PZ F4F Wildcat Cheap and Fast

[TopSpin]

Soup up that PZ warbird on the cheap.
I was looking for a project plane when I saw one of the ParkZone F4F Wildcats at the field and thought it looked like it would make a cool soup up project. It was light and a belly lander so no LG to mess with and it flew well for a stock plane. I checked one out at my LHS and the price was an instant turnoff. I didn’t want a PnP or a BNF since I already have an abundance of servos, ESC’s, Motors, and all of the other stuff needed to build a plane. So I did some research on the web and low and behold found this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003TRNSD2/ref=oh_details_o06_s00_i00




Perfect. It has everything needed to build the plane but without the electrics and the price was right. Now I can put my own power setup in it and it should really haul.

So I ordered it and got it in October and it sat until after Christmas, I’m great at procrastinating. But a couple of days ago I decided to get busy on it and have some fun.
This is the motor I went with for the plane; https://www.leaderhobby.com/product....=9394001223649



It is a 500 watt, 1400 KV powerhouse, it weighs 126 grams with the prop adapter, spacers, and 18mm long mounting screws. I will initially run it on 3S and possibly go to 4S depending on performance. The ESC is an Aeolian 80 amp with a 3 amp BEC: https://www.leaderhobby.com/product....=9394001225810
I went with such a large ESC because I will probably experiment with 4S later and will be pulling around 42 amps so 50 percent overkill is always good with cheap ESC's.

The first problem I encountered was mounting the motor to the weird PZ motor mount. The screw pattern did not fit my EMP motor so I had to make a template and drill it to fit. Using a small piece of paper and a small Phillips screwdriver making a template is simple. Once that was done all I had to do was overlay the template on the plastic mount and drill it with a 3mm drill.
Great, the motor fit nicely but there was a problem, when I test fitted the cowl I discovered that the prop shaft was too far back in the housing to fit the prop. I tried some spacers on the prop shaft but it was obvious this would not leave enough thread to screw the prop hub onto the shaft.


This is the stock motor, notice that it is a quarter inch longer than standard 480 outrunners and has a one quarter inch bump out on the prop shaft to accommodate the cowl.


Turns out our friends at ParkZone use a proprietary motor that is a half inch longer out on the nose so the collet wont interfere with the cowl. The stock collet adapter and prop then fit and clear the cowl but you have to use their motor, their prop, and their collet. Very good marketing trick guys.



So I needed to make some half inch spacers. Using thick wall Aluminum tubing I used my tubing cutter to make the spacers and they came out great. Using 18mm long 3mm allen screws I mounted up the motor and test fitted the cowl again.

This time it fit just right but there was an interference problem as the bolt on prop adapter was rubbing against the cowl, the hub is much larger than the stock collet adapter. So, Dremmel tool to the rescue.


I opened up the cowl a bit and it all fits great and you can’t really tell the difference unless you actually know where to look. The other bonus is I was able to use the stock hub for a more scale look.


Also, because this plane is going to be wicked fast I didn’t want to go cheap Charlie on the receiver. So instead of going with one of those low reliability Chinese knock offs I installed a genuine Spektrum 6115e receiver. I don't want to lose this plane to a junk radio.



In setting it up I tried the stock 9X6 prop and it provided plenty of thrust with the 1400 KV motor and only pulled 29 amps. Problem is that the stock prop is terribly unbalanced because it is designed to only fit correctly on the ParkZone prop adapter. I went to a GWS 10X6 HD 3 blade prop. It looks good, is smooth as silk, and it is going to be a rocket ship. Best of all it runs on 3S although I will probably play around with a 4S battery at some point. It is pulling 36 amps from a Hyperion 2100 3S 35C battery. I don’t have any way of measuring the thrust but at half throttle it pulls like a locomotive and at full throttle it is just wicked. I’m guessing unlimited vertical at or near half throttle. Anything after that is pure fun.




So I will maiden this thing and we will see how it flys or doesn’t. If it does it should be amazing and if it crashes it won’t be the first time one of my overpowered experiments failed. But they are always fun and I will provide the video no matter what happens.
HAPPY NEW YEAR. John.



Here is a little larger picture of the spacers and the finished plane in case anyone would like to duplicate this, it is really easy and much less expensive than the available BNF. Since I already had the servos, ESC and motor my only cost was the airframe. The cost of the parts comes to about $30. 00 so that makes the total cash outlay $110.00 ( not counting the battery) for a $180.00 plane. Guess I'll have to paint the prop tips yellow...