GWS Warbird series...

[freeman]

Hi guys,

For those who had bought the GWS warbird series, you will find that your plane actually need some tuning before it can really flies well...

Had talk to the guy who is part of the design team Mr.Luo a.k.a. Master Luo in WGS office in Taiwan.

Let's talk about the Zero since it is the first warbird produced by GWS.
The initial design of zero is powered by a 150 size motor, so in order to have a S & L flight profile, the stabilizer was purposely make to pitch the aircraft up to hold the aircraft. But since everyone starting to use Brushless motor nowadays, which is much more powerful, so pitch up is not necessary, which mean that during the construction of the plane, the stabilizer have to pitch down by about 2~3 deg.
The zero, despite the design fault is a very manueverable plane, comparable to ME 109 and F-4U in the same series.


The second plane to discuss is the Spitfire. The spitfire have the problem of sudden nose up when power is applied. This sudden nose up is not the same as the usual nose up when you increase throttle. This is caused by the concave at the bottom part of the wing near the trailing edge. The problem was brought up by the design team, but the CEO Mr.Lin insist on getting the concave underwing to be scale.
The solution was to putty the concave and the problem solved.

The last plane to be mention is the F-4U Corsair. For those who had flown the plane with landing gear would notice that the plane will have the tendency to tip over. The cause of it is mainly due to the wrong positioning of the landing gear. No solution was given.

The engine mount for all the warbird series are stick mount. It is strongly advisable to mod it. The recommended method is to make a firewall out of plywood and epoxy it. The stick mount is not desirable because it will become very loose if it suffers any nose dive crashes. By installing the firewall, the problem of loose stick mount will be eliminated...

This is what was told by the designer. Guys out there might have better solution to the above problem or if you have any problem regarding the warbird, feel free to discuss them here.

Cheers

Happy Flying.



Cheers

Happy Flying.

[kennyc]

Hi guys,


The engine mount for all the warbird series are stick mount. It is strongly advisable to mod it. The recommended method is to make a firewall out of plywood and epoxy it. The stick mount is not desirable because it will become very loose if it suffers any nose dive crashes. By installing the firewall, the problem of loose stick mount will be eliminated...

This is what was told by the designer. Guys out there might have better solution to the above problem or if you have any problem regarding the warbird, feel free to discuss them here.

Cheers

Happy Flying.



Cheers

Happy Flying.

Hey Great write up,
For the stick mount... it works fine and most of the time we fly not to errr. nose into terra firma, and this stick is good because if you do, the stick will break, thereby saving your motor.
i see no reason to mount it onto the bulk head unless your stick mount hole is already meshed up.

I dont understand the undercamber thing on the Spit. you mean you would have to putty the entire TE under camber to fix the flying characteristic? that is quite a bit of job! 1. it adds unecessary weight 2. you would have to make it even on both sides.

and MR Lin saying to keep it scale.. i think it is a load of Cra* guess the more likely reason is to keep manufacturing costs down by not having to make another mold for the plane.
I mean who the hell gives a heck about scale on the GWS planes. they cost $40 and flies well, and i am sure most ppl would be happier to have better flying GWS planes then a crappy flying one that looks scale. Look at it this way, if anyone wanted scale and cannot fly, they should buy Tamiya or hasegawa, they make really scale looking planes!


The F4U tip stalls even without landing gear. So you can tell "MAster" Luo to come up with a better reason sheesh!


What about the panel lines on the P51!??? This panel lines on the plane is causing major tip stall problems. If scaled up 1:1 the panel lines would look like monsoon drains! Tell Mr Luo that it needs to be covered up.
Please ask him to cover it, cause everyone who reads the P51 build thread knows that it is mandatory to seal up those drains.. err i mean panel lines.

[kennyc]

Hi guys,

For those who had bought the GWS warbird series, you will find that your plane actually need some tuning before it can really flies well...

Had talk to the guy who is part of the design team Mr.Luo a.k.a. Master Luo in WGS office in Taiwan.

Let's talk about the Zero since it is the first warbird produced by GWS.
The initial design of zero is powered by a 150 size motor, so in order to have a S & L flight profile, the stabilizer was purposely make to pitch the aircraft up to hold the aircraft. But since everyone starting to use Brushless motor nowadays, which is much more powerful, so pitch up is not necessary, which mean that during the construction of the plane, the stabilizer have to pitch down by about 2~3 deg.
The zero, despite the design fault is a very manueverable plane, comparable to ME 109 and F-4U in the same series.

