Plane Talk: Cermark F-16 Propjet ARF - 2009/01

70 MODEL AVIATION
THE F-16 FALCON is probably one of the
best jets to start with if a model pilot has little
experience flying. Even though the wings are
short, the fuselage shape that flows into them
is a lift component, creating a larger overall
wing area and therefore providing forgiving
airborne handling. Although the F-16 mimics
the stability of a delta design, it has excellent
agility as a result of the stabilators that are
mounted close to the mean aerodynamic
chord.
Jets are more or less a high-cost special
interest in the aeromodeling community.
Modelers today have more success with pure
jet forms featuring turbine engines and
accurately scaled outlines than ever. But
those models aren’t for novice RC pilots
because of their complexity and narrow flight
envelope.
For a fraction of the cost, a propjet is a
respectable alternative. Although the
propeller detracts somewhat from the jet look
(depending on the vantage point), many
attractive jet features are maintained. Best of
all, the propjet is a much friendlier RC model
to fly; it typically handles similarly to a lowwing
sport model.
Cermark carries F-18 and F-16 propjets
that close the compromise gap between the
pure jet and propjet. Both models feature
outlines that are relatively close to those of
the full-scale aircraft, thanks to the expertly
molded fiberglass bodies and accessories. In
addition, the models feature retractable
landing gear, which is sorely needed to sell
the jet look in the air.
MICHAEL RAMSEY
Plane Talk: Cermark F-16 Propjet ARF
Depending on your point of view, the propeller and engine in the nose are almost
unnoticeable. Three scale color schemes are available for the 60-size model.
Jet thrust in the nose is a blast in the air
The fuselage is molded fiberglass with a gel-coat finish. Filmcovered
plywood dorsal fins are glued into grooves cut along
outlines molded into the surface.
The Cermark F-16P is smooth in the air, much like a turbinepowered
model. Thrust from the propeller increases control
effectiveness and acceleration is better.
01sig3.QXD 11/21/08 2:53 PM Page 70
January 2009 71
+
• Outstanding “jetish” appearance
and finish.
• Ease of flying in all attitudes.
• Excellent parts fit and high level of
prefabrication.
• High-quality pneumatic retract
system.
• Great high-speed performance
and convincing “jet” handling.
• Bolt-together construction with
removable wings and tail.
• Full replacement part and
accessory support.
-
• More complete instructions
would benefit intermediate ARF
builders.
• Landing-gear-plate reinforcement
is required.
• More than 10 ounces of ballast in
the tail is required.
Pluses and Minuses
Unlike ducted-fan models, the Falcon’s intake scope is proportioned
correctly. Ducted-fan models need more air and enlarge this area of the
jet, distorting the look.
Left: The F-16P rises from the smooth paved runway
before the O.S. .91 is brought to full throttle; the
power is exhilarating. The included pneumatic gear
retracts at a moderate rate.
Photos by Mark Lanterman
The cockpit interior is thinly molded fiberglass.
Cermark’s optional jet pilot adds a nice touch and
sits 1/2 inch from the floor. Gauges and instruments
are photocopies from the Internet.
The O.S. 91FX fits precisely onto the factory hardwood rails. The opening for
the engine is made at the factory, and the painted spinner is included. A
dynamite combination!
01sig3.QXD 11/21/08 2:57 PM Page 71
72 MODEL AVIATION
Model type: RC sport-scale ARF
Skill level: Advanced builder,
intermediate pilot
Wingspan: 47.6 inches
Wing area: 697 square inches
Length: 64.7 inches
Weight (estimated): 9 pounds
Wing loading: 29.75 ounces/
square foot
Engine: .61-.91 two-stroke
(electric version available)
Radio: Five channels (minimum),
eight servos
Construction: Fiberglass fuselage,
conventional wood tail and wing
surfaces
Covering/finish: Three schemes
available, painted-in-the-mold
fuselage, two- or three-color
matching covering, decal sheet
included
Features: Removable cockpit,
pneumatic retracts, full-flying
stabilator, removable surfaces
Options: Scale cockpit and pilot
Price: $399.95
Engine used: O.S. 91FX
Propeller: APC 12 x 8 sport
Fuel: 600cc tank, Magnum #1
Radio system: Futaba 7C FASST
transmitter; Futaba R617FS
receiver; two Futaba S3001 servos
on ailerons, one Futaba S3003
servo on retract valve, two Futaba
S3002 servos on nose steering and
throttle, two Futaba S9001 servos
on stabilators, one Futaba S3102
servo on rudder; 6.0-volt, 4200
mAh NiMH battery; four extra-long
HD extensions, two reversing Y
harnesses; one heavy-duty switch
Ready-to-fly weight: 10 pounds,
1.3 ounces
Flight duration: Exceeds 10
minutes
Specifications and Test-Model Details
Access to the air and fuel tank are through the forward hatch. The
tank valve for refilling is held loosely in place with Velcro. Doublestick
foam tape secures the air lines.
