[Trumpetman]

I've just started working on a "Peashooter" from the Dan Santich plans out of MAN from around 1985. It is in quarter scale with a 84 inch wingspan. The plans are pretty close to scale outline but I will be making a few modifications to make it suitable for scale competition. Boeing started development in 1931 and the first flight was in March of 1932. It was the first all metal. low wing fighter produced in the US and it was also the last open-cockpit fighter with fixed gear produced for the ASAAC. There a ton of interesting colour schemes and I haven't decided yet what I will do.

I bought the kit from a fellow RCC member about a year ago complete with a full wood laser cut kit, plans, fiberglass cowl, pants and spats. Ricardo threw in a few extras as well including a documentation package including a stack of pictures from a walkaround of the plane in Chino, California. I have a BNIB Zenoah G-62 (magneto) which should help provide some much needed nose weight as well as giving me rock solid reliable operation. It is not a powerhouse compared to today's lightweight gassers but for this type of plane, the simplicity can't be beat.

The plans were developed in the very early days of giant scale RC planes and the design philosophy was that these planes needed to be STRONG. Lots of plywood and spruce! I hope to reduce weight as I go by making some changes to the design based on my experience with today's building techniques. This is the first time that I am building on a jig with the formers fastened to plywood uprights. The plane is built around a solid plywood crutch that runs from the firewall all the way to the tail former. After the top half is sheeted much of the crutch gets cut out along with the solid interior of the last three formers. There are no building instructions so I'm going from the plans and making up the rest as I go! I decided to build a jig because it would be very easy to build a banana shaped fuselage if you were to rely only on the crutch to keep things in line.

Here is a video of one of the very few still flying:

You Tube

You Tube

[Trumpetman]

The plywood crutch sides are 1/8" birch ply (3" wide) and they run from the fire wall through to the last former. From the firewall back through the #3 former, the crutch is a sandwich structure of 1/2" balsa with an inner layer of 1/16" birch plywood! Each crutch is also capped (top and bottom) with 1/2" by 3/16" spruce. During the building phase the crutch was designed to hold everything in alignment. The crutch is cut off and removed (along with the centre of formers 4 through 7) after the top half of the structure has been plank sheeted. The plans call for the fuselage to be plank sheeted with 3/16" thick balsa. I have milled the supplied material down to 3/32". This one change has saved 289 grams (most of which is behind the CG). The other changed made so far include milling the wing sheeting down to 3/32", replacing most of the spruce stringers with balsa and drilling holes into the top main spruce longeron from the CG location all the way to the tail. Using a postal scale I have documented a total weight saving of 656 grams just in the fuselage.

You won't believe the ribs but I'll leave that discussion for when I get to building the wing

[CF105]

Awesome! The P-26 is one of those planes that is loaded with character. And lots of colourful schemes to choose from.

[Scrappy]

Ahh...building season!!!

I'll be watching this for sure!

[Max]

Originally Posted by Scrappy

Ahh...building season!!!

I'll be watching this for sure!

Nothing like the smell of balsa dust in the workshop!!

[Trumpetman]

The fire wall is made up of three pieces of 1/4" plywood laminated together. The plans show the motor mounted to the face of this lamination but the length of the G-62 meant that I had to cut that part of the fire wall out and add an additional firewall behind for the motor to mount onto. I made a small plywood pattern of the shape called for in the plans and then using a wood rasp and lots of elbow grease, the edges of the three laminations were shaped to match the plans. I also added a little sloped area behind the cylinder head in order to give the air passing through the cooling fins a place to escape.

I`m going to order a Bennett muffler so I`ll have to remove a bit of the first two laminations in order to make some room, but that will be modified when the muffler arrives.

[Trumpetman]

This next part is a bit tedious but there really is no other way to sheet a fuselage that is basically one continuous compound curve! I used a Master Airscrew stripper to cut 1/2" wide planks from the balsa sheeting that I milled down to 3/32" thick. Using CA and kicker they go on pretty quick. What you see here is about 3 hours work. Once I get the planks all the way to the 1/2" wide side longeron I can pull it off of the jig, install some interior components and then get at sheeting the rest of the fuselage.

[Phil202]

That is an awesome project!!
I'm following this one with great interest!
It's always fun to see something out of the "ordinary" being built!

[Riptide44]

Gordon you are a real craftsman..nice subject model..very seldom modeled, I am following this one with envy.with an 84inch span and a 62 up front,(you know how I like the 62,s), this thing is going to go like greased lightning,,hope to see it at your scale meet this summer!!!!!

[Trumpetman]

Thanks Ron! I'll probably end up flying it at half throttle most of the time LOL

I've spent one evening so far modifying the wing ribs. The plans have the ailerons grossly oversize so I had to add extensions to the tail end of the ribs (where they connect to the rear spar). I've also modified the plan to get a scale flat centre section wing and plug in outer wing panels. It will take one more evening to open up all sorts of lightening holes. The kit was laser cut as per the plans and most of the ribs are 1/8" birch plywood (the rest are 1/4" birch plywood).
The plans do not show the flaps so modifications have to be made to the ribs for those as well.

I'll post pictures after I've got the ribs completely modified.