Top Flite Sea Fury

This "Gold Edition" kit came on the market around 2001.  At least, that's the copyright date on the instruction manual.  A year or two later, I bought a kit.  It is modeled after an airplane ( WM483 ) that was sold to Iraq.  It would eventually find itself back in the USA, where it was restored and flown in 1993.  In 1998-99, it flew in the Reno air races, with Canadian markings and the race number 74, presumably representing the 74 Sea Furies that served in the Royal Canadian Navy.  From 2000, it wore the number 117.

The Top Flite kit was designed by Mike Cross and is about 1/7 scale, with a wingspan of 66".  It was discontinued by Top Flite sometime around 2012, as far as I know.  I bought a Saito 1.80 for it, as well as the Century Jet scale gear.  Since the Corsair was about 12 lbs, I figured this one would be 13-14 or so.  They never come out as light as specified on the box ( 10-12 lbs )!  The real Sea Fury had a power loading of 5 lbs per horsepower and I wanted the same with the model.  The Saito was rated at 2.8 hp.  Top Flite recommends a 1.20 FS, which would give scale like vertical performance for a 'light' model.  As it turned out, I needed the 1.80 for a Great Planes Giles 202 that I bought to replace a Hangar-9 Cap 232.  I'm now looking for an RCV 130 CD for the Sea Fury.  How scale is this Sea Fury?

Willis Nye drawings appeared in Jan/Feb 1963 issues of Model Airplane News.

Also, some CG data for the real airplane, from the Air Ministry Publication.

The model uses the Selig S8036 airfoil at the root and the S8037 at the tip, with +1 incidence.  The stab is at 0, while the engine has 2 deg right and 2 deg down thrust.  Here's a stupid question...

Why not use scale incidence angles and set the down thrust to 0.5 degree ?  The wing is still +1 to the stabilizer.

The model CG is 4 to 4-5/8" back from the leading edge at the center, with 4-3/8 being the recommended starting point.

Control Throws for the Real Airplane

I plan on using "scale" control throws, so aileron high rate is revised to 5/8" up, 3/4" down ( this is probably the only airplane I've seen that has more down travel than up! ).  Elevator would be 7/8" up and 7/16" down, rudder is 1-7/8" left and right.  I would set aileron low rates to 60% to give a realistic rate of roll, given the 'faster than scale' airspeed.  Likewise, the turning/looping circle is going to be much smaller than scale, so the elevator low rate will be set to 35-40%.  The real airplane only had ground adjustable aileron trim tabs.  There were four flap positions, UP, TAKEOFF, MAX LIFT and DOWN ( corresponding to 80 degrees! ).

The test flight will check trim effectiveness, stability, slow flight and stalling and will go something like this,

1.  Takeoff at full throttle, flaps up, holding about 1/3 up elevator.  The airplane will be climbed at a shallow angle to gain speed for maneuvering.  If the elevator is not in trim and I have to hold a lot of "up", the gear will be retracted.  On the other hand, if it wants to climb excessively, I will not retract the gear until the elevator is trimmed.  This is because the nose will probably pitch up further due to lack of drag and slight aft movement of the CG.

2.  The airplane leveled off and trimmed at 2/3 throttle, followed immediately by a "clean" stall test.  Effect of landing gear on trim, followed by flaps.  Then, a stall test in the landing configuration.  This is not so much to see how the plane behaves, but to see how much elevator is 'useful' before a stall occurs.  This way, if a quick landing needs to be made, I will know not to exceed the critical angle, since about 1/3 of the useful elevator throw is held during the approach to control the speed and the rest is used in the flare and hold off.  In the real airplane, full flaps were not to be used in a power off landing because the drag and sink rate were very high.

3.  The airplane cleaned up and flying at about 3/4 throttle, the rates switched to low.  A couple of 'scale' aileron rolls and a 'big' loop ( the low elevator rate should not allow a loop any smaller than scale ).  Also, the low elevator rate should avoid the possibility of a stall/snap while maneuvering.  Switch back to high rates for landing.

Planned colour scheme is the same as this guy ( Royal Netherlands )!  I know, being Canadian, I should do a Canadian scheme, but they're boring!  Besides, I like the "sky type S" colour better than the "light grey" that the Canadians used.