Official FlightLine RC 2000mm B-24D/J Liberator Thread

[VulgarVulture]

V.V., Welcome to "The Squawk". I thank your Uncle for his service. Looking forward to watching your progress. Post pictures, please. Best, LB

Elbee, thanks for the welcome! If you ask him, he was just doing his part. Nothing more, nothing less. He's something else! Most of the progress right now is getting the research and materials taken care of. I just got done finalizing the decals with the decal maker! Here's a copy I have before some changes were made.

What's the story on your profile pic?

[VulgarVulture]

Hi Vulture. Welcome to HobbySquawk. That's an awesome thing to do for your great uncle. I know that someone on the B-24 thread on RCGroups made a ball turret modification. They used the turret from the HobbyKing B-17.

Thanks for the welcome! My Great Uncle hasn't been able to get visitors in his nursing home due to COVID, so this B-24 has been the perfect excuse to call and talk his ear off (along with recording his war experiences). Lurch just chimed in with HK ball turret!

[VulgarVulture]

Here are a couple of things that may help you a bit.
I am posting a couple of photos.
One is with the HK 1875mm B-17s ball turret sitting on the belly of my FliteLine B-24.
The next one is of the old Freewing 1600mm B-17s ball turret sitting in the same spot.
The next photo is of the two ball turrets side by side for comparison.
(Sorry if the pictures are out of order.This site seems hate using a mobile phone for everything!!)

I am also adding a video of a working Ball Turret on this plane done buy “Brandon Moon”......

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xplDCkAVH30

And this is a link to some “Thingaverse” files from “Tom Hunt”. In them are a couple of files for a rotating and tilting ball turret. These have been designed to actually hold a small camera to pan and tilt it.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2229968

*It is not designed to retract, as the B-17 s turret does not retract.
*Also not that the base of the HKs ball turret is the wrong shape.
Hope this helps.

LURCH

Lurch, this is exactly what I was looking for! I was worried about the scale differences of the B-24 model and B-17 model resulting in the turret being scaled too big/small. Are there any sites that carry these replacement parts in stock? I haven't been able to find any.

Brandons mod is a work of art, however I don't think I'll go through the trouble of making mine retract as it would only really happen in flight and therefore not well seen. I do plan on making the other 3 turrets rotate though!

My buddy is taking a stab at 3D printing it sometime this week, I'll let y'all know how it goes!

Thanks again Lurch!

[taz101]

I'm in the process of building up my Great Uncle's (who's still with us at 96) B-24H "Eight Ball" and was curious if anyone has come up with a solution to the missing ball turret? I'm working with a buddy of mine to attempt a 3D printed version but figured I'd ask in the meantime. Sure are some awesome builds in this thread!

Here are a couple of things that may help you a bit.
I am posting a couple of photos.
One is with the HK 1875mm B-17s ball turret sitting on the belly of my FliteLine B-24.
The next one is of the old Freewing 1600mm B-17s ball turret sitting in the same spot.
The next photo is of the two ball turrets side by side for comparison.
(Sorry if the pictures are out of order.This site seems hate using a mobile phone for everything!!)

I am also adding a video of a working Ball Turret on this plane done buy “Brandon Moon”......

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xplDCkAVH30

And this is a link to some “Thingaverse” files from “Tom Hunt”. In them are a couple of files for a rotating and tilting ball turret. These have been designed to actually hold a small camera to pan and tilt it.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2229968

*It is not designed to retract, as the B-17 s turret does not retract.
*Also not that the base of the HKs ball turret is the wrong shape.
Hope this helps.

LURCH

[Elbee]

I'm in the process of building up my Great Uncle's (who's still with us at 96) B-24H "Eight Ball" and was curious if anyone has come up with a solution to the missing ball turret? I'm working with a buddy of mine to attempt a 3D printed version but figured I'd ask in the meantime. Sure are some awesome builds in this thread!

V.V., Welcome to "The Squawk". I thank your Uncle for his service. Looking forward to watching your progress. Post pictures, please. Best, LB

[Prowler901]

Hi Vulture. Welcome to HobbySquawk. That's an awesome thing to do for your great uncle. I know that someone on the B-24 thread on RCGroups made a ball turret modification. They used the turret from the HobbyKing B-17.

