Building light vs. durability & Wing Loading vs. Stability

[payne9999]

The paulownia wood has grain that is almost identical to balsa. Very open in the long direction. I think if you had a real straight section you could blow air through it.

I think when it comes to electric planes, especially park flyers, the wing loading is what it is about and not necessarily the total weight.

Dave

[Captain Dunsel]

Aspen is sold by Lowes in NJ, so it does make it away from the Great Lakes area.

I don't use much CA, so the problem with getting it to cure or stick to lite ply or spruce isn't an issue. I prefer aliphatic, for several reasons:

1. Easy cleanup
2. Gives me enough time to adjust things
3. Forces me to stop at some point and let things sit, whilst I think through what I've done, am doing and am about to do.
4. Doesn't hurt when I spill a blob onto my bare, hairy skin!
5. No smell
6. Much cheaper than CA
7. Doesn't go bad or clog the bottle the way CA does
8. About as light as CA, once it's cured

I agree that CA is faster and that it'll bond very dissimilar materials, so I do use it when I really need those qualities, but I'd say that 90+% of my gluing is done with aliphatics.

CD

[road king 97]

Originally Posted by Captain Dunsel

Aspen is sold by Lowes in NJ, so it does make it away from the Great Lakes area.

I don't use much CA, so the problem with getting it to cure or stick to lite ply or spruce isn't an issue. I prefer aliphatic, for several reasons:

1. Easy cleanup
2. Gives me enough time to adjust things
3. Forces me to stop at some point and let things sit, whilst I think through what I've done, am doing and am about to do.
4. Doesn't hurt when I spill a blob onto my bare, hairy skin!
5. No smell
6. Much cheaper than CA
7. Doesn't go bad or clog the bottle the way CA does
8. About as light as CA, once it's cured

I agree that CA is faster and that it'll bond very dissimilar materials, so I do use it when I really need those qualities, but I'd say that 90+% of my gluing is done with aliphatics.

CD

I use tite bond 11 on most every thing except for landing gear area and motor box then i use a little epoxy . Ca is fast but i have plenty of things to work on when building a plane and the time you save by using ca you burn up trying to sand it smooth before covering . joe

[Rockin Robbins]

I tend to use CA as a temporary tack to maintain alignment while the real glue cures. CA is a great clamp.

[tenacious101010]

I read one time that... If you dont have a structural failure now and then.... you are building too heavy. Kinda weird, but there is some truth in the saying. Good luck with your project, Denny

[TLyttle]

Nope, not weird at all. Old racing adage: if nothing breaks, you aren't going fast enough, same philosophy...

[payne9999]

Now the wing is the only thing left to cover. I am going to take it to work and get an official weight today. I think the Fusealage all up is going to be about 16 oz. I have the giant bush plane size wheels because I fly off a grass field and landings are challenging (to keep from flipping over).





I am hoping for under 20 oz. for the finished plane (ready to fly weight).

Dave

[road king 97]

She is a looker and i love the bush plane wheels . great build and cant wait to see the wing. joe

[payne9999]

Thanks Joe!

I just weighed the fuse at work (with motor, battery and all) at 17.9 oz. So the original design ( the whole plane) was supposed to weigh 17 oz. The wing assembly is super light but I am anxious to measure the finished weight. If I am over by 3 or 4 ounces I think I will be really pleased.

I like the paulownia wood for some applications but in this case I am really happy with the mostly spruce fuselage. It seems very rugged and hopefully it will handle my landings.

Dave

[road king 97]

Where do you get paulownia wood at and how much is it compared to balsa ? joe

[JackM]

Beautiful craftsmanship!

[road king 97]

Originally Posted by JackM

Beautiful craftsmanship!

I agree and i would like to fly a light plane on the wing rather that a heavy one on a big motor. joe

[kenchiroalpha]

Hi Dave
Outstanding
You have done a splendid job
Shes very sharp looking
Take care
Yours Hank

[payne9999]

Originally Posted by road king 97

Where do you get paulownia wood at and how much is it compared to balsa ? joe

Joe,

Here is where I got mine:

http://www.worldpaulownia.com/html/p...warehouse.html

It seems cheap to me because for the $49 I was able to cut up wood for many models but I have never bought balsa blocks to cut up so I don't have a good point of comparison.

