Alex48

Hi Jack

Thanks................I did initially put the airframe together and added the equipment to get a rough idea where things needed to be. My equipment layout is different to yours too, my UAT will be much closer to the CG as will the pump and a few other things. Ive glued three of the box's in as close to F1 as possible but left the 2500 NiMh out for fine tuning. Ali does like his models with a forward CG hopefully it will work out, if not you're very welcome to say "I told you so"

Cheers, Alex

Jack Diaz

My Feedback: (1)

Alex, I just saw on the pictures that you posted on the first page, that your plane has operational speed brake.
Mine came with the speed brake permanently glued to the fuselage, and of course, no opening mechanism.
So, yours have more weight in the back.

BTW, installing the rudder servo and linkage without the speed brake opening was almost impossible. I was considering to cut it out and reinstall.

When I asked Skymaster about my plane not having the operational speed brake, they told me that the full size Long Nose do not use speed brake.

Jack

Alex48

Hi Jack, The hawk T2 definitely use's the speed brake, I'll double check with the guy that did the acceptance trials for the RAF but 99.9% sure they do use it.

Don't envy you installing that rudder without the speedbrake opening [X(]

Here's a photo of a T2 on the ground with hydraulics not pressurized the speed brake is drooping slightly............

Alex

David Gladwin

Surely that cant be right, sure they wont use it for landing if they don't want the graunching noise, but to nail it permanently closed seems a bit odd ! ! A jet without a speedbrake must make life interesting and difficult ! The ONLY jet I know of without a speedbrake function is is Concorde and at least it could reverse the inners when subsonic !

For what its worth, I have been using the speedbrake on my Air World Hawks. It is both effective and produces little or no pitch change. Seems a worthwhile addition and makes rear fuselage access MUCH easier.

Regards, David Gladwin.

Alex48

The gear is going to be painted with matching gear doors. Never a job a look forward to on these builds.......... The gear is normally very greasy and because these are oil damped oily too. I degrease the oleo's about 5 times with an automotive engine degreaser. Masked them up and sprayed them with an acid etch primer. I left them for a good 48 hours to cure. I then scraped my nail along the oleo's and wheel's to see if the primer had adhered properly, it had thankfully. Next I sprayed them with a hard wearing enamel a sort of light dove grey. One thing to note is the valves for the oil are not all that strong I managed to shear one in half when tightening it up [] I didn't put much torque on it either, just something to watch if any of you do the same..............an embarrassing email later and one should be on it's way to me.

Be good if SM had painted gear as an option.

Cheers, Alex

Ali

My Feedback: (5)

Looks a million times better already..
I am nearly there with getting painted gear as an option. First battle was to get a small amount of the matching paints included with each kit. I have told the factory that I will pay extra for each one of the kits I sell to include a small plastic bottle so that the owner can either touch up or go to a paint store and get a god match. ( This cost will not be passed onto my customer as I beleive this is quite a important and useful option for each kit to have )
I have been told that this will go into place after the new year holidays ( Fingers crossed )
Then comes the painted gear option! [>:]

pilot tw

Hi, Ali

yes, we will offer the options for the painted landing gear after Chinese new year. our factory was holiday from yesterday, i hope you already got the Viper jet 2M & the Trainer kit already..

Best regards

Anton

Ali

My Feedback: (5)

Nice one Anton! Thanks
The 2M Viper Yellow is here and was taken to the builders yesterday. We are going to have to work hard to get it ready and tested in time for Florida jets I am away in India next week and then Kuwait right after. I am not sure if there will be enough time to get it flight tested and ready in time to ship it.
No sign on the Mach 1 yet..

SAP_2000

Anton: I would like the painted gear for my Hawk. What price are we talking about??

Alex48

I've had my fill of masking for the next few months................All the internals have been sprayed grey. Gear doors and the speed brake have been sprayed the same dove grey as the gear. The photos don't really show the state these were in. All the gear doors needed painting because the way it came from the factory just wasn't up to standard. Its just a matter of fitting the fuz out now. Haven't made much progress on the wings as I'm waiting for flap hinges.

Ive included a photo of the cockpit with the frame sprayed up, such a little detail makes a huge difference to the finished model, well worth doing...............

Not the most exiting photo's but none the less.............

Cheers, Alex

Alex48

This is going to have a full complement of lights. I'm hoping this will be something special. I've sourced some very powerful devices for this. Included will be the large landing light in the nose which will be made with a cluster of three high power white lights over 100000 MCD's worth. One retractable landing light in the nose wheel well, two strobes with a proper flash, flash , pause sequence and an alternating Anti collision light (not strictly scale but should look good). The Nav lights are very high power and also true colour lights unlike the low power mass produced LED's you see in your LMS. The only lights that are LED's are the strobes, Although I have someone purpose building the circuitry for these new high power lights to be used as strobes. It's all experimental atm so not sure what they will look like in the real world but they will at least be as good as anything else on the market.

All the lenses had to be made from scratch, I used the plunge molding technique, the pictures should explain things.

