Official FlightLine RC 1600mm F7F-3 Tigercat Thread

[Brandon Moon]

I can say one thing for sure...Mark, Alpha, and the crew at MotionRC have busy little bee's. They're going to give "Santa" a bad wrap

And....they are only just getting started. .................? What will the next "PROJECT X" be? :)

[xplaneguy]

Hmmmm....I wonder? ;)

[Brandon Moon]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and our wonderful RC Community and their families. Time for turkey and War birds ;):p

Special thanks to Alpha, Mark, Tom, and the MotionRC Crew :D

[OV10]

Hmmmm....I wonder? ;)

I'll drive clean across the country to meet you out in the middle of nowhere so that you can whisper in my ear without fear of me being a gossip monger just to hear you say it is a 1500mm (1/8 scale) OV-10 Bronco ;)

[Alpha]

At which instant I'll drop a nuke on you both. :D Hahaha kidding

Hopefully FMS pulls through, maybe theirs is real and not a year away, I honestly don't know at this point.

[xplaneguy]

LOL!

Time to serve up more Tigercat this Thanksgiving. ;)

Wishing everyone all the best this holiday season. :)
Tony & Evelyn

[Alpha]

Great pics!

I spent a few minutes installing the Mr.RCSound Aspire into the Tigercat this afternoon. Ten minutes of work with a Dremel and done! We designed the Tigercat to accommodate the Mr.RCSound system in a couple different layouts. Flat spots in the central fuselage right in the airflow channel to keep everything cool, and also in the engine nacelles. Brandon and I will elaborate soon. Pictures after ham leftovers!

[Evoman]

It would had been great if the wings folded up for ease of transport. That's something I wish was more common place among RC planes like Navy models.

[xplaneguy]

Thanks Alpha!

Another helping of Tigercat from Apollo Field - Van Nuys, CA.

[xviper]

It would had been great if the wings folded up for ease of transport. That's something I wish was more common place among RC planes like Navy models.

When transposed onto a model foam plane, that folding mechanism could be a weak point. I doubt it can be reinforced well enough to keep it light. The existing folding wing aircraft that Banana Hobby sells are a real concern. Model planes tend to be subject to much higher (proportionally speaking) G forces than the real thing. I can just see wings folding up on a high speed, tight turn or a hoop that is pulled out of just a bit too hard. Foam RC planes with carbon rods already "fold" the wings in flight way more often than we'd like to hear. I can imagine how bad it could be in a model that comes with folding wings. Unless I wanted one for a static display, I stay away from any such planes.

[Alpha]

I'd love more scale features like a folding wing, too, Evoman, but xviper2 is right, it is very difficult to implement a cost-effective and reliable mechanism at this price point and target wing loading.

I owned that beautiful folding wing Corsair from Banana Hobby, too. It was gorgeous on the ground and attracted a big crowd.... to witness the wing fold during the maiden. Designing a robust mechanism sufficiently resistant to those forces ends up being very heavy, which for foam electric is especially problematic. Trust me, we tried ;) The way loads are distributed in most solid foam molded aircraft, the shear points just end up being moved to wherever your carbon or plastic mounts end, unless the entire wing is sheeted in a lattice of foam and hard material reinforcements, which at that point just gets heavy and expensive.

A static display folding wing would be less problematic, with a manual locking mechanism to mechanically secure the wing before flight. I'm sure someone will undertake the necessary mods on this Tigercat, eventually. If we ever make a Hellcat, I would try to implement a manual moving system like this, in part because it wouldn't just be neat for scale geeks but would also add practical value to pilots just wanting a quicker way to fold their aircraft for easier transport.

[OV10]

If we ever make a Hellcat, I would try to implement a manual moving system like this, in part because it wouldn't just be neat for scale geeks but would also add practical value to pilots just wanting a quicker way to fold their aircraft for easier transport.

Hello Alpha............maybe FL's designers can gleen some info on how the Maxford E-2C Hawkeye is done. ;)

http://www.maxfordusa.com/1e-2hawkeyearf.aspx

[Alpha]

As an expert on the Mr.RCSound System, I've asked Brandon Moon to provide a more in depth Tutorial on how to install the sound system in your Lelu's nacelles. In the meantime, here is my "quick and dirty" method to install them in the fuselage, instead. Planning time, five minutes. Execution time, ten minutes.

1) Picture 1: Unscrew the wood plate in the aft battery compartment. This reveals the flat foam floor of the fuselage. This is actually an air channel that takes air from a Naca[ish] duct in the nose, through the nose gear cavity, through this under-battery channel and throughout the fuselage to the exit hole in the rear section.

2) Picture 2: Position the TT-25 transducer onto the wood and draw an outline around the widest diameter. Take a dremel and remove the material with a narrow sanding bit, moving straight down until you're just about flush with the foam floor. Take care to avoid sanding through the curvature of the outer fuselage. It will be just a few mm thick at the lowest point. Clean the area with an alcohol wipe and dry it, then epoxy the transducer onto the flat foam floor. Ensure the sides of the transducer are not touching anything, otherwise the sound quality will be greatly diminished.

3) Picture 3: For extra airflow, I cut out a corresponding hole in the wood plate itself, the screwed it back on. The large Mr.RCSound Aspire control board itself is tucked into a large cavity directly on the CG. This cavity was designed specifically with this in mind. The receiver is tucked into a cavity at the rear of the entire hatch, in fact under the canopy latch, far from everything.

4) Not Shown: I may fly my Lelu with just one TT-25 speaker for now. It's plenty loud for me. If I decide to install a bass transducer, I will do so either in the rearmost cavity, or cut a hatch to access the flat surfaces along the inner fuselage wall aft of the wing's trailing edge.


Easy!

[Brandon Moon]

Looks good Alpha....very nice clean simple install

[xplaneguy]

A little Thanksgiving treat to finish off the day. Enjoy!

[Brandon Moon]

Now that is just a classic photo....I had to save that one ;) to just admire myself

[Alpha]

That's a great photo, Tony!!

[xplaneguy]

Thanks guys! More group shots planned this weekend.

[Bajora]

My Maxford Storch had manually operated folding wings. It was no doubt kind of cool but I am personally quite ok with the Tigercat just as it is. :)

[Fast Eddie]

After watching the flight videos so far, this is a must have. For me, The dark blue color (top and bottom) might cause orientation issues under certain conditions. So invasion stripes on bottom only might help. Hope that doesn't offend the scale police, but losing orientation is not fun. Now waiting to see Ryan's flight review.