Building a 50 year old Comet P-40 Kit

Ken Cook wrote:              I built the Curtis Jenny from this series and it was a good flying plane.

what did you power it with ? Was it control line ?

"I Built This Kit 50 Years ago, I made it Rubber Power and ended up setting it on fire and launching i"

Me too as a teenager, only some 70 years ago.  But Guillows P-47's.  Just as much fun despite the small field fire we sat.  

Looking forward to reading about your build.

Bob

Mine was rubber powered. I built mine about 45 years ago, I didn't know enough about rubber powered models like I know now. It worked , it was severely under powered but it did work. I bet I could've added additional strands of rubber. I think what I liked the most was the size. I recall when I first built it, I was almost afraid of it, my dad said it's just like the small ones.

Good start Joe , am sure it will turn out beautiful ! Are you converting it to R/C or was it can go either way kit ? Can't tell from the pic has a little glare to it .

getback wrote:Good start Joe , am sure it will turn out beautiful ! Are you converting it to R/C or was it can go either way kit ? Can't tell from the pic has a little glare to it .

thanks Eric, Yes , it is going to bee Electric RC maybe with 90 degree retracts if I can find some and if it doesn’t add to much weight

Nice plane and good workmanship, the last and latest of the Comet series of kits. Hard to believe 50 years passed. Improvements include rubber motor containment cardboard tube, protects fuselage in case rubber breaks.

Thanks for sharing, have not built those kits. Was into R/C then albeit single channel rudder only, so bypassed those.

Hey Joe! The P40 was my 1st favorite aircraft as a young modeler. I'm excited that you're building a 31" W/S kit for EPRC



Thinking about/looking at that cardboard-tube.. and wondering if you can integrate it into your motor-mount? Is its inner diameter a standard size to accept a short length of hardwood dowel? That; along with lite-ply forward bulkheads could add some rigidity to the nose of the model.

For those interested, I found that Outerzone has the plans plus parts and decal patterns for this Comet bird.

https://outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=9331 Curtiss P-40E Tiger Shark from Comet (ref:3649) 31in span

There is someone who goes by the name MikeH whom Outerzone posted his photos of an R/C build with a reed valve Cox .049 engine.

Outerzone photo.

He has this to say,

MikeH, Outerzone on Oct. 20, 2017 wrote:Here a few pictures of my completed Comet P-40 Super Star [more pics 004-006]. The model was built in 2003 as an .049 powered Radio Control model. On a hot summer's day here at 2500ft in Idaho, the .049 engine would sometimes only get the plane 10 ft off the ground (it flew fine in cool weather). In 2007 I build a new fuselage for the plane with a brushless electric motor. The plane would climb straight up with this motor. This was the last plane I build with dope and tissue, and after 10 years the wing became warped enough the plane became hard to control and crashed several times. I still have the .049 fuselage, and this plane's "next life" will be as a control line model.

My sentiments on this aircraft is that if covered with a very light covering could be powered by a .020 Pee Wee with lightweight single or two channel R/C gear. In this case the builder opted for full colored dope versus simply trimming, which can add considerable weight although giving a more realistic warplane finish, hence why it was underpowered with the reed valve engine.

Built light, an R/C .049 reed valve even with a #2 cylinder (one bypass port) would be the ultimate in 3 channel performance. The House of Balsa 32-in. Stealth Sport was designed to fly on 2 channels with only a Cox .049 Dragonfly reed valve engine.

Whilst searching CEF through G**gl* found this Smithsonian link without link to CEF (otherwise I would show it), an explanation on the P-40 shark mouth. An AVG pilot discovered a magazine photo of a shark mouth British P-40's already operational in Africa, brought the idea up to commander Claire Chennault for his squadron. Claire decided that not just the squadron, but all AVG planes be decorated as such.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/when-shark-bites-180974484/

Smithsonian Magazine photo.

roddie wrote:Hey Joe! The P40 was my 1st favorite aircraft as a young modeler. I'm excited that you're building a 31" W/S kit for EPRC  



Thinking about/looking at that cardboard-tube.. and wondering if you can integrate it into your motor-mount? Is its inner diameter a standard size to accept a short length of hardwood dowel? That; along with lite-ply forward bulkheads could add some rigidity to the nose of the model.

hey Roddie , I like the idea of of using the tube as a way to hold the engine mount , unfortunately I already cut it out to make room for the battery and speed control.by the way thanks for straightening out my photo , I couldn’t figure out to do it

GallopingGhostler wrote:For those interested, I found that Outerzone has the plans plus parts and decal patterns for this Comet bird.

https://outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=9331 Curtiss P-40E Tiger Shark from Comet (ref:3649) 31in span

There is someone who goes by the name MikeH whom Outerzone posted his photos of an R/C build with a reed valve Cox .049 engine.