.

Sorry i have a bone to pick with the zero too
I am surprised that Master Luo said that the plane used a 150 sized motor.
With that motor and all the electornics on, its not gonna get off the ground haha...
also based on what he said about the pitch up to have straight and lvl flight..
i have to see this plane in flight... a zero doing a harrier haha! gee... GWS as usual giving excuses for not fixing flaws in the plane!??? whatever happened to scale?

I am not shooting GWS for their planes. I learned to fly on them and i believe brought RC flying to many ppl. but please if it is a flaw and you dont really want to fix it, then dont talk about it.

[kennyc]

OOps could not edit to add to my reply...

The recommended way to fix the GWS zero is to add a shim on the LE of the wing, to change the incidence. I am not sure how you are gonna make a pitch down on the horizontal Stab. on the Zero... looking at the construction of the tail plane area, it leaves little room to alter the angle

[freeman]

Hey Great write up,
For the stick mount... it works fine and most of the time we fly not to errr. nose into terra firma, and this stick is good because if you do, the stick will break, thereby saving your motor.
i see no reason to mount it onto the bulk head unless your stick mount hole is already meshed up.

I dont understand the undercamber thing on the Spit. you mean you would have to putty the entire TE under camber to fix the flying characteristic? that is quite a bit of job! 1. it adds unecessary weight 2. you would have to make it even on both sides.

and MR Lin saying to keep it scale.. i think it is a load of Cra* guess the more likely reason is to keep manufacturing costs down by not having to make another mold for the plane.
I mean who the hell gives a heck about scale on the GWS planes. they cost $40 and flies well, and i am sure most ppl would be happier to have better flying GWS planes then a crappy flying one that looks scale. Look at it this way, if anyone wanted scale and cannot fly, they should buy Tamiya or hasegawa, they make really scale looking planes!


The F4U tip stalls even without landing gear. So you can tell "MAster" Luo to come up with a better reason sheesh!


What about the panel lines on the P51!??? This panel lines on the plane is causing major tip stall problems. If scaled up 1:1 the panel lines would look like monsoon drains! Tell Mr Luo that it needs to be covered up.
Please ask him to cover it, cause everyone who reads the P51 build thread knows that it is mandatory to seal up those drains.. err i mean panel lines.

Hi,

Sorry, I mean the F4U will trip over on landing run due poor positioning of the gear, not in flight. What I mean was on landing, the nose will dip and the tail will rise. The rest I agreed with you, they simply "Bo chap"...

Cheers, Happy Flying.

[leonlio]

F4U Tipping Over

GWS uses standard plastic parts for most of their war bird series. The main landing gears plastic is more than 1cm in thickness. This means that there must be at least some thickness of foram to mount the plastic on..

The viable solution would be to shift the plasic mount further back from the Leading Edge where the wing is thicker, and giving enough foam for the plastic mount to installed effectively. This unfortunately leads to your described tip-over problem.

To get around this problem these was what I did:
1. Bend the landing gear wire forward until well in front of the CG. If viewed from the top, the wheel axles easily be seen. (The real F4U has big wheels and is also well in front of the wings, so it doesn't look that bad)

2. Build the plane light. Smaller mass, smaller turning moment, less chance of tipping-over.

3. Go slow your on your landing approach. Slow speed translate to smaller monentum. But the plane has to be build light to be able to do the slow flying without stalling.

4. Time the flare for a gentle touch down.. again building light helps a little here.

5. Land against wind.. to decrease ground speed even more for a slower landing approach.

6. Land on good landing strip. Rocky, weeds and long grass tend to snag the the wheels and cause unnatural braking force and tip-overs.


Watching out for the above, I was able to get 8/10 good landings, until I sold it to make room for other projects...

GWS foam warbird can still be quite enjoyable to fly despite the lame excuses from the company.


Just my 2-cents worth, cheers
Leon

[shoan99]

Hi,

IMHO, the gws landing gears are not worth putting on. Most of the ppl in sg will fly gws planes on grass areas which will make gws planes tip over most of the time. I recommend belly landing on grass. Furthermore the warbirds fly much better without the gears.

