FREE Pilatus Porter Pc-6 Plans .15 size
11-15-2011, 10:21 AM
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FREE Pilatus Porter Pc-6 Plans .15 size
After a while I added some (very little) details to the plans and here they are now.
Here is the original thread
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10677535
Have in mind that this is the first model I design.
Lots of details are left to the builder to find out.
Wingspan around 44 inches, for .15 size engine.
Over built to survive my poor flying skills.
Plans are in sketchup format and dxf format.
Sketchup includes 3D finished model and another model with the final outlines.
Dxf plans are in 2D only.
Feel free to modify the plans, just sent me the updated file so I can merge it woth this one and update the post.
Send contact information along with modified files to give the proper credit.
Well, skp and dxf formats not supported to be uploaded..so..just ask for the plans ad I'll send them to you, be patient.
Elias R.
Here is the original thread
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10677535
Have in mind that this is the first model I design.
Lots of details are left to the builder to find out.
Wingspan around 44 inches, for .15 size engine.
Over built to survive my poor flying skills.
Plans are in sketchup format and dxf format.
Sketchup includes 3D finished model and another model with the final outlines.
Dxf plans are in 2D only.
Feel free to modify the plans, just sent me the updated file so I can merge it woth this one and update the post.
Send contact information along with modified files to give the proper credit.
Well, skp and dxf formats not supported to be uploaded..so..just ask for the plans ad I'll send them to you, be patient.
Elias R.
11-15-2011, 10:27 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2004
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RE: FREE Pilatus Porter Pc-6 Plans .15 size
Here you go...no need to ask for the plans
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=C8BSYODO
You can send me emails if you have any questions though...probably won't have the answer but I'll be glad to share the ignorance with you
Elias R.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=C8BSYODO
You can send me emails if you have any questions though...probably won't have the answer but I'll be glad to share the ignorance with you
Elias R.
11-15-2011, 06:52 PM
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Location: Chilliwack, BC, CANADA
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RE: FREE Pilatus Porter Pc-6 Plans .15 size
Elias the trick to attaching the files is to rename them as something like Pilatusdxf.txt or Pilatusskp.txt. Then it'll attach. You just need to let us know you did that and to rename them after downloading to dump the .txt and move the period to the new spot between the name and the proper extension.
I opened up the plans and there's no doubt that you built it SOLID! ! ! ! The one thing I'd suggest is that if the model is built TOO heavy it becomes its own hammer which does more damage to it than a slightly lighter construction. Not to mention that if the model comes in at more than about 45 oz that it'll become all that much harder to fly due to the wing loading. And that will just encourage you to test the strength.
You'd have a tough time building it as heavy as it is and still keep it to 45 or less oz. So some changes I'd suggest which should not reduce the toughness by much are;
[ul][*] Reduce the sides, top and bottom to 1/8 sheet. Then to keep the nose area tougher glue on a 1/32 ply doubler that extends back to mid way under the wing.[*] Reduce the width of the tail surface outlines to 1/4 wide by 1/8 thick. But then to better support the skins include a few 1/8 sq ribs. The resulting surfaces will be lighter but just as strong. Frankly most folks would make them out of fairly light 3/16 sheet sand the edges a little and call it all good. It's a lot easier too.[*] I'm not sure what the function is for the deep U slot at the front of the windscreen but that should go. It's just a crush zone for any nose impacts. If it's to slot the landing gear into for some shock absorbing then that's fine. But it woudl be better to include a rubber shock mount in the leg than to do it in the fuselage. I've attached a sketch of a nice way to do this below.[*] You really don't need the extra bulkhead at the point just behind the one at the rear of the wing opening. It's a bit of a waste. However I would put in some vertical and cross square strips at two places evenly spaced between that rear wing opening bulkhead and the leading edge of the stabilizer to better support the long grain of the sides, top and bottom. By using strips instead of a bulkhead it makes it easier to feed the pushrods through.[*] To make for an easier elevator hookup I'd make the two elevator halves in one piece that spans the whole way with no center gap. Then leave the rear of the fuselage open. That way you attach the control horn to the center of the elevator and just at the opening. The pushrod comes through the opening and directly to the horn. This makes it SUPER easy to install after the model is finished and to remove it for any future repairs or any other reason. It's also a nice clean way to do the elevator hookup.[*] with the slightly thinner sides you'll want the strip wood to extend forward to the front of the wing opening. It'll better support the wing and avoid crushing the sides.[*] The wing at the center section should be a full airfoil that sits on the fuselage. The way you have it would look nice but it's a poor way to make a wing attachment for a model you expect to do some crashing and hard landings with. A better way would be to have the wing center as a full piece and it sits down onto the top of the fuselage. The rubber bands would go onto a regular cross facing dowel at the rear but at the front a good way to do it is have a single or double dowels that point forward and coming out of a balsa block windscreen to hold the wing down. That way in a crash the wing shifts forward and just pushes the rubber bands off the forward pointed dowels and the wing springs free. Ideally the ailerons would be driven by a single servo laid flat so it doesnt' stick down below the wing's lower surface and get caught when the wing slides to freedom. Alternately two smaller servos could be mounted somewhat outboard to each drive one aileron directly.