Outerzone photo.

He has this to say,

MikeH, Outerzone on Oct. 20, 2017 wrote:Here a few pictures of my completed Comet P-40 Super Star [more pics 004-006]. The model was built in 2003 as an .049 powered Radio Control model. On a hot summer's day here at 2500ft in Idaho, the .049 engine would sometimes only get the plane 10 ft off the ground (it flew fine in cool weather). In 2007 I build a new fuselage for the plane with a brushless electric motor. The plane would climb straight up with this motor. This was the last plane I build with dope and tissue, and after 10 years the wing became warped enough the plane became hard to control and crashed several times. I still have the .049 fuselage, and this plane's "next life" will be as a control line model.

My sentiments on this aircraft is that if covered with a very light covering could be powered by a .020 Pee Wee with lightweight single or two channel R/C gear. In this case the builder opted for full colored dope versus simply trimming, which can add considerable weight although giving a more realistic warplane finish, hence why it was underpowered with the reed valve engine.

Built light, an R/C .049 reed valve even with a #2 cylinder (one bypass port) would be the ultimate in 3 channel performance. The House of Balsa 32-in. Stealth Sport was designed to fly on 2 channels with only a Cox .049 Dragonfly reed valve engine.

Whilst searching CEF through G**gl* found this Smithsonian link without link to CEF (otherwise I would show it), an explanation on the P-40 shark mouth. An AVG pilot discovered a magazine photo of a shark mouth British P-40's already operational in Africa, brought the idea up to commander Claire Chennault for his squadron. Claire decided that not just the squadron, but all AVG planes be decorated as such.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/when-shark-bites-180974484/

Smithsonian Magazine photo.

Thanks for the response. I wish I could find someone to make a laser cut short kit of this . The die crunch parts were horrible Some parts just had the part number and no outline at all. I cut most of the pieces out by soaking the wood and cutting out with lexan scissors

akjgardner wrote:Thanks for the response. I wish I could find someone to make a laser cut short kit of this . The die crunch parts were horrible Some parts just had the part number and no outline at all. I cut most of the pieces out by soaking the wood and cutting out with lexan scissors

You're welcome. You probably already know this so it is old hat. A technique to cutting sheets is to print full size, the parts sheet as an overlay, then temporarily glue it to the balsa using one of the paper glues, glue stick, glue on the paper then stick to the balsa. Then it becomes like one of the printed sheets. IMO, scissors may be hard to use, but an Exacto knife would work at cutting out the pieces.

It is a little more time consuming, but still gets the job done. Back some 40 years ago, there was at least one rubber aircraft kit manufacturer of some of the rarely kitted WW1 biplanes (mom and pop shop) that sold their kits with the paper pattern overlaying the balsa.

Back in the mid 1990's, AHC of NYC was clearing out their stash of old, legacy kits. I then bought about 8 Comet kits to include Ed Lidgard's 32" Sparky. It is print wood. One of these days I'll build it, relive my days as an 11 year old, when I built my first one. With the lightweight electric R/C motors, it could relive as an R/C lightweight.

Sometime back, may be in Flying Models, someone doubled the size of Sparky for R/C as a lightweight gasser with plans available then.

Starting to Sheet the fuse, 1st bay is 1/8 inch hard balsa ,then 1/16 in all the others. I used foam for the transition to the turtle deck due to weird angles and for strength. The next 2 bays will be 1/16 as well, after I install the pushrod tubes. This Kit Has a lot of Nice plastic Parts for detail.

I Hade To Make New Ribs, The ones in the kit were too flimsy since this is going to be RC

Making progress , kind of wished i would have made this for a Norvel .074

nice work my friend, congratulations!

MauricioB wrote:nice work my friend, congratulations!

Thank you sir

Its coming along really good Joe , you must have a pretty steady hand to get the panels in place so good .

getback wrote:Its coming along really good Joe , you must have a pretty steady hand to get the panels in place so good .

Only after I take a shot of apple crown Eric  

akjgardner wrote:

getback wrote:Its coming along really good Joe , you must have a pretty steady hand to get the panels in place so good .

Only after I take a shot of apple crown Eric  

Ha ha I like apples too !

Working on the battery hatch.

I'm enjoying seeing this build come together.

rsv1cox wrote:I'm enjoying seeing this build come together.

Thanks Bob, I gotta say I’ve built a pole barn and a couple of decks in the time I’ve got invested in this , but this is way more fun

What he said ... The old kits are old and need the extra patients that it takes to put hem back together , But can bee frustrating. And please remember to tell me this when I build a oldie but Goldie model Looks like a silk job would have been well easier than all the panels but would not bee original .