Originally Posted by Leo L

I'm very curious to hear how the retracts work out. Unfortunately, my experience with retracts has not been good. Since I fly from a grass field, I've tried evert retract that i could find and none of them will stand up to the ripping force of grass.

For those of you who have a field that is conducive to retracts, I hope you get them. there is nothing quite as spectacular as taking off and watching the wheels tuck up. However, for those who are in my boat, here are photos of fixed gear. Please note that the Corsair tail wheel is not an easy install in the Wildcat. The Corsair wheel needs a hollow body to allow the control rod to reach it. the Wildcat has solid foam right up to the first hole in its underside, much too much foam for me to remove.

I bought a second F4F with the intent of adding landing gear so that I have the option of flying off of paved surfaces without sanding down my skid on my first *still flying wondefully* F4F. LOL

I followed your advise to the letter with the J3 Cub front gear *nice!* but I actually did use the F4U Corsair tail wheel assembly. I removed the fake rear gear and hollowed out just enough foam to allow the Corsair wheel assembly servo horn to operate and then from the front of the plane carefull pushed in a thin rod through the inside of the plane into the foam you mentioned in the back until the rod made it into the the new hollowed out cavity. I got lucky with my aim on the first try! From here, I just added a second rod to the rudder servo *using the rudder servo horn hole closest to the servo shaft* to the rear tail wheel assembly. To keep the foam I had to remove for the tail wheel assembly linkage in the back to a minimum, I clipped the horn assembly leaving just the first hole and used that. It works great! I used a dremel tool to cut off the fake rear gear and made a hole in the remaining grey plate for the Corsair horn assembly to pass through. This let me screw the Corsair rear gear plate into the original fake gear plate. I cut a 1.5" *roughly* slit on center from where the Corsair linkage passes through the grey plate towards the rear so that I can easily remove the entire rear gear linkage by unscrewing it and disconnecting the rod from the rudder servo in the front. It looks very neat and should be durable enough. * Note: The Corsair rear gear horn needs to be removed and rotated 180 degrees and re-installed to get the steering direction correct *

With the addition of the front and rear gear + linkage, the plane balances with a 2200mah Turnigy 20-30C battery as it did with no gear and a 1300mah battery. All is good as since I've added the weight of the bigger battery and landing gear I also went with the T28 30A ESC and T28 prop. I used slighly large foam wheels that are a tad bigger than the fake retracted landing gear on the fuselage, but I should be able to take and land in grass this way. If anyone's really interested I can take a few pics. Thanks Leo L for blazing the original trail!

Robbie

Originally Posted by ty_horn

I didn't get any responses on trying the P-51 3 blader on a Turnigy 3536 so I tried it anyway. I do not have a watt meeter so I based everything on feel, sound, and flight time :-)
First of all, how the heck do you guys get that PZ prop balanced. I have put about 5 inches of tape on one blade and 3 on another while the 3rd has none. It still isn't quite balanced! Anyway, I flew around for about 6 minutes with mixed throttle and the vertical is much stronger than the Wildcat's stock prop and it flies much much faster but the battery, motor, esc didn't get any warmer. Flight times were a little shorter though...

So the 3 blade on 3536 is a lot faster? Man the stock blade on 3536 is insanely fast anyway.

oh yes. I would say that the 3 blader is as fast at 2/3 throttle as the stock blade is at full throttle. It is crazy fast. I actually prefer the stock 2 blader on this plane. Will probably wait for my 3 blade to break when it catches a big clump of grass before changing it out though :-)
I was just talking to my neighbor last night about how I rarely fly above half throttle with the 3 blader on it. It is so fast that the plane gets too small within about 3 seconds.

Originally Posted by robbiehatfield

. If anyone's really interested I can take a few pics. Thanks Leo L for blazing the original trail!

Robbie

Would be great - any reengineering is a welcome sight. Post away.

Originally Posted by jeffsch

Gentlemen, what did you need to do to fix the servo reversing? Turn the RX and TX on/off? Rebind? Reprogram the TX?

I had to reverse everything in the Tx again. Still not sure what happened, but it hasn't happened again.

Originally Posted by Hootch

I had to reverse everything in the Tx again. Still not sure what happened, but it hasn't happened again.

I had to reprogram the TX once when the batteries in the TX went dead. (I left the TX on overnight.)

Originally Posted by jeffsch

Gentlemen, what did you need to do to fix the servo reversing? Turn the RX and TX on/off? Rebind? Reprogram the TX?

I don't think so.
I turn the TX on and plug in the battery to the plane . When finished i unplug the plane and turn off the TX.
If the servo is reversed a rebind is not going to change it. It will stay set where ever it is when the rebind is done. When the TX is turned on and the plane responds to it it will not change in flight either. What ever happens,happens when things are cycled on and off.

