ESM F4U Corsair 50cc 85" Wingspan ARF
Specifications from Manufacturer
- Wing Span: 85"
- Wing Area: 9.39 sq. ft
- Wing loading: 44.5 oz/sq.ft.
- Gas Engine: 50 to 60 cc
- MSRP $699.00 (US) as of 10-2013
Specifications for this built
- Gas Engine: DLE 111cc Twin-cylinder with standard mufflers
- Elevator Servo: 1 x
- Aileron Servos: 2 x
- Rudder Servo: 1 x
- Flaps servos: 4 x
- Throttle servo: 1 x
- Air Retracts Servo: 1 x
- Air Retracts: ESM (2 for main and 1 for tail wheel)
- Main gear Doors Servos: 4 x
- Receiver:
- Power Management:
- Master On-Board Ignition switch
- Optical Radio controlled ignition cut-off switch
- Receiver/Servo Batteries: 2 x Fromeco Lion 2400mAh
- Ignition Batteries: 1 x Fromeco Lion 2400mAh
Overall finish
The exterior finish of this ARF is very good with built in panel lines, mat paint job. The interior is spacious.and the designed servo area will work for most applications. The elevator, rudder and tail wheel use string pull/pull system, You can see more details in the official (ESM)
PDF manual at this link.
Changes and modifications
For my particular ARF I perform the following changes and modifications.
Replaced
- Replaced all oem links with heavy duty Dubro ball links.
- Replaced all air lines wit Robart air lines.
- Replaced retracts air valve with Robart heavy duty valve.
- Replaced all air line plastic connectors with Robart.
- Replaced most hardware with SAE hardware from RTL Fasteners.
- Replaced the oem wooden dowels with a larger diameter hard wood dowels.
- Replaced the oem wing bolts with larger steel hex cap bolts and blind nuts.
- Replaced original main gear axles (4mm) made out of very soft material with 8mm stainless steel studs.
Modified
- The original firewall had a left thrust line so some modifications are made to fix this issue.
- Re-enforced the firewall "tube" (see manual and fig. 1 and 2) )with extra fiber-glassing. Added also in front of the origan firewall an extra layer of hardwood and everything were tide down with bolts and large "fender" washers (fig. 3). Just wanted to make sure the 111
cc engine will not "depart" from the plane!
- Created a hatch on the fuselage belly between the tail wheel and the wing.
- Re-finished 2 main gear doors because they were painted and finished on the wrong side!
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| Figure 1 |
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| Figure 2 |
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| Figure 3 |
Engine
This model is specified for a 50cc Gasoline Engine but later on when the landing gear, servos and auxiliary equipment installed to achieve the correct CG I would had to add more than 10 lb. of weight! At that point I decided to use a bigger engine for adding weight on the nose A DLE 111cc twin cylinder gas engine was purchased and installed (figures 4).
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| Figure 4 |
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Landing Gear
The ES M air retracts look very beefy; at least most of the parts (figures 5, 6 and 7) .
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| Figure 5 |
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| Figure 6 |
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| Figure 7 |
The weak links are the axles and the scissors. The original axles bent
after the 1st landing and we manage to straiten them by hand! I replaced
them with stainless steel (could not find harden steel of these
dimensions) 8mm stand-offs (figure 8). Of course I needed to drill bigger holes on the wheels.
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| Figure 8 |
Landing Gear Doors
The package included the 3 piece doors for the main gears and the hardware for the piece that attached to the wheel strut with the number. The 2 main doors had no hardware so I had to create hing points and fit the 2 servos to operate them (figures 9 and 10).
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| Figure 9 |
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| Figure 10 |
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I used an EMS Gear and Door sequencer for scale movement of opening and closing the gear doors and retracting the landing gear.
... to be continued