[/ul]
It might seem like you did everything wrong. But in fact there's much that is good about your design. The wing, other than the center section and mounting method, is excellent. At first I didn't like the plywood tip ribs. But for a rough and tumble model it's actually not a bad idea at all. My only thought is that for the built up ailerons you could make the skins from 1/16 so that the wing could be built as one whole piece with the ailerons included with the ribs. During construction you'd reach in and slit the skins for cut marks that you can see from outside later. Finish the wing all in one go, lift it off the board and then find the slit marks to use as guides for the straight edge to let you cut the built up ailerons free from the main part of the wing. Doing it this way would aid in having the ailerons be a better fit to the wings. And because the ailerons are a closed triangular "tube" they would be adequitely stiff and strong even with 1/16 sheet skins.
Even with the changes I've suggested you will still need to carefully pick your balsa for good light stock. Use too much heavy wood where it's not needed and this thing will become overweight in a blink despite the reduced sizes for the wood in my suggestions.
The wing of the Porter has a pretty high aspect ratio so the size you made this plan does not result in much wing area. I'm seeing 48 x 6.5 for just 312 sq inches. A model of this size needs to be kept down to around 16 oz/sq foot or less. With only 312 sq inches /144= 2.17 sq feet of area. 2.17 x 16 = just 34.7oz as a target load to achieve a pleasant flying model. So I was even optimistic about the 45oz figure I gave earlier. At 18 oz/sq foot I'd say you're up at the top end of a "nice to fly model". But that only raises the target flying weight to 39oz.
Now a .15 will easily fly more than 39oz as long as you don't expect 3D aerobatics. So the solution to your Porter powered by a .15 is to make the whole model a little bigger. If you just scale the plane to push the span up to 54 inch span the chord would become 7.3 inches and the wing area climbs to 54 x 7.3= 394 sq inches. Going with a 16 oz loading target you now could build to 394/144 x 16=44 oz. A not bad flying weight for a .15 trainer. Ideally you would still try to keep it a little lower to the mid to low 40's for weight. The flying ability would gain so much by doing that with the slower flying speed making it easier to fly that you would likely find that you just don't crash as much and with that you don't need to test all that build in ruggedness.
And yes it is a whole other way to think. If yoiu build to survive crashing the model generally comes out so heavy that you can't avoid "testing" it far too often for reasons that leave you wondering what happened. But if you build it to fly well by building lightly the flying speed lowers to where you have more time for corrections, the corrections take up less space so the model pulls out of bad situations where if heavier it would crash and overall you enjoy flying it far more. There is also a lot to be said for the idea that a properly designed and lightly build model will tend to do itself less damage in a sudden stop just because there is less weight and less inertia to do harm to the airframe.
If you don't think you can build a 54 inch version all that lightly then maybe split the difference and go with a 52 inch span. The wing area then becomes 52 x 7 = 364 sq inches. At the target loading of 16oz/sq foot we go with 364/144 x 16= 40.5 oz as a target weight. A weight which would fly in a nicely spirited manner with a .15 engine.
Hopefully I haven't flooded you with too much to think about.
I opened up the plans and there's no doubt that you built it SOLID! ! ! ! The one thing I'd suggest is that if the model is built TOO heavy it becomes its own hammer which does more damage to it than a slightly lighter construction. Not to mention that if the model comes in at more than about 45 oz that it'll become all that much harder to fly due to the wing loading. And that will just encourage you to test the strength.
