Official FlightLine 1600mm B-25J Mitchell PNP Thread

[Elbee]

A photo of the real Cactus Kitten in 1945

Dave, is that a 'field modification'?

Looks to be air intake ducting, possibly to help with in-flight ventilation.

Great detail.

Best, LB

[davegee]

davegee,

the livery you've chosen is perfect for the "J".

The graphics are simpler in style which I find better suited to the era and no doubt quite accurate.

The new gunsmoke weathering is awesome and the addition of Robarts and 3DP wheels, though subtle, add so very much.

You've got me to thinking that my next foamie should be my Mitchell instead of my Tomcat.

I could use a break from the 'complexity' and yours is such a beautiful example.

I could most likely be done by July , I figure.

Seriously, just great work, Dave, as per your usual.

Best, Steve

Thanks, Elbee. I'm really loving how easy this airplane is to fly and how realistic it looks. They really did their homework on this one! Another good thing is that you can remove the outer wing panels to more easily put it in your transportation out to the field. Works great, I'd highly recommend it for a "fun" airplane!

The paint scheme and name of this airplane Cactus Kitten, were all real and the 345th Bomb Group Air Apaches that operated them out of the Pacific Theatre in WWII was highly decorated for their daring missions. But they lost over 700 air crew during the war, so it came at a high price.

My plane, Cactus Kitten, was involved in an important mission to destroy Japanese shipping at what is now Saigon, Viet Nam in April of 1945. They were supposed to have B-24 coverage to soften up the AA batteries before they arrived over target, and also meet up with P-38s to provide protection and also target ground AA batteries. Unfortunately, none of the supporting aircraft made it for one reason or another, and the whole might of the Japanese forces there was concentrated at this small group of a dozen B-25s. Cactus Kitten took a direct hit after sinking a Japanese transport, and went in with all 5 crew lost.

I've found some info on the internet that a relative of the flight engineer/top turret gunner who was one of the crew lost on that mission and is trying to keep their story alive. I'm going to try and get in contact with him and send him some pics of my model to honor people like his relative and all the others who paid the ultimate price.

Best,

Davegee


A photo of the real Cactus Kitten in 1945

[Elbee]

davegee,

the livery you've chosen is perfect for the "J".

The graphics are simpler in style which I find better suited to the era and no doubt quite accurate.

The new gunsmoke weathering is awesome and the addition of Robarts and 3DP wheels, though subtle, add so very much.

You've got me to thinking that my next foamie should be my Mitchell instead of my Tomcat.

I could use a break from the 'complexity' and yours is such a beautiful example.

I could most likely be done by July , I figure.

Seriously, just great work, Dave, as per your usual.

Best, Steve

[davegee]

Got another flight on my B-25J and several flights with my E Flite P-51D LOU IV this morning. The B-25 I did another low altitude bomb drop of about 20 feet off the ground to simulate about 200 feet off the ground for the full size aircraft. All four bombs dropped out beautifully right after I opened the bomb bay doors, and three of the four landed in a tight pattern within a few feet of each other. The fourth bomb for some reason was about 20 feet away.

These bombs are made out of PLA which is fine for most things, but the delicate structure of the tail fins makes it susceptible to breakage even when they hit soft dirt. I"m going to find a different material that will be stronger so that won't happen again, hopefully.

In one or two of the side profile photos I took this morning, you can see some added detail on the fuselage just forward of the side guns where muzzle blast has scorched and discolored the paint on the fuselage in those areas. I had a photo to go from for trying to make it look believable.

This was the 10th flight today, 4th, "bombing mission" which has more or less worked out very well. I'm working on the parachute bombs that I'll deploy later this fall to see how they do.


Robart tires are in the mail and should arrive this weekend. Once I get them, I'll put them onto the printed scale wheels that I made up, and install them on the plane for some more test flights next week. I don't really have any big problems with the OEM wheels that come with the kit, but think more scale wheels will look better and the tires that are hollow should help stick the landings a little better. Overall, this is one of my favorite airplanes to fly.

