Hobby King 1875mm B-17G Flying Fortress V2

[jetfool]

Looking NICE!

[davegee]

Thanks, Rex. This thing is BIG!

[davegee]

Hello everyone: hope all are looking forward to a great Thanksgiving Day tomorrow. My wife and I and our three bullies are looking forward to the feast! We have a tradition up here in Cody of getting a yearly turkey harvested from a small farm out in the country a bit. The wife in the family is from England, specifically the Norwich area and her parents still run a small turkey farm in England. That is huge turkey country, in fact a monster turkey farm was started on the old airfiield of Halesworth, a prominent host of famous units like the 56th Fighter Group in WWII.

At home, I have been working some more on the B-17. Have added the propellers and done a few 1/2 power runups in the basement shop to get more familiar with the airplane and run other tests. Did a CG check and it is slightly aft of recommended CG range, probably because I added the working tailwheel retract and some weight in the tail with a scratchbuilt version of the Cheyenne turret and the upper half of a 21st Century pilot. I think I can zero out the tail heaviness with some weight or a bit larger batteries in the nose. Will work on that.

The plane weighed in today a 6 3/4 pounds on the scale, ready to fly. With the huge wing on this bird, it should be a great flyer in scale form this spring.

I'll attach a few pics from the past couple of days. The last is what our turkey looked like, until recently.

[jetfool]

Davegee,
She is going to be a beauty when she sees the sky. You're doing a great job.
We had turkeys on our farm and used one Tom for dinner every Thanksgiving for years. Used to self-provide our food by raising/growing everything we ate. I miss those days.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING to YOU and YOURS
Rex

[davegee]

Thanks, Rex. Very cool. All my life until when we moved to WY six years ago, we bought all our turkeys at the supermarket. I love our little trek to the farm every Thanksgiving and chat with others doing the same thing and Vicky and her wonderful family who raise these turkeys naturally and with love. I love hearing her English accent. I suppose in many ways it’s a relic of the past, but I hope not.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day tomorrow to you and your family.

Cheers

davegee

[Grossman56]

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I have to work tomorrow so we'll have ours on Saturday, hospitals never close, but they are putting on a Turkey dinner for us and the public so that's cool.
Those props look perfect Dave, she looks awesome!

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[jetfool]

Dan,
Sorry you are working today but people are counting on you. Our family feast is Friday as kids are at their in-laws today. Wife's sister is here from Ohio so they will gab all day and not bother me. LOL
As for ME, I'll spend it in the shop watching movies and working on models.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

[davegee]

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I have to work tomorrow so we'll have ours on Saturday, hospitals never close, but they are putting on a Turkey dinner for us and the public so that's cool.
Those props look perfect Dave, she looks awesome!

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

Thanks, Dan. Things are coming along. I'll wait to glue on the rudder and horizontal stabilizer until I hear from you if we have something that has a chance of success with a 3D print, You might have read an entry by Elbee with info on a very lightweight filament that might make the big difference with the weight issue in the tail of the aircraft. That would help. That [tail heaviness] still worries me. I'm a little out of CG limits tail heavy right now (due to addition of the heavier retractable tail wheel retract) and with the addition of the printed Cheyenne turret it will only get worse. But it's worth going ahead with the project and see if we can pull it off. Lots of room in the nose for a weight and/or larger batteries to balance it all out.

With my line of work in the airlines, I frequently ended up working away from home and family at big holidays. Probably the low point was early in my career where we had a layover in Florida somewhere for Thanksgiving and the Only thing open was some dingy cafeteria type restaurant. Just us and a few locals eating our "holiday" meal. But more often than not I was able to finesse the schedule so I could be home with my family on important occasions like this.

Cheers

Davegee

[davegee]

I'm waiting on some parts like connector cables for the servos but do a little work here and there while I wait. I finished the printing of wheels for the 5.5 inch Robarts for the mains, added some details like the inflation tubes and also just started into a little weathering of the underneath of the cowl and exhaust areas.I like to use chalks which are removable if need be. I won't go overboard on this as I am trying to follow the life of the actual plane that this represents, one flown by my late father in law on three missions late in 1944. The plane was pretty much new when it arrived at the squadron in October, but flew heavily (58 combat missions) until the end of the war in May 1945. It was then flown home and eventually scrapped back in the USA, along with thousands of others. The point being, although run hard, I don't think it had the wear and tear of other planes that flew longer during the war.

I'll be adding other small details like brake lines for the main gear, and possibly some sort of retract/extend struts that go forward of the gear into the wheel wells. Not sure if that will wok out, but I'll give it a try. I don't care much for the stock spring struts on the mains, but not sure if I"ll try anything else to improve that look. One idea might be replacing them with Flightline B-17 main struts, but trying to find a couple of those would probably be like searching for hens' teeth. If anyone has any for sale, I"m very interested!!