The included hardware is an exact fit. The
aileron-servo hatch includes screws that
are painted to match. Wing-tube hard
points are located and drilled at the
factory.
A heavy 6.0-volt, 4.2-amp battery and 6 ounces of lead ballast
were required to balance the review F-16P. Regardless, it is
beautiful and stable to pilot.
The vertical fin/rudder mounts to the
fuselage with a solid aluminum tube for
support and one setscrew for security. The
rudder servo is buried inside the root of
the fin.
The included retracts are strong metal units with hardened heavy-gauge steel struts bent
to the correct shape. Accurate clearance openings are made at the factory.
The F-18 is available in the blue-andyellow
Blue Angels scheme, but the F-16 is
regularly offered in three color schemes. The
General Dynamics and Thunderbirds
schemes are red, white, and blue, and the Air
Force scheme is a two-tone gray. The grays
are more challenging to see, but the scheme is
a better match to the desire for a total scale
effort—even if there is a spinner up front.
Although Cermark does offer a turbinepowered
F-16, the propjet version is close to
40% less expensive. And the latter includes
01sig3.QXD 11/21/08 3:22 PM Page 72
pneumatic retracts, darn good hardware,
and an aluminum spinner that complements
the front-end outline.
Equipping a propjet is close to free
compared to the expense of a turbine and all
the other high-end hardware required to
insure the investment. The F-16P (as
Cermark calls it) will fly great with a highspeed
.61 two-stroke engine (a popular find
at swap meets or in the spare-engine
drawer), and the radio system need not be
complex; five channels will do nicely.
This review tested the model with an
O.S. 91FX, which worked out wonderfully.
A lighter .61 greatly reduces the need for
ballast in the tail section; this aircraft
needed 6 ounces in the tail, and that was
with a 4200 mAh, 6.0-volt NiMH battery
(the heaviest that would fit) back there.
However, the disappointment of adding
dead weight did nothing to harm the
Cermark F-16P’s friendly, highperformance
flight characteristics. It’s a
pound overweight, but I got over it quickly.
The wings, stabilators, and vertical fin
are removable, making the project an
almost bolt-together job. I used thin
cyanoacrylate to install the rudder and
ailerons, and any hole I drilled was
hardened with a drop or two of the thin
stuff. (Don’t skip that step.)
Clear silicone adhesive is great for
securing the fuel tank and the air tank for
the retracts. The decorative missile rails
attach with a few dabs of epoxy, and the
lower subfins are best secured with thick
cyanoacrylate.
The fuselage was a magnificent piece of
fiberglass mold work; not a blemish or scar
marred the semigloss surface. Inside the
fuselage, the formers were secured; they
offer good support to the thin fiberglass
skin and should withhold any stress the
structure might endure. The plywood used
is a veneer type, which is somewhat flexible
depending on the load; it holds a screw
better when cyanoacrylate is used to harden
the threads.
The rear landing-gear plates would do
better if made from a harder laminate, such
as birch or maple multilayer grade material.
The first hard landing with this test model
damaged the gear plates.
To ensure that the landing gear will take
the abuse of imperfect touchdowns and
rough fields, add, with epoxy, a third layer
of 3/32 birch plywood behind all the gear
plates and size them to the existing area.
The test model has held up extremely well
with this simple modification.
The conventionally wooden engineered
wings plug into the fuselage with the
reinforcement of a 3/4-inch aluminum tube,
which is supported at its ends with
hardwood plugs that accept wood screws
through the predrilled holes. Wood dowels
at the root keep the wings from rotating;
their incidence is set at the factory and
aligned to each other.
The stabilators (elevators) are fully
sheeted balsa, built with a hefty-gauge,
solid-aluminum rotation pin. The fully
supported and aligned sleeve for each
stabilator half is installed in the fuselage at
the factory.
An aluminum control horn clamps to the
aluminum pin with heavy-duty hardware.