You'd have a tough time building it as heavy as it is and still keep it to 45 or less oz. So some changes I'd suggest which should not reduce the toughness by much are;
[ul][*] Reduce the sides, top and bottom to 1/8 sheet. Then to keep the nose area tougher glue on a 1/32 ply doubler that extends back to mid way under the wing.[*] Reduce the width of the tail surface outlines to 1/4 wide by 1/8 thick. But then to better support the skins include a few 1/8 sq ribs. The resulting surfaces will be lighter but just as strong. Frankly most folks would make them out of fairly light 3/16 sheet sand the edges a little and call it all good. It's a lot easier too.[*] I'm not sure what the function is for the deep U slot at the front of the windscreen but that should go. It's just a crush zone for any nose impacts. If it's to slot the landing gear into for some shock absorbing then that's fine. But it woudl be better to include a rubber shock mount in the leg than to do it in the fuselage. I've attached a sketch of a nice way to do this below.[*] You really don't need the extra bulkhead at the point just behind the one at the rear of the wing opening. It's a bit of a waste. However I would put in some vertical and cross square strips at two places evenly spaced between that rear wing opening bulkhead and the leading edge of the stabilizer to better support the long grain of the sides, top and bottom. By using strips instead of a bulkhead it makes it easier to feed the pushrods through.[*] To make for an easier elevator hookup I'd make the two elevator halves in one piece that spans the whole way with no center gap. Then leave the rear of the fuselage open. That way you attach the control horn to the center of the elevator and just at the opening. The pushrod comes through the opening and directly to the horn. This makes it SUPER easy to install after the model is finished and to remove it for any future repairs or any other reason. It's also a nice clean way to do the elevator hookup.[*] with the slightly thinner sides you'll want the strip wood to extend forward to the front of the wing opening. It'll better support the wing and avoid crushing the sides.[*] The wing at the center section should be a full airfoil that sits on the fuselage. The way you have it would look nice but it's a poor way to make a wing attachment for a model you expect to do some crashing and hard landings with. A better way would be to have the wing center as a full piece and it sits down onto the top of the fuselage. The rubber bands would go onto a regular cross facing dowel at the rear but at the front a good way to do it is have a single or double dowels that point forward and coming out of a balsa block windscreen to hold the wing down. That way in a crash the wing shifts forward and just pushes the rubber bands off the forward pointed dowels and the wing springs free. Ideally the ailerons would be driven by a single servo laid flat so it doesnt' stick down below the wing's lower surface and get caught when the wing slides to freedom. Alternately two smaller servos could be mounted somewhat outboard to each drive one aileron directly.
[/ul]
It might seem like you did everything wrong. But in fact there's much that is good about your design. The wing, other than the center section and mounting method, is excellent. At first I didn't like the plywood tip ribs. But for a rough and tumble model it's actually not a bad idea at all. My only thought is that for the built up ailerons you could make the skins from 1/16 so that the wing could be built as one whole piece with the ailerons included with the ribs. During construction you'd reach in and slit the skins for cut marks that you can see from outside later. Finish the wing all in one go, lift it off the board and then find the slit marks to use as guides for the straight edge to let you cut the built up ailerons free from the main part of the wing. Doing it this way would aid in having the ailerons be a better fit to the wings. And because the ailerons are a closed triangular "tube" they would be adequitely stiff and strong even with 1/16 sheet skins.
Even with the changes I've suggested you will still need to carefully pick your balsa for good light stock. Use too much heavy wood where it's not needed and this thing will become overweight in a blink despite the reduced sizes for the wood in my suggestions.
The wing of the Porter has a pretty high aspect ratio so the size you made this plan does not result in much wing area. I'm seeing 48 x 6.5 for just 312 sq inches. A model of this size needs to be kept down to around 16 oz/sq foot or less. With only 312 sq inches /144= 2.17 sq feet of area. 2.17 x 16 = just 34.7oz as a target load to achieve a pleasant flying model. So I was even optimistic about the 45oz figure I gave earlier. At 18 oz/sq foot I'd say you're up at the top end of a "nice to fly model". But that only raises the target flying weight to 39oz.
