LX B-2 Spirit Complete Overhaul/Redesign

scootergenie · Apr 22, 2020, 10:21 AM

You've peaked my interest, I'll be watching this one.

*Aros* · Apr 21, 2020, 10:02 PM

Definitely beginning to take shape! Very cool, I've never seen anyone attempt this before with the LX version. Can't wait to see it all finished. As for LX, great analogy. Such potential, we've seen it with their ambitious air frames for many years. Hell, their F-117 was my first EDF! (Yeah, let that sink in). Yeah, as you can imagine that lasted about a minute, lol. Good ol' Banana Hobby's descriptors: "Super Stable! Perfect for beginners!!" I didn't know any better at the time but I was their perfect customer: No experience, but HAD to have a stealth fighter! Take my money!

Thank God for Freewing. I don't want to even think where we would be with foam EDF jets without them. Speaking of, if Freewing were to ever develop their own B-2 (imagine?!?!) your finished product might be the closest guess we could ever see as a foamie B-2. I'll be anxiously checking in on your progress!

F106DeltaDart · Apr 21, 2020, 09:23 PM

Thanks Steve, Todd, and Jon! LX has always been a mystery to me. They remind me of that one student in each high school class that is extremely smart, who just doesn’t put in any effort. They could have a quality product if they wanted, but they seem unwilling to invest the extra effort. And even then, if they had just some minor modifications to a few of their existing planes, they would be smash hits. Their B-25 is incredibly detailed and flies great. It even has more scale landing gear than most composite B-25 models do out of the box! If it had a better spar, more power, better basic hardware, and more durable gear, it would fly off the shelves. Their F-117, and F4F Wildcat are also in a similar vein.

Anyways, I made the blocker plates for the wing divots today out of Flite-Test style dollar tree foam board with the paper removed. I also started filling in all the gaps and panel lines with Hobbico filler. Already starting to look a bit more like a B-2! The canopy is also going to need some mods down the line. Like to original airframe, the oversized cockpit windows make it look like it flew out of a cartoon. Now I’m just waiting for retracts to arrive so that I can start working out the gear configuration.

air-jon · Apr 21, 2020, 03:44 PM

This is an ambitious hack and very cool! Subbed! It is such a bummer/mystery why they could not get the shape right from the start... I understand there are many variables to designing, producing, shipping models but it's still a bummer. It could have been a really cool airframe from the LX factory....even if the hardware was laughable. I have come so close to buying this bare airframe so many times...

*Aros* · Apr 20, 2020, 09:40 AM

Very cool Michael! One of my favorite birds (The B-2 itself, not the LX version, lol)... Great work so far...Really excited to see the final product and flight video. Good luck!

RCjetdude · Apr 19, 2020, 07:55 PM

Very interesting project Michael. Always have liked the B-2.

F106DeltaDart · Apr 19, 2020, 04:11 PM

Thanks Alpha and Wesley! Banana has always been a grey zone for me. I only go there when I need a real engineering challenge :). One of the next objectives on my list was figuring out the Aerodynamic center and setting a CG to aim for. I ran the geometry through an online calculator, and came up with the following static margins:

For now, I’m aiming for around 18% MAC for the maiden flight. This CG position is also going to inform the location of the main landing gear. The landing gear on the real thing is very far aft (around 35% MAC). I will move it to around 27% or so to try to get smoother rotation. Hopefully that will improve things a bit in that regard. It will however, shorten the already close-coupled distance between the mains and nose. I will be planning on installing a gyro for both nose wheel steering and the drag rudders at some point down the line.

The next priority item was the intakes. I cut them back by around a 1/2” to move to the scale position. I’ve always found the giant divots in front of the intakes to be a major eye soar on this model, and wanted a way to make them look more scale. I decided that a cheater grate was the best way to accomplish this. The divot will be covered up with foam, but here’s a preliminary check on how it will look:

Another issue was battery space. Stock, there is no way a 6S battery would ever fit. I was however, able to remove just enough structure to accommodate 2 3S 3700s. Those will be tied in series for primary power. Although I would have loved to have the functional bomb bay, I will probably end up using it as the gyro/receiver bay. There is so little space to put anything in this model, it’s pretty much the only place that works!

Merry Boozer RC · Apr 19, 2020, 08:00 AM

F106DeltaDart always wanted to try this model but banana 🍌 has always been a no fly zone for the Boozer. That being said your modifications are looking fantastic and I can’t wait to see the final product. 6 s on this is going to be ballistic definitely might need to add some carbon spares to this bird it’s definitely going to be 100 mph + on that power set up.