RCXPLANES

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Edible,
Those are the Bluebird BMS-306 micro servos, 12 oz, in/ 0.11 sec @ 4.8V, $14.00. Shawn at Castle Creations told me they are made by GWS when I spoke to him about 4 servos on the Phx 25 at 11.1 +V. He said there was really no problem and they wouldn't dammage the ESC at all. What would happen if there was any problem is the motor would loose a few RPM for a second then come back fully on line if the BEC overheated. The test described by him was as follows; "on the bench with a full battery charge, everything hooked up, ESC setup done as will be flown and plane or motor/gearbox secured, run the motor up to 3/4 power and after 30 seconds or so, start moving the sticks around a lot, except for the throttle. If the impedence of the servos is to great for the BEC, you might sense the motor loose some RPM (unspecified amount) then gain it back as the BEC protection kicks in and out. If you have any trouble with these servos you can run the Hitec HS 50 or 55 micros with no problem as they seem to have the least impedence of all we have tested and have not had the BEC protection come on with them."
I have had a few quarries as to the equipment on this plane so here's a quick rundown of what I chose. There may be better or more appropriate equipment out there, but this is how I did it. My plane seems to fly great like this.

AUW is still unknown at this time (TBA)

Depron 6mm white foam
0.156" (4mm) carbon tube (3 pieces)
Himax 2015-5400 motor (2015-4100 was not available)
Castle Creations Phoenix 25 ESC
Kokam 1500 mAh 3s1p battery
GWS 12 x 6 Prop
GWS 350 "D" gearbox
Motor mount rings for Himax/GWS Gearbox
Kokam Lipo 402 charger (soon I hope)
GWS 6N or 6NH reciever (pins come out the end lengthwise)
Bluebird BMS-306 servos
DuBro micro Pull/Pull system. (one package does two surfaces)
Dubro micro pushrod system modified for ailerons. (lots left over)
DuBro Micro control horns on the ailerons. (I'm not sure these are going to be permanent)
1/16" nylon plate fashioned into pass through micro control horns for the pull/pull tail surfaces.
Self adhiesive Velcro for battery attachment
Dean's connector

Thanks for following these postings. I hope you have either enjoyed them or learned something from them. I learned a considerable amount from the project.

flip3d

u should get the hobbico mkII charger.
it will charge 2 batts at a time and will charge nicd,nimd, lion/lipo

and its only 40 bucks.

flip

i want plans of ur flip

RCXPLANES

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Can you dirrect me to a site that sells this cherger for $40.00?

Thanks

RCXPLANES

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Glory be, I got my charger today and a decent weather break this afternoon. I got the chance to fly on a full charge for the first time and all I can say is, HOLLY STINKIN' COW. This thing went 18:50 minuets with what was an unbelieveable amount of power. It easily rivals my Saito 100 Flip 3D in power to weight and thrust performance. I sensed a bit of power drop off in the last 4 or 5 minuets but definitely not substantial. It would still hover at just below half throttle right up to low voltage cutoff. I landed after the first 6 minuets again to check the batt and motor temp. They were warmer than the first flight, the motor way more than the battery, but not too hot to hold my hand on indeffinitely. I thought it was fine so I relaunched and restarted the stopwatch.

With the amount of power this thing has right now for the full flight, I am definitely going to add the landing gear. I don't see them holding it back at all. I am using the DuBro 1 1/2" ultra light wheels for the mains on 0.056" wire and the DuBro micro tail wheel and bracket. Should be cool to ROG and do some harrier landings and then takeoff again.

If there is one thing that I don't like about this plane it has to be the hinging of the control surfaces. Especially at the tail. The tape just doesn't seem to want to keep the rudder in it's plane of opperation very well. It will kind of go off to the beveled side and shorten the distance to the servo. Maybe I didn't do as good a job as I could have but It doesn't seem very precise at all. I didn't notice it in flight but the pull/pull definitely gets slacked lines. On my next one or if I revamp this one, I think I will look into some micro nylon barrel hinges. I am not very worried about their weight with the kind of performance this thing has.

All in all, this was a great project for me that resulted in a pretty *****en little plane. There are only a couple of minor issues to address with the first design draft. That is next on my agenda along with the addition of the gear. I would highly recomend any of the equipment I used for this project although I am sure there are better choices and there will be those that have their own ideas as to equipment to use. Thats fine, use what you know. After all, this is my first Flat Foam and electric project. My opinions may change with some experience of other hardware. I loved being able to plug it in, throttle up and throw it into flight. I also loved just putting it in the back seat without any cleaning at all for the ride home.

