P-38 Pusher MJ - Twin boom with a twist

I'm still being fond with the idea of a pusher setup airplane and to put the realization onto a model that originally a forward engine setup is something that challenge the idea of the creation. This is where I came up with the pusher setup for my P-38 Pusher MJ aircraft design.

The Idea behind it

The idea is to convert the twin front engine of the actual P-38 Lightning into a pusher single motor R/C aircraft. To begin with, I started drawing and designing it with Sketchup. The process is pretty much as what I've did with my previous build. From Sketchup, and then to the actual plan drawing than later be sent to plotter for printing in A0 paper size as single full page plan.

P-38 had distinctive twin booms and a central nacelle containing the cockpit and armament.

Instead of twin engine forward, I've designed it to be a single pusher setup.

Printed the single page plan on the A0 paper size and ready to be cut and transfer onto the depron sheet.

The Build Process

Building the plane is pretty much straight forward according to the plan layout. And if you have experience building one of the Flite Test aircraft before, this one should be a breeze. Nothing fancy on the plan layout and I have included all the basic needs for a plan that you can follow along. I will not go deeply onto the build details. However I will give some keypoints of the aircraft building that you should take note of.

Straight forward plan layout

The crucial part in the assembly of this plane was the wings section. The wings need to be glue together in a dihedral angle approximately 20 degree. This is to ensure the stability of the airplane itself for this particular build. Furthermore since this plane were build to have some kind of slow flyer characteristic, dihedral wing give it more calmness in the air.

The dihedral of the main wings.

Enough room space to tuck in the lipo together with the RX and ESC.
The cockpit cover being secure to the fuselage using wooden stick and a rubber band.
The motor mounted using a piece of plywood and hot glue to the foam board.
I'm only using 3pcs of 9gram micro servo. 2 for the aileron and 1 for the elevator.

The build time for this aircraft took me around 4hours starting from cutting out the paper plan, cutting out the foam, hot glue everything, and tuck in all the electronics. A total of two sheets of depron required. 

The power setup that I'm using on this aircraft are:

1. Turnigy 1450kv
2. 9x6 prop (recommended 8x6)
3. 1800mah 3C lipo
4. 30A ESC
5. AUW: 620kg

The Maiden Flight

The next day after assembling all parts together, I'm off to the field to maiden it. A breeze of wind does not deter me from maiden it as I believe this baby can handle a breeze to a light winds. 

The Plan

There are currently two variants of plan that you can choose to work with, full page plane or tiled plan. Both can be downloaded freely at the URL below:

1. Full Page Plan in pdf
2. Tiled Page Plan in pdf

Conclusion

Overall, the objective to have a pusher setup aircraft and a slow flyer are achieved. It does glide with less tip stall onto it. I would recommend to who ever want to build it, make some increase of the ailerons and elevator surface to give it more authority. The boom a bit sensitive and easily break in case of hard landing. You might want to stiffen it by embedding some sort of CF spar onto it. A three point landing gear would be great to have should you want it to be able to take off from ground.