flashsolutions

I'll stick to listening and learning. I too would not have believed some of the stuff I've seen on this thread could fly but built it and saw for myself.

Critterhunter, if they are that out of touch, they need to stay in their own little isolated space. They don't know what they are missing.

I will have to say, I have enjoyed building the STC that Waterdog posted over there. My Grandson is visiting this week and I buddy boxed with him flying my STC. He wanted to build one of his own so we cranked one out in two evenings. Will maiden it tomorrow.

Powered by an E-Flite Park 370 with an 8x4 prop, it feels like it has enough power to blow the socks off of the first one I built which has a HiMax motor and 7x4 prop.

critterhunter

Cut out some new/larger tail feathers for the bipe. I oversized them just a bit to compensate for my wider wings than scale, and also to give me a little more control. Might bring them down in size some. Starting the wing struts tonight. Tail is just stuck on with toothpicks for the picture.

critterhunter

Please do! Always nice to see a new face in here than hasn't got sick of my long winded messages yet.

critterhunter

Fisher, use less width between the booms or shrink the verticle stabs to get it rolling real well if you want. I was surprised how well #3 rolled on just one aileron, but I did increase it's size over the original specs.

critterhunter

Well, I wouldn't say I'm getting flamed. just some short and sweet "I don't think it will fly because of the body proportions" type of stuff. Ever hear the old saying "You can make a brick fly if you have enough power and the time to trim it out". That's pretty much true these days with brushless motor power plants. I see the same kind of "looking down the nose" types when it comes to Electric versus gas-n-glow. Many of these people are old school and are going to hang onto ancient technology by the finger nails. They're only hurting themselves.

saucerguy

There is this guy at wattflyer that was wanting to try out a new design, he created a rendering in a 3d graphic, I looked at it, told him, I'd reccomend adjusting certain things, I then opted to make it out of simple flat foam plate stock and gave it a toss. My reccomendations actually hindered it, his stock set up was still wrong though. I proceded making adjustments to the chuck glider and was then able to make the final reccomendations. From there, I proceeded with making the RC version, but my mistake being, I didn't sweep the wings back far enough, so the plane refused to fly as originally intended "my mistake for deviating from the original chuck glider", it was a brushless set up btw, so there has to still be some aeronotical elements designed into the plane, you can't fly a brick with brushless in spite of the saying.

I slapped the booms from the beast onto it, the same booms per the foam flyer specs with the coroplast mods, and we now have super so. I have a zagi I'm using for the overall sweep, this way I know it's going to fly purely as a flying wing with what ever I create afterwards, so live and learn and the bottom line being, you gotta do this stuff in the real world to truely get an educated perspective about any design.

critterhunter

Got the wing struts mounted on the SE5a bipe this morning. Not fune, and don't want to do that that way again. It was a real pain taking my scaled up formula, then figuring out proper angle and height with my Clark-Y wings thickness to get them right. The fun continued as I had to weigh and prop the top wing to keep it totally flat and parallel in relation to the bottom wing while the glue dried. I'm sure there are much easier ways, but I wasn't awake yet and so just did what I knew would work. Probably took the long way around to get that done.

calvino

Nice biplane man, making it as well as the other planes

saucerguy

I took my Mustang out for it's maiden, I see why people fall in love with these war bird, talk about air supremecy, it was a simple matter of point and click and that's where it went. I love the fact it turned on a dime and I was all worked up thinking it's going to be a handful, it's not.

Next on the plate now, is project p40 warhawk, I'm going to scratch out a 36" version and be meticulous about the jig system so I can get all of the cool curves in there.

critterhunter

In the following pictures you can see the top wing is now mounted with it's struts. While the picture doesn't show it well, the struts are connected to balsa at each end, with the bottom one being embedded into the wing. Tail feathers were also trimmed down some and the elevator/rudder hinged, though they are still held on the plane with toothpicks for the pictures. You can also see the flat carbon I have on the bottom of the elevator to keep it's two halfs strong. Tonight, after I also put some flat carbon in the vertical stab/rudder and horizontal stabilizer, they get glued to the fuse and I'll cut out and hinge the ailerons.