[VulgarVulture]

I'm in the process of building up my Great Uncle's (who's still with us at 96) B-24H "Eight Ball" and was curious if anyone has come up with a solution to the missing ball turret? I'm working with a buddy of mine to attempt a 3D printed version but figured I'd ask in the meantime. Sure are some awesome builds in this thread!

[Wild Man]

After changing out the two elevator servos for two that matched and checking everything. We had some calm weather with a slight crosswind this evening just after sunset. So I decided to do the test flight. All went well. I am flying it on two Admiral 4 cell 4000's. This plane has good power and on take off I only used 1/2 throttle. Awesome looking War bird in the sky, and after flying my jets and racer's it is like flying a huge lumber wagon LOL!!! now I need to put the updated main gear on it that I ordered with the plane

[quitcherbitchen]

Awesome Video. Now I want a B-29 worse then ever. The B-17 landing looked scary. I think the building skills are higher then flying skills with that particular plane. Very nice all the them.

[tab28682]

No pictures!! You have a phone. I want to see what you see.

I should take more pictures, but I like to see things without looking through a viewfinder.

This video shows some of the action at the event. The first half of the video is some impressive full scale Warbird flybys at the event, and the second half shows some of the great bomber models that were there, so you can see what I saw...;)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B9WugvBBiFY

[quitcherbitchen]

No pictures!! You have a phone. I want to see what you see.

[tab28682]

Had a nice flight with the FL B-24 down at the big Warbird fly in at Bomber Field on Saturday. Mine was dwarfed by the 120" span glow powered B-24 model that was there, though....:)

[Gilatrout]

Went to fly mine today in honor of DDay (yesterday was stormy) and I forgot to bring battery adapters.

*Sigh*

Good thing I wasn't in charge at Normandy

[themudduck]

Guys,

Anyone running 3 cells:
What MAH are you using?
Thanks.

I have been using 3600s, and had to move one as far forward as possible to get the plane balanced. But it flew great and with plenty of power and duration.

[MikeT]

Guys,

Anyone running 3 cells:
What MAH are you using?
Thanks.

I'm using Admiral 3S - 3700 40C batteries.

Mike

[theoldALFER]

Guys,

Anyone running 3 cells:
What MAH are you using?
Thanks.

[Wild Man]

xviper I am not one to complain much And I do have just as much experience as you and many others, but when I find a problem as bad as these two servo's that draws a line I have done and used all the same remedies as you have mentioned but found know other alternative Yes I could have used another channel and dialed it in,, I tried resetting the servo arm to get it to match better but it was not going to happen, But all of this is not the point. I could care less about perfection the purpose of these foamies is to assemble hope things check some what close and go fly the crap out of them, but some times you just get tired of fixing things that should have been correct right out of the box Which does not ever happen. I happened to have a pair of new servo's the right size and replace the crap servo's in the horizontal stab glued them in checked linkage adjustment, and checked for correct throws up and down on the elevators now they both center and have the same travel up and down. End of Story

[xviper]

Poor centering may not necessarily be a function of how much a servo costs. It's likely a matter of the servo arm not being able to achieve a perfect 90 degree orientation relative to the servo body, even when the servo is centered. One tooth one way or one tooth the other way just doesn't do it. It so happens that the 90 degree desired angle is between two teeth. Even expensive servos can have this trait. If you want perfection, you'd need to have enough channels so you can put every servo on a different channel so you can sub-trim each one to achieve what you want. Personally, I find the best compromise I can with what I have and be done with it. Rarely, have I encountered any insurmountable difficulties in the air because of this. Another option is to buy a big bag of servos and find matched pairs.

[OV10]

Wild Man A servo tester (even the less than $10 ones) actually has the capability to check centering of servo's

[Wild Man]

A servo test would not have caught this problem a servo test just tells you the servo is working, after looking at and checking how all the servo's center on this B-24 I find that none of them center the same and some are worse than others, The flap servo's do not match center or throws, The aileron servo's do not match centers or throw, and the rudder servo's are off, but I guess we can not expect to much from such cheep servo's