For the large landing light I've made a litho plate housing that slots into the nose. You can also see the start of the little retractable light I'm making. The pictures you see with the little landing light illuminated are taken in full sun with the camera flash on. If you look directly at these lights you get a nice white blob follow you around for hours, as I found out..........

Cheers, Alex

jetpilot

My Feedback: (48)

nice work
scott

jetnuno

I GOT MINE TODAY

Superb manufacturing, amazing gear, but I found the front nose a bit weak. I am planning to reinforce it a bit. Mine is the T1.

Just thinking about a paint scheme. The 2010 looks nice. Any more ideas....

Alex48, nice work over there. I am planning to do the same, but using a vacuum table. What thickness of plastic are you using?

Regards

Nuno

Alex48

Hello

The plastic is about 2mm in thickness. Just like vac forming the temperature of the plastic is the most critical thing.

I've had a few emails regarding the lights I'm using. I may make a full lighting package for this model as I've had a few requests. For those that have enquired I'll get back to you on pricing. I just want to make sure everything is good with this one and the lights are actually better than anything else on the market. The first few flights should show what they're like.

Cheers, Alex

Alex48

The fuz is nearly complete now. The things of note that I've changed from stock are as follows........

For rigging the wings Ive used BVM easyairs. Four on each side for the UP, DOWN, BRAKE and DROP TANKS. I've changed the method of wing retention from the standard M4 bolt accessed through the fuz to a wing nut accessed through the wing. There's loads of space in the wing so this should make life easier. For the servo connections I've used a power box MPX lead with the smelted ends, this is an excellent plug and a better option than ashlocks. The servos have been soldered on. I cut a hole in the fuz for the MPX head to sit in. The hole is slightly smaller meaning it's a tight push fit. All you need to do is slide the wing on do the wing nut up an connect the MPX plug, job done...........

Alex48

All the wiring and pneumatics in the back end have been protected with heat resistant sleeve and held down with aluminum clips. I think I suffer from OCD with these installations, I just have to make it all neat or I go a bit cranky. I drilled a few holes and ran all the wires and tubing through them careful to keep the strobe wiring away from everything else.

Alex48

All the lighting has been installed, unfortunately we couldn't make a strobe unit to accept the high power lights as we kept burning out the chips we tried, so these lights are the conventional LED's on the strobe system consisting of 2 whites and one alternating red. The top strobe light is mounted on the turbine hatch. I crimped four contacts onto the respective parts allowing the operator to slide the hatch on without worrying about lighting connections.

The Nav lights are true colour Ultra lights and should be very good, far better than LED's. The small retractable landing light that's fixed to the gear door is also an Ultra light. The main landing light consists of a cluster of three very powerful lighting devices, these must not be looked at directly within 10 feet or risk damaging your eyesight, they're extremely powerful! I'm looking forward to seeing them on in the air. The Navigation and strobe lights will be on a switch housed inside the forward fuz. Both landing lights will be on a rc switch selectable from the transmitter. All the light lenses will be installed at the end of the build. The picture with the lights on was taken with the daylight bulbs in the workroom up at 200W so it was pretty bright in there.

Alex48

The main equipment trays have been replaced for my own design. I've done the installation in two layers. Under the main tray we have three air bottles the forward two for the brakes, tank release and air brake with the larger one behind for the gear. This is tee'd into a much larger tank housed under the intake ducting. At the back Ive installed all the sequencers and ECU, all the lighting wiring, air tubing and servos enter under the sequencer tray. The top tray houses the powerbox, rx and switch's etc... I had to lower the rx and PB to clear the cockpits. The fuel system components are mounted on a removable plate which gives easy access to the ECU and sequencers. Just four screws hold the plate down allowing good access to components underneath. I wanted to house all the switch's and filling stations under the cockpit as you have to remove this to get the turbine hatch off anyway.

I could have just mounted everything on the top tray but I think this would have looked cluttered and lacked symmetry. I think the extra effort was worth it...................

These are the pictures of it all during the installation, I'll take some completed photos of the trays later.

Alex48

forgot the picture of the light on the top hatch....

SAP_2000

Are there any room for smoke tank(s) anywhere near the CG in the Hawk?

Jack Diaz

My Feedback: (1)

Staale:
Yes. Plenty of room.

Jack

SAP_2000

Thanks.
Any other availiable places behind the main tank, over or under the intakes? Would prefer a lower installation of the smoke tank to get it more out of the way.

Jack Diaz

My Feedback: (1)

Plenty of space under the bypass too.

I put 3 large air tanks for the retracts in there. After realizing how little pressure is needed to operate, it is definitely an overkill.

Jack

Alex48

Hi guys

As Jack said loads of room for a smoke tank, not fond of the stuff myself.....

I'll take some photos of where you could fit one. Abroad testing with a customer atm so will do it when I get back

pilot tw

Hi all,

Here is the pictures showing the difference between the 2 pipes. If your pipe is 0.6mm please e-mail us and we will replace free of charge. We will take some pipes to Florida Jets to echange for USA customers. So if you are not attending or know of somebody that will, please collect the pipe from us in the Florida Jets.

For UK and rest of world we will send via EMS.

This problem only for Viper large and Hawk Large. So please check and send us e-mail before flight.

Best Regards

Anton