rc-flight.com Hurricane

I recently bought a kit of the new ARF series from rc-flight.com, a Hurricane in Norwegain colors. Its wingspan is about 185cm, so it is quite big.

First imporession of the kit is that it is of suberb quallity, very scale like and extremely good fit on all the parts. Sold contruction with fiberglassed fuselage and traditional balsa, ply, rib construction on the wing. The wing is covered with something similar to Solartex only better i think. Looks like the ld punther tex sold by modellhobby in Oslo. Only downside on the model is that i do think the green color is a bit to dark from what, but i am not 100% sure.

I am going with a Saito 1.50 in the nose, turning a prop. between 16x8 to 18x6.

I will paint the norwegain markings using oil-based paint using an airbrush. For weathering I will pre-shade the panel lines and rivets, some general dust spray and add some exhaust. To keep the fuselage torsion strength i decided to not put in a full cockpit at this stage, only go with a 1/4 pilot body.

FYI, this kit is very complete. Comes with all the hardware, ank, wheels, a pir of good quallity retracts etc... For the good price of 3995 NOKs.

I use Adobe Illustrator, an ink jet printer and self adhesive photo paper to make the masks for the pint job. The painting it self is done using Aztek airbrush and Humbrol enamel paint. This paint does not have to be fuel proof as the whole aircraft will have a top coat of two component acryllic car paint.

The norwegian rundell came out ok, i will improve it slight after the paint has dried using tamiya masing tape. The adhesive photo paper ripped of some of the white, but i should not be to difficult to fix it. The colors is slightly to light, but not as bad the picture shows due to flash light.

Four norwegian roundels are now finished, look great. I've also used post shading technique for weathering on the panel lines. Basically the same way as normally done on plastic scale modells using black oil-based paint with and lots of thinner.

Finally ! Due to way to much travelling lately I have not been able to work on this bird. I took a day off on friday and finished more or less. Since last post I have added exhaust, painted red gun hood, added guns and over sprayed the whole aircraft with 2 - component acryllic car paint. I got really enthusiastic two weeks ago when I visited Flying Legends at Duxford where they had no less than 3 splendid Hurricanes in a Battle of Britain memorial together with 3 spits and a Lancaster flying on a sunny day in the midlands. Today I have put the whole bird together and started the engine a couple of times. Engine starts really easy, run really great allthough there is some redish fluid coming out of the muffler which make me wonder if it has some corrotion inside. No bad sound or anything, but i never gave it more than half throttle.

A test flight is scheduled very soon.

The Hurricane has now around 15 flights, including one major crash. Not to worry it has flown afterwards. The three first flight was not pleasant as the aircraft was not balanced correctly, tail heavy. It flew with way to much authority and sensitivity on the elevator. When I added 300 grams of lead in the nose (250g way front on the engine mount plus another 50 grams in the cowling) the plane started to behave. Unluckily the plane crashed after either a radio failure ( I do not think so, brand new JR 9xmkII ), or being shot down by somebody on the same frequency. Strange enough I have never had any radio trouble when I have been alone on my channel. Well, I decided to try not to get in this situation ever again and bought the syntheziser module from rcflight.com. Great little gadget.

During the next flight i had problems with the gears doors rotating and causing the gears to be pulled half way out because of drag. Tried to remove the doors, and finally got the feeling of how good this bird flies. Really nice! In the end I started loosing lead so I got a little fed up and decided to go for a heavier engine to avoid all this lead, it really should be 350 to 400 grams for the CG to be spot on. I bought a Zenoha ZG26 gasser, it has just arrived and i will put it in during the winter and test fly it early spring time. By using this engine the CG should be just right without using any lead at all. I'll let you know how this went in a few months.

For pictures, please take a look in the gallery for warbird meeting 2005.