Did some wiring harnesses and painting detail on the fake motors to help make them look a little better. I found to my chagrin that they printed the fake motors with 10 cylinders, not the 9 that I expected. I guess no one will really notice that except me!

Cheers

Davegee

[f4u ausie]

Dave first thing 4 me if I had this model(the struts). I agree. very old school .. I'm sure you will tidy that. It's coming along nicely..

[davegee]

Thanks, Craig. I will be looking hopefully for some drop-in replacements for those gear. A real turnoff, those. But I’ll plan on flying it this spring, regardless of my success in finding a replacement.

I suppose it’s Springtime, Down-Unduh. I hope you’re enjoying some nice weather. We just got a couple of inches of snow, so it looks very Christmasey in these parts. My bullies love frolicking I the white stuff, anyway.

cheers

davegee

[davegee]

Did some minor modifications for scale on the B-17 last night. This airplane represents one of the last series of B-17Gs produced, and these included improved accommodations to the waist guns and windows. While the early F models in combat had sliding windows to fire their .50 cal. guns out of, the crews suffered from temps around -50 degrees F. With the last improvements to the G models, the windows were fully sealed into the waist area, and a new mount was developed to allow the gunners to fire with some better accuracy. The windows were sealed and could not be opened in flight or on the ground. The positions of the guns were also staggered so that the two gunners would not bump into each other while trying to fire their guns. As the war went on, many crews were issued just one gunner to operate both guns That was the case in my father in law's combat tour. He came over with a full crew of 10 men, but eventually one gunner was removed from his plane, leaving the other gunner to man both guns, as necessary.

Here's a couple pics of what I did last night. Still a few minor dings to fill in and repaint, but it is pretty much done. I might add one gunner around one of the guns before I seal up the windows. HK added several of just the barrels only to stick into various parts of the plane. I found an STL to print up the rest of the gun so you can see the whole thing and not just the barrel.

[jetfool]

Davegee,

WHERE IS THE PICTURES? LOL

[davegee]

Davegee,

WHERE IS THE PICTURES? LOL

Hi Rex: good luck with your F4! With all those detail parts I'm sure it's going to be a winner!!

Regarding the pics of the waist windows and guns, I just wanted to be sure they posted ok when I sent them. The reason why I ask is when I was looking at the post I sent yesterday, the pics of the windows were not there. Yet, they've been there all along before that, and when I'm looking at it now, they are there to see. Let me know what you think and if you are able to see the pics when you bring this post up.

Thanks!

Davegee

[F106DeltaDart]

The last photos I see are the ones you posted of the wheels in post 169

[jetfool]

Davegee,
No photo's yet

[davegee]

Davegee,
No photo's yet

Hi Rex: that is really weird! I am looking at them online now, and they have always been there for me except that one time I wrote you where they disappeared for awhile. When I click on the pics, the screen goes blank except for "invalid file." Never seen that before!

I'm going to repost these two pics that I tried to send the other day. Let me know if you receive them when you next look at this area.

Thanks!

Davegee

[davegee]

"Danger" Dan and I are working on a 3D printed replacement tail piece for the B-17 instead of the stock earlier tail turret that comes with the model. We are having some success so far. Dan sent me the STL for V2 which is an improved version of what we started with. After doing a fit test with an extra fuselage and adjust where necessary, we should be able to print the final copy. I have ordered some light weight filament which advertises a 65% decrease in weight over regular filaments, making it ideal for for uses like this and other rc aircraft where reduction of weight is paramount. We'll see. An interesting and educational exercise, at the very least! I'll attach a few pics of the project-in-work.

Cheers

Davegee

[davegee]

The last photos I see are the ones you posted of the wheels in post 169

Thanks, 106DD. I've repossted some and hopefully they will show ok now. Very weird.

While I have your attention, I haven't given up on finding some Flightline B-17 main landing gear, but I have to brace myself that that will not happen. Instead, although I HATE to use the round springy gear, I might have to do something along those lines.

I could just leave everything stock on this, and live with the fact that the airplane's stance is way too high. Another idea I have is possibly modifying the landing gear steel strut by opening up the servo and cutting about 1/4 inch off the strut so that I can lower it in the retract a bit. I'd rather get rid of the strut completely, but that might not be possible. I would still have the functioinal circular spring, but it would be closer to the retract and make the model's stance a bit lower.

I looked online for HK and wanted to order a replacement main gear retract where I could test this theory out, without endangering working gear that are installed. I mean, if they don't sell retracts, I can't take the chance of screwing up the ones that work if I can't get replacements. Maybe I missed the part on their online parts finder where you can order replacement gear for this airplane.

Do you have any thoughts on this, or some other way I can go with a different strut from a different model that I could put in this retract as a more scale replacement?

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

Cheers

Davegee

[jetfool]

Davegee,
Pictures have arrived. The mods look fantastic, you and Dan are doing a great job. It's nice to have a local friend that enjoys the same things.

Best Regards, Rex