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Building
blog of Aerosmith hobby f-14
Information The
F-14 Tomcat is a supersonic, twin-engine, variable sweep wing,
two-place fighter designed to attack and destroy enemy aircraft at
night and in all weather conditions. The F-14 can track up to 24
targets simultaneously with its advanced weapons control system and
attack six with Phoenix AIM-54A missiles while continuing to scan
the airspace. It can also deliver free-fall or guided bombs. History
The
F-14 prototype made it first flight on December 21, 1970.The first
of 478 F-14A aircraft entered US Navy service in October 1972 and
saw it's first operational flight in September 1974. F-14A aircraft
were upgraded to the A+. The upgrade consisted of the replacement of
the original Pratt & Whitney TF30-P-414A engines by the more
powerful General Electric F110-GE-400 turbofans. The F-14A+ (later
designated F-14B) entered service in 1987. A total of 79 F-14A models were exported to Iran. The US Navy and the Imperial Iranian Air Force are the only two operators of the type in the world The
kit
The
F-14 ARF consist of the main fuselage, 2 engine pods, 2 wings, 2
fin, the stabilizers and some plastic and metal parts to complete
the plane. The
construction is very straight forward and required minimum building
skill. The
instruction booklet is very clear and comes with color pictures to
further explain the construction sequence.
The
basic kit do not comes with the power plant, but the Value Pack
comes with 2 70mm Ducted Fan and 2 EPF 3900kv motors.
The Mega Pack will come with the above mentioned plus 2
Dualsky 40Aamp ESC and 2 Dualsky 11.1V 2200mah 25C batteries.
Effectively all you need is to drop your receiver into the
plane after you have completed your construction. The
power-plant for this kit is twin 70 mm EPF ducted fans EPF 3900kv
motor. Both the 70mm DF
and the motor are specially designed for the F-14.
Altogether there are 2 sets of batteries used, EMAX 11.1V
2200mah 15C and Dualsky 11.1V 2200mah 25C.
For more economical user, I would recommend the EMAX as they
cost less and still able to perform to the mark. In
fact, the EMAX was discharging up to 24Amp, (52amp) in a separate
test carried out in 25deg C environment.
So I would say the rating stated in the package is very
conservative. The
setup will draw up to 33 amp on static mount.
The rating for the EMAX is 33amp and Dualsky 55amp.
continuous discharge. The
Construction The
construction starts with sanding all the parts to remove mold
release marks and ejection pin marks. Next,
the construction goes to preparing all the small items, i.e. the
pushrods, stabilizer hinges and the canopy spring loaded latch.
The
Wings After
preparing the parts, we move on to the wings.
The ailerons were cut out from the wings and the plastic
hinges were installed. Relatively straight forward, but things to
take note, use a shape blade to cut the ailerons out and shape the
bevel on the ailerons after cutting it out from the wing.
The aileron servo was also installed into the servo well.
A servo foam tape was used to secure the servos and a strip
of fibre tape was used to cover the servo.
After this stage, the wing can be considered done. .
The
Stabilizer The
stabilizer is made of 2 components, the stab hinge which we have
competed in the first stage of the construction and the stabilizer
itself. The groove is
pre-cut so the work was just to coat the stabilizer hinge with epoxy
(recommended) and pressed it into the groove.
Things to take note here is there is a notch on the hinge
which have to align with the groove. After placing the hinge rod into the groove, a thin layer of
epoxy is lay into the groove for more strength. Finally, it was covered with some filling putty and sand to
level…The picture shows the end result, with and without filler.
The one on the left without filler
The
Fuselage The
fuselage consists of the main body, battery hatch (canopy), two
engine pods and wing mounting.
The
battery hatch is secured by pin and spring latch.
The latch was pre-built in the earlier stage of the
construction. The latch is epoxied to the rear of the canopy coaming.
The pin is first epoxied to the canopy and the mounting plate
is secured with a tape of the pin to make a impression on the
fuselage. After making
the impression, the mounting plate will then epoxied to the fuselage
and the 2 holes will be drilled out. The
wing mounting is very straight forward.
The wings and fuselage joint are seamless.
The wing is strengthened with the insertion of the fibre-glass
strip. The groove the
gut according to the instruction sheet, the groove will extend to
the root of the wing. The
knife is set to cut 4mm deep.
After
cutting the groove, the carbon strip is placed in the groove with
epoxy. After the epoxy
had set, the groove is fill up by filler and sand to smooth when
cured.
Next,
we have to cut a opening at the rot of the wings to allow the servo
lead of the wing servo to be able to route to the receiver in the
battery compartment. This
is done using a heated metal ruler. As a safety precaution, an improvised handle was made using a
towel for handling the heated metal ruler. First,
mark the slot to be cut, it should be at the forward edge of the
Landing retract mechanism well.
After
it was marked, the heated ruler is sliced into the marked slot
slowly. When pushing
into the slot, the foam should melt as the ruler move in.
If not, it is either the speed is too fast or the metal ruler
is not hot enough.
The
ducted fan was installed in the molded step on the ducting.
A small slot had to be cut out to accommodate the wiring from
the motor. The two
ducted fan were both secured and make sure it is not loose.
If not, it will cause vibration during engine run.
All the wires will be routed into the battery compartment.
A
second slot had to be cut at the centre part of the fuselage to
allow the wires to be routed into the battery compartment.
Lastly,
the elevator servos were installed and wired through the ducting to
the battery. The lead
had to be laid before closing the engine pod.
With the closing of the engine pod, you had generally
finished the construction of the F-14.
These
are the pictures of the finished F-14.
The C of G of this F-14 is 1cm aft of the wing root.
The elevator throw is about ¾ inch both ways; the aileron
throw is about ½ inch both ways.
The F-14 can be hand launch or ROG. For ROG, it is
recommended to use the EPF-Aerosmith servoless retracts as the
housing for it are already being molded into the fuselage. I
decided to paint my F-14 in VF-103 Jolly Roger ‘Last Flight’
scheme. The completed
F-14 is painted with Sanyo Gunze Paint and Tamiya model paint.
The top side of the plane is painted with Dark Ghost Grey and
the rest of the plane is painted with light ghost grey.
The decal is custom made with reference from internet and
decal from a 1/48 scale static model.
The
Flight Characteristic The
plane flies very well without any bad characteristic.
It glides well and minimum trimming needed for the first
flight if the CoG is correct. Landing
speed is very low without flaps and is able to flare and land
without power. The F-14
is able to make basic aerobatics like loop, roll, split-S, Cuban-8,
barrel roll and the famous Russian ‘Cobra’ maneuver. Final
verdict…It is very forgiving plane with very good aerobatic
performance. I would
recommend the F-14 for flyers that are moving from propeller to EDF.
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