Aluminum is used throughout the provided
hardware—nice. Align the stabilators with
an incidence meter rather than the mold
seams.
Cermark had cleanly tooled clearance
openings for the engine and retracts. These
openings needed only slight customizations,
but to describe my gratitude for this
prefabrication would take pages of words.
I’ll just say, “I’m glad I didn’t have to cut
out those holes.”
The retractable landing gear are the airup/
spring-down type. They look strongly
made with hard aluminum and heavygauge-
steel wire struts. Not only is this
system of actuating the landing gear safe,
but it also cuts the amount of plumbing by
50%.
The speed at which the gear actuates is
regulated by valves (labeled: air throttle)
spliced into the lines leading to the
individual mechanics. Be sure to threadlock
the struts and carefully align the nosegear
steering. The nose gear will need lowprofile-
type mounting hardware to clear the
steering linkage; 4-40 socket-head wood
screws suit nicely.
The O.S. 91FX was used to demonstrate
what thrills excessive power can offer.
Because it has the same footprint as the
61FX, no modifications to the prefabricated
openings or firewall were necessary. For a
big brute, the .91 handles like the .40 does
on most trainers. It starts easily and needs
almost no adjustment out of the box.
The ring on the piston needs roughly a
half gallon of fuel to properly seat; until it
does, it can run and transition roughly—but
fear not. The engine hand starts and can be
run in on the model, as this .91 was. Fitting
the muffler and its parts with red threadlocker
is crucial.
An APC 12 x 8 propeller allows the
engine to unload for good high-speed
performance and generates a minimal
amount of thrust at idle so that landings can
be slow. High-nitromethane users should
add a shim to the head (as I did), to
eliminate detonation; using a colder plug
would prevent detonation too. I favored the
O.S. A5 glow plug.
To offset the heavy engine in the nose,
Cermark located the radio tray in the tail
cone. The exhaust cone doubles ingeniously
as the hatch for this compartment. To
further reduce the weight in the nose,
miniservos were used for the throttle and
nose-gear steering.
The review F-16P came with the rudderservo-
arm exit on the wrong side, which
meant that the rudder moved the opposite
direction of the nose gear unless a reversing
Y harness was used—an easy fix. A
reversing Y harness is used for the
stabilators too.
Heavy-duty servos are important for the
stabilators, but standard ball-bearing types
January 2009 77
are adequate for the ailerons and retract
valve. The miniservo mount for the rudder
is brilliant, although it requires a hightorque
servo of the appropriate size.
Flaperons were programmed but
unnecessary for flight.
The F-16P’s assembly manual was pretty
good, even though its layout and
information were presented in a format that
might be awkward for the intermediate
builder. All the data was there, but some
hunting was necessary and the updated
retract-system information was missing.
Flying: The Falcon flies like a sport model
despite its convincing jet appearance. The
air blast from the propeller allows the F-16
to accelerate more quickly, and thrust from
the propeller keeps the stabilators more
effective while flying at slow speeds and
landing.
The tricycle gear is stable like a trainer’s
during ground handling, so steering is not
much of a surprise unless you make abrupt
turns. Wingtip-scrape protection might be a
good idea.
All testing was done on smooth
pavement, but videos on the YouTube Web
site show Cermark’s F-16P flying from
grass with no difficulty. As does a sport
aircraft, the F-16P takes off at a familiar
speed and can climb out quickly near the
runway’s end.
The recommended low rate for elevator
proved to be comfortable (I added roughly
30% exponential later), but the aileron
control was like the ground handling:
trainerlike. I preferred high rate on aileron,
and that control had exponential
programmed to soften the center feel of the
stick as well.
Bringing the gear up as the model rotates
off the mains is totally cool. A slightly high
angle of attack in heading, as with the fullscale
F-16, is easy to hold, showing no
tendency to tip stall. So this Falcon
immediately had me forgetting about that
propeller spinning out front.
The low exhaust note from the stock
O.S. muffler helped me appreciate this “jet”
even more. Only a baritone grumble could
be heard from the engine, and just enough
of a whistle from the airframe hinted at how
the whine of a turbine might sound.
This model calls for a ballroom-dancing
pilot style: big and graceful. No 3-D, discostyle
flying is allowed. Any flier who has
seen the US Air Force Thunderbirds
perform will appreciate the aerobatic bag of
tricks that this Falcon has for an RC pilot in
command. Big loops, point rolls that “bang”
into the stops, and high-speed passes are
what make this model great.
