I bought this lightly used “discontinued” Freewing B-17 off a guy on one of the classifieds. I got home from picking it up with just enough time to throw a receiver in and have it flight ready before dark. I got it done and headed to my runway (golf course) that is 100 feet from my house ��. I powered it up and had it ready for takeoff when I got the overwhelming feeling of “DONT DO IT”. I hadn’t even researched the CG envelope or the planes flight characteristics. Like I do with every plane I buy. The downside to flying on a golf course in a gated community is that there are always people out cruising around in their golf carts right when I can use it for flying. I usually have a small crowd watching, weather I like it or not. That day a couple stopped and started taking pics and saying how excited they were... I stupidly disregarded my gut feeling and checked the CG with where I thought was appropriate. As soon as she was airborne, after 10 feet, I knew I was going to be accomplishing a miracle getting it down in one piece. The airplane was so tail heavy that I could barely fly straight and level yet try for an approach. It would snap roll into a death spiral out of nowhere. I recovered from a few but eventually I was too close to the ground. It drove straight down into the nose. For the amount of impact, I was surprised at how little damage had been done, even though it was bad, I was assuming much worse. I searched everywhere for replacement fuselages and...Continue Reading

The pics show the progress through the repair. First I boiled a large pot of water and dunked the entire nose of the fuselage multiple times until the foam expanded back to the original shape. The foam looked awful... worst orange peel ever. I covered the entire area that was boiled with balsa filler, waited until dry, and sanded as smooth as I could get it on the lumpy foam. I keep adding more filler to the bad areas and sand again. After a few times of doing that I put a couple coats of latex paint I had laying around. Then I did the process of covering ugly spots or pits with filler, sanding and painting. The first round I used the dark grey, second was the light grey and the last coat is silver. It’s the correct color, but it needs to have a clear dull coat sprayed last to get rid of the shine that the paint I used had. I’m still not done. I’ll probably do one or 2 more rounds of balsa filler before making the paint match. The reason I paint in the middle of the process is that it holds the dry filler together from becoming brittle and it covers small deficiencies and rough spots. I have done this to many planes and it holds up fine. This was my first time boiling it. I will post the finished pics.

Update 20 October 2018
It’s still not finished... but looks much better. I purchased the last replacement nose cone. I need to paint the damaged section at least once more and coat the entire plane in dull coat. I figured I would fly it in this condition for my re-maiden....Continue Reading