I am a huge P-38 fan and I've had my share of P-38 foamies over the years. I love their flying characteristics and looks as much if not more than any warbird I can think of.
I finally tired of waiting for a super scale P-38 foamie to hit the market so I discovered a wood/composite P-38 on the market with full fowler flaps and a really nice size at 83". The Legend Models P-38 (used to be the VQ) is a nice fairly scale P-38 that isn't foamie cheap by any means but is a good next step up before you hit the Yellow Aircraft or Ziroli class which can run $5K+ easy turn key.
My buddy built her for me. Took him 52 hours. I added scale details going with close-to-scale-sized wheels with the forward nose strut rake. (Drives me NUTS when I see RC model P-38's with tiny struts sticking straight down on tiny wheels, bleck!) Full Robart electric retract system, Castle Phoenix Edge 100A ESCs, Dualsky 470Kv motors running two Admiral 5S 4000 mAh 60C LiPo's swinging two Counter Rotating Master Airscrew 16x10x3's that I rounded the tips for a more scale look.
I maidened over Memorial Day Weekend. I took it to a large parking lot to make sure I had plenty of runway. The flight went great! The second flight was last weekend at the local school I normally fly at. That also went really well. The flap mechanism is very sloppy and still needs work (you will notice the inboard port flap not all the way up) but doesn't seem to have any noticeable adverse affect in the air thankfully.
I painted the nose/fuse and invasion stripes and used Callie Graphics for the decals and nomenclature. I also cut out holes in the side radiators, custom made the turbos and side radiator intakes (the ones that came with the NARF were terrible looking) and added screen mesh to all the intakes and added the antenna like the FS. Overall, I am really pleased with how she turned out.
Here's the video and some photos! Crossing my fingers that someone makes a super scale foamy P-38 one day!
(I added a Memorial Day Tribute in with the maiden video that is worth watching that starts at the 5:50 mark)
I finally tired of waiting for a super scale P-38 foamie to hit the market so I discovered a wood/composite P-38 on the market with full fowler flaps and a really nice size at 83". The Legend Models P-38 (used to be the VQ) is a nice fairly scale P-38 that isn't foamie cheap by any means but is a good next step up before you hit the Yellow Aircraft or Ziroli class which can run $5K+ easy turn key.
My buddy built her for me. Took him 52 hours. I added scale details going with close-to-scale-sized wheels with the forward nose strut rake. (Drives me NUTS when I see RC model P-38's with tiny struts sticking straight down on tiny wheels, bleck!) Full Robart electric retract system, Castle Phoenix Edge 100A ESCs, Dualsky 470Kv motors running two Admiral 5S 4000 mAh 60C LiPo's swinging two Counter Rotating Master Airscrew 16x10x3's that I rounded the tips for a more scale look.
I maidened over Memorial Day Weekend. I took it to a large parking lot to make sure I had plenty of runway. The flight went great! The second flight was last weekend at the local school I normally fly at. That also went really well. The flap mechanism is very sloppy and still needs work (you will notice the inboard port flap not all the way up) but doesn't seem to have any noticeable adverse affect in the air thankfully.
I painted the nose/fuse and invasion stripes and used Callie Graphics for the decals and nomenclature. I also cut out holes in the side radiators, custom made the turbos and side radiator intakes (the ones that came with the NARF were terrible looking) and added screen mesh to all the intakes and added the antenna like the FS. Overall, I am really pleased with how she turned out.
Here's the video and some photos! Crossing my fingers that someone makes a super scale foamy P-38 one day!
(I added a Memorial Day Tribute in with the maiden video that is worth watching that starts at the 5:50 mark)
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