If you have flown a vintage RC
Aerobatics airplane, you will probably
appreciate how this model flies—and do
well flying it. It’s groovy, with extra
goosebumps.
Landing requires the pilot to set a glide
slope with a nose-high attitude; otherwise,
landing speeds will be incredibly fast. The
F-16P likes to fly and doesn’t want to stop.
Keeping the nose high, which is easy with a
propeller-driven model, presents more drag
into the oncoming air, slowing the Falcon.
This technique eliminates the need for
flaperons.
The ability to fly in this configuration
requires you to accurately place the CG; do
so with extra scrutiny. The video I’ve seen
shows this model having difficulty keeping
the nose up while landing. This test aircraft
never flew that way. Nail the CG and this F-
16 will fly great.
Afterburner: I explored the model’s CG
enough to find that the recommended point
is approximately 1/4 inch too far aft.
Learning this was a benefit, because
roughly an ounce of lead came out of the
tail.
Even tail-heavy, the Falcon displayed
only stable flight characteristics, but
holding down-elevator while landing was
sometimes necessary to hold the glide slope.
That’s an awkward technique to learn.
The landing gear has absorbed both
picture-perfect landings and abuse from
ugly landings that bounced all the way
down the field. The heavy-duty struts
haven’t bent, and the rubber tires are
holding up well. An electric air pump is
used to charge the tank to 85 pounds, and it
lasts a full 15 cycles—enough for an
afternoon of flying.
The F-16P’s lateral balance improves
tracking through loops and drifting on
landing approach. Even though the model is
glow powered, the airframe stays relatively
slime free.
The latest word is that an electricpowered
version of this model will be
available that will retain the propeller up
front but omit the ghastly muffler. MA
Michael Ramsey
[email protected]
Manufacturer/Distributor:
Cermark
9830 Bell Ranch Dr.
Santa Fe Springs CA 90607
(562) 906-0808
www.cermark.com
Sources:
O.S. Engines
(217) 398-8970
www.osengines.com
Futaba
(217) 398-8970
www.futaba-rc.com
Batteries America
(800) 308-4805
www.batteriesamerica.com
Other Printed Reviews:
Fly RC: April 2007
Radio Control Jet International: December
2006

70 MODEL AVIATION
THE F-16 FALCON is probably one of the
best jets to start with if a model pilot has little
experience flying. Even though the wings are
short, the fuselage shape that flows into them
is a lift component, creating a larger overall
wing area and therefore providing forgiving
airborne handling. Although the F-16 mimics
the stability of a delta design, it has excellent
agility as a result of the stabilators that are
mounted close to the mean aerodynamic
chord.
Jets are more or less a high-cost special
interest in the aeromodeling community.
Modelers today have more success with pure
jet forms featuring turbine engines and
accurately scaled outlines than ever. But
those models aren’t for novice RC pilots
because of their complexity and narrow flight
envelope.
For a fraction of the cost, a propjet is a
respectable alternative. Although the
propeller detracts somewhat from the jet look
(depending on the vantage point), many
attractive jet features are maintained. Best of
all, the propjet is a much friendlier RC model
to fly; it typically handles similarly to a lowwing
sport model.
Cermark carries F-18 and F-16 propjets
that close the compromise gap between the
pure jet and propjet. Both models feature
outlines that are relatively close to those of
the full-scale aircraft, thanks to the expertly
molded fiberglass bodies and accessories. In
addition, the models feature retractable
landing gear, which is sorely needed to sell
the jet look in the air.
MICHAEL RAMSEY
Plane Talk: Cermark F-16 Propjet ARF
Depending on your point of view, the propeller and engine in the nose are almost
unnoticeable. Three scale color schemes are available for the 60-size model.
Jet thrust in the nose is a blast in the air
The fuselage is molded fiberglass with a gel-coat finish. Filmcovered
plywood dorsal fins are glued into grooves cut along
outlines molded into the surface.
The Cermark F-16P is smooth in the air, much like a turbinepowered
model. Thrust from the propeller increases control
effectiveness and acceleration is better.
01sig3.QXD 11/21/08 2:53 PM Page 70
January 2009 71
+
• Outstanding “jetish” appearance
and finish.
• Ease of flying in all attitudes.
• Excellent parts fit and high level of
prefabrication.
• High-quality pneumatic retract
system.
• Great high-speed performance
and convincing “jet” handling.
