and I have built hundreds. Thanks to Maybz for such a wonderful desing. Tom

Originally Posted by Tom Smith

I picked up and old kit on the e zone a month or so ago and just got it built. It went together quite well, and this thread was invalueable. I used what Maybz said to use for the swing wing, a Hitec HS 65 karbobite servo, and it worked perfectly. I used two Spektrum S75s for the elevons and a Spektrum AR500 receiever. Mine is powered by the trusty old Esskay 400XT outrunner that Hobby Lobby use to sell a few years ago, one of the motors the designer recommends. It has plenty of power with a 7x6 prop and a 1350 Thunder Power 3s LiPo, not screaming fast, but very realistic. A Thunderbird 18 is used for speed control. Test flight was tonight after supper and it went off without a hitch. A few clicks of right aileron and a few clicks of down elevator had it flying hands off. I used a servo slower for the swing wing and it worked flawlesly. It takes the wiings a few seconds to fold or open and looks very realistic in flight. And mine does the parachute maneuver as well. This is one of the neatest models I have ever built, and I have built hundreds. Thanks to Maybz for such a wonderful desing. Tom

Nice work, Tom!

When I fix the broken nose on mine I may also install a servo speed reducer for the wing sweep.

Ted

I got mine from this company. http://www.robotmarketplace.com/store.html It's in the RC Gear section.
It works great. Price was $15.99 plus shipping. It's called the DigiSlower servo slower and it is programmable. You can adjust the travel amounts and the speed. As it came out of the package the speed was slowed down enough that I didn't have to mess with that function but I did have to adjust my travel throws cause I already had the servo in there and fuly adjusted and the top pieces of the fuselage glued on. No way to get in there to mechanically adjust anything so I tried it on an extra servo I had on the bench to see if the throws matched what was in the plane swing wing setup. It was a little off so I adjusted it usuing that external servo, got it to match my burried internal servo, then plugged it into the model. It worked perfectly. Tom

Originally Posted by Tom Smith

I got mine from this company. http://www.robotmarketplace.com/store.html It's in the RC Gear section.
It works great. Price was $15.99 plus shipping. It's called the DigiSlower servo slower and it is programmable. You can adjust the travel amounts and the speed. As it came out of the package the speed was slowed down enough that I didn't have to mess with that function but I did have to adjust my travel throws cause I already had the servo in there and fuly adjusted and the top pieces of the fuselage glued on. No way to get in there to mechanically adjust anything so I tried it on an extra servo I had on the bench to see if the throws matched what was in the plane swing wing setup. It was a little off so I adjusted it usuing that external servo, got it to match my burried internal servo, then plugged it into the model. It worked perfectly. Tom

Good pointer on setting the adjustment after closing up the sweep servo, thanx!

Ted

Yea, if your are still building, wait to get the digislower before setting up the swing wing servo throws. I did it the hard way, but it worked out OK in the end. I had read where you couldn't slow down a retract servo, so I went ahead and finished the model. Then I realized, this aint a retract servo, it's s regular servo (HS65) simply working off of the retract switch. So, I odered the digislower and the rest is history. Tom

Originally Posted by Tom Smith

Yea, if your are still building, wait to get the digislower before setting up the swing wing servo throws. I did it the hard way, but it worked out OK in the end. I had read where you couldn't slow down a retract servo, so I went ahead and finished the model. Then I realized, this aint a retract servo, it's s regular servo (HS65) simply working off of the retract switch. So, I odered the digislower and the rest is history. Tom

I built mine a couple of years ago and it flies great. I wasn't aware of any servo slowing devices at the time but have recently bought one from HK with no yet intended purpose. Thinking of using it for the flaps I made in my F4U or maybe the wing sweep for my F-14. Had a minor crash with the F-14 last year which broke the nose and haven't fixed it yet. Lazy I guess. If I use it for the F-14 I will use your advice on how to adjust it accordingly.

Ted

ps - you can see pics of my build in post #1700

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...postcount=1729 I have some Mods as you can see the top cover can be removed to do repairs...... and a better sweep wing attachment

Fanally managed to get some vid on the 75% last weekend.

Here's it is, with my crappy flying

75% MDC F-14 flight video (8 min 33 sec)

Had the first couple of flights on mine (100% version), using a 120W power setup with 6x5.5 prop. I haven't sanded any leading/trailing edges yet. It seemed slightly underpowered, so I've swapped the prop for a 7x5 which should produce 140W. Will be interesting to see how it performs with this. I also plan to do some edge sanding.

The wings didn't like coming back fully forward unless I slowed right down, despite having used tape and spacers as per this thread. Perhaps my spacers (card) weren't really thick enough.

It was pretty sensitive with linear controls. A bit of expo and dual rates calmed things down. It was fairly windy, but I found that there were occasional uncontrolled roll movements. Is this just the way this model gets blown around when it's windy? I'm used to seeing a little more yaw and less roll.

It is fun