The Luftwaffe look is easily achieved with the simple spray-on acrylic paint Dick used. Insignia (above left) is made from a simple computer printer while
rounded shape on the tips of the wing cores, cut out a section of the leading edge at the tip, glue in a piece of scrap foam, cut to the outline shape, and sand to shape. Vinyl spackling putty works well to fill in gouges and rough spots. The two wing panels butt
up against the engine nacelle sides, with a 1⁄8-inch plywood joiner going through a slot in the nacelle into the wing cores, between the upper and lower spars. Easy and strong. The pilot’s fuselage is sheet foam with ply- wood doublers, is slid on over the foam wing and epoxied in place.
Any low temperature iron-on film will work on the foam cores, adding a little strength and a better, easy to paint surface. I like the SLC material sold by The Core House—it’s light and accepts about any kind of paint.
Hinging all the control surfaces is done with 2-inch wide clear plastic packaging tape in the usual foamy model manner. The leading edges of the ailerons, elevator, and rudder are cut and sanded at an angle, and the tape applied to the upper surfaces first. Then, with the control surfaces folded up-
panel lines are reproduced with a Sharpie. Dick is all smiles (above right) with the recently completed Blohm & Voss P.179.
ward, the tape is applied to the bottom, pushing it into the hinge gap and sealing it to both edges. This provides free movement and a strong, completely sealed hinge gap. The servos are mounted by cutting holes in the foam so the servo is a push fit, and it is secured in place with a few dabs from a hot glue gun. Slots are cut into the control sur- faces and the 1⁄16-inch plywood control horns are epoxied in place. I use .047-inch wire for all the pushrods, with a Z-bend on one end and DuBro’s
www.dubro.com Mini E/Z link on the other end. Hot glue short pieces of plastic tubing to the nacelle sides to keep the pushrods from flexing. The ESC, receiver, and Li-Po battery are mounted to the fuse- lage with hook and loop fastener. For the battery, I cut slots through the fuselage and use a hook and loop strap for security. Because of the asymmetric layout, the model must be balanced spanwise at the cen- ter line of the wing. I found that the weight of the battery pack on the fuselage counter- balanced the weight of the engine nacelle. For exact spanwise balance, small weights could be added to either wingtip as needed.
I paint my foam warbirds with water based acrylic craft paint, available in lots of colors and it’s low cost. I use a low cost, sim- ple airbrush to spray the paint and with a fairly large nozzle on the airbrush, thinning the paint with plain water is easy and I have very few clogging problems. A Sharpie marker pen is used to draw panel lines on the airframe, and the detailing really helps the scale appearance. Military insignia is available through hobby outlets in stick-on vinyl for real scale looks.
The powerplant is a brushless outrunner motor, about 120 to 150 watts for lively per- formance. For this, I like the BP Hobbies
www.bphobbies.com 2212-13 motor, their 18-amp ESC, a 9–5 prop, and a 3-cell 1800 or 2000 mAh Li-Po battery pack. The plane is easily hand launched with an underhand toss at full throttle, and it will jump straight out of your hand into the sky. Okay, this isn’t an accurate super detailed scale project, it could be called “cartoon scale”, but hey it will provide a lot of flying fun for not too much effort and cost. This stuff is fun!
Fellow pilots at the field may have to perform a double take when they see it fly by, but the P.179 flies exceptionally well, despite its odd geometry. FLYING MODELS 35
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