I have some good news I picked mine up tonight as promised.
My LHS guy is very cool and always gives me a good discount. He didn't have the PNP so I walked out with the BNF for $161 and some change So, I guess I basically got the AR500 for free

Took the plane out of the box for a looksy and I likey The plane looks very nice.

Comparisons of the stock battery to a Turnigy 1300

Turnigy
1300mah 20 to 30C 116.4grams

Parkzone
1300mah 15 to 20C 109.9grams

So the Turnigy is a little heavier, but nothing this plane can't handle but with a much better C rating.
Sizes are almost exactly identical,
Oh, I did notice that the balance lead wires are much nicer on the Turnigy. They are noodle wire and the PZ is much stiffer.

Can't wait to fly this bird

Originally Posted by Sky_Captain

I have some good news I picked mine up tonight as promised.
My LHS guy is very cool and always gives me a good discount. He didn't have the PNP so I walked out with the BNF for $161 and some change So, I guess I basically got the AR500 for free

Took the plane out of the box for a looksy and I likey The plane looks very nice.

Comparisons of the stock battery to a Turnigy 1300

Turnigy
1300mah 20 to 30C 116.4grams

Parkzone
1300mah 15 to 20C 109.9grams

So the Turnigy is a little heavier, but nothing this plane can't handle but with a much better C rating.
Sizes are almost exactly identical,
Oh, I did notice that the balance lead wires are much nicer on the Turnigy. They are noodle wire and the PZ is much stiffer.

Can't wait to fly this bird

have you read how some people have put a small wedge of foam in front of the larger batteries to get the weight back off the nose a bit as they say this bird is a little nose heavy

best of luck with the maiden i'm sure it will be a sweet one from everyone's comments, this weekend i hope to get mine in the air

cheers chuck

Chuck his Lipo is only 7 grams heaver that the stock 1300 one. I have 1/2 inch of foam in front of a 2200 Lipo. His setup will fly great.
When are you getting one?
MERLIN

Thanks Chuck,
I'll be sure to check the COG before flight.

Thanks Merlin, I noticed your post while I was typing
That is good news

Originally Posted by Turner2

I think you are misinterpreting the illustration and have no understanding of the effect of distance. And it's not my theory. Oh well, I tried.

By the way I am in agreement with you on on off sequence.

I understand the effects of distance. I just need and extra person to hold the plane across the parking lot so I can point the TX at it and get movement verification. I was going to just put a camera on the plane to video the control surface and hold my other camera but I don't think my video editing software is capable of doing a picture in picture edit. I figure the parking lot should be far enough apart since it is close to 100 feet. Now if you think it needs to be more than 100 feet I can go to the college where I fly and go from one end of the field to the other. Its somewhere in the 2-3 foot ball fields long. Either way is fine with me as long as an answer is proven and if I am wrong I will admit it.

Just for the record, I hold my TX like this guy is.


My antenna is not bent like his but straight out in front of me. So technically my antenna is never pointing at the plane. I still plan to test the theory at range though.

Oh, and I know you were not disagreeing with me on the TX or RX first. I was covering another conversation at the same time. I'm a bit old school and even if the manual says its ok to turn the RX on first I still wont do it. Its just not a good habit to get into because electronics fail and I don't want to be the one on the receiving end.

Anyway, I just checked and the field is 500 meters long which is .31 miles. Should be a good test for range as well as the dead zone.

Originally Posted by MERLIN V16

Chuck his Lipo is only 7 grams heaver that the stock 1300 one. I have 1/2 inch of foam in front of a 2200 Lipo. His setup will fly great.
When are you getting one?
MERLIN

bought it over a week ago still waiting to maiden it, the weather has been atrocious here where i live for the past 2 weeks, hoping to get out this weekend

i also have the 1300 mAh 30-40C Battery, they seem like a real good batt, i use it in my Radian too

here it is sitting with my micros while i sit and watch the Twins take on the Rangers, we get yesterdays games in our morning, oh and i'm a Dodgers man

cheers chuck

Hope the weather improves for you Chuck! You had better maiden before I get my airframe Have ordered a 1000Kv motor from ebay and will post some numbers on how it compares to the stock motor, I still have a P51-BL prop to test with, that's the same as what comes with the F4F?

Mike.

Originally Posted by LunaRendezvous

Hope the weather improves for you Chuck! You had better maiden before I get my airframe Have ordered a 1000Kv motor from ebay and will post some numbers on how it compares to the stock motor, I still have a P51-BL prop to test with, that's the same as what comes with the F4F?

Mike.

yes same porp motor esc and battery combo! and better airframe! imo