Abuelo

Being new to your forum, and busy relearning to build and fly after some 30 years, I felt joining this contest would be a good way to get positively involved. Since my building experience had all been with balsa I elected to build something 'my old way', and the Lady Bug caught my eye.

The Lady Bug is, so far, entirely 1/8" stringers and sheets with some 1/16" for ribs and gussets, and Titebond glue. Will complete the fuselage by closing up the nose and fabricating an extended landing gear for prop clearance.

So far:

- Wing is 9.5" x 21.5", built per the plans, and 19 grams.

- Tail surfaces are built-up rather than sheet as called for, and together are 11 grams.

- Fuselage so far is 19 grams.

Covering is intended to be red Coverlite but once home with the packet calculated there is not enough to fully cover. So, will incorporate some Aerospan on the wing and stab underside to complete and to offer some color contrast. Sealing will be by nitrate dope.

CHELLIE

Thats Looking Nice

Crashalott

Should be a good one.
Keep er goin!
Crash

quorneng

Nice!
Very neat.

CHELLIE

How is the Build coming along, its looking very nice so far

Abuelo

Getting close to final sanding, doping, and covering. All the major components are built and roughed in. Weight as shown is 79 grams, 2 3/4 oz on the digital scale. Total wing area looks around 160 sq inches.

Still to do are the pushrod exits, have the coffee stir sticks already thanks to McDonalds, and the top windshield fairing. Had to redo the nose area as the firewall was set for an .049 glow and was way too far back for an electric. In spite of measuring twice before cutting, still have the firewall too far to the rear. The prop saver hits the very front of the fuselage and so I will need to modify, test fit both a 180 and 250 (which use the same X mount) and both hit.

I'll be out of town seeing grandkids from Oct 3-15, so need to get this finished and flown before the contest ends. Will be back once covered.

Building so far consumed nine 1/8" x 1/8" strips, one each of 1/8" x 3/16" and 1/8" x 1/4" strips, one sheet each of 1/16" and 1/8" with the majority available for the next project, scrap triangle stock, 2" x 4" 1/16 ply, bits of 3/16" and 1/8" aluminum tube, 1/8" dowel, and .062" wire. Wheels are DuBro 2" foam, misc. hardware and hinges are DuBro, covering will be Polyspan and red Coverlite, attached and sealed with Randolph tautening nitrate dope. Assembly glue is Titebond with a couple dabs of 30 minute epoxy.

CHELLIE

Sweet

Abuelo

Have the Lady Bug partially covered. Tomorrow's plan is to get the servo's mounted and start on the fuselage. Landing gear, such as it is, is complete and ready for installation, and hinge the control surfaces. The rudder is upside down in the photos but will be correctly installed.

The flying surfaces are covered with Polyspan, adhered with thinned nitrate dope, and shrunk with a heat gun. No issues there. The CoverLite on the control surfaces and wing underside tips is another story.

CoverLite was not intended for a dope installation although it does work. Found I had to dope the wood just prior and then press down and hold until the dope dried slightly and the tissue stayed stuck. It seems to be a tissue-thin polyspan type product with a sealing coat of some sort that thin nitrate is slow to penetrate. Once down it stays down, thinner is slow to release whatever is stuck and the color slightly bleeds into the balsa.

Does shrink well, however, with a careful application of a heat gun. In retrospect, i would have done better in covering the wing entirely with the Polyspan and using the CoverLite as trim over that. Live and learn.

So tomorrow, will fit the servos and pushrod and apply three nitrate coats on the fuselage. Looks like I will use the Polyspan entirely and possibly a blue tissue as trim. Will see how things go.

CHELLIE

Very very Nice Reminds me of my Stick, Tissue and Dope Builds from the late 60s and I am only 29 years old LOL and 18 at Heart I still remember using Ambroid and Dope to build Model Planes with and i love the smell of the Ambroid Glue and Dope Take care, Chellie

quorneng

Nice build
Very neat and compact but the tail moment looks ever so short!

