Here is my review of the kit and building process for the new P-51 from stoneblueairlines. Its a 42" EPP warbird.
Heres a link to the plane: http://www.stoneblueairlines.com/airplanes/sba-p-51d-mustang.html
One of my first Flite Test planes was the FT Spitfire speed build kit that a friend purchased for me as a gift. It was one of my best flying and favorite planes. There is just something about warbirds that I really like.
The way they look in the air, the scale features, and the flying characteristics. One of the things i did not like was how easy it was to "ding" up foam board everytime i took it out to my car to go fly. That is one thing i have appeciated about my EPP lamiated planes. You dont have to really worry about hanger rash at all. Being that my spitfire had flown its final flight not too long ago, i was on the lookout for another warbird.
The P-51 mustang had always been on my radar so when the stoneblueairlines.com guys started letting out info on a EPP version for fpv i was immediately interested and waited impatiently for it to be released. They have released an excellent contstruction video so i am not going to get into detail here.
This is more a summary and what i think of the process overall.
EPP is a very intersting foam. The first time you pick it up, you will probably be thinking "this should weigh more". While EPP will snap and break it is much different than EPO and the other common RC plane foam. You can take a hammer to it or step on it and it is just fine. Try that with your Hobby King plane and see what happens.
Once you glue in spars and laminate it, the plane becomes incredibly strong.
In one of the preview videos Jeremiah from Stone Blue Airlines aludes to the construction techniques as being similar to flitetest foamboard planes. All of the parts align together nicely. There is not a lot of places where you can mess up alighment of the wing or tail section.
The kit comes with a lot of carbon fiber sparring. Flat stock as show on the sides of the fuselage and tail, round tubes which go in already cut out portions of the elevator, and round rods inserted in the wing.
The entire plane, with the exception of the wing, has either cutouts or marks for the spars.
You will want A LOT of t-pins. Compared to hotglue, this construction requires you to walk away and let it dry overnight.
The motor mount is made from 2 pieces of wood glued together. It has been engineered with an angle to the right and has tabs that insert into the fuselage.
The wing has 2 spars on top and bottom. This creates an "I-beam". Top and bottom together fight any deformation of the wing. The wing also has some dihedral that you add to it. It is very easy to accomplish by watch the construction video. When done, even before laminate, this is a very very stiff wing. After laminate when the plane was completed i was able to pickup the plane by the wingtip with almost no bend.
EPP is very "rattle can" friendly. You should always test on a small part, but i havent ran into any Paint yet that it doesnt like. My personal favorite is one or two coats of Krylon for plastics.
I used a company called Callie Graphics to do custom decals for the p-51. They have a large selection of p-51 graphics in various scales. I asked them to do some custom text and pictures in 1/5 scale. This only cost $28 including shipping. They are very easy to apply on top of the laminate. Than i just used a small piece of laminte over the top to protect them.
The hardware the is included in the kit is very nice and high quality. Most parts are metal. This part here is something i had not see before. It is easy to install and it seems to hold very well. The elevator control is under so it has to "push" to pull up in a dive. To combat the rod bending they include a carbon fiber rod and heat shrink tube.
The plane has 2 compartments. One in front of and one just behind the cockpit. There are 2 wooden tabs and 4 very strong magnets that keep the lids closed. The lids are connected with a laminte hinge.
I want to fly this plane both line of site and fpv so i have added a sound system. This is the ESS-AIR transducer system from banggood.com. It was around $59. It weighs about 120g. I installed one transducer in the nose facing down and the other in the middle of the wing. Transducers basically turn whatever they are attached to into the speaker. So the bottom of the plane emits the sound.
Based off just the build i really love this plane. It was a lot of fun to build. It is nice having a ton of room inside for parts and to know that this can take a bump or a hard crash and still be flyable. I am going to add FPV after maiden and will update after both. If you have any interest at all in learning how to build with EPP I highly recommend watching the build video below.
SPECS
AUW: 1,200 grams (including 2200 battery, minus FPV)
Motor: Emax GT2812/05 1840kv
Prop: 8x4
ESC: Emax 40a Bheli
Servos: Emax 9g
Battery: 2200mah 3s 35c JetFuel
Sound Module: ESS-Air from banggood.com $59
Expecting flight times to be 10-15 minutes. Top speed calculated arond 60mph.
Official Build Video
***UPDATE: Maiden went well:
https://youtu.be/TlzgcDD_XNc
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Flies great. I actually turned my throws way way down. Really has alot of roll if you want it. After dialing that down it flew fantastic. As you can see in that video i was able to make full speed runs after just a minute or two. Keep in mind that it was about 34f out and pretty windy. The failure at the end was a combination of things. One, this was the first use of the battery. Secondly it was very cold. And finally i had set the lip alarm too high, or not at all. for some reason it was set to 11.7v so i didnt know when it was actually low. It finally hit something like 9.8v (3s) and i lost all control. Very minor damage. Just need to reapply some laminate to the nose and put on a new prop.
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