Official Freewing Twin 80mm/90mm A-10 Thunderbolt II Thread

[MikeT]

You guys made my day with this announcement. I'm in on this with both feet.

Mike

[Kloverzero]

I grew up on Myrtle Beach AFB through the 80's, and I used to ride my bicycle out to the flight line and watch them land and take off all day. I am so stoked to see this HUGE Warthog, I cant wait to get my hands on one....though I have absolutely NO IDEA where I am going to store it....guess I need to crash some planes to make room for it!!!!

[gooniac33]

Now I am getting more and more excited!! I have been flying the Freewing 64mm A-10 for a while now and it has always had 12 blade fans in it. I started with Change Sun fans that worked well but then came upon a gem of a fan unit on Ebay. It has a bright silver spinner so it actually makes the plane look kinda like its full scale counterpart. Now with the 12 blades it does sound pretty dang close to what the real one sounds like! There is a lot of whoosh and then a lil roar out of the rear as it goes by. I have posted a few of my videos showing this and will post a couple more here. I am positive that the bigger model with 12 blades will sound fabulous! But in the mean time here is my little 64mm that has been showing off for a couple years now... I also upgraded the gear to the 80mm F-5 gear. it changed the plane for the better!

These are the Change Sun 12 blade fans. They were ok but not as good as the current ones.

These are the ebay 12 blade fans. It actually sounds like a turbine at idle... performance is much better with these fans

This is one of my best hard flights with the plane. It has a big battery! 4s 35c 6000mah pack!

[Highlander]

Alpha:
Any thought to the proposed color schemes? I'd like to see a desert tan and brown/green camo options for sure. Gray would be my third choice.

So will this be considered a Freewing "Super Scale" type airplane with the nice extra touches? Love the Decals on my new Freewing 90mm F-15. Also the pilot/cockpit was nicely done for an ARF. Hope to see similar quality of detail on this one.

[Pheonix]

Just think, I just purchased the Tigercat and now this one comes along. I have the small A-10 and it is a good flyer. If this one is anything like the small one, it will be a winner for me.

[wvrailfan]

This A-10 will go straight to the top of my must have list.
As a young Chaparral and Redeye surface to air missile crewman in the late 70s and early 80s we trained to protect ground assets from tactical air attack. While in W. Germany we got to simulate shooting down F-4s, AV-8s, Tornados, Jaguars, A-7s, Fiat G-91s and a variety of attack helicopters. Most of the time we could make successful tracks as long as we were properly deployed and informed.
When the A-10s came on the scene, they presented a whole new problem for our teams. Even though they are relatively slow and big, they are quiet and work in pairs. At that time the hardest for us to deal with were the pairs where one was gray and would attack from the haze, while the other was camo and would attack from tree top level. If we managed to detect and track one, the other would usually get us before we know where it was.
I feel for any ground target an A-10 is going after.
I hope this model has the same slow fly, stand on a wing tip and turn on a dime ability of the prototype.

[Alpha]

First of all, thank you for your service, Wvrailfan! Your term "Stand on a wingtip" is a good way to describe this A-10's ease of turning. It "carves" through the air. Four point rolls are cleaner than eight point hesitation rolls, but general banks are very true to the line. I haven't done much inverted flying on this one, though. The primary intent is less of a racer and more of a scale presentation of the agility of the A-10 Thunderbolt II. It is such an impressive aircraft, we want to do it justice, in slow flight stability and maneuverability.

Highlander, for mass production purposes, we're planning the standard gray scheme, with four decal options , different nose arts, different color tail flashes, etc. Two of the liveries are from squadrons with whom we consulted in the preparation of the aircraft.

If there is sufficient interest, we may offer a desert scheme. The green scheme, however, is difficult to execute well; on this A-10's large surfaces, our tests for the accurate darker green hue is very susceptible to deformation in direct sunlight. There are other hues of greens that have less sensitivity, but on a model this large, the inaccuracy is very apparent. Translation: The non-bubbly greens look bad, and the accurate green bubbles badly. It may be that the green schemes are left for modelers to paint themselves. Xplaneguy provided excellent references for a livery that either we will create, or we'll provide from Callie as a promotion.

[Alpha]

Here's a shot of the underside showing the model's size. Note, this model is molded EPO from August, not the CNC prototype from May. There are a few changes we've made since then.

