Official FlightLine RC 1600mm P-38 Lightning Thread

[TSHobbies]

Heres the Robart wheels mounted...same size,but think they look better..had to cut about 1/4" off the strut wire. wish the plastic gear leg had been at least molded in grey or silver..wouldve been better than white..but my airbrush will fix that later

[Dewey H Lee]

OV10
I was eluding to the post on the P-40 warhawk on hobby sqwack. Post#80 by him. Shurly he did say you would send him the bust and pay for shipping but he said he would do it as a contribution back to the rc community. Check it and see if my eyes have gotten that bad. I'm sure he would do one for Aros.

[TiredIronGRB]

Why would it hurt to leave both ESCs feeding the receiver? It's not like it is increasing the volts, the two power connections would be parallel and not in a series, wouldn't lifting the power on one ESC also cause the other battery to drain faster?

[ruffneckx1]

The wheel mod is done using Robart low bounce diamond tread. 2 3/4 " for the mains and 2 1/2 " for the nose.
Thanks to MotionRC's testing and posting their findings, everything kinda' fell into place. I added small washers to each to increase the forward rake. 2 per rear set of screws for each retract.
Next I'll detail and paint the struts.
" My Little Pig " is what I'm shooting for.

Woody

[2FewDaysAtFlyingField]

There are two ways to do this. The easiest is to buy the BEC connector from Motion RC and plug this in between the ESC and your Throttle Y connector for the ESC you want to disable.

http://www.motionrc.com/150mm-bec-eliminator-cable/

Otherwise, pull the middle conductor (red lead) out of the connector going from the ESC to the Throttle Y connector. wrap the bare lead/connector that you pulled out with electrical tape or heat shrink tubing so it doesn't short to anything else.

Or you can do it my way and plug both ESC's into a heavy duty Futaba Y cable to "Let the smoke out" of the system. You'll be happy to know that the Aileron servo wire from the P38 control board is the weakest link in the system and it will completely fry (while you frantically unplug the batteries) before it damages any of the expensive equipment like the Futaba 7008 receiver and Eagle Tree Guardian Flight Stabilizer. I might also note that the foam is much more flame retardant that I thought. Obviously another example of forward thinking by the Flightline design team!

All kidding aside, Both ESC's seem to have survived the incident and both seem to be working as well as their respective BEC's. I'll probably tear her down tomorrow night and inspect every servo wire and check the function of every servo and light just to be sure. :) I have two other twin ARF's that I installed CASTLE ESC's in that are plugged together with no problem. In hind-sight I should have checked the voltages on these ESC's to make sure they were the same.

By the way, I HAVE DIBS ON ONE OF THE P38 CONTROL BOARDS BEFORE ALL YOU OTHER HOBBY HOARDERS START SNATCHING THEM UP FOR THE REST OF YOUR FLEET! I'VE GOT A P38 DOWN AND THE LUFTWAFFE IS INBOUND!

[Flyer Phill]

I'm jealous....seriously jealous!!

[tdevince]

Why would it hurt to leave both ESCs feeding the receiver? It's not like it is increasing the volts, the two power connections would be parallel and not in a series, wouldn't lifting the power on one ESC also cause the other battery to drain faster?

Depends on the type and quality of the integrated BEC on the ESCs. Some are able to make it work OK, sometimes it gives issues as the two ESCs don't necessarily play well together. My experience with twins is that it's best to remove one from the power. On a previous post Tom from Motion RC advised to disable one of the ESC supplies.

As far as draining one battery faster, I wired both batteries in parallel so that both feed both ESCs and my external CC BEC.

[tdevince]

A couple of build notes:
1. The hardware bag says you will have 14 PA3x10 screws, you don't (nor do you need 14).
2. The manual says to use 5 of these 3x10 screws to attach the center nacelle to the center wing section. Use the 3x15 screws instead.
3. On mine there was a slight misalignment of the outer wing panels to the tabs to which the machine screws bolt. With a little effort I was able to coax the outer wing panels on. Given the difficulty in getting them on, they won't be coming off for transportation. Fortunately that won't be a problem for me since I use an F250 for transport.

