Hangar 9 P40 Warhawk

A little preamble to set the scene.  I had written an article for a newsletter article expounding the benefits of building from a kit or plan in an attempt to urge the junior members of my Association to get away from their ARTF lifestyle.  Not that I am against ARTF models, I had had a couple myself, Super Air and Speed Air 40, I was wanting the junior members to develop their latent hand skills into producing and experiencing the feeling of great satisfaction in building and flying an aircraft that you have cut wood for, cut yourself for (!) and spent hours lovingly assembling and finishing your creation.  My article did not fall totally on stony ground as one of my junior members rose to the challenge.  He built under my guidance a foam-winged Gnott slope-soarer.  I can hear those purists saying “but it was a foam wing”, at least it got him building.  When he finished it, and he made a superb job, we took it to a slope event and his face was a picture when he launched it for the first time and it flew.  He admitted the satisfaction was overwhelming; and then, after landing the Gnott, launched his ARTF soarer. 

Now I had had a Top Flite Spitfire on the building board for about 16 months and it was making slow progress, mainly due to work commitments and long hours.  In fact I started it in September 2006 and I have just glassed the fuselage and I am painting the wing!  In the meantime my junior members had bought a number of Hangar 9 aircraft, Corsair, P47 Thunderbolt and a Hellcat and they were having great fun doing formation flying with them, all powered by ASP 91s, the fly-bys sounded and looked fantastic. Of course they started ribbing me about my Spitfire build time and how much fun it is to put an ARTF scale model together and fly it within a week. I had a play on the sticks with all of them and was impressed at their viceless handling.  That was it, I had to have one.  To cut a long story short I went for the Warhawk as it is not a common model and has, to me, pleasing lines with a blend of antiquity and speed.  My local model shop did not stock the kit so a thumb through RCM&E found a shop that did.  One phone call and a deal with my ‘flexible friend’ later had one ordered.  Another phone call to Just Engines to order an ASP 91 and I just had to wait.  Time to construct a story for Hazell (my wife) as she could not fail to notice a large box being delivered to the house.   Bought in April 2007, I think it was a blend of late Christmas present and early birthday present!

Two days later I was the proud owner of a P40 Warhawk and an ASP 91…..Wow!

The garage was cleared; let building commence.  On opening the box you are confronted with a well-packed set of parts and a plain English (American) construction booklet.  I have been modelling for some 40 years now but, a sit down with a coffee and a read of the instruction book whilst ticking off the kit parts is always a good idea.  Past experience of diving in and assembling the wings of a model for example only to find that a major stress widget has been left out which leads to much sawing, swearing and rebuilding! 

Gather all required tools as listed and lock yourself away in the garage.  If you have built ARTFs before you will have no trouble, this one is a doddle.  The instructions are clear with excellent pictures.  I would recommend considering a number of modifications.  The undercarriage nacelles would benefit from a lining, on the inside, of epoxied glass cloth to make them more rigid as the ABS plastic is a little flimsy.  The fibreglass belly pan should be cut off square at the trailing edge of the wing and back end fixed to the fuselage.  I have found, because it sticks out proud of the wing trailing edge, it gets caught on all manner of things resulting in cracking etc.  The battery/RX tray should be screwed to the support rails as it is very fiddly securing the battery and RX in position with rubber bands.  You can also, if you wish, change all clevises and rods for proprietary UK ones, I did!  I also elected to install a separate retract servo battery so that in the event of a stalled/jammed retract servo it would not drain the main RX battery.  Most important; the instruction book shows the canopy being glued on without a pilot, a heinous crime!  Never have an aircraft, especially a warbird, without a cockpit occupant.  Furthermore it must be a scale-pilot not a teddy bear, buxom wench or ugly gargoyle.  I used my pilot out of late lamented ‘Miss Marilyn’; see the archives of  this e-zine for details of that model.

I decided to use my brand-new Spektrum 2.4 Ghz radio that I had bought in the USA (at much reduced cost) and had converted to British specification by Horizon UK for free! 

The whole assembly took a total of 24 hours working at a moderate pace over 3 days.  The engine was run-in in the aircraft and we were ready to fly, now it was up to the weather. 

Ian Nelson