• Bolt-together construction with
removable wings and tail.
• Full replacement part and
accessory support.
-
• More complete instructions
would benefit intermediate ARF
builders.
• Landing-gear-plate reinforcement
is required.
• More than 10 ounces of ballast in
the tail is required.
Pluses and Minuses
Unlike ducted-fan models, the Falcon’s intake scope is proportioned
correctly. Ducted-fan models need more air and enlarge this area of the
jet, distorting the look.
Left: The F-16P rises from the smooth paved runway
before the O.S. .91 is brought to full throttle; the
power is exhilarating. The included pneumatic gear
retracts at a moderate rate.
Photos by Mark Lanterman
The cockpit interior is thinly molded fiberglass.
Cermark’s optional jet pilot adds a nice touch and
sits 1/2 inch from the floor. Gauges and instruments
are photocopies from the Internet.
The O.S. 91FX fits precisely onto the factory hardwood rails. The opening for
the engine is made at the factory, and the painted spinner is included. A
dynamite combination!
01sig3.QXD 11/21/08 2:57 PM Page 71
72 MODEL AVIATION
Model type: RC sport-scale ARF
Skill level: Advanced builder,
intermediate pilot
Wingspan: 47.6 inches
Wing area: 697 square inches
Length: 64.7 inches
Weight (estimated): 9 pounds
Wing loading: 29.75 ounces/
square foot
Engine: .61-.91 two-stroke
(electric version available)
Radio: Five channels (minimum),
eight servos
Construction: Fiberglass fuselage,
conventional wood tail and wing
surfaces
Covering/finish: Three schemes
available, painted-in-the-mold
fuselage, two- or three-color
matching covering, decal sheet
included
Features: Removable cockpit,
pneumatic retracts, full-flying
stabilator, removable surfaces
Options: Scale cockpit and pilot
Price: $399.95
Engine used: O.S. 91FX
Propeller: APC 12 x 8 sport
Fuel: 600cc tank, Magnum #1
Radio system: Futaba 7C FASST
transmitter; Futaba R617FS
receiver; two Futaba S3001 servos
on ailerons, one Futaba S3003
servo on retract valve, two Futaba
S3002 servos on nose steering and
throttle, two Futaba S9001 servos
on stabilators, one Futaba S3102
servo on rudder; 6.0-volt, 4200
mAh NiMH battery; four extra-long
HD extensions, two reversing Y
harnesses; one heavy-duty switch
Ready-to-fly weight: 10 pounds,
1.3 ounces
Flight duration: Exceeds 10
minutes
Specifications and Test-Model Details
Access to the air and fuel tank are through the forward hatch. The
tank valve for refilling is held loosely in place with Velcro. Doublestick
foam tape secures the air lines.
The included hardware is an exact fit. The
aileron-servo hatch includes screws that
are painted to match. Wing-tube hard
points are located and drilled at the
factory.
A heavy 6.0-volt, 4.2-amp battery and 6 ounces of lead ballast
were required to balance the review F-16P. Regardless, it is
beautiful and stable to pilot.
The vertical fin/rudder mounts to the
fuselage with a solid aluminum tube for
support and one setscrew for security. The
rudder servo is buried inside the root of
the fin.
The included retracts are strong metal units with hardened heavy-gauge steel struts bent
to the correct shape. Accurate clearance openings are made at the factory.
The F-18 is available in the blue-andyellow
Blue Angels scheme, but the F-16 is
regularly offered in three color schemes. The
General Dynamics and Thunderbirds
schemes are red, white, and blue, and the Air
Force scheme is a two-tone gray. The grays
are more challenging to see, but the scheme is
a better match to the desire for a total scale
effort—even if there is a spinner up front.
Although Cermark does offer a turbinepowered
F-16, the propjet version is close to
40% less expensive. And the latter includes
01sig3.QXD 11/21/08 3:22 PM Page 72
pneumatic retracts, darn good hardware,
and an aluminum spinner that complements
the front-end outline.
Equipping a propjet is close to free
compared to the expense of a turbine and all
the other high-end hardware required to
insure the investment. The F-16P (as
Cermark calls it) will fly great with a highspeed
.61 two-stroke engine (a popular find
at swap meets or in the spare-engine
drawer), and the radio system need not be
complex; five channels will do nicely.
This review tested the model with an
O.S. 91FX, which worked out wonderfully.
