F4u Corsair Rc Plane Ready To Fly

[Marguerite Litscher]

WhenI was presented with a chance to review the new E-flite 1.2m Corsair I quickly said yes! I have a friends who has the E-flite 1.2m T-28 and it is an excellent flying plane that looks great both on the ground and in the air. Additionally, I like the looks of the Corsair even more than the T-28. I went to the Horizon Hobby Website and looked at the pictures and the video and read about the plane in their promotional material. I liked the looks of the main wheels, the three section flaps and the additional details built into the plane. Those details included an installed decorative pitot tube in the wing, a decorative scale antenna in the fuselage, the exhaust pipes in the cowl and the pilot and decal instruments in the cockpit. Of course E-flite's reputation for good flying planes and excellent customer support helped me make my decision to review this plane.

The Corsair 1.2m has arrived and I have completed the assembly, or actually, the final assembly as it took less than a half hour even stopping to take pictures to complete the final assembly process. It was a very quick and easy assembly as discussed below in the Assembly Section as no glue was needed. As I write this opening the plane is now ready to fly and my Spektrum DX 9 transmitter has been programmed for this Corsair. All I need to advance this review is some flying weather where the spring winds won't take an RC plane to Oz.

The rudder came fully assembled and attached to the fuselage. Even the servo control rod came attached. For the horizontal stabilizer I merely needed to install it onto the fuselage. Both the fuselage and horizontal stabilizer were molded to fit together in a very solid fashion. After sliding them together I simple had to secure the stabilizer into the fuselage with one supplied screw. (The screws for this and securing the wing are all the same size so picking the correct screw required no thought. I did need to supply a 2mm Allen wrench to screw in the screw. It took me several attempts to properly align the screw with the built in mount and start screwing in the screw. If you don't plan to ever remove the horizontal stabilizer it can also be glued in place but that is not necessary and is not in the instruction manual. The final step was attaching the clevis on the elevator control rod coming out of the fuselage to the control horn that came installed on the elevators that came attached to the horizontal stabilizer. Unfortunately, the clevis pin was deformed or partial broken. I contacted Horizon Hobby and had a replacement pin sent to me at no cost. It arrived in a couple of days and that was before the wind died down enough for a maiden flight. That was the only defect I found in my entire plane. The pin might have worked with the elastic band on it as well but not something i wanted to chance.

The one piece wing also came fully assembled and required no assembly by me. I only had to attach the three supplied Y-harnesses for the ailerons, flaps and landing gear. I slid the wires into the hole for them in the bottom of the wing saddle and then fit the wing to the fuselage. The wing was secured in place with the four supplied screws that were all the same size. Again I used my own 2mm long Allen wrench although a normal length wrench would have worked as well. With the wing firmly secured in place I flipped the plane over and plugged the aileron, flap and retract Y-harnesses into the Spektrum receiver that came installed in the fuselage. The wing was now installed.

The fuselage came with the motor and ESC installed in place as well as an installed servo for the rudder which was fully connected to the rudder and an installed servo with control rod/ clevis for the elevators. I described attaching the horizontal stabilizer above as well as attaching the wing. The only remaining part to attach was the propeller. Here I had a short delay as I found the propeller nut to be a very tight fit initially. When I tried to practice screw it onto the propeller shaft the shaft turned and I couldn't get it on with the propeller and its hub in position. Here I used a pair of needle nose pliers to hold the propeller shaft in a still position with the propeller off. I was able to install the propeller nut and after installing and removing it a couple of times I was able to screw it on with out the propeller shaft turning.

A two piece plastic propeller hub is supplied to install around the center of the supplied four blade propeller. It snapped into place and supplies the proper spacing for the propeller out from the motor to clear the cowling. With the propeller on the shaft I was able to now screw on the propeller nut without the propeller shaft turning. Final tightening of the nut was performed with a small screw driver through the two holes in the propeller nut to get the nut on nice and secure.

The Spektrum receiver came installed in the fuselage with the tail servos and ESC already connected. I had to connect the Y-harnesses as described above in connection with the wing attachment. A binding plug was supplied in the kit and I installed it in the proper slot in the receiver and bound the included receiver to my DX-9 Spektrum transmitter.