Now a .15 will easily fly more than 39oz as long as you don't expect 3D aerobatics. So the solution to your Porter powered by a .15 is to make the whole model a little bigger. If you just scale the plane to push the span up to 54 inch span the chord would become 7.3 inches and the wing area climbs to 54 x 7.3= 394 sq inches. Going with a 16 oz loading target you now could build to 394/144 x 16=44 oz. A not bad flying weight for a .15 trainer. Ideally you would still try to keep it a little lower to the mid to low 40's for weight. The flying ability would gain so much by doing that with the slower flying speed making it easier to fly that you would likely find that you just don't crash as much and with that you don't need to test all that build in ruggedness.
And yes it is a whole other way to think. If yoiu build to survive crashing the model generally comes out so heavy that you can't avoid "testing" it far too often for reasons that leave you wondering what happened. But if you build it to fly well by building lightly the flying speed lowers to where you have more time for corrections, the corrections take up less space so the model pulls out of bad situations where if heavier it would crash and overall you enjoy flying it far more. There is also a lot to be said for the idea that a properly designed and lightly build model will tend to do itself less damage in a sudden stop just because there is less weight and less inertia to do harm to the airframe.
If you don't think you can build a 54 inch version all that lightly then maybe split the difference and go with a 52 inch span. The wing area then becomes 52 x 7 = 364 sq inches. At the target loading of 16oz/sq foot we go with 364/144 x 16= 40.5 oz as a target weight. A weight which would fly in a nicely spirited manner with a .15 engine.
Hopefully I haven't flooded you with too much to think about.
11-16-2011, 04:36 AM
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RE: FREE Pilatus Porter Pc-6 Plans .15 size
Once again we have someone offering their first and unflown design as a free plan to others! The inexperienced should steer well clear of any design that has not been proven to fly. Also any inexperienced flier or builder would be well advised to stick to designs by experienced designers & published by magazines which usually insist on seeing photos of the prototype in flight before they will publish.
Experienced fliers will know this and wont waste their time & balsa on novices plan!
Experienced fliers will know this and wont waste their time & balsa on novices plan!
11-16-2011, 04:58 AM
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RE: FREE Pilatus Porter Pc-6 Plans .15 size
BMatthews,
Thanks for taking the time to view the files and make all these suggestions.
Certainly will take them into account since that was what I was looking for...learn from errors and gather as much information as possible from people who has experience.
Thanks.
Thanks for taking the time to view the files and make all these suggestions.
Certainly will take them into account since that was what I was looking for...learn from errors and gather as much information as possible from people who has experience.
Thanks.
ORIGINAL: BMatthews
Elias the trick to attaching the files is to rename them as something like Pilatusdxf.txt or Pilatusskp.txt. Then it'll attach. You just need to let us know you did that and to rename them after downloading to dump the .txt and move the period to the new spot between the name and the proper extension.
I opened up the plans and there's no doubt that you built it SOLID! ! ! ! The one thing I'd suggest is that if the model is built TOO heavy it becomes its own hammer which does more damage to it than a slightly lighter construction. Not to mention that if the model comes in at more than about 45 oz that it'll become all that much harder to fly due to the wing loading. And that will just encourage you to test the strength.
You'd have a tough time building it as heavy as it is and still keep it to 45 or less oz. So some changes I'd suggest which should not reduce the toughness by much are;
[ul][*] Reduce the sides, top and bottom to 1/8 sheet. Then to keep the nose area tougher glue on a 1/32 ply doubler that extends back to mid way under the wing.[*] Reduce the width of the tail surface outlines to 1/4 wide by 1/8 thick. But then to better support the skins include a few 1/8 sq ribs. The resulting surfaces will be lighter but just as strong. Frankly most folks would make them out of fairly light 3/16 sheet sand the edges a little and call it all good. It's a lot easier too.[*] I'm not sure what the function is for the deep U slot at the front of the windscreen but that should go. It's just a crush zone for any nose impacts. If it's to slot the landing gear into for some shock absorbing then that's fine. But it woudl be better to include a rubber shock mount in the leg than to do it in the fuselage. I've attached a sketch of a nice way to do this below.[*] You really don't need the extra bulkhead at the point just behind the one at the rear of the wing opening. It's a bit of a waste. However I would put in some vertical and cross square strips at two places evenly spaced between that rear wing opening bulkhead and the leading edge of the stabilizer to better support the long grain of the sides, top and bottom. By using strips instead of a bulkhead it makes it easier to feed the pushrods through.[*] To make for an easier elevator hookup I'd make the two elevator halves in one piece that spans the whole way with no center gap. Then leave the rear of the fuselage open. That way you attach the control horn to the center of the elevator and just at the opening. The pushrod comes through the opening and directly to the horn. This makes it SUPER easy to install after the model is finished and to remove it for any future repairs or any other reason. It's also a nice clean way to do the elevator hookup.[*] with the slightly thinner sides you'll want the strip wood to extend forward to the front of the wing opening. It'll better support the wing and avoid crushing the sides.[*] The wing at the center section should be a full airfoil that sits on the fuselage. The way you have it would look nice but it's a poor way to make a wing attachment for a model you expect to do some crashing and hard landings with. A better way would be to have the wing center as a full piece and it sits down onto the top of the fuselage. The rubber bands would go onto a regular cross facing dowel at the rear but at the front a good way to do it is have a single or double dowels that point forward and coming out of a balsa block windscreen to hold the wing down. That way in a crash the wing shifts forward and just pushes the rubber bands off the forward pointed dowels and the wing springs free. Ideally the ailerons would be driven by a single servo laid flat so it doesnt' stick down below the wing's lower surface and get caught when the wing slides to freedom. Alternately two smaller servos could be mounted somewhat outboard to each drive one aileron directly.
