ALFA MODELS Focke-Wulf FW-190

A precision modeled warbird with performance

I'm a big fan of warbirds, and one of my all-time favorites is the WW Il German Focke-Wulf Fw 190. It's widely regarded as Germany's best fighter and ranks with the F4U Corsair, P-51 Mustang and Spitfire as the best of the best. It was so good that you can trace the origins of the Hawker Sea Fury and the Grumman Bearcat back to the Fw 190.

Hobby Lobby has really embraced electricpowered airplanes, so it has a great selection of warbird models from which to choose. Noticeably lacking, though, was a German fighter-until now. Hobby Lobby recently added the spectacular Alfa FW190 to its lineup. This all-foam fighter requires a minimum of effort to be sortieready and gives new meaning to the phrase "almost ready to fly."

IN THE BOX

The airframe of the Alfa FW-190 is completely assembled and painted in an authentic camouflage paint scheme (how's that for convenience!). It consists of only two parts: the complete fuselage assembly and the wing. The cowl, canopy, control surfaces, pushrods, control horns, firewall and servo tray are installed to save you a ton of work. Great-looking water-slide decals (for two versions of the FW-190) round off the package.

Because the model is made of foam, hard plastic covers the foam where most of the abuse is likely to occur. The underside of the fuselage and the leading edge of the wing are just two of the areas that are reinforced. The wing is removable, and the model fits nicely in its box for transportation and storage. Access to the radio equipment is through a hatch in front of the canopy; a cleverly designed latch holds it securely.

The model spans 33.5 inches, is 28.75 inches long and sports 186 square inches of wing area. If the target weight of 16 ounces (or less) is adhered to, the model's wing loading will be a little more than 12 ounces per square foot, and performance will be very scale. Mine weighed just under 16 ounces ready to fly. To make the fighter mission-ready, you'll need 2 microservos and a receiver, a geared Speed 300 motor, a 14A ESC and an 8-cell, 1100mAh NiMH battery pack. I've pretty much switched to using brushless motors and Li-poly batteries in all of my models. I chose the new MP Jet Outrunner motor, 2and 3-cell Kokam ISOOmAh Li-poly batteries and a Jeti Advance ISA ESC.

The electronics included a Hitec Micro 555 receiver and 3 HS-55 Feather servos. You might have noticed that I have an extra servo onboard. A lot of park flyers don't use a rudder (which I really miss when flying), so to gain more control, I decided to add a functional rudder at the expense of a little weight. To fine-tune the model's performance, I tried several APC electric props to optimize the current draw with the use of an AstroFlight Whattmeter.

ASSEMBLY

Making the Alfa FW-190 flight-ready is a simple exercise and takes very little effort. If I hadn't added a working rudder to the model, I could have been out flying it in about 2 hours. The most time-consuming assembly task is applying the water-slide decals; they're very delicate. The instructions are loosely translated from Czech, but the model goes together so easily that the instructions are primarily a guide.

I installed the motor first; there are three indents for the motor mount on the firewall. To use the MP Jet Outrunner motor, the radial mount must be installed "backward" on it. This places the motor closer to the firewall and allows the cowl and spinner to fit properly. The cowl fits very nicely on the fuselage, and the instructions recommend that it be tack-glued into place. Instead, I recessed and glued a couple of rare-earth magnets (that 1 bought from RadioShack) at 12 and 6 o'clock on the nose of the fuselage. I then glued thin washers in matching positions inside the cowl. The magnets are very strong and hold the cowl very securely.

The aileron servo is installed in the center of the wing, and the factory-installed pushrods are easily connected to the servo. Installing the elevator servo is just as easy, but be sure to glue the pushrod sleeve to the support. The instructions direct you to install the receiver and ESC next, but I waited to install them until after I had added the functional rudder.

RUDDER MODIFICATIONS

Making the rudder functional required a minimum of effort and materials. Hobby Lobby has guidelines on its wcbsitc for this conversion, and they work well. The first step is to cut the rudder free; 1 used a new no. 11 hobby-knife blade and a metal ruler to make the cut. The rudder and fin are hollow, and the trailing edge of the fin and leading edge of the rudder must be filled so the hinges have something to grip. I used a couple of pieces of pink insulation foam. It took only a couple of minutes to shape the foam and then glue it in with epoxy. When the epoxy had cured, I rounded the leading edge of the rudder and sanded a matching concave in the trailing edge of the fin. I touched up the bare foam with gray acrylic paint. I cut hinges out of an old floppy disc and used epoxy to secure them. The rudder control horn was an extra GWS horn that I had lying around.