1/16 F4U-4 Corsair WIP

Oops, I meant to put that it was a 450. As this is my first R/C build it may get fairly heavy, and I would rather have an overpowered moter than one that is underpowered.

A Park 380 is a whole lot of motor for that Corsair.  Most size a motor by watts per pound of model.  Lemon makes small and light receivers for Spektrum transmitters, quite inexpensive and very reliable.  You will need an ESC for the motor, of course.  The bigger the motor, the bigger the battery and that is where the weight can get out of control on a small model.  80 to 120 watts per pound is a good starting point for the Corsair, and it should weigh a little over a pound all up.  In my opinion.  My electric experience is with Old timers and indoor stuff, but I've done electric EDF stuff too.

I haven't had much time to work on this build lately, but I did get the fusalage built up:

I have ordered a Park 380 moter and it should arive in about two weeks. Does anyone have a recomendation for a radio?

Hi Dutch,

I too am in the middle of a Guillows build of a Thomas Morse Scout.  Its going to be old school .020 gas and control line. 

Your kit is a pretty good one, except Guillows balsa is not the best and will need to be replaced in some areas with a better grade to take the stress of the RC conversion. 

Google your kit name with "RC Conversion".  There are some really good tutorials on the internet on how poeple have made this Corsair kit work for electric RC.  There are a lot of motor and ESC choices to make, so many, it makes my head spin.

The plane will be very light, so I doubt you will need to make the flaps.  I've build several Corsairs for RC and those flaps are a bugger to make.

The amount of channels you may need is 6.  Aileron, Elevator, Rudder, Speed/Throttle, Retracts, and then a sixth if you plan to have a release for a bomb or rockets.   

I look forward to seeing you project.

Scott

I will be building it electric, but will also set it up to be converted to gas. Also making the rockets work sound interesting. I will be putting bombs on, but I will consider adding rockets as well.

I'll be watching!  I haven't done RC in a bit, and when I did it was mostly ARF stuff.  I did the stick and paper stuff as a kid and have a keen interest in scale RC - not sure what they call it, but they build really detailed scale flying models.  Always thought it would be a nice bridge between scale modeling and RC.

I'd guess you're going electric? 

And... to be really cool, could you use pneumatic retract tech to fire the rockets? 

Now that’s really cool.

Your friend, Toshi

I am not sure how many channels I will use, but with retracting gear, bomb dropping, and motor most likely quite a few. This is going to be a plane I add more features as time goes on and I get better at using it, so not much is set in stone for now.

That looks fun. Are you going 2 or 3 chanel?