Official FlightLine RC 1600mm P-38 Lightning Thread

[OV10]

Well, three flights after the repaint, I bid farewell to my P-38 at Warbirds Over Grapevine. I'm honestly still not sure exactly what happened that caused the crash. After my first flight that seemed a bit tail heavy, I added 47g in the nose to get the CG in the correct position. I took off, and had a great flight. Flew stable as always, and handled much better with the added nose weight. After about 3 patterns, I realized I forgot to set my timer (couldn't have been up more than 3 minutes), I dropped the gear and made my approach. At about 100 ft as I leveled off for final, the aircraft did a hard wingover to the left and headed for the small road behind the field. I recovered from the spin about 20 ft above the road, leveled out, and gunned the throttle to get it back up to altitude. As soon as I punched throttle, it did the same thing again and went nose first into the concrete. Aircraft is totaled from the nose back to the booms, both batteries taco'ed as well. After many hours of painting, customizing, and even machining special metal reinforcements for the props, I am a bit dismayed to say the least, and I don't think I'll get another one. After 40 flights without any issues at all, I'm clueless to what exactly happened, possibly single engine/batt failure? Had plenty of speed and was almost level at the time, so a stall doesn't seem likely to me. The only bright side is that I now have space on the airplane rack now, there may be an FMS Tigercat to take its place in the future..

Sorry to hear of that DD :Sick2:
If I were a betting man I would go with your assumption of the single motor/batt failure.
When FlightLine put this 38 and the Tiger out with instructions to have each motor on it's own batt I knew it was just a matter of time before this type of configuration was gonna bite someone.
All my twins have their ESC power leads Y'd into one connector and I use a parallel Y adapter to hook the two batteries into that one ESC connector.
If you are going to loose power in this configuration you will lose both motors at the same time and have to deadstick just like a single motor aircraft when your power source takes a crap for whatever reason.
The Lightning is an awesome bird but if you decide to not replace it and go with the Tiger, either way I would strongly recommend that you do not go with independent power sources on twin applications.;)

ps.......If you don't replace the 38, I'd be interested in acquiring those "special" prop reinforcements.

[F106DeltaDart]

Will definitely be doing that in the future Charlie, won't be making that mistake again! As for the reinforcements, I'll have to check that they aren't bent. I'll let you know if they are still in reasonable condition.

[rifleman_btx]

That's good advice for sure

[e4dragongunner]

Hey OV10! Could you provide a pic of your ESC/Parallel wiring for clarity?
Many Thanks

[OV10]

More than glad to e4DG.......;)


The 2 ESC's are spliced black/black and red/red into a single connector ...........................The batteries are connected into a parallel Y harness


As you can see the Admiral "new" 4000 40C fit nicely without any canopy slicing or whittling of the fuselage walls.
I am using a separate UBEC ZTW 10A to the receiver. This is because when this bird was released there was no absolute specs on the BEC's.
It was also being told that is was OK to keep both Vdc+ Y'd to the Rx without any explanation to support something contrary to the standard.
The standard was always to isolate one (red)lead on the two throttle connectors so as to prevent the two 'switching' BEC's from fighting with each for voltage control.
Later when FL released the Tigercat the same thing was again instructed but this time I elevated the concern about this which finally got Alpha to disclose the fact that FL had
partnered with an ESC manufacturer that had a proprietary design that allowed both BEC's to be connected without issue.
My Tiger does not use a separate UBEC but it does use the same battery connection setup as the P-38 and all the rest of my twins. ;)

[e4dragongunner]

Ha!!! awesome stuff OV! many many thanks. What kind of flight times with the 4K's? and Balance gear up? yes?.... where is your cg? I have two flights on mine. 1st scary as sh*t as I did not have the 4 mm up elevator set up. Second Flight was MUCH better, rotated easily and flew very nice. Greased the landing, I will be adding an 8 Channel receiver and separating the nose gear and the rudder. Tracking on take off needs a separate trim. Using 3k and 2.5k set for timer for 6 min.

[OV10]

Ha!!! awesome stuff OV! many many thanks. What kind of flight times with the 4K's? and Balance gear up? yes?.... where is your cg? I have two flights on mine. 1st scary as sh*t as I did not have the 4 mm up elevator set up. Second Flight was MUCH better, rotated easily and flew very nice. Greased the landing, I will be adding an 8 Channel receiver and separating the nose gear and the rudder. Tracking on take off needs a separate trim. Using 3k and 2.5k set for timer for 6 min.

