I love to fly models, but I really enjoy building them. It can be a relaxing and rewarding experience to build a model from scratch or from a kit. Building your own models can help you gain experience with installing motors and radio gear, and even teaching you covering techniques.
Microaces, a somewhat new kit manufacturer that produces a line of beautiful micro aircraft kits, has introduced an innovative way to cover model airplanes using a lightweight sticker material with highly detailed graphics. I enjoyed applying stickers to all kinds of things when I was a child, but who would have thought that I would have the same enjoyment applying them to a model airplane today!
Microaces Curtiss P-6E Hawk
Microaces listens to what modelers want to see kitted. The company polled readers on the RCGroups forum to determine the most popular single-engine airplane for a new kit. The elegant Curtiss P-6E Hawk won and became the company’s next project.
The model is 1/22-scale with a wingspan of 15.87 inches. The aircraft is available as a deluxe kit that includes the AP05 5,000 Kv brushless motor and XP-7A ESC, or as a standard kit.
The Curtiss P-6E Hawk kit’s quality is apparent as soon as you open the box. All of the parts are neatly packaged with one of the best instruction manuals that I have seen. Every step of construction is numbered and beautifully illustrated.
Microaces also has several P-6E Hawk build videos that can be accessed on the company’s website. I recommend that you watch them because they offer some great building tips.
This would be the third Microaces kit that I had built, and I was excited to get started! The Curtiss P-6E Hawk kit includes a new, lightweight sticker material with amazing graphics, laser-cut foam and plywood parts, micro aileron servo, preformed wire, propeller and spinner, molded receiver and battery door covers, carbon-fiber wings, control horns, and even a sanding stick and guide.
Construction begins by sanding the correct 45% chamfer in the rudder and aileron parts, using the supplied sanding guide. These parts are good ones on which to practice applying the stickers if this is your first Microaces kit. You will need a good pair of tweezers to aid in positioning the sticker covering on the parts. Applying the stickers is not difficult, but it may take some practice.
The P-6E Hawk kit uses light plywood for the landing gear, cabane, and wing struts. The plywood parts are assembled and covered with the sticker material in the same manner as the foam pieces.
The full-scale P-6E Hawk only has ailerons on the top of the wing. Microaces did a great job of developing a scale pushrod aileron control linkage to replicate this. The linkage neatly installs in the underside of the bottom wing, and is driven by one aileron servo that is mounted in the fuselage.
It is important that you hook up the servo to your receiver and center it before installation because it will affect the centering of the ailerons when attaching the wing to the fuselage.
I always test my receiver, motor, and all servos to make sure they are properly working before installing them. On my P-6E Hawk, I used the Spektrum AR6400 receiver that clips into the receiver mounting tray that is installed in the fuselage. The clip-mounting system allows you to remove the receiver so you can use it in other models. When installing the bottom wing, make sure that the aileron servo arm is aligned with the aileron linkage for full control movement.
The rest of the build is straightforward. After installing the receiver, motor, and propeller, it was time to check the CG and go fly!
In the Air
The Microaces Curtiss P-6E Hawk with its beautiful graphics looks amazing, but how does it fly? The answer is great. With two wings, the P-6E Hawk has a light wing loading that allows the model to be flown at scale speeds with scalelike performance.
The AP05 5,000 Kv brushless motor has good power using the stock 300 mAh LiPo from Microaces. It is not a 3-D model with unlimited aerobatics, but it can fly beautiful scale maneuvers such as loops and rolls.
Takeoffs are easy—smoothly add power and hold some up-elevator. The model tracks well with the rudder. I flew the aircraft indoors at the 2013 Horizon Indoor Electric Festival in Columbus, Ohio. I had a ball practicing landings and doing touch-and-gos.
The P-6E Hawk is easy to land, but has a tendency to nose over during landing. I found that if you make a nose-high, three-point landing and hold in up-elevator, it will nicely roll on.
The Microaces Curtiss P-6E Hawk is a fun airplane to build, looks beautiful, and has scalelike flight performance! If you are interested in adding one to your model airplane hangar, see the Microaces website for more information and current pricing.