1. The spoked wheel hubs shown are only for testing. The production model will have accurate A-10 wheel hubs.
2. The two nose doors are full coverage, unlike the smaller 64mm that only uses the rear door. On this 80mm A-10, the front door is servo actuated. The main struts' doors are not installed on this particular model. The nose strut is correctly offset.
3. The pylons can be slid off the wings, and ordnance interchanged among the hardpoints. This is the same design as the 90mm F-16. No glue or magnets are used.
4. The AN/ALQ-131 ECM Pod is obviously on the wrong pylon. This flight was to evaluate handling if ordnance was only on one wing and nothing on the other. We were going to model the ALQ-119 or slightly larger -184, but its shape is simple that it's easy enough for a modeler to fabricate his/herself, so we chose the more complex ALQ-131 instead. The ALQ-131 also fits more of our intended liveries.
5. The wing and rudder servos are large 25g servos and the two elevators will likely be larger. Probably 32g or 40g.
6. The ESCs are currently 130A. Plenty of headroom on the Stock 80mm setup (which usually uses an 80A ESC) and the Upgrade 90mm setups we're testing. Big UBEC to power everything.
7. Note the plywood gas

[TiredIronGRB]

Must have!!!

[AkumaZeto]

How come this and the tiger cat are both coming from FMS and Freewing at the same time? This will be my first twin jet!

[T-CAT]

Looks great Alpha!

For the 90mm upgrade, I bet the Stingers 1450kv power system would be perfect on this A-10. It's sub 100A, so it would provide good flight time with a pair of 5000mah 6S batteries (as long as the jet will balance using 90mm EDF's and 5000mah 6S batteries) and good thrust for those sweet A-10 attack maneuvers. I've got some 1450kv setups sitting around and can toss those in assuming Motion plans to sell the 90mm nacelles are sold without the power systems. Will that be possible?

[Oxotnik]

Building on feedback from customers of our twin 80mm F-14, we specifically optimized this A-10 for grass operations. Big, wide, soft tires, and aluminum compression struts. A full lighting package, as well. More photos and details of those to come.

Wow. Just wow. I'd almost popped on the 64mm A-10 as my first EDF, but ultimately decided against it, based on grass operations. I fly almost exclusively on grass. I'm stoked and can't wait to see this thing!! Now, the M1.5 (equivalent scale-up speed) gives me a little worry, as I'm not a speed-demon pilot. Has the paint scheme been determined? Personally, I'm hoping that it won't be a shades-of-grey scheme. I'm really tired of not being able to see my grey camo'd Freewing planes!

[Alpha]

I love all the sounds this aircraft makes. The whines, whistles, roars, BRRRRRTs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqljKE_TDws

[TSHobbies]

awesome! Thanks for the photos Alpha..cant wait to see more!

[MikeT]

The more I see the more I like. Keep it coming.

Mike

[dkalwishky]

How come this and the tiger cat are both coming from FMS and Freewing at the same time? This will be my first twin jet!

Read this thread.

http://www.hobbysquawk.com/forum/motion-rc-general-topics/motion-rc-news-and-information/52701-duplicate-models-from-various-manufacturers

[Roller25]

Will this be priced similar to the likes of the F-14?

And for the love of god, please make a huge first batch! :-)

[Alpha]

We're targeting a lower price than the F-14D and doing our best to deliver the best product at a reasonable and widely accessible price. I want as many people who want a big A-10 to have access to one without breaking the bank.

We continue to increase our initial batch counts with each new release, and we're elated that overall each new releases continue to push that requirement even higher. The F7F was released only a week ago, with our largest initial by far that was supposed to last for months, and there are only 14 left for pre-order in that first shipment as I write this.

[Alpha]

This photo gives viewers an idea of the ESC placement within each nacelle, directly behind the EDF for optimum cooling. The piece I'm holding is attached to the fuselage with six screws, making for a straightforward swap out for the 90mm setup, if people wanted to go with 90mm power. You can see that there is plenty of wall thickness with the 80mm, pictured, allowing the same outer dimensioned nacelle to fit the 90mm. We just changed the mold to accommodate the wider diameter. Everything else remains the same.

[bill34207]

It's not as big as I wanted and appears the wing is not the 3 piece I'd hoped for, but I will most likely still wind up owning one.
Especially if done in camo instead of the gray that doesn't work well in less than ideal skies.
Come on guys lets make the interest in the camo scheme known before it gets finalized.