Flight times are the same as my Tigercat.............6-8 minutes depending on the throttle mgmt.
I balance ALL my aft swinging gear birds in the retracted(up) position.
You have expressed using the 4mm up elev as defined in the manual. As you may know but others new to this bird may not, the appropriate CG that results in a neutral elevator trim can not be achieved due to the alum structural support in the wing that prevents the lipos from being moved any further aft. FL made a conscious decision not to change the mold designs and made a calculated risk that from a marketing aspect this would be acceptable for most flyers.
For me it meant that A LOT of down pressure was required to hold level flight while inverted and that was not acceptable and so came the weight add mods.
I presently have 3 ounces of stick weight on the bottom leading edge of the horizontal stab which brings my elevator trim to 1mm up.
Good enough for me.;)

I also have the FMS 1400 P-40B main gear struts with Robart 3" diamond tread wheels on the mains and the nose gear is the left main strut from the FMS 1400 P-51 with a 2-3/4" wheel

[BadBob]

Well, three flights after the repaint, I bid farewell to my P-38 at Warbirds Over Grapevine. I'm honestly still not sure exactly what happened that caused the crash. After my first flight that seemed a bit tail heavy, I added 47g in the nose to get the CG in the correct position. I took off, and had a great flight. Flew stable as always, and handled much better with the added nose weight. After about 3 patterns, I realized I forgot to set my timer (couldn't have been up more than 3 minutes), I dropped the gear and made my approach. At about 100 ft as I leveled off for final, the aircraft did a hard wingover to the left and headed for the small road behind the field. I recovered from the spin about 20 ft above the road, leveled out, and gunned the throttle to get it back up to altitude. As soon as I punched throttle, it did the same thing again and went nose first into the concrete. Aircraft is totaled from the nose back to the booms, both batteries taco'ed as well. After many hours of painting, customizing, and even machining special metal reinforcements for the props, I am a bit dismayed to say the least, and I don't think I'll get another one. After 40 flights without any issues at all, I'm clueless to what exactly happened, possibly single engine/batt failure? Had plenty of speed and was almost level at the time, so a stall doesn't seem likely to me. The only bright side is that I now have space on the airplane rack now, there may be an FMS Tigercat to take its place in the future..

Could be a motor mount separation, as I have seen before, but on take off, with a gas version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_cCd-uciZo. Did the exact same thing. This sort of thing can happen, especially on a gas or nitro P-38 as well as when an engine loss occurs, it will go into an immediate flat spin. I have the VQ 83" model with 2-4 strokes and never flew it because of the money invested and the horror stories about the flat spin engine losses, so now it hangs on my hobby room wall as a very nice memento (my wife insisted I do not sell it!!). Hard to believe for me, but yes, she told me I could get a new one but not to sell that one! LOL! Anyway, I went into my Real Flight sim, downloaded the VQ P-38 and played with the engine out scenario and I was only able to bring it in safely, maybe 2 out of 20 attempts. This with no wind adjustments. This sim version is with gas motors installed. I waited until I was 3 mistakes high before pressing the "E, or M" buttons, I believe, and waited for one of the motors to quit. It only took a second or so, but, man the adrenaline kicked in quick. This is why I bought the FL electric version, tho I see now there is an electric version for the VQ 83" P-38 available as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp9yTqsKUOA. HMMMMMMMMM! This could get me into trouble!!! LOL! More https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOXJADySKIo&t=132.

[rifleman_btx]

Yup battery failure. Was flying really well then almost as if one cell let go it just dropped voltage and spun in. Battery count was 13.9 at a point in Normal flight would have been 15 volts. My counter still had 1.5 minutes left. It was the 60th run on that battery. So my fault totally. So I'm thinking about rather or not to replace or get a F7F... craaaaap I love both planes lol

[e4dragongunner]

Brother... That Sux, I am so Sorry. Go F7F , then steer back towards the P-38. Love my 38. going to go with OV'a setup.

[RRHandy]

:Sick2::Scared::Crying::( Hang in there Rifleman. R.

[rifleman_btx]

Brother... That Sux, I am so Sorry. Go F7F , then steer back towards the P-38. Love my 38. going to go with OV'a setup.

Indeed brother, that's actually how I plan to go, buy the f7f first then replace this one after. I guess that's the ok thing about this happening at the tail end of the season. Gives time to go to hell and regroup.

[e4dragongunner]

Not to hijack the thread in asking this... but are you considering " at all" the FMS?
its expensive.... Really Really cool gear. and 1 6S lipo.... Just asking.

I may be answering my own question here but the Flightline can utilize the lightening batteries.

[rifleman_btx]

I'm going with the flightline. Only because I already have the needed batteries and a plan to work them. Basically it will be 2 2700 4S packs parallel connected to the escs. So to have 5400mah of power for both escs and it'll be a little lighter to boot. Anyway, that's the plan

[e4dragongunner]

Solid Copy! :-)

[F106DeltaDart]

Sorry to hear about that rifleman. Looks eerily similar to mine right now. It's been a bad week for P-38s..

[rifleman_btx]

Ah, meant to tell you my oldest son ships to San Diego at the end of July to start his transformation to be a Marine

[rifleman_btx]

Sorry to hear about that rifleman. Looks eerily similar to mine right now. It's been a bad week for P-38s..

I know right and by the reports, simular problema caused them both. Power issues. Oddly though, you were running twin packs, I was only running a single, and both came to an end by the same cause.

[rifleman_btx]

I think when the time comes I'll get another silver one... don't know why I've always been partial to silver planes

[rifleman_btx]

And what I'll be doing is covering ov10s route since I can continue using 4000s in the b26, I will double them up for the p38 in the same way as well... then just keep flying the p39 on the 5000s. As I don't think it will fly well on a lighter battery as when I designed it, it was pretty specific for the 5000s and I think going 4000s will make it tail heavy... As you may can tell definitely not talking about the fms model, this is my own design i dreamed up for the fun of it with a mid mounted motor. But all in all it will all be awesome in the end