yojoelay

G'day,

Today I found a complete wing and a 3/4 of a fuselage back to the tail from a Kyosho Calmato Sport. The wing only has a small hole in the leading edge. The fuselage is another story; everything until midway up the wing saddle is gone, and whats left is fuel soaked until about 3 inches (8cm) past the wing saddle. Tail feathers were fine, the previous owner even left the control horns.

I've got a few of spares around - a motor mount, pushrods, servo tray, maybe even an old firewall off a similar sized ARF - and flicking through this forum has inspired me to have a go. It will be my first rebuild and I've got three questions at this stage:

1 - Do I try to clean up the fuel mess and build from mid- wing saddle forewards, or cut all the soaked stuff out and start with clean wood? (not sure how to clean up fuel soaked wood but I have seen some suggestions in other forums - any tips are welcome) - note, the turtle deck appears to be made of foam, so chemical solutions are likely out
2 - Any tips on building the front of the fuselage up? I've got a bit of kit building experience but never from scratch...
3 - Any pictures / dimensions of the front end of a low wing Calmato Sport would be appreciated

Thanks,

Joel

bbbair

If you are going to take on a rebuild of this size, I would go all the way and cut out the oil soaked wood and replace it all.

Oil soaked wood never really glues well, is heavy and soft - although there are ways to clean the wood - for something like this - rip it out and start fresh!

Good luck and be sure to take lots of before and after photos! It makes for a much better story later on. [sm=thumbs_up.gif]

Flyboy Dave

My Feedback: (21)

....yep, cut out all the bad wood. I did a complete "nose-job" awhile back, it is
rewarding to restore a plane like that....and fun. [sm=thumbup.gif]

Have fun....take pics....post 'em in this thread. Let's see the rebuild.

FBD.

Airwarrior

At that point you may even consider scratchbuilding an entire new fuselage. Build a simple box type structure like used on the Stik series of planes, and mount the wings and tail feathers from the crashed plane.

yojoelay

Last night I peeled back some of the old covering to find that the oil damage is far more extensive. The fuselage is oil soaked all the way down to the tail along the bottom. I'm hoping the previous owner used enough epoxy to seal up the tail feathers - haven't peeled back the covering far enough to really tell. If not it shouldn't be too hard to find another set - most airplanes don't seem to crash into the ground tail first and since I belong to a large club, planes tend to crash fairly often.

A scratch built box / stik fuselage is looking like the go.

I'll snap and post a few photos by the end of the weekend.

Joel

Wine Country Flyer

My Feedback: (5)

Yep-Give it a go. You'll be glad you did, and the warm fuzzy feeling you get when it leaves the ground for the first time under your guidence is like nothing else.
John

OzMo

My Feedback: (3)

a well rebuilt plane is a joy! be extra sure to correctly duplicate the incidences and moments. a search or request on this site is likely to get that data for you good luck.

yojoelay

Right,

As promised here are the photos. The fuselage is in fairly rough condition, you might even see the staining from the fuel. The wing is looking great, with just a small hole in the leading edge.

I'll document the full rebuild here. My plan is to remove the tail feathers and build a new stik type fuselage. Nothing fancy as it will be my first crack at this sort of thing. Well, on second thought I might make it a tail dragger - lets see how it goes.

OzMo, I'll take your suggestion about searching for measurements and preserving the incidences and moments. I figured I'd start by tracing out what I could from the old fuselage, then move on to planning out the rest of the new one. I'm also thinking that I won't throw out the old fuse until the new one is built - just in case there are some measurements required late in the game.

The current fuselage is lite ply. I don't have a power saw so I was thinking about a 1/8th inch balsa with some 1/8th by 1/4 inch webbing to strengthen it. Formers will likely be lite ply - I think cutting those can by hand will be fairly easy.

Any other suggestions are welcome, particularly at the outset as its a lot easier to change the plan now.

More progress as it comes...

Joel

yojoelay

Thread revival - fast forward 1.5 years.

I've had a run of bad luck crashing two scratch built planes in two weekends. One was a complete write-off, the wings folded in mid air (had about 300 flights or so, and just as many tough landings), the other suffered a reciever failure but came out rebuildable. More on those later.

Anyways, I couldn't really face either of them it was time to get going on the Calmato.

The old fuselage was scrapped after removing the rudder, which was still in good condition, and approximating the length. The new one will be a trike arrangement, mostly because I'm in bad shape for a plane now and I don't have any tail dragger landing gear that aren't badly bent. I'm re-using the original gear that came on the wing and adding a nose wheel from an old trainer.

The new fuselage sides are 5mm balsa (about 3/16" or so) laminated from the trailing edge forwards with 6.5mm balsa (1/4"?). The main former which holds the wing is 3mm ply with the area supporting the wing dowels doubled up to 6mm ply. Firewall is two layers of 3mm ply laminated together. F3 is a sheet of 5mm balsa, F4 and F5 are 6.5mm balsa sticks glued up to support the fuselage sides, top and bottom. Not sure what the weight will be but I'll do an all up weight before flying.

The fuel tank bay has 6.5mm balsa on the bottom. The whole top will be a single sheet of 5mm balsa while the underside will be 3mm balsa installed cross grained. Power will be either an OS 46ax or a Saito 56 - since both of them are now available - mounted upright.

There are some minor dents in the wing that need patching, more on that when I get to it.

So, all up it's pretty typical stuff and although it won't be a rocket, it should be more than strong enough to take a few knocks on landing while getting me back in the sky by next weekend!

If anyone knows the incidence of a Calmato sport wing please let me know - I haven't measured one yet but the new fuse sides were cut to match the old fuse so it should be fairly close. I have a new Robart incidence meter, looking forward to using it.

All the best,

Joel