[/ul]
It might seem like you did everything wrong. But in fact there's much that is good about your design. The wing, other than the center section and mounting method, is excellent. At first I didn't like the plywood tip ribs. But for a rough and tumble model it's actually not a bad idea at all. My only thought is that for the built up ailerons you could make the skins from 1/16 so that the wing could be built as one whole piece with the ailerons included with the ribs. During construction you'd reach in and slit the skins for cut marks that you can see from outside later. Finish the wing all in one go, lift it off the board and then find the slit marks to use as guides for the straight edge to let you cut the built up ailerons free from the main part of the wing. Doing it this way would aid in having the ailerons be a better fit to the wings. And because the ailerons are a closed triangular "tube" they would be adequitely stiff and strong even with 1/16 sheet skins.
Even with the changes I've suggested you will still need to carefully pick your balsa for good light stock. Use too much heavy wood where it's not needed and this thing will become overweight in a blink despite the reduced sizes for the wood in my suggestions.
The wing of the Porter has a pretty high aspect ratio so the size you made this plan does not result in much wing area. I'm seeing 48 x 6.5 for just 312 sq inches. A model of this size needs to be kept down to around 16 oz/sq foot or less. With only 312 sq inches /144= 2.17 sq feet of area. 2.17 x 16 = just 34.7oz as a target load to achieve a pleasant flying model. So I was even optimistic about the 45oz figure I gave earlier. At 18 oz/sq foot I'd say you're up at the top end of a "nice to fly model". But that only raises the target flying weight to 39oz.
Now a .15 will easily fly more than 39oz as long as you don't expect 3D aerobatics. So the solution to your Porter powered by a .15 is to make the whole model a little bigger. If you just scale the plane to push the span up to 54 inch span the chord would become 7.3 inches and the wing area climbs to 54 x 7.3= 394 sq inches. Going with a 16 oz loading target you now could build to 394/144 x 16=44 oz. A not bad flying weight for a .15 trainer. Ideally you would still try to keep it a little lower to the mid to low 40's for weight. The flying ability would gain so much by doing that with the slower flying speed making it easier to fly that you would likely find that you just don't crash as much and with that you don't need to test all that build in ruggedness.
And yes it is a whole other way to think. If yoiu build to survive crashing the model generally comes out so heavy that you can't avoid "testing" it far too often for reasons that leave you wondering what happened. But if you build it to fly well by building lightly the flying speed lowers to where you have more time for corrections, the corrections take up less space so the model pulls out of bad situations where if heavier it would crash and overall you enjoy flying it far more. There is also a lot to be said for the idea that a properly designed and lightly build model will tend to do itself less damage in a sudden stop just because there is less weight and less inertia to do harm to the airframe.
If you don't think you can build a 54 inch version all that lightly then maybe split the difference and go with a 52 inch span. The wing area then becomes 52 x 7 = 364 sq inches. At the target loading of 16oz/sq foot we go with 364/144 x 16= 40.5 oz as a target weight. A weight which would fly in a nicely spirited manner with a .15 engine.
Hopefully I haven't flooded you with too much to think about.