[Aros]

Nice job on the forward raking struts Woody! All done by washers alone?

Thank you for the build notes tdevince! These are always helpful for the builders to follow. Like me. :)

I posted this on the RCG thread and thought it's worth saying here too:

Guys, I cannot stress this enough: For all of you beginning or just about to build your P-38's, do yourself a favor and use this comprehensive build guide that Alpha took the time to put together for you. If you do, you won't have the various questions I've been reading about.

When I get mine on Friday, I plan on having this build video by my side on a laptop next to me as my constant companion, step-by-step to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes I've been reading some having. It's why we develop these videos. We want to help the customer as much as we can during the build because we all know there's much room for improvement when it comes to these Chinese manuals.

Take your time, reference the video early and often and all should go well.

http://www.motionrc.com/flightlinerc...an-pnp/#videos

[xplaneguy]

Looking great Woody! :)

[OV10]

Why would it hurt to leave both ESCs feeding the receiver? It's not like it is increasing the volts, the two power connections would be parallel and not in a series, wouldn't lifting the power on one ESC also cause the other battery to drain faster?

There are basically two regulator types on BEC's which are linear and switching. The "linear" BEC achieves it's 6V for the Rx via a voltage reducing circuit of the LiPo voltage which is a power loss factor via heat and the "switching" circuit does it with out the heat loss(not going into the electrical theory on how).
The linear BEC is usually used on a 3S or less LiPo's because the voltage spread to be reduced is not a significant amount, ex... 11.1 down to 6V, and the switching BEC is used on 4S and higher. Leaving both ESC's BEC output on a twin application to feed the Rx has been an acceptable practice when using "linear" with rare occasions of failure however it is NOT a good practice to do this with "switching" BEC's because they will fight each other for voltage balance and then bad things begin to happen.
It is just good practice to pull a red wire from one of the ESC's BEC lead to the Y connector that is plugged into the Rx throttle. Trust me.......I know all about twins, thus the expression under my profile name.
Best regards,

[Aros]

If anyone wants to post a video of the proper steps to pulling the red wire from one of the ESC's BEC lead to the Y connector and thus the proper setup from the ESCs to the RX I really won't mind...Nor will several others I assume.

;)

[ruffneckx1]

Just finished watching the build video ( again ) and unless I missed something, no mention is made of removing a red lead from either of the esc's.

Woody

[crxmanpat]

If anyone wants to post a video of the proper steps to pulling the red wire from one of the ESC's BEC lead to the Y connector and thus the proper setup from the ESCs to the RX I really won't mind...Nor will several others I assume.

;)

No video, but all I do is take an Xacto knife, slightly pry up the locking tab with the tip, then pull the red wire out. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

[ruffneckx1]

THX Tony. :shy:

Aros.MotionRC: yes, the forward rake is accomplished using #4 steel flat washers. Two per side are placed on the back end of each retract.

Woody

[OV10]

I can't do videos but here's a very good pictorial that I found way back when I was first getting into twins.

http://www.rcpowers.com/community/threads/dual-motors-dual-becs-tutorial.10617/#post-110567

[roys001]

This is my first twin and my fifth plane from MRC. I've never needed to calibrate the ESC. On this plane though based on the blog posts it would seem to be a requirement. Is that because it's a twin or is it a "best practices" type of a thing that I should have been doing all the time?

[dkalwishky]

Tuesday the Green P-38 showed in stock, I immediately placed an order. Today (Thursday) it's out for delivery! Woo Hoo!

[TSHobbies]

I have to mention...I already have 2 of the Avios Sea Furys, so didnt want to invest in getting another...but after receiving this P-38 ,I think the Avios planes are due to be replaced. Just wish it had the 5 blade prop.

[tdevince]

Last night I only got as far as attaching the center nacelle to the center wing section. I noticed that the diagram for the circuit module shows one slot for the landing light LED (self explanatory), two slots for Strobe LED's and one slot for Wing LED. Since there are two wing LEDs, does it really matter which slots the wing LED and Nacelle LED plug into (so long as its not the landing light LED)? I wasn't aware there were strobes on the plane. Haven't powered up yet but thought I'd ask since it won't be until tonight that I get to finish.