Abuelo

Thank you for your kind words.

The tail moment is small, chord is 9.5" on a 21.5" span, but that is the nature of the entire Clancy Lazy Bee menagerie. Should work, most of Andy Clancy's designs are on Outerzone and a few on YouTube, along with several freelance jobbies at up to a 72" span.

Compare to my Roaring 20, a Ken Willard design from the 1960s with a 21" span, 5" chord, and the same 18" fuselage length. Flew with an E-flight 250 at just under 7 oz with a takeoff roll of inches. Got real small real quick. I just weighed them and the Roaring 20 came in at 101 grams empty and the Bug, without fuselage covering, at 92 grams. I think I will be 0K with a 250 2 cell motor.

Sending you a question on your Fokker build thread. Very well done, by the way.

Abuelo

My anachronistic Lady Bug is complete and first flown this morning. All went well in spite of being slightly tail heavy (the built-up stab helped but not enough) and a couple of minor warps.

Construction was balsa with bits of ply and bass and was essentially from Clancy Aviation's plans secured from Outerzone. Some lightening in material sizes, simplifying the landing gear, and a lot of sanding cut the weight down some and no structural faults showed up in initial testing. Covering is Polyspan with some red Coverlite and the blue tissue was from the family's package wrapping supplies. All covering attaching and finishing was with nitrate dope. Hardware was Dubro, either purchased or from bulk stock.

Total cost, less taxes,was $36.46. I counted full price on materials like balsa and Polyspan that are used on other projects so the scrap/excess is not wasted. Fittings from bulk supplies are estimated and the one specific item, the Coverlite that I purchased intending to cover in full but only used for trim, is included in full.

All up after adding the nose weight is 230 gr / 8 1/8 oz. Motor is a 250, 1200 kv with a APC 7 x 3.8 prop and so the thrust to weight is close to 1 : 1. Battery is 350 mAh, 35c, 2 cell. Radio is Spektrum and HS 55 servos. These are not figured into the cost.

Photos attached. Also have two short videos, one showing the takeoff roll and the other shows it in flight but they are in the .avi format. Question: What format should I convert these to in order to post? I have an Intel Mac and will need a program to do so; don't think anything is built-in that will work.

Also, do I need to itemize the expenses or is a total OK?

A great contest, and thanks. Learned a lot from the expert builders here on their projects.

mclarkson

That's a little cutie!

Crashalott

Hey that looks like my kinda plane,i might have to build one.
Crash

CHELLIE

Yeaaaa Thats a Cute little plane I Love it, Great Job, Waiting for the video Take care and have fun, Chellie

Abuelo

Lady Bug is trimmed and flying. Video showing the first flights is together but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to upload to the forum. Never done this before, don't know the format or how to get it to be standalone.

Have separate videos in .avi, combined in .mov and .m4v. Suggestions, anyone?

Using a Mac with iPhoto, and the Apple store people recommended ivi for converting.

Wrench66

Prolly the simplest way is to upload the vid to your desktop then transfer it to YouTube.com .....dead easy and you can post here with no drama
--Ray

BTW....your Bee Build is lookin great!

Abuelo

Thanks. This is a whole lot simpler than what I had been trying.

Uploaded to YouTube a few minutes ago and it seemed to work. Will post the address once its confirmed as active and working.

Abuelo

The first day's flight video with a few some stills is now on YouTube.

http://youtu.be/tXOAhp8VIiU

pmullen503

Nice! It looks like it can fly surprisingly fast in the video. Well done.

Abuelo

Part of the speed is perspective, its small and bulky and was in fairly close. Lady Bug has just a 22" wingspan, 9.5" chord, with an 8 oz/sq ft wing loading. Did some ballpark calculating and the cubic wing loading came out to 7.79 and the prop pitch max at 31.95 mph. Figuring in inefficiencies, must be flying in the mid 20s.

CHELLIE

Sweet Build and Flight very well done

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXOAh...ature=youtu.be