RCXPLANES

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I just couldn't stand the tape hinges at the tail anymore so, With the post and a PM from Mups53, I Tried a couple of options for hinging. Thanks for the help Mike. It made everything go very smoothly. I hapen to have a balsa stripper, so I didn't have to make the tool that Mups discribed to me as a #11 blade CA'd to a piece of ply that would cut the hinge slots nicely. Either way would work great. I decided on the DuBro small barrel hinges although the CA hinges would do nicely as well. At $3.50 for 15 of the barrel hinges, I figured it was worth it. I flew it this afternoon and let me tell you, controling the tail hinge line was a bigger help than I thought it would be. When I started, I was only going to double bevel the rudder but decided to do the elevators the same while they were off.

Here is some pics of the well worthwhile update to your flat foam planes tape hinges.
First I used some 220 sand paper and a flat piece of ply to sand the other side of the single bevel into fuse and stab. You can see the elevators are already done and the beveling for the rudder is ready. The wax paper is to keep any joiner wire epoxy from getting on the stab.

RCXPLANES

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This shows how I set up my balsa stripper for 3mm and used it to center the hinge slots. At Mups suggestion, I set the depth to be just a touch more than the inserted part of the hinge. this worked very nicely even on the prebeveled surface. Mups53's tool would work fine as well if you can get the foam flat on a table or hold a flat surface against it. I just happen to have the stripper.

RCXPLANES

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It is important not to get any epoxy in the barrel of the hinge, rendering it worthless. I reached into my pocket and applied some soft chapstick to both sides of the folded hinge barrel. This works excelent. Just don't get it where you want the epoxy to stick.

RCXPLANES

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I was using 5 min epoxy, so I first put the hinges into the control surface and left the barrel completely exposed. This gives the greatest deflection. I used a "T" pin to put some epoxy into the slots before inserting the hinge that I coated the first 2/3ds of. Once the three hinges were inserted and the epoxy was just going off, I folded all of the hinges against the edge of the control surface and aligned them by eye to have the same depth and hinge line. Not that hard but kind of critical.

RCXPLANES

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I installed two hinges on each elevator half and used a music wire joiner. I epoxied the joiner to one of the halves first. After that half was firmly attached to the stab, I attached the second half in it's place and taped both elevator halves to the stabilizer so that the epoxy in the holes for the joiner would dry with both elevators at the same angle. After this inexpensive upgrade, the hinges are very free and hold the center line great. You can tell in the air even though such things are not supposed to be that critical on these planes. The pull/pull system stayed in perfect adjustment for the flight when it would not before. I noticed that one of my ailerons is starting to pull the tape up now. Guess I got some more upgrading to do.

If you find $3.50, some epoxy and some free time, I would highly recomend upgrading your Foamy this way. I had to do a little touch up on the paint where the tape pulled it off as well but I think it was worth it.

RCXPLANES

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Mike,
I just want to thank you for all of your help. Made everything easier.

RCXPLANES

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I have had some requests for plans for this plane so I am very close to finalizing them on my Autodesk QuickCAD program. So far it looks pretty darn good. If you read the thread from the begining you know that I started out with old fashioned paper plans that were hand drawn but all the measurements are translating perfectly. If you have any intrest in these plans, please PM me, that way I can judge the interest in them and proceed acordingly to get them out.

Ian.W

Can you get them in adobe acrobat form. Check out this thing, i found it on the bottomof a foamy majestic and it may be useull. I wll be liooking into it tonight. Its called go2pdf for free. well i hope

Ian

RCXPLANES

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Ian,
I will check out go2pdf if I can find it. I tried to use the Adobe web site based "Create Adobe PDF Online" with 5 free trials before you have to subscribe for $9.95 a month. It would be worth it but seems to have some problems. In four hours. I made two wing plan pdfs using different methods. Both resulted in a one sheet 8.5 x 11 portrait miniture of the 8 page landscaped wing. Using Adobe's PoastScript drivers and other recomended downloads to print to file and convert to pdf, failed to render a pdf at all. Their forum is riddled with unanswered complaints.

Still working it out.

Ian.W

wow, thats just confused me reading your post!