A lighter .61 greatly reduces the need for
ballast in the tail section; this aircraft
needed 6 ounces in the tail, and that was
with a 4200 mAh, 6.0-volt NiMH battery
(the heaviest that would fit) back there.
However, the disappointment of adding
dead weight did nothing to harm the
Cermark F-16P’s friendly, highperformance
flight characteristics. It’s a
pound overweight, but I got over it quickly.
The wings, stabilators, and vertical fin
are removable, making the project an
almost bolt-together job. I used thin
cyanoacrylate to install the rudder and
ailerons, and any hole I drilled was
hardened with a drop or two of the thin
stuff. (Don’t skip that step.)
Clear silicone adhesive is great for
securing the fuel tank and the air tank for
the retracts. The decorative missile rails
attach with a few dabs of epoxy, and the
lower subfins are best secured with thick
cyanoacrylate.
The fuselage was a magnificent piece of
fiberglass mold work; not a blemish or scar
marred the semigloss surface. Inside the
fuselage, the formers were secured; they
offer good support to the thin fiberglass
skin and should withhold any stress the
structure might endure. The plywood used
is a veneer type, which is somewhat flexible
depending on the load; it holds a screw
better when cyanoacrylate is used to harden
the threads.
The rear landing-gear plates would do
better if made from a harder laminate, such
as birch or maple multilayer grade material.
The first hard landing with this test model
damaged the gear plates.
To ensure that the landing gear will take
the abuse of imperfect touchdowns and
rough fields, add, with epoxy, a third layer
of 3/32 birch plywood behind all the gear
plates and size them to the existing area.
The test model has held up extremely well
with this simple modification.
The conventionally wooden engineered
wings plug into the fuselage with the
reinforcement of a 3/4-inch aluminum tube,
which is supported at its ends with
hardwood plugs that accept wood screws
through the predrilled holes. Wood dowels
at the root keep the wings from rotating;
their incidence is set at the factory and
aligned to each other.
The stabilators (elevators) are fully
sheeted balsa, built with a hefty-gauge,
solid-aluminum rotation pin. The fully
supported and aligned sleeve for each
stabilator half is installed in the fuselage at
the factory.
An aluminum control horn clamps to the
aluminum pin with heavy-duty hardware.
Aluminum is used throughout the provided
hardware—nice. Align the stabilators with
an incidence meter rather than the mold
seams.
Cermark had cleanly tooled clearance
openings for the engine and retracts. These
openings needed only slight customizations,
but to describe my gratitude for this
prefabrication would take pages of words.
I’ll just say, “I’m glad I didn’t have to cut
out those holes.”
The retractable landing gear are the airup/
spring-down type. They look strongly
made with hard aluminum and heavygauge-
steel wire struts. Not only is this
system of actuating the landing gear safe,
but it also cuts the amount of plumbing by
50%.
The speed at which the gear actuates is
regulated by valves (labeled: air throttle)
spliced into the lines leading to the
individual mechanics. Be sure to threadlock
the struts and carefully align the nosegear
steering. The nose gear will need lowprofile-
type mounting hardware to clear the
steering linkage; 4-40 socket-head wood
screws suit nicely.
The O.S. 91FX was used to demonstrate
what thrills excessive power can offer.
Because it has the same footprint as the
61FX, no modifications to the prefabricated
openings or firewall were necessary. For a
big brute, the .91 handles like the .40 does
on most trainers. It starts easily and needs
almost no adjustment out of the box.
The ring on the piston needs roughly a
half gallon of fuel to properly seat; until it
does, it can run and transition roughly—but
fear not. The engine hand starts and can be
run in on the model, as this .91 was. Fitting
the muffler and its parts with red threadlocker
is crucial.
An APC 12 x 8 propeller allows the
engine to unload for good high-speed
performance and generates a minimal
amount of thrust at idle so that landings can
be slow. High-nitromethane users should
add a shim to the head (as I did), to
eliminate detonation; using a colder plug
would prevent detonation too. I favored the
O.S. A5 glow plug.
To offset the heavy engine in the nose,
Cermark located the radio tray in the tail
cone. The exhaust cone doubles ingeniously
as the hatch for this compartment. To
further reduce the weight in the nose,
miniservos were used for the throttle and
nose-gear steering.
The review F-16P came with the rudderservo-
arm exit on the wrong side, which
meant that the rudder moved the opposite
direction of the nose gear unless a reversing
Y harness was used—an easy fix. A
reversing Y harness is used for the
stabilators too.