While on that subject, anybody know if a SE5a has two or four ailerons? I can't tell by the picture I've been upscaling from. With the tail slightly larger, as will be the ailerons, this plane should also probably be classified as my first 3D platform.

critterhunter

Last night I went mid evil on the SE5a tail feathers with flat carbon stock. Would have used a less wide piece for the horizontal stab but it was all I had laying around. Weighs next to nothing anyway and I guess I don't have to worry about any tail slop while stunting. Think I'll change my user name to Carbon Crazy. Glued the horizontal stab in this morning, and the verticle stab gets glued in tonight. From what I've read with a Clark-Y airfoil if the h-stab is parallel to the flat bottom of the wing there is three degrees of positive incidence built in already. I want to make sure these wings load up and "grab" the air without any problems, so I raised the front of the h-stab 1/8th inch. Now I just have to do some searching on the net to find out how many ailerons a scale bird has. Mine will be larger for more control, but I at least want to get the number of them right. Also have to adjust the motor thrust angle. I prefer a slight bit of down/right but may just go right a hair since the tail angle should be giving the wings good grab anyway.

saucerguy

Looking good critter, the se5 comes with 4 ailerons, I highly suggest using ez connects so you can get them in sinc, also, I reccomend adding some diagonal struts to join up the ones on the outer wing, mine kept falling off upon landings and the ARF version eflight has out, uses that system as well, I guess they figured out it was problematic. The other option is to go with the traditional rigging, but you will not enjoy doing it at all, I know I hated that element even though I didn't fully rig it up per the plans, which were very difficult to decipher.

My se5 is going to be redone from the plans via. scratch this time, the old one is RIP now, no biggie, all I need are plans, the kit's components actually got in my way since they were just a little off, so had to work around alot of it which added a ton of build time into it. I should blow up the plans a bit as well, the 24" wingspan was difficult to see the orientation in the air.

critterhunter

Thanks for the info. Will check into the kiwk links and such when I cross that bridge...

More SE5a progress...The tail feathers are now glued in place. Next was to measure and cut out the ailerons. Scale calls for 3.6"x7.2". Problem is my wider wings in relation to the wing struts only gives me about 2.5" of clearance for ailerons width wise. So, added up the square surface area of scale and got myself the proper length at 2" wide to equal that. (2x13" or so), then added a little extra length to insure I've got more than scale surface area.

Turns out somebody was nice enough to dig up a picture he took of a real SE5a, so I was able to use that to determine the bird does indeed have four ailerons. This thing is going to spin on a dime. Nice picture as well, it should help to me tweak the scale looks of the bird more.

Realized my big 40" hot wire bow would be a handful to cut the ailerons out, and my table cutter obviously wouldn't work since one wing is in the way of the other. Now it's like 1:30 in the morning and I want to get these buggers cut out before I go to bed. Did some more staring off into space like I always do and came up with a quick mini hot wire bow for these sort of situations where precision is too critical for the 40" one.

I used one of the fiberglass rods from a garbage picked patio umbrella I have laying around to function as both my load spring and bow. .022 gauge stainless steel fishing leader. Fiberglass tube already had eyelits on it's ends to tie my wire to. Attached power leads a bit after the eyelits to hopefuly avoid the tied wire ends from getting hot and melting the wire free from the bow.

Isolated the bow at the other end of the garage (I only have one good eye as it is) and played with the settings on one of my car battery chargers. Found the proper heat level and let it run for about 20 minutes to make sure the tied ends aren't getting hot. Passed the test and hot wired out my ailerons. Tonight they get hinged and glued.

Look what I garbage picked...some kind of depron foam. Very light but also very flimsy. Should at least make a good wing covering over ribs or something. Also notice the pink foam under the plane and behind the other depron-like material. Garbage picked that as well.

saucerguy

So weird, I too made a mini bow 12" long out of fiberglass material I had laying around, I yanked it from a kite that had peices missing, it was on the spur of the moment as yourself, ie. you needed something small to do more precise work, you made due with what you could find on hand. I had to cut a couple of grooves in it to tie the wire in, but it made short work on the straight cuts I did on the two p40 wings using the gravity system I mentioned ealier. I now should finally invest in a dimmer switch, plugging the leads that close together heated up the wire too much so a reduction is in order, not that it didn't do the job being too hot regardless. Again, weird how we both came to the same spot almost at the same time, I did mine 2 days ago and now have plans upon making more of varying sizes to get the p40 looking sweet and easy to reproduce while keeping the scale, rounded profile in tact.