Horizon Hobby supplied me with a three-cell E-Flite 2200mAh LiPo battery to power my Corsair. I charged this battery with my own charger. I added a small piece of Velcro that I supplied to the bottom of the battery and installed it almost all the way forward in the fuselage. It was secured in place with the Velcro and the two Velcro like straps that came already installed in the fuselage. This battery powered all aspects of the plane. It also balanced the plane on the recommended Center of Gravity of 73mm behind the wing's leading edge. There is room to move the battery back if a slight large battery is used rather then the recommended 2200mAh battery. All of my flights were done with the recommended battery and the plane balanced on the recommended C/G

Many kits have some small detail parts to attach in place such as a decorative scale antenna or a scale pitot tube for determining the speed on the full size plane. This kit had those and also had scale mufflers installed under the cowl and included a pilot with a decal based instrument panel. However, in this kit these parts came already installed on the Corsair and the added details make the plane even more enjoyable to look at on the ground. Below are pictures of these parts installed as they came in the kit.

Two drop tanks were also supplied in the kit and they simply slide onto their mounts on the bottom side of the wing. I have taken pictures of these "tanks" installed and have flown with them in place. Fly with or without them as the choice is yours. I found they did add some drag and slightly slowed down axial rolls. I will fly without them most of the time as i like the plane's looks better without and she is slightly faster (IMHO) without them. Again the pilot is free to fly with or without them and she can certainly fly with them installed.

After binding the plane to my transmitter I tested the flaps and the working 90 degree rotating retracts. They worked perfectly right from the start. My flaps are on a three way switch and the top switch position has the flaps up in normal flight position. The middle position deploys half flaps which is excellent for landing. The bottom switch is the down position for takeoff. The effect of the flaps is discussed below in the flight section. The drop tanks slide on and off rails under the wings and removal is displayed in the video below. Finally, the video shows the retracts in operation.

This Corsair is a six channel plane with proportional control of the throttle, ailerons, elevator and rudder. It has 90 rotating electronic retracts and flaps with three flap panels per side and with a three position switch on the transmitter the flaps have three positions. Using my Spektrum DX-9 transmitter the flaps worked perfectly with a full up, mid position and full down position as discussed above. For landing I don't deploy the flaps until I am down to half throttle and I experienced no ballooning of the plane at that throttle setting even when fully lowering the flaps. The retracts also worked perfectly and required no adjustment by me of any setting on my transmitter.

As for the normal flight controls I found I wanted a little more rudder control due to my flying in some heavy winds that were often cross runway. I simply programmed the rudder to 130% movement rather than the standard 100%. I found I was perfectly happy flying my plane with the other controls at 100% movement and had no need for dual rates or expo. A less experienced pilot may want to program in lower rates for the ailerons and elevator. The instruction manual recommends 70% for low rate movement. An intermediate or better pilot will most likely want full rates all the time as I did.

With many of the flights in strong cross wind conditions The AS3X stabilization system built into the receiver was given a real test and it did a great job of correcting for undesired directional changes caused be the gusting winds. They were sometimes observable by me when I was watching closely as I knew what I was and wasn't doing with the transmitter sticks. The wing tip facing towards the cross wind would get pushed up or down and the AS3X corrected for it immediately so I didn't have to make those corrections. I really appreciated this feature in the gusty flight conditions.

Some dawn patrol flying was done in still air but most of the flights have been in spring winds of 10 plus miles per hour with gusts at times up to 20 mph. The plane handled the wind much better than I did when shooting my demo video posted below but some AS3X corrections might be seen and I was very unsteady with my camera. I used You Tube's steady option for my video.

I always like to make scale like takeoffs with my warbirds and this Corsair is no exception. By running the motor up in a somewhat scale like manner she not only looks quite real she gave me no problems with side or rotational turning on takeoff. I didn't try any snap takeoffs but if I did I would want to be ready with rudder to counter any possible torque roll that might be displayed. Again this was not an issue with my takeoffs nor with takeoffs by Chris that all were performed in a slowly accelerating scale like manner.

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