george197928

Hi,

I would like to make a Guillow Fokker DR1 or Sopwith Camel into an electric R/C model. I don't know much about electric, so any advice would be welcome, but I do have one specific question:

my plan was to have three channels, speed control/elevator/ailerons. I thought the usual 3 channel setup was throttle/elevator/rudder with lots of dihedral, but would ailerons make flying more fun, and is this setup usual for small models?

Are any of these considerations important?:

Rudder counters adverse yaw when using ailerons. My understanding is that co-ordination is essential for gliders with long wings, but doesn't matter much for power models, though i saw somewhere that it was an issue particluarly for DR1. maybe the answer would be to link rudder to the aileron servo, does anyone do this or would it put too much load on a small servo?

I'd need rudder for steering on ground-would it be hard to take off without one?

need rudder for spinning/recovery from accidental spin?

any others?

cheers,
George

Matt Kirsch

My Feedback: (21)

When converting these types of kits, weight and complexity are both considerations. A simple pulll-pull rudder, using thread, is much lighter and simpler than the typical aileron setup.

Rubber power planes are designed with non-scale dihedral in them, in order to make them more stable in flight. This makes them ideal for rudder-only control.

A word to the wise, though: Guillow's kits traditionally have very hard, very heavy balsa. You can save a lot of weight, and sacrifice none of the strength if you use the provided parts as templates and cut new parts out of lightweight balsa. On the 24" Cessna 170 I built, I saved 1/3 of an ounce just by replacing the spars. The bare airframe still weighs 25g. To fly well as an R/C conversion, it needs to weigh half that much...

george197928

thanks for the warning, maybe i'll just stick to rudder.
1/3 of an ounce just by replacing the spars! isn't that the weight of a servo? Does hard and heavy balsa equal strong, i.e. instead of cutting out lots of new ribs could i just drill lightening holes in the original ones?

Jim Finn

My Feedback: (2)

Those kits are pretty heavy and very small to fly R/C. Biplanes are not the easist to build or fly. Hope you have lots of R/C experiance. The power system (motor, speed controler, gearbox and battery pack) should weigh no more than 1/2 the all up weight. That is gonna' be tough to manage with a Guillow kit.

Mike Taylor

My Feedback: (1)

You might want to look at Dumas kits. They are built incredibly light and are also laser cut. They have a few WWI and Golden Age biplanes in 30" WS that others have successfully converted to electric R/C. Peole have also converted their Bearcats and Corsairs as well.
http://www.dumasproducts.com