Official Freewing 64mm F-14 Tomcat Twin 64mm EDF Jet Thread

[thedarkwraith]

The rear landing gear rubs on the fuselage when I pick it up. Do you have this problem too?

I had no problems with any of the landing gear. Rears when retracted had ample clearance from body and fit nicely in the spots provided in the body. Do you have pictures to show what you are referring to?

[Rayant]

The rear landing gear rubs on the fuselage when I pick it up. Do you have this problem too?

[f4u ausie]

Yes ya teck info is the best cya

[Jon @ Two Bros RC]

Maybe motion as well as showing us ( the fancy bits and bobs)on a new plane,, should mention in vids,, its a high wing load, keep up speed ,, till on final... the only vid they did was james,, at cob county field,, was an old plane,, f4 (keep up the speed in the turns or it will fall like a brick) he said.. so in turns im on the power... less crashes is to everybodies advantage.. cause it is a beutiful bit of foam a little reminder,, here or there does not hurt

They probably should, yeah. I went in-depth on my channel and explained how to get the most out of it, and how to avoid wrecking it. Not everyone watches me, though.

[f4u ausie]

That was neither a "tip stall" nor a bug in the plane. It has to be flown with throttle or it will stall while banking. It's a heavily wing loaded jet. It's not forgiving to pilot error and will drop a wing if it's not being flown correctly. Fortunately, it's not hard to fly, you just have to have the presence of mind to keep throttle engaged while banking and coordinate turns, and make sure that you're landing it with throttle as well.

Maybe motion as well as showing us ( the fancy bits and bobs)on a new plane,, should mention in vids,, its a high wing load, keep up speed ,, till on final... the only vid they did was james,, at cob county field,, was an old plane,, f4 (keep up the speed in the turns or it will fall like a brick) he said.. so in turns im on the power... less crashes is to everybodies advantage.. cause it is a beutiful bit of foam a little reminder,, here or there does not hurt

[Evan D]

Flyboy56, sorry to hear. The F-14 is a special plane but seems not quite right.

[Jon @ Two Bros RC]

I crashed my F14 a couple of days ago. I had a total of 12 flights on it. The first 4 or 5 flights the plane flew fine with gyro in stabilized mode. The next few flights it started to try to tip stall to the right while landing. On my final flight I was doing a left hand turn when all of a sudden the plane turned violently to the right and went into a dive from which I could not recover. I will not be getting another one of these F14s . I kind of have the feeling that Freewing released this plane on the market before working out the bugs in the gyro.
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That was neither a "tip stall" nor a bug in the plane. It has to be flown with throttle or it will stall while banking. It's a heavily wing loaded jet. It's not forgiving to pilot error and will drop a wing if it's not being flown correctly. Fortunately, it's not hard to fly, you just have to have the presence of mind to keep throttle engaged while banking and coordinate turns, and make sure that you're landing it with throttle as well.

[flyboy56]

I crashed my F14 a couple of days ago. I had a total of 12 flights on it. The first 4 or 5 flights the plane flew fine with gyro in stabilized mode. The next few flights it started to try to tip stall to the right while landing. On my final flight I was doing a left hand turn when all of a sudden the plane turned violently to the right and went into a dive from which I could not recover. I will not be getting another one of these F14s . I kind of have the feeling that Freewing released this plane on the market before working out the bugs in the gyro.
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[kallend]

The wing sweep mechanism does not come preassembled .. happy flying

There have been reports even from MRC of the gyro pitch leads being reversed as supplied pre-assembled. Also of flap hinges having no adhesive and pulling out causing crashes, of stabilators having no adhesive to the plastic part that goes on the stub axle, and of retract mounts pulling out with essentially no adhesive. All pre-assembled parts.

[f4u ausie]

The wing sweep mechanism does not come preassembled .. happy flying

[kallend]

I don't hav this plane yet. I will.......... I've seen 2 u tube vids so far crashes. . implying 1 wing swept only... But way more happy chappy's vids that is. Get with the program.. u pay for and assemble yourself. A thing u then put in the air...mmm. Risky on its own. Ask ramy RC how much his planes cost..
Just sayin. Hopeing I'm not outta line.. just hate the it's somebody elses fault world

Parts that come "pre-assembled" and are advertized as such should be assembled properly. If they aren't then they are defective and the manufacturer is liable.

[thedarkwraith]

Found a great video showing a modification you can do to the wing sweep ball links/control rod to improve it tremendously:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJEH-oUxKII

According to his video there have been others that have experienced ball links popping off the wing sweep servos and resulting in a crash. This is something I will be doing to my next one for sure.