Elias the trick to attaching the files is to rename them as something like Pilatusdxf.txt or Pilatusskp.txt. Then it'll attach. You just need to let us know you did that and to rename them after downloading to dump the .txt and move the period to the new spot between the name and the proper extension.
I opened up the plans and there's no doubt that you built it SOLID! ! ! ! The one thing I'd suggest is that if the model is built TOO heavy it becomes its own hammer which does more damage to it than a slightly lighter construction. Not to mention that if the model comes in at more than about 45 oz that it'll become all that much harder to fly due to the wing loading. And that will just encourage you to test the strength.
You'd have a tough time building it as heavy as it is and still keep it to 45 or less oz. So some changes I'd suggest which should not reduce the toughness by much are;
[ul][*] Reduce the sides, top and bottom to 1/8 sheet. Then to keep the nose area tougher glue on a 1/32 ply doubler that extends back to mid way under the wing.[*] Reduce the width of the tail surface outlines to 1/4 wide by 1/8 thick. But then to better support the skins include a few 1/8 sq ribs. The resulting surfaces will be lighter but just as strong. Frankly most folks would make them out of fairly light 3/16 sheet sand the edges a little and call it all good. It's a lot easier too.[*] I'm not sure what the function is for the deep U slot at the front of the windscreen but that should go. It's just a crush zone for any nose impacts. If it's to slot the landing gear into for some shock absorbing then that's fine. But it woudl be better to include a rubber shock mount in the leg than to do it in the fuselage. I've attached a sketch of a nice way to do this below.[*] You really don't need the extra bulkhead at the point just behind the one at the rear of the wing opening. It's a bit of a waste. However I would put in some vertical and cross square strips at two places evenly spaced between that rear wing opening bulkhead and the leading edge of the stabilizer to better support the long grain of the sides, top and bottom. By using strips instead of a bulkhead it makes it easier to feed the pushrods through.[*] To make for an easier elevator hookup I'd make the two elevator halves in one piece that spans the whole way with no center gap. Then leave the rear of the fuselage open. That way you attach the control horn to the center of the elevator and just at the opening. The pushrod comes through the opening and directly to the horn. This makes it SUPER easy to install after the model is finished and to remove it for any future repairs or any other reason. It's also a nice clean way to do the elevator hookup.[*] with the slightly thinner sides you'll want the strip wood to extend forward to the front of the wing opening. It'll better support the wing and avoid crushing the sides.[*] The wing at the center section should be a full airfoil that sits on the fuselage. The way you have it would look nice but it's a poor way to make a wing attachment for a model you expect to do some crashing and hard landings with. A better way would be to have the wing center as a full piece and it sits down onto the top of the fuselage. The rubber bands would go onto a regular cross facing dowel at the rear but at the front a good way to do it is have a single or double dowels that point forward and coming out of a balsa block windscreen to hold the wing down. That way in a crash the wing shifts forward and just pushes the rubber bands off the forward pointed dowels and the wing springs free. Ideally the ailerons would be driven by a single servo laid flat so it doesnt' stick down below the wing's lower surface and get caught when the wing slides to freedom. Alternately two smaller servos could be mounted somewhat outboard to each drive one aileron directly.
[/ul]
It might seem like you did everything wrong. But in fact there's much that is good about your design. The wing, other than the center section and mounting method, is excellent. At first I didn't like the plywood tip ribs. But for a rough and tumble model it's actually not a bad idea at all. My only thought is that for the built up ailerons you could make the skins from 1/16 so that the wing could be built as one whole piece with the ailerons included with the ribs. During construction you'd reach in and slit the skins for cut marks that you can see from outside later. Finish the wing all in one go, lift it off the board and then find the slit marks to use as guides for the straight edge to let you cut the built up ailerons free from the main part of the wing. Doing it this way would aid in having the ailerons be a better fit to the wings. And because the ailerons are a closed triangular "tube" they would be adequitely stiff and strong even with 1/16 sheet skins.
Even with the changes I've suggested you will still need to carefully pick your balsa for good light stock. Use too much heavy wood where it's not needed and this thing will become overweight in a blink despite the reduced sizes for the wood in my suggestions.