Ive got my arcutacht friend comming around tonight hopefully so ill ask him were he gets A0 plans done

RCXPLANES

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I found go2pdf.com and got their PDF Virtual Printer. It works really good, for everything except tiled CAD drawings. It won't allow me to define the printer margines for each page in the tiling and looses some information where the drawing is and the printer can't print. I had no problem when I set it up for my printer. Something about printer drivers.

I am still working on it.

RCXPLANES

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Ok, For those who are interested, I now have a set of PDF plans for the Foam Flip 3D. They are tiled and take 16 pages to print, The funny thing is that I have two computers conected through a LAN to the same printer and one of them prints the PDF perfectly while the other is small by 3/8 inch over 6 inches. I had this problem when I first got a set of PDF plans and all I can say is if they come out with a scaling problem, you might try a different computer / printer combo. PM me if you want them this week.

Errol

patternflyer1

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Awesome job on this thread and the plane Errol. You look like a very good builder!!!!!!! Thanks you have given me some great ideas!!!!!!!!!!

RCXPLANES

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Thanks Patternflyer1, I just use all of my experiences and get real picky when I build something. If I can do it anyone can. Let us know about your creation.

lagCisco

i remember seeing your post when you re-covered the flip3d and i really loved the way it looked and was also thinking about building a foamie using the flips outlines but you beat me to it! anyways what kind of carbon spars do you use for the fuse and wing and where did you get them from?

RCXPLANES

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lagCisco,
I had a hard time finding what I wanted at the time. I used a 29.5" x 4mm or 0.157" OD for both the LE and Fuse Spar from Hang em high Kites and my LHS carries a 0.157" OD carbon tube from CFS that I used for the wing. I think the product from Hang em high kites is slightly better quality and if thay have the 48" ones in stock, that;s the way to go. All they had when I ordered was the 29.5" ones.
Part CT1570L - Carbon Tube Pultruded '1570' (4mm) From [link=http://ecom.citystar.com/hang-em-high/ushop/index.cgi?ID=GJHEVX&task=show&cat=SPARS%2dLong+Carbon]Hang em High[/link] is what you want. It is the second listing down on this page. Don't forget to scuff them a little bit with 220 sandpaper before you epoxy them in.

Ian.W

i dont get the instructions for the carbon LE, do you make two wings???

RCXPLANES

My Feedback: (1)

Edible,
Sorry for the confusion. You just make one wing and rout it out like the main spar only do it on the edge of the foam between the top and bottom surfaces. Here is a picture of how I did it as it is being epoxied. I used wax paper between the tape and the epoxy and carbon. The wing comes out very stiff like this. I was just out in the yard flying it.

Levi_Jordan

My Feedback: (21)

Hi Errolw,

I have been watching your progress since you started.... It looks very nice. I decided to chime in after hearing of your successful flights and hearing you are working on the plans in CAD.

If you can send me a .DXF file of your plans I will laser cut foam sets for FREE for anyone who wants to build one.... Just send foam and return postage and I am more than happy to do it at no charge. Yes, I do meen free.... no strings. I just want to help out and get more people into this awesome part of the hobby!

Just let me know if you want to do it.... my e-mail is [email protected]

Once again, great job, and keep the pictures and info rolling!

RCXPLANES

My Feedback: (1)

Sled_driver,
Thanks a bunch for that offer. I think many people must have unsubscribed to this thread. The interest in plans was pretty high for a while and I have only sent out a few PDFs since I posted their availability.
I had no idea you could laser cut this stuff. Right now of course it is dificult to get the Depron and my local Lowe's doesn't carry the Bluecor foam.
I drew these plans in Autodesk QuickCAD and can save to a *.DFX file. I will tell you though that I did not use polylines for the drawing and I have heard that CNC has a problem with that. I don't know if there is enough interest right now to redo them in polylines. If the interest looks high enough I will do that.
Right now I am drawing up another plan for this plane with a built up wing of a 20% airfoil. I will use polylines there and include the lead in and stop that should be there as well.
Thanks again for the great offer for the folks out there that would want that kind of service. Let me know people.

Levi_Jordan

My Feedback: (21)

Sounds good....

Don't worry about polylines... our laser can do splines and arcs just fine. if you need something for your ne project, just let me know... CNC is a hobby too for me, and I have a CNC foam cutter, Laser and Router. They sit most of the time, so a project is great! Right now I am putting together a little website dedicated to the small 3D foamy types.... I've got 8 or 10 designs now and am just finishing getting the website up....Having TONS of fun of course!