FT Spitfire [UPDATE]

Hi there, this will be a small update on the FT spitfire I build some time ago. It flew great and looks the, it only needed some paint. With that excuse I bought an airbrush and some paint. The airbrush in question is a very cheap generic dual action airbrush. Paints are normal oil based paint, thinned out using white spirit. 

The plane started out like this.

The plane just after its maiden flight nice and white

Although this was never going to be a scale model, it was always in my mind to get close to the livery of the Spitfires that served over my country. After some research I found that due to the type of land here, the hues are different from those of the Spitfires flown in the UK. It was a mix of some sort of grey blue with brown colours. The colours were mixed and I got to work. The base coat is a slightly blueish grey which covers the hole plane. 

plane painted in the base colour

Next came the brown camouflage scheme on top of the grey to do this I used masking tape, using a good blade , line were cut along the tape in random wave patterns. Using these pieces the areas where masked off. 

Masking up

Using the airbrush the outline of the brown areas was first done and then filled in with colour. A small tip which I should have done was to first dirty up the masking tape by sticking it to my clothes which reduces its stickiness, thus not pulling away any paint as it was being removed. The result were quite good though. 

After removing the masking tape

The last thing was to paint some insignia, some RAF roundels and tail markings. 

Finished for now and drying 

As it stand now the plane needs only a canopy, pilot and a red spinner. It will not fly before its ready, you never know what could happen in flight and at I want a picture of the completed aircraft before it loses to gravity some day.

Few things I learnt from this. 

• Mask areas properly otherwise you will have over spray on the unmasked areas. 
• Prepare all stencils beforehand
• If you are mixing any paint , mix a lot of it, you never know how much you need to used before. 
• When using an airbrush start spraying on a scrap piece and ten onto the area.

Until then.

Happy Flying.

FT Spitfire and Next Projects

Hi There, my FT Spitfire has been flown with the now much more powerful motor, and it flies great, the 3000mah battery is a good performer but flight times only last about 10 minutes, something I learned the hard way unfortunately, as the low voltage cutout shut off power to the motor and had to land behind some tree, no mayor damage, all fixed and flown again. The characteristics of the plane are very good. It tracks very well, its very responsive not to mention it looks the part. The video shows my friend Joseph Mustang as well as my Spitfire flying around one of the fields.

For the moment the Spitfire will remain as it is, until I get the airbrush and try to paint it.  The next project will be to fix a wing of my own design. This was a scratch built wing, roughly designed using the Flitetest Versa wing as a base. It is much larger than the Versa wing. It has seen few fights, and a lot of crashes unfortunately, hence the need to fix this. Below you can see the wing as it is now without power pod or fuselage. 

The main damage is:

• Motor mount area heavily damaged due to broken propeller striking the wing
• Under wing area where fuselage was mounted, damaged due to several bad crashes

I did not have any idea how to get around fixing it, until yesterday night when while watching a video on you tube saw a blunt nose Versa Wing which was made exceptionally well, the video is enclosed at the bottom.

So basically now 8 inches from the middle of the wing will be cut out and a new part will be made to that a blunt nose will be formed into it, which will allow my to run two 3s 2200mah batteries in parallel, and FPV gear.

Thats it for now and Happy Flying.

FT Spitfire [Update]

The spitfire was flown!! it flies very well, very easy to control and incredibly stable, the amount of dihedral the wings have may be helping out quite well. I have flown it a little bit tail heavy with the cg 6mm back from that specified by the Flite Test guys and it is still manageable, only just.

My motor is not up to the job of carrying the aircraft properly, although it does fly OK, if the condition were a bit windier it would have been a problem. The current setup is a 1400kv motor (160w) with a 7x6 prop, which is the limit for this motor. I have another motor 1400kv as well but it is rated at 580W which is quite powerful, also it is heavy meaning I might need to remove the nose weight that I currently have.  The proposed 2200mah battery did not correct the CG enough and I used the 3000mah battery. All up flying weight for the model was 750grams, the glide slope is very good even at this weight , the wing design generates a very good amount of lift.  This would be an ideal model for the Power scale sourer.  With a small battery and some lightweight mods it would fly amazingly I think.



Thats it for now and Happy Flying.

Little and Large

Back at the Bench

Its been a while since my last post, I got busy again, first off FPV. I will be building testing and flying FPV for the first time, I bought all the parts for the basic FPV setup, 5.8Ghz system, 600tvl camera and Hobbyking V2 goggles.

I have set the system up, but I am still having issues with the system. Motor + esc interference was a problem at first, but by using ferrite rings this was quickly eradicated. Problems are still present in the system. As the Video Tx is subjected to any vibration, it starts to scramble the signal. Its is baffling me But I will get round to fixing it up somehow.

Next thing is I started to build again, which is nice, this time around I downloaded the free FT Spitfire plans from the Flite Test website. They are excellent and clear to use, also there are build videos of the planes which help a lot. The following photos are of the progress so far. As it sits now its "ready" to for the maiden flight , I will try to airbrush and paint the plane on a later date. The electronics in the plane are:

4 x turning 9gram servos
1450kv Turnigy Motor (165w) and 7x6 propeller
Frsky V8R4-II reciver
Zippy 2200mah / 3000mah Mystery Battery


Its not the prettiest of things right now, especially with the masking tape, but it will do for the maiden flight. I will be covering the fuselage with tape and then panting it completely.

Thats it for now and Happy Flying.

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