Nice Brushless setup for F18

RC Groups Discussion - F/A-18 Hornet Foam Parkflyer: "I'm running the BL Himax 2025-4200 with an aluminum gear box, 3.75:1 gear, APC 9x6SF prop with a TP 2100 3s1p lipo, and CC Phoenix 25 ESC. AUW is 22oz, thrust is 26.4oz, pitch speed is 52.8mph. 17.6 amps draw on the battery, 9.8 volts on the motor. Prop rpm is 9250 and motor is 34700rpm. I get 7 to 8 min flight time, 9 if I really manage the throttle. This set up will hover and pull unlimited vertical, at least as far as I can see."

Lightweight Spackling for filling nose, gaps, small dings

Painting the F18

Steve's painting pics:

RC Groups Discussion - F/A-18 Hornet Foam Parkflyer: "31. To apply the base coat of paint for my Blue Angels paint scheme, I used navy blue acrylic craft paint thinned 50/50 with windshield wiper fluid and sprayed with an airbrush. Two coats were required -- a light initial coat followed by the final coat. No fillers or primers were used. Keep the paint as light as possible! The solid blue base coat cost 0.75 oz on the prototype.

32. The canopy was painted used brushed-on gray acrylic craft paint. To fill the grain of the foam before painting, I slathered on a thick coat of of lightweight spackling compound thinned with water and then sanded it down to a smooth finish. This photo was shot just after the spackling was sanded down. This leaves a beautiful smooth finish with negligible weight gain.

33. The completed canopy. The gray and blue are craft paint, the yellow is Coverite trim sheet."

Printing, Waterproofing, and Gluing decals

RC Groups Discussion - F/A-18 Hornet Foam Parkflyer: "print the decals on regular high quality paper, spray the tops with acrylic clear coat to waterproof them, and then stick them on with 3M 77 adhesive sprayed on the back"

Paint used by Jetset44/Steve

"For paint, I use standard acrylic craft paint thinned 50/50 with windshield wiper fluid and sprayed on with a cheap Badger airbrush. Works fantastic--hundreds a colors to choose from and cheap (less than a dollar a bottle). It's available at virtually any craft store, including Walmart." [link]

Getting acrylic paint to stick to tape hinges

RC Groups Discussion - F/A-18 Hornet Foam Parkflyer: "It's no problem!
You sand it very lightly with 400 grid paper, just rub it slightly so the surface is matt - then any paint sticks to it!"

Acrylic paint for foam planes

RC Groups Discussion - F/A-18 Hornet Foam Parkflyer: "I have always used craft paint on all my foam models. You can airbrush it or it paints nicely with a foam brush also. I get it from Walmart. It is acrylic latex base paint. It is called Delta Ceramcoat."

Donn bought at Michael's craft store.

Fiberglassed bottom of F18

RC Groups Discussion - F/A-18 Hornet Foam Parkflyer: "ive FG'ed the bottom, the paint shows right through, here is a quick pic. this is after the WBPU was applied and dried, i have to trim it still. As you can see it gives a better finish then tape, and is much stronger. You can see my access hole i cut to change the esc...."

Gluing servos for reusability

RC Groups Discussion - F/A-18 Hornet Foam Parkflyer: "When I install servos, I wrap them with two turns of tape, apply glue ,wait and fix the servo.

When I want to reuse the servo, I just remove the tape and the servo is clean of glue, wraped the servo again, apply glue and so on."

EDF: Fan comparisons

About 200 watts or less, all Fans are, more or less, the same
Wattage Power fan, Vasa 65, Mini wemotec, Kyosho...
1/ the Kyosho produce more thrust, good for hand launch
2/ the Mini is speed oriented in trade off thrust.
3/ The wattage PF is the best bang for the buck
4/ the Vasa 65 is great fan over all.

Take your pick, can't go wrong with any of these fans if you
limit power to 200 watts or less. More 300 watts then the Mini
will survive better.

link

Hand-launching the F-18

"I'll second the posts above about launching. I've tried many different launching techniques and I've found that launching with 50% throttle works best for all of the Park Jets. 50% throttle is enough to maintain level flight after launch but isn't enough to cause noticeable torque roll. Any less than 50% and the model sinks too quickly and any more than 50% and torque roll becomes a problem."

[Steve]

Glassing models by J Morgan

link

Protecting thin edges of wings

"I tried a new trick and worked really good. On the trailing edges where the foam is tapered down and gets thin I noticed it's easy to damage from just a light bump so I used some foam safe CA and ran a small bead along the TE top and bottom and wiped it smooth (so it covers about 1/4" of the TE) with a cloth or paper towel then hit it with accelerator. The result is a much stronger edge. Should help with hanger rash and that extra hard grass during landings."
[ link ]