There are some really great RTF models out there of great big warbirds like the B-24 Liberator. They're super impressive, very large, but also usually quite costly. So what's the alternative? Making your own of course! That's what community member Nathan Knight has done.
Nathan said that his inspiration for diving into foam board airplane design was Nic Letchner's fantastic design video series. These videos are a great introduction to using software for create aircraft plans.
Using the software Inkscape, all of the shapes were mapped out using a Mighty Mini powerpod to establish the scale. 'Inkscape makes it very easy to adjust your shapes to match any contour so it went fairly quickly. The hard part is figuring out how the foam with meet up and glue together.'
The wingspan of this model is 47", so not too small despite using the mini powerpods.
As you can see, Nathan went with under-cambered wingtips that can be found on many of our Flite Test DIY airplanes.
Working more on the fuselage, formers were used to establish the B-24's turtle deck shape.
Before going ahead an installing a bunch of electronics, Nathan decided to do a little glide testing. These were purely done in free flight, so no control. As a piece of advice, doing this is a great idea. You really get a sense of if your plane is going to fly well without investing unnecessary time and effort. As Josh Bixler has said, just carve up some foam and get it in the air ASAP!
After these successful flights, the bomber was decked out with four powerpods.
It's really beginning to look like a B-24 in this shot! Note the turtle decks in position.
Landing gear was added so scale looking takeoffs and landings would be possible. If you want to make your own landing gear, all it takes are a couple of foam wheels and some wire. You can pick up hardware like this in the FT store.
Set down on the ground, the bomber really looks the part. It's amazing what you can create with some good old foam board.
All painted up, the homemade RC B-24 is ready for action! Check out that weathering. If you want to learn how to do this, here's a tutorial.
Another B-24 was built by community member Kwhabq. Check out how scale it looks!
Here's a video of one of Nathan's maiden flights. It looks to be a great flier! We really love seeing projects like this. If you have something special that you're working on, make sure to post about it in the forms. You can also email me through my personal email (found below) so we can feature you here on flitetest.com!
Links
Nathan Knight's YouTube Channel
B-24 Flite Test Forum Thread (with plans)
Article by James Whomsley
Editor of FliteTest.com
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