The wing of the Porter has a pretty high aspect ratio so the size you made this plan does not result in much wing area. I'm seeing 48 x 6.5 for just 312 sq inches. A model of this size needs to be kept down to around 16 oz/sq foot or less. With only 312 sq inches /144= 2.17 sq feet of area. 2.17 x 16 = just 34.7oz as a target load to achieve a pleasant flying model. So I was even optimistic about the 45oz figure I gave earlier. At 18 oz/sq foot I'd say you're up at the top end of a "nice to fly model". But that only raises the target flying weight to 39oz.
Now a .15 will easily fly more than 39oz as long as you don't expect 3D aerobatics. So the solution to your Porter powered by a .15 is to make the whole model a little bigger. If you just scale the plane to push the span up to 54 inch span the chord would become 7.3 inches and the wing area climbs to 54 x 7.3= 394 sq inches. Going with a 16 oz loading target you now could build to 394/144 x 16=44 oz. A not bad flying weight for a .15 trainer. Ideally you would still try to keep it a little lower to the mid to low 40's for weight. The flying ability would gain so much by doing that with the slower flying speed making it easier to fly that you would likely find that you just don't crash as much and with that you don't need to test all that build in ruggedness.
And yes it is a whole other way to think. If yoiu build to survive crashing the model generally comes out so heavy that you can't avoid "testing" it far too often for reasons that leave you wondering what happened. But if you build it to fly well by building lightly the flying speed lowers to where you have more time for corrections, the corrections take up less space so the model pulls out of bad situations where if heavier it would crash and overall you enjoy flying it far more. There is also a lot to be said for the idea that a properly designed and lightly build model will tend to do itself less damage in a sudden stop just because there is less weight and less inertia to do harm to the airframe.
If you don't think you can build a 54 inch version all that lightly then maybe split the difference and go with a 52 inch span. The wing area then becomes 52 x 7 = 364 sq inches. At the target loading of 16oz/sq foot we go with 364/144 x 16= 40.5 oz as a target weight. A weight which would fly in a nicely spirited manner with a .15 engine.
Hopefully I haven't flooded you with too much to think about.
11-16-2011, 05:18 AM
#6
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Join Date: Feb 2004
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RE: FREE Pilatus Porter Pc-6 Plans .15 size
kdc,
Thanks for your comments.
I understand your concerns and certainly i'm not going to build this plane and go fly it by myself.
I'm actually learning to fly on a Four Star 40 with the help of well experienced flyers (20+ years experience). I built this airplane from a kit with the help of the guys I fly with.
Currently i'm building from scratch an Ugly Stick drawn by guy fuller also with the help from experiencied builders.
Currently i'm flying a raptor 30 helicopter and some small brushless airplanes.
Didn't want to upset anyone by sharing these plans.
I just wanted to share the work and effort and get feedback in order to make of this a good flying model.
Regards
Thanks for your comments.
I understand your concerns and certainly i'm not going to build this plane and go fly it by myself.
I'm actually learning to fly on a Four Star 40 with the help of well experienced flyers (20+ years experience). I built this airplane from a kit with the help of the guys I fly with.
Currently i'm building from scratch an Ugly Stick drawn by guy fuller also with the help from experiencied builders.
Currently i'm flying a raptor 30 helicopter and some small brushless airplanes.
Didn't want to upset anyone by sharing these plans.
I just wanted to share the work and effort and get feedback in order to make of this a good flying model.
Regards
ORIGINAL: kdc
Once again we have someone offering their first and unflown design as a free plan to others! The inexperienced should steer well clear of any design that has not been proven to fly. Also any inexperienced flier or builder would be well advised to stick to designs by experienced designers & published by magazines which usually insist on seeing photos of the prototype in flight before they will publish.
Experienced fliers will know this and wont waste their time & balsa on novices plan!
Once again we have someone offering their first and unflown design as a free plan to others! The inexperienced should steer well clear of any design that has not been proven to fly. Also any inexperienced flier or builder would be well advised to stick to designs by experienced designers & published by magazines which usually insist on seeing photos of the prototype in flight before they will publish.
Experienced fliers will know this and wont waste their time & balsa on novices plan!
11-16-2011, 09:39 AM
#7
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Chilliwack, BC, CANADA
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RE: FREE Pilatus Porter Pc-6 Plans .15 size
KDC, that's a bit harsh. Especially in light of the fact that he fully and openly stated his background and warned that they were basic plans and some of the thought behind the design. In no manner at all has he represented them as anything done by an expert. He even mentioned that no model has been built from the plan so the builder was on their own. I see little need to wade in with more warnings than this.