[JL69]

Gws

Hi guys, I'm new to this forum and i have been flying for 4 months. I have gone through 3 GWS spitfires, i would say a crash would break it up in many pieces(CG problems-total distruction B4 i can sort the CG out). i am now flying the ultrafly PC9 from jet hobby fiber tape it up and it is in-distructable. BTW i fixed up a steerable nose gear and main gear from my T-34 on it, not to mention it flys great too, you can check-out the video and pics at jethobby's web page.

stuff i got from jet hobby that is still flying great

TREX-XL(HDE)
Wing dragon - sold recently
T43-mentor - selling soon
PC9 (Ultrafly)- flying
F16 (Ultrafly) - crashed many times but finally got it to fly great (lots of fiber tap and epoxy)
PC9 (Balsa) - flying (hoping to sell)
Su31(Balsa) - flying

thinking of selling some of the stuff (wife comin back from UK-boy will she be mad)

[Vortices]

Hi guys. I think i have to put in my 2 cents worth.

I have been flying gws F4u for a year or so. Crash big time (more than 4 big pieces) about 8 times, the amount of epoxy probably out weighs the foam. However I have leart the characteristic of the plane ( i guess I have to after that many "oh Shit " situations).
Firstly, for the price and the size, it is the best available in the market. I would consider them to be more scale than sport scale. Very good platform to start detailing. With an airbrush and a pilot, it can look quite sharp.
Secondly, flying wise, they are stable enough to progress to from e-starter and manouverable enough to practice basic aerobatics. F4u is relatively slow with thick airfoil. Therefore it will never go fast regardless of what motor you put on it. However it rolls and loops and snap roll very well. One of the best quality is that it flys inverted very well!! The down side is almost impossible knifedge and wing drop due high g stall during loop pull up. it will flip in to a roll as one wing stalls, So go easy on the elevator during high speed pull up.
Dreadful tip over tendency, well the gears are set too far back, about 11/2". so you can either bent the gears sufficiently forward or forget about the gear.
I have experiment with all configurations of tires and spring struct. My best solution to date, cut the centre portion of the terrible looking plastic wheel out and throw them away. keep the outer rings. get a set of light weight sponge gws tire(more scale), cut a groove along the tire portion than epoxy the plastic ring on to the sponge tire. If properly done only the plastic ring would touch the ground. This configuration allows skidding and slipping during landing, this would greatly reduce nose over tendency.
Technic wise. long and stable app on finals shallow decent and cut power after touch down...very scale like landing. I can make 7 out 10 good landing in reasonably gusty condition thisway.

The Zero. Good plane overall nonetheless the longtitudinal dihedral (angle at which the stabiliser chord line meets the wing chord line) is wrong.Reduce it by 3 degress which means either raising the leading edge or dropping the trailing edge of the stab by 3 degrees. Shimming the leading edge of the wing is also possible but filling the gap on the Stab is easier than that on the wing. After this mod the zero flys well. as mentioned earlier it is even a slower plane than the f4u. You can put a more powerful motor on it but reqs big power increase for little increase in speed. I have upgraded my zero with retract (GWS) they work well but due to thin wing ,clearance quite critical.
Flying wise. All basic aerobatics snap roll very well. very little tip over tendency on landing. Everything in the pics are GWS except for the working oleo that I made my self, the pilot and gunzhe paint.

well there you have it . Hope it make sense. Feel free to email me if you think i am crapping away or you need furthe info.

cheers.

[Vortices]

my little pacific theater...

[gEcky]

GWS Spitfire mods?

The second plane to discuss is the Spitfire. The spitfire have the problem of sudden nose up when power is applied. This sudden nose up is not the same as the usual nose up when you increase throttle. This is caused by the concave at the bottom part of the wing near the trailing edge. The problem was brought up by the design team, but the CEO Mr.Lin insist on getting the concave underwing to be scale.
The solution was to putty the concave and the problem solved.

Hi,
anyone has pic/links to the above mentioned mod to the Spitfire?

Also, has anyone here managed to install retracts on this plane?
Here's some pics i found off RCG

[gEcky]

Here's some pics i found off RCG

oops...here are the pcis

[gEcky]

Anyone?

[Junwei]

hi

i notice the two white box like tings under the wings.. what are those.. and who can help/ accompany me to buy my 1st EP plane two weeks later.. after my term test.. finalli save up enuf and learn enuf frm here alrdy.. haha...

Junwei

[gEcky]

i notice the two white box like tings under the wings.. what are those..

The white boxes are scale details for the Spitfire - air scoops on the real plane.

and who can help/ accompany me to buy my 1st EP plane two weeks later.. after my term test.. finalli save up enuf and learn enuf frm here alrdy.. haha...

Junwei

You may like to post ur request in a new thread to get the right attention