Also, It seems like if there was a source for nice balsa blocks it would be nice because a person could cut for the grain direction that is most desirable for a given part. It seems like companies that supply cut up balsa get a lot for their product. To complete a short kit for a 53" Cub for example, I spent about $40.00 just on balsa. However, to cut your own stock (especially sheets) you need several peices of equipment. I was trained to be a luthier (guitar builder) so I am fortunate to have the machines.

Dave

[road king 97]

Thanks for the link ,i get my balsa from national and so far they have sent me very nice stuff. I had some balsa blocks and did not need to order any yet, but you can price them here i think. I own a good balsa stripper and make my own sticks rather that buying to soft of sticks or crooked ones. I was a master carpenter for 30 + years now and have a few tools in my wood shop .http://www.nationalbalsa.com/ BTW, i have a friend of mine that just made a new composit steel guitar and it starting to market and sell them. joe

[kenchiroalpha]

Originally Posted by road king 97

Thanks for the link ,i get my balsa from national and so far they have sent me very nice stuff. I had some balsa blocks and did not need to order any yet, but you can price them here i think. I own a good balsa stripper and make my own sticks rather that buying to soft of sticks or crooked ones. I was a master carpenter for 30 + years now and have a few tools in my wood shop .http://www.nationalbalsa.com/ BTW, i have a friend of mine that just made a new composit steel guitar and it starting to market and sell them. joe

Hi Joe
Would love to see that Guitar if possible
BTW i am searching for plans for the Canard stick, and have asked some other old timers like us for help as well
Take care dear friend
Yours Hank

[road king 97]

Originally Posted by kenchiroalpha

Hi Joe
Would love to see that Guitar if possible
BTW i am searching for plans for the Canard stick, and have asked some other old timers like us for help as well
Take care dear friend
Yours Hank

My buddy sent me a video of his new steel but i lost it,i will have him send it to me again. Yea that cressline canard stick plan is a slippery son of a gun and hard to find. thanks hank. joe

[Dereck]

For those who don't read realworld paper magazines, from the August 2011 Flying Models and a plan feature article by Dave Platt - who may lean to gigantic scale, but knows more about true aeromodelling than most of us added together.

Dave recalls a flying buddy saying "I have noticed that a slightly heavier model will always fly better than a lighter, broken one".

It has an element of truth...

Whoever has been after a Canard Stik plan - it is a rare bird indeed. No sign of it on the old RCM plans site, and after wading through more garbage than the Versus Channel shows atop the Tour de France, no sign of it on MAN's shopping site either.

It must have been published somewhere in the US magazine arena!

There's a dedicated canard thread on some other E-power forum site, though the name escapes me

D

[kenchiroalpha]

Originally Posted by Dereck

For those who don't read realworld paper magazines, from the August 2011 Flying Models and a plan feature article by Dave Platt - who may lean to gigantic scale, but knows more about true aeromodelling than most of us added together.

Dave recalls a flying buddy saying "I have noticed that a slightly heavier model will always fly better than a lighter, broken one".

It has an element of truth...

Whoever has been after a Canard Stik plan - it is a rare bird indeed. No sign of it on the old RCM plans site, and after wading through more garbage than the Versus Channel shows atop the Tour de France, no sign of it on MAN's shopping site either.

It must have been published somewhere in the US magazine arena!

There's a dedicated canard thread on some other E-power forum site, though the name escapes me

D

Hi Dereck
I have some older Nicad and NimH Brushed birds which i wont change over to lipos and brushless as i like how they fly due to the added weight
http://www.wattflyer.com/forums/show...5&postcount=12
Take care
Yours Hank

[TLyttle]

Last plan I saw from Dave Platt was a rubber scale Guardian, seems to me he won his Class at the Nats with it, so "gigantic scale" is what he does now. He always excels, no matter what he tries...