[davegee]

The markings came in the mail from Callie yesterday. So, I got some of them on last night before this morning's flights. I also ordered a sheet of nomenclature, very good reproductions, but I don't know where most of them go. If anyone has a link to showing where these were placed along the outer surfaces of the B-25, I'd be very thankful. In the meantime, I'll fly it with the few markings I put on.

So, I got four flights today, two just regular flights and two "bombing missions" to drop the bombs and see how they work. Since I have to be careful of my plane's well-being, I really couldn't follow the bombs more than a second or so while concentrating on keeping my plane flying like it's supposed to. But the bombs (4 of them) dropped out beautifully and the weights in the nose let them fall fairly flat with a realistic trajectory. Unfortunately, two of the four bounced on the dirt and then onto the asphalt cross-runway where the delicate fins broke off. Those that just landed in the dirt are just fine with no damage. I'm using PLA for all my printing now, and PLA might be too delicate for making droppables, like bombs. Might change that down the road.

The B-25 flies beautifully and pretty easily in about 10 flights I have on it already. I'm going to continue to research the parafrag bombs that they also used on missions. These would be easier to recover than even the orange bombs in that field of dirt and scrub brush. I have ordered some Robart tires to replace the OEM tires. I have already printed up the wheels that the tires will go on, and they are painted and ready to go when I get the tires from Robart.

All in all, a lot of fun flying this airplane!

Cheers

Davegee

[davegee]

I had decided to draw a line on scale detail and not do the interior of the bomb bay doors, but now you've forced me to change my mind and have another delay in finishing my PBJ-1J! BTW, the 345th was the Air Apaches. Attached are the parafrags that were used to attack Jap airfields. You're doing great detail work and are setting a very high standard!

Thanks very much, Charlee. This is my first B-25 RC plane. Most of my planes have been WWII fighters, and some bombers as well as EDF jets. I'm really liking this airplane, it's been done very well by Flightline. I'm especially liking the operable bomb bay doors and plan on doing some scale tests with dropping the printed bombs and hopefully some small pararfrag bombs that they dropped from very low altitude on Japanese airfields as you indicated, and also shipping targets. In fact, this was where Cactus Kitten that I am replicating in a foamie was lost, on a bombing mission on Saigon harbor, hit by antiaircraft fire on the ground and resulted in all 5 crewmen losing their lives.

I just ordered a book on the 345th Bomb Group today by Jay Stout to get more information on this unit from the 5th AAF. I have read that just in the 345th BG alone, they lost over 700 men from hostile actions in combat during the war.

Take care,

Davegee

[Elbee]

Charlee Great mod idea. Looking forward to seeing this!

Welcome to Hobby Squawk.

Glad to have you onboard.

Best, LB

[Charlee]

I had decided to draw a line on scale detail and not do the interior of the bomb bay doors, but now you've forced me to change my mind and have another delay in finishing my PBJ-1J! BTW, the 345th was the Air Apaches. Attached are the parafrags that were used to attack Jap airfields. You're doing great detail work and are setting a very high standard!

[davegee]

davegee so very clever. Best, LB

I've seen one photo in passing online of one of the parachute bombs, but I'd have to do more research to make them half-way accurate looking. They had a spinner on the bottom that must have armed the bomb with very few turns because they dropped these on shipping targets from about 200 feet agl. That might be a fun side-project this fall/winter for next spring. The bomb racks are attached with four screws so they can easily be removed to put some little parachutes in. We'll see. Might be kinda cool, and historically accurate, more or less...

Cheers

davegee

[Elbee]

davegee so very clever. Best, LB

[davegee]

After I got home from the successful maiden and subsequent flights of the B-25 this morning, I started working on some details of the landing gear bays and bomb bays. I pulled all the gear doors and bomb bay doors off the plane and repainted the interior parts with Vallejo zinc chromate paint that I applied with my airbrush. Really good quality paints that they have, I'll use them more in the future.