[Hugh Wiedman]

For what it's worth.. I've noticed less glue. Not on this .. landing gear on spitfire. Almost none. Came loose after first landing.. f4 phantom wood blocks for edf mount. Were loose. Out of the box i mean . Not glued at all.
sure they will fix it.. .... Check check. Everything B4 first flights

I had the exact same issue on the new 8S F4 I just turned into the Jolly Rodgers: Absolutely no glue on the wood blocks for the edf mount!! When I took out the edf to install the afterburners, the fan almost fell out in my lap! Definitely averted a real problem there as the wood blocks are not recessed in the foam and there is nothing preventing the whole thing from moving forward, except the foam around the outer edge of the fan casing-maybe enough to sort of keep it from rocketing through the fuse up to the nose at full power! That would be a real shock to the pilots when the fan blew through the nose in front of them.

[thedarkwraith]

By pinning I mean drilling a small hole through the hinge and whatever it attaches to and inserting a small diameter carbon fiber rod into the hole with glue (cut to length of course). That way the hinge is less likely to rip off perpendicular to the carbon rod.

They have nice hinges installed on the ailerons but put cost saving measures (in my opinion) hinges on the flaps. Look at the missing RIO there is a bean counter saying we can save $x dollars by not installing it (even though holes are there for it).

[thedarkwraith]

Forgot to mention that in the picture showing the wing box you can see the wing sweep servos were in the swept out position. In the video you can clearly see the wings are swept back so the pushrods had to have popped off once I swept the wings back. If you look closely in the video you can see instances where the wings were moving for/aft uncontrolled in turns.

[thedarkwraith]

I know people will think that I caused the problem and want the manufacturer to replace my mistake but that is not the case. Watch the video and you will see that I had full control of the plane until the wings swept back. I had 6 successful flights on the plane with 2 of those that same day sweeping the wings back. In the video when the plane was heading away from the field with the wings swept back I tried sweeping the wings back out and nothing happened then I tried turning on the gyro to see if it could assist in controlling the plane and it couldn't. That was right before it rolled and started diving to the ground. You can see the wings moving around a couple of times in the video denoting that the pushrods for the wing sweep came off. How did they come off? Got me but when I tried sweeping them out and nothing happened in flight I knew there was a problem.

Post crash inspection shows that both wing sweep pushrods were in fact not attached to the servos. I will post many pictures of the after crash inspection. Some will say they popped off during the crash. I have to say no to that based on the wing sweep mechanisms are still attached to the wing box and there is no indication that the wings tried to force themselves into the aft body (see pictures). The left flap is suspiciously disconnected from the hinges and was wedged between the wing and aft body (aileron still attached and if you look at the pictures there is no damage to wing or flap to show that it was crash damage that ripped if off) and right wing has both flap and aileron still attached even though it sheared off at the pivot point. The pictures are the best evidence I have to show the failures incurred.

The wing sweep pushrods should be some kind of captured ball link or some kind of ball link that you have to unscrew to remove it. These plastic ball links that just push on seem a little like a cost savings measure to me in such a critical area as the wing sweep mechanisms.

[Madspadder]

I agree that 90% of the time it's pilot error or not setting up the plane properly. In my opinon, in this case the flap hinges were defimitely a manufacturer's issue. Flap hinges shpuld not fail after a few flights and are not part of assembly or set up. Just my two cents worth.🙂

[f4u ausie]

I don't hav this plane yet. I will.......... I've seen 2 u tube vids so far crashes. . implying 1 wing swept only... But way more happy chappy's vids that is. Get with the program.. u pay for and assemble yourself. A thing u then put in the air...mmm. Risky on its own. Ask ramy RC how much his planes cost..
Just sayin. Hopeing I'm not outta line.. just hate the it's somebody elses fault world

[Chris_WaterGuy]

For what it's worth.. I've noticed less glue. Not on this .. landing gear on spitfire. Almost none. Came loose after first landing.. f4 phantom wood blocks for edf mount. Were loose. Out of the box i mean . Not glued at all.
sure they will fix it.. .... Check check. Everything B4 first flights

I have 3 Freewing EDF Jet models thus far and hoping this F14 will be my fourth.

I had flap hinges detach on my HSD Viper several years ago during the approach resulting in an un-commanded roll into the deck!
Since then I have routinely firmly tugged on the control surfaces / hinges and linkages of new models, often resulting in movement. So now I routinely re-attach all hinges with Foam-Tac or UHU-pore glue.

Of more concern to me is the detachment of the wing sweep pushrods in darkwraith's model. The pushrods look like they attach to the servo arms via ball links. Is this correct? In which case should they be replaced and if so, what would anyone recommend?

[Madspadder]

Here is a video of thedarkwraith's last flight. Such a great looking and flying jet until the problems developed.

https://youtu.be/yABV9zN_oBE?si=B7PHSE2E-_V0-9LU