[road king 97]

I have some older brushed planes also ,flew with c size batteries ,no esc just a radio shack toggle switch with a servo to slide it off and on.lol I have one with a old car speed control with the bar that scraped across a coil also ,never new if it would work that day and if it did how much it would interfear with my reciever. But i was flying a very heavy E plane and having some fun in the late 70,s and 80,s with em. We have come a long way with e planes in the last 10 years. joe

[Dereck]

Originally Posted by kenchiroalpha

Hi Dereck
I have some older Nicad and NimH Brushed birds which i wont change over to lipos and brushless as i like how they fly due to the added weight
http://www.wattflyer.com/forums/show...5&postcount=12
Take care
Yours Hank

My last NiMh impelled model was my Four Star 40. With 600W driving a 15 x 10 off 16 x 3300mA Sanyo NiMh, it was good for up to KE loops and suchlike, at around 5-1/4lb. The last pack died from old age and having a lot demanded of it, the eleven year old model was about worn out - same reasons really - and someone offered me a pile of loot for the geared Hacker. I sometimes wish I'd kept the motor and built a new Four Star for it. The motor's brief appearance in an OD pattern ride wasn't succesful, as it wasn't a good match to the airframe.

The model had all the performance I wanted, plus the NiMh were far less demanding in use than LiPo. The snag now would be the 100AH deep cycle lead acid I used for field charging - keeping one of those happy in a third floor condo would be much more fuss than when my last one lived in our old townhouse's garage.

Dave Platt's latest in Flying Models is a 44" span high winged free flighter with a PAW 55 diesel. The engine is academic really, you have to be English to really appreciate a diesel

So it looks like he hasn't forgotten how to do real aeromodelling.

To liven things up pictorially - have a shot of my latest heavyweight. I took the 1950's British FROG rubber powered free flight kit, the 'Raven' and blew it up to an IMAA legal 200% full size. That's all of 36" span, so I suspect the Immense Model Aircraft Association won't let me play in their sandpit, even if I brought my scale documentation With a 1500Kv outrunner on 2S 400mA, she flies at 8.4oz. Control is rudder, ele and motor.

The structure is 'scale', so it could be built much lighter. I did make the tailfeathers with built up frameworks, vice the original's all sheet ones though. The only serious alterations were an extra wing rib, as the rib spacing was getting a little excessive looking, and a battery hatch on the now sheeted fuselage top from noseblock to cockpit.

Info on the 'full sized' Frog kits at: http://www.houseoffrog.co.uk/

D

[Dereck]

Oops - nearly forgot. Info on the FROG range on a great website at:

http://www.houseoffrog.co.uk/

D

[road king 97]

Dereck,I dont know about you but i dont build in the summer much but if this heat keeps up around here my building time may increase to all summers and only fly in fall. My power went out yesterday from 3 in the afternoon till 2 in the morning and left me with no air . I think comed should start replacing old lines and old transformers instead of giving out all thier money to the top bosses for a bonus . joe

[Dereck]

Joe
When I moved to Chicago, I expected a building season - in the winter! Comed are a bunch of (expletive deleted). Should be getting what they have to work, not wanting to charge customers so they can put a fancier logo on the CEO's car or whatever their latest scam is.

The Raven 2X was designed and built over a three month period, during four three-week chemo cycles. That meant I could only really work on it for around ten days at the most in a three week cycle. Test flying was done when that lot was over - I was barely able to drive at best then.

In normal times, it would have taken me about two weeks - one to do the plans, another to do the building and covering.

Built my first electric in 1985 - a pretty handy three channel trainer type kit I reviewed for an English magazine. The ESC was a microswitch epoxied to the servo case and actuated by a carefully hacked into shape servo disc arm.

Electric flight has come a long way! The OPs standard of airframe was a ways down the road then. The lightest electric I recall seeing back then was a scale model of a pre-WW1 monoplane around 24" span. It had two very small cells of dubious chemistry and the 'throttle' involved timing the charge from 'flat' to hopefully hit the desired competition spec runtime. No RC gear - it was a free flight model.

It also wupped all we CO2 enthusiasts at the British Indoor Scale Nationals in 1989...

D