Also, I used some .010" thick styrene sheet and after making a few paper patterns cut the plastic to be inner door covers for the bomb bays. These have circular lightening holes in them like the real ones. It came out pretty well, just for fun. I'm attaching a couple of pics of that, including with the modified weighted bombs (in the nose with a metric screw) to hopefully drop more realistically thatn the foam bombs that come with the kit. I'll try these next week. In the meantime, I'll continue to work on scale details on other parts of the airplane.

I printed up 6 more bombs on my Prusa mini printer. (How I Love this thing!) After adding the M5 16 screws in the noses of all six bombs to improve stability and drop performance, I painted four of them orange. These bombs I will try testing next week (whenever the wind dies down to be able to) to see how accurate I can place them. The real unit in WWII, was the 345th Bomb Group Flying Apaches, which had a very distinguished combat record in WWII. The version of the plane I am working on, Cactus Kitten, was from this unit.

I'll be dropping these bombs from strafing altitude, less than 20 feet actual altitude (simulated scale height) above the ground. I hope the orange color will help me retrieve them afterwards.

Once I get the bombing all figured out, I'm going to look into small scale parachutes with a scale bomb on the end to drop to the ground from an even lower altitude. During the war, these devices were dropped against enemy shipping and targets and the parachutes allowed them (the B-25s) to escape the blast once they hit the targets.

[davegee]

Very, Very , Nice Davegee. I scarfed up the last pair of 31/2" Diamond tread Robart wheels at the last hobby shop in Indianapolis this week. Dave Platt quote...... gett-em when you see them. Sad Robart has sold their retract/wheel business.

Rex

Thanks, Rex. The plane is coming along this weekend for some down time to do these mods and start in on weathering the aircraft. I just made up a removable aluminum pitot tube that uses a little steel wire to go through holes drilled through the tube glued into the right wing. Then, I slide my pitot tube into the slightly larger tube I just described, line up similar holes and place the wire through the holes perpendicular to the tubes. I use this same technique on all my planes that have long pitot tubes like the Corsair, P-47, and now the B-25.

Next time I fly the B-25 next week, I'll do some more practice bombing runs over t he field at low altitude, much lower than I dropped them yesterday and lost the foamie bombs in the breeze. These will hopefully splat right in the dirt and weeds. For insurance, one load of 4 bombs I just printed up will be painted fluorescent orange to better see them and hopefully recover all of them. Later on, I'll use the somewhat scale looking OD bombs that have the yellow noses on them.

Regarding Robart wheels, I ordered some 3 1/2" wheels from them over a month ago. I forgot about them, then yesterday they sent me an email that I have to renew my PayPal payment since it had been over 30 days since I ordered them. So, I sent them the money and hopefully they'll arrive so I can put them on the B-25. I still have to order a smaller nose tire, and I'll be sure to get on that pronto, as it sounds things are changing at Robart, and not necessarily for the good.

Hope you're enjoying an early fall in Indiana. We're having a nice one here in northwest Wyoming right now.

Cheers

Dave

[jetfool]

Very, Very , Nice Davegee. I scarfed up the last pair of 31/2" Diamond tread Robart wheels at the last hobby shop in Indianapolis this week. Dave Platt quote...... gett-em when you see them. Sad Robart has sold their retract/wheel business.

Rex

[davegee]

davegee,

Lookin' really good, Sir.

Those inner doors are awesome. A man after my own heart with that mod.

The bomb rack and bombs finish it off quite well.

Nicely done.

Best, LB

Thanks, Elbee. I guess to me each warbird has that one (or more) distinctive parts that stand out. On the B-25, it is the inner panels on the bomb bay doors with the lightening holes. And since this bomb bay is meant to be opened and closed and even drop ordnance from, I figured I Had to dress it up a little. Not a big deal making paper patterns up to fit the insides of the doors and cutting slots out to accommodate the hinge points on the model. The lightening holes were simply done with a hole punch after I marked off where they should go. Was sorta fun, actually. I also am glad I removed and painted all the gear doors to give it a little more authentic look.