Heavy-duty servos are important for the
stabilators, but standard ball-bearing types
January 2009 77
are adequate for the ailerons and retract
valve. The miniservo mount for the rudder
is brilliant, although it requires a hightorque
servo of the appropriate size.
Flaperons were programmed but
unnecessary for flight.
The F-16P’s assembly manual was pretty
good, even though its layout and
information were presented in a format that
might be awkward for the intermediate
builder. All the data was there, but some
hunting was necessary and the updated
retract-system information was missing.
Flying: The Falcon flies like a sport model
despite its convincing jet appearance. The
air blast from the propeller allows the F-16
to accelerate more quickly, and thrust from
the propeller keeps the stabilators more
effective while flying at slow speeds and
landing.
The tricycle gear is stable like a trainer’s
during ground handling, so steering is not
much of a surprise unless you make abrupt
turns. Wingtip-scrape protection might be a
good idea.
All testing was done on smooth
pavement, but videos on the YouTube Web
site show Cermark’s F-16P flying from
grass with no difficulty. As does a sport
aircraft, the F-16P takes off at a familiar
speed and can climb out quickly near the
runway’s end.
The recommended low rate for elevator
proved to be comfortable (I added roughly
30% exponential later), but the aileron
control was like the ground handling:
trainerlike. I preferred high rate on aileron,
and that control had exponential
programmed to soften the center feel of the
stick as well.
Bringing the gear up as the model rotates
off the mains is totally cool. A slightly high
angle of attack in heading, as with the fullscale
F-16, is easy to hold, showing no
tendency to tip stall. So this Falcon
immediately had me forgetting about that
propeller spinning out front.
The low exhaust note from the stock
O.S. muffler helped me appreciate this “jet”
even more. Only a baritone grumble could
be heard from the engine, and just enough
of a whistle from the airframe hinted at how
the whine of a turbine might sound.
This model calls for a ballroom-dancing
pilot style: big and graceful. No 3-D, discostyle
flying is allowed. Any flier who has
seen the US Air Force Thunderbirds
perform will appreciate the aerobatic bag of
tricks that this Falcon has for an RC pilot in
command. Big loops, point rolls that “bang”
into the stops, and high-speed passes are
what make this model great.
If you have flown a vintage RC
Aerobatics airplane, you will probably
appreciate how this model flies—and do
well flying it. It’s groovy, with extra
goosebumps.
Landing requires the pilot to set a glide
slope with a nose-high attitude; otherwise,
landing speeds will be incredibly fast. The
F-16P likes to fly and doesn’t want to stop.
Keeping the nose high, which is easy with a
propeller-driven model, presents more drag
into the oncoming air, slowing the Falcon.
This technique eliminates the need for
flaperons.
The ability to fly in this configuration
requires you to accurately place the CG; do
so with extra scrutiny. The video I’ve seen
shows this model having difficulty keeping
the nose up while landing. This test aircraft
never flew that way. Nail the CG and this F-
16 will fly great.
Afterburner: I explored the model’s CG
enough to find that the recommended point
is approximately 1/4 inch too far aft.
Learning this was a benefit, because
roughly an ounce of lead came out of the
tail.
Even tail-heavy, the Falcon displayed
only stable flight characteristics, but
holding down-elevator while landing was
sometimes necessary to hold the glide slope.
That’s an awkward technique to learn.
The landing gear has absorbed both
picture-perfect landings and abuse from
ugly landings that bounced all the way
down the field. The heavy-duty struts
haven’t bent, and the rubber tires are
holding up well. An electric air pump is
used to charge the tank to 85 pounds, and it
lasts a full 15 cycles—enough for an
afternoon of flying.
The F-16P’s lateral balance improves
tracking through loops and drifting on
landing approach. Even though the model is
glow powered, the airframe stays relatively
slime free.
The latest word is that an electricpowered
version of this model will be
available that will retain the propeller up
front but omit the ghastly muffler. MA
Michael Ramsey
[email protected]
Manufacturer/Distributor:
Cermark
9830 Bell Ranch Dr.
Santa Fe Springs CA 90607
(562) 906-0808
www.cermark.com
Sources:
O.S. Engines
(217) 398-8970
www.osengines.com
Futaba
(217) 398-8970
www.futaba-rc.com
Batteries America
(800) 308-4805
www.batteriesamerica.com
Other Printed Reviews:
Fly RC: April 2007
Radio Control Jet International: December
2006