On the bomb rack, I decided to modify the Fast N Light design just a bit. It has three rows of bombs side by side so you can carry up to 12 bombs inside and put them on the aluminium tubes to keep them in place until the doors open and they fall out by gravity. I decided to remove the center support with its accommodation to hold those bombs in favor of just two parallel frames to drop a maximum of 8 bombs. This airplane as far as I know had two racks, one on each side of the fuse, to hang the bombs on. To me, it looks a little more accurate this way, just my take on it.

I've ordered the Robart tires and will eventually print up a more accurate wheel/tire arrangement that should improve the scale look of the airplane, too.

Cheers

davegee

[Elbee]

davegee,

Lookin' really good, Sir.

Those inner doors are awesome. A man after my own heart with that mod.

The bomb rack and bombs finish it off quite well.

Nicely done.

Best, LB

[davegee]

After I got home from the successful maiden and subsequent flights of the B-25 this morning, I started working on some details of the landing gear bays and bomb bays. I pulled all the gear doors and bomb bay doors off the plane and repainted the interior parts with Vallejo zinc chromate paint that I applied with my airbrush. Really good quality paints that they have, I'll use them more in the future.

Also, I used some .010" thick styrene sheet and after making a few paper patterns cut the plastic to be inner door covers for the bomb bays. These have circular lightening holes in them like the real ones. It came out pretty well, just for fun. I'm attaching a couple of pics of that, including with the modified weighted bombs (in the nose with a metric screw) to hopefully drop more realistically thatn the foam bombs that come with the kit. I'll try these next week. In the meantime, I'll continue to work on scale details on other parts of the airplane.

[davegee]

I had a great morning under near-perfect weather conditions to do the maiden on my Flightline B-25J model today. I started by taking up my "weather ship" the E-Flite Beech 18 to get a feel for the winds aloft and as a warmup before the main event. We have some weird extremely local micro weather conditions at our flying field which is on Bureau of Rec land with lots of sagebrush, rocks, and not much else. No excuses to run into a tree, because there are none! But I have found that just two miles away at reliable weather stations, or flags flying in front of buildings, the weather can be 180 degrees out of phase at the field, usually with discouraging results. But this morning, everything lined up and I was ready to fly!

I did some tests yesterday like taxi tests, turns, etc., just to get a feel for how this model behaves. Did a full power test and range test too. This morning I did the same prep, checking flaps, gear and retraction, and security of the removable wing panels. All was good.

So I took off using low rates and 30% expo per the assembly manual with an Admiral 5000 6S battery pushed all the way forward. All control throws were book values, and I flew most of the 5 flights I flew in low rates.

I've had a couple of Flightline B-24s, a DeHavilland Mosquito, and Flightline P-38, not sure if I've had other multiengine prop planes, but I was reasonably assured that this would go relatively well. First takeoff was scale, low climb angle with takeoff flaps. and then I cleaned up the gear and flaps for several laps checking out trims. Needed hardly any correction, maybe one up-click in elevator at level flight with the gear up, but nothing else.

The first landing was actually not bad, however I was a bit alarmed as I almost ran out of elevator authority in the roundout to landing pitch attitude on the mains with a little nose up and a bit of power right into the touchdown. I did other flights with just a little more power and it was a bit better, but I decided to do just one more flight with the elevators in the mid-rates position. This made a BIG difference as I had adequate pitch control and a slightly nose up landing about as good as I could ever do with this airplane. I hope to make the landings more consistent with this setting,
and I think it will work out ok.

I did load three of the little foam bombs that came with the kit, and dropped them from a low altitude as it passed by me. There was a little left to right wind, and the bombs took off with the wind a bit. I tried to find them afterwards, but never did. But I think they looked pretty cool coming out and the bomb bay doors worked great. Fortunately, I have access to my 3D printer and can print up a ton of these little bombs for future use. I think I'll paint a set of them fluorescent orange so I can find them more easily. Plus, these will have the screws in the nose so I think they'll drop closer to the aim point, than the kit foam bombs. We'll see.

In conclusion, I'm delighted with this new addition to my "fleet." You still have to stay on top of it as with any plane, but this one with its great suspension gear for our rough runway, mid-wing position and elevators that clear contact with the ground even if you get into a bit of a pickle on a landing or two.

I usually don't fly on the weekends so I will work on the airplane this weekend with some scale details like a removable pitot tube and a few scale drainage tubes on the engines. I'm going to try and make some scale looking panels on the inside of the bomb bay doors that have round lightening holes in them for a more scale appearance when the doors are open. And I'll print up a bunch more bombs to use to practice with my little bomb rack, design courtesy of Fast N Light.

Callie is set to ship my specific markings for this plane, called Cactus Kitten. I should get them next week to finish up the markings part of the model building. Lots of weathering and other details to go.

I highly recommend this airplane, for those interested in multi-engine warbirds.

Cheers

Davegee

[davegee]

Great job, Davegee. Onward and upward!

Thanks, Rex. I'm looking forward to getting the maiden done soon. Still a lot of detailing, decals, weathering, etc., but that can be done later this fall/winter.

[jetfool]

Great job, Davegee. Onward and upward!

[davegee]

While waiting for my B-25 to arrive via FedEx tomorrow, I printed a few items I plan to use on my plane on occasion. These are bombs and a bomb rack, and a tray to put small parachute items in so they hopefully don't snag on the airplane coming out of the bomb bay.

These designs are courtesy of Fast N Light. The bombs have holes drilled through them and mount onto 12 aluminum 1/8" diameter tubes. When the bomb bay doors open, they will fall out by gravity. Or that's the plan, I'm thinking it will work. Per Fast N Light, a 3 g. M5 screw 16mm long is screwed into the top to give it more stability and realism during the drop to the ground. You can drop from 1 to 12 bombs simultaneously. I have 6 made up now for Initial tests. I'll try to drop them in the ground just off to the side of the runway so that they don't break and I can find them again!

The tray that I printed up is designed to put soft items in, like parachutes. The hope is that they will fall out of the bomb bay without getting caught on some structure of the airplane.

The aircraft I am going to replicate, Cactus Kitten, was in a unit in the Pacific Theater that did strictly low level work; strafing and low altitude bombing. One thing I read they did was tie a parachute onto bombs that were going to be dropped at very low altitudes, hopefully giving them enough time to escape without "fragging" themselves on their own bombs! Unfortunately, this happened many times to pilots and aircraft doing dive bombing and low altitude bombing during WWII.

I'm hoping my B-25 will be ready for its maiden flight sometime this upcoming week. Once I have a few successful flights on it, I'll add the bombs and other scale details to the plane. I'll post developments here as they happen.

Cheers

davegee

I made some progress on assembling the plane yesterday. Got the wings on for the first time, painted white stripes on the outboard wing sections that this unit had, and did a test bomb drop in the shop just now. The main purpose for today's test was to be sure that the bombs (6 of them in this test) would drop clear of the airplane when the doors are opened and the bombs slide down the aluminum tubes.

I took note of the unfortunate accident that our friend Arthur from France had on his maiden flight of his B-25. I don't know exactly what happened there, but I did take away that is is possible for the pilot to get distracted watching the bombs or parachutes drop out of the airplane during flight. I took that to heart, as I could see I could be distracted for a glimpse of this just long enough to lose control of the aircraft. I'll be sure to keep my eyes on the plane at all times, and if a friend is around to snap some pictures or video that is a much better way to go for me.

I'll include a photo of the bombs in the airplane. I tried a10 second video of a static drop in my shop but it was too long. I might try another one later, but this one proved what I needed to know for now.. Each bomb (up to 12 max load) has a 5mm 16 screw that is screwed into the nose. This will hopefully give some stability and realism when they are actually dropped on a flight. We'll see.

Possible maiden has slipped to sometime next week, weather permitting. It will still be a work in progress for several months as I do some additional detailing and weathering of the airplane. So far, I'm liking this airplane.