I recall telling you the se5 has 4 ailerons, you didn't believe me, hehe. You are right, it can turn on a dime, I always look back to the time of the original plane and think, how would this handle full scale in combat, I hold alot of respect for it in those regards, a very nimble craft of it's day and the germans were regretting having to contend with it in the air.

Looking at your photo though, your ailerons look twice as long as what they should be, make sure your throws are set up very tame or you may have it death spiral out of control upon launch.

critterhunter

No, I found the factoid on the plane having 4 ailerons on another website where somebody was nice enough to throw up a color picture he took of a real SE5a. It was easy enough to see from there that it has 4 ailerons. If you mentioned it some time in the past I must have missed it.

If you read my above message it explains why the ailersons are so long. The scale size wouldn't clear my wing struts (scale would be 3.6" wide and 7.2" long), as I've only got about 2.5" of clearance between the trailing edge of the wing and the struts. 3.6x 7.2=25.92 inches of surface area. I can only comfortable fit about a 2" wide aileron on my wings, so 26" divided by 2"=13" long to equal the same surface area. Am I missing something here? I also went to 13.5" long to give me a little more control (this plane should also probably be classified as my first 3D platform). I'm by no means an expert on ailerons so if you see an obvious flaw in my thinking please correct me. I know they do look like a lot, especially when you consider there are four of them, but that's the math I came up with.

I know the faster the plane the smaller the control surfaces can be (more wind over the surface area=more control). This plane is going to use a 2409-18 1000 (1100?) k/v Tower Pro motor and swing somewhere around a 10x5 at the max. I would figure it's max speed will be somewhere between 30 to 40mph tops. I wanted a real torky motor and less speed on this bird, and I've loved the 2409-18 motor (Get the D version...same specs but MUCH better case and looks) on other platforms. It's amp draw is fairly low on this size prop, like 10 to 14 or so. If I want to go to a smaller prop, say in the 8x4 or so range, for more scale looks (haven't determined what size prop scale is), the amp draw will go down even more. This motor is fairly efficient compared to the BP21, 12T, or other Tower Pro motors...And the "D" version (as opposed to the standard "T") is even more efficient since it's bell and such are designed different with less space between the bell/magnets/etc.

Yea, kind'a funny we both came up with the fiberglass mini bow idea on our own within the same time frame. Great, or is that twisted, minds think alike I guess. I'm about to make some hotwire hand tools to power via my dimmer/car battery charger setups. I've made a few in the past to cut things such as battery/servo/rx chambers and such, but did a pretty cr*appy job on them and they've started to fall apart on me (wrong wood for the handles on them). I want to make an assorment of hand hot wire tools to really give any cuts/channels/etc on bodies a "store bought" look. Currenly I use a soldering iron or heated up piece of metal to do various things, and that aint easy to do a neat and clean cut with. Though I use stainless steel fishing leader for my bows, table cutter, and now the mini bow (I think I'm using .022 guage on all of them), thicker piano wire works wonders for hot wire hand tools because it's stiff and will hold various cutting design shapes.

Dimmer switches are easy to wire up. Pick one up at Home Depot or Lowes for like $5. Wire it up to a wall outlet cord and that gets plugged into the wall. Your charger is then plugged into the dimmer, and the dimmer dial controls how much power from the wall is flowing into your charger...and thus how much power is flowing out of the charger to the cutting tool. I mark my dimmer face with various points and notations so I know exactly where a certain tool needs to be without it getting too hot. To determine this I fire it up and bring the dial up to where the cutting wire starts to glow red a bit (careful, too high and it'll melt the wire in half). Usualy lowering the dimmer to just blow the glowing position is best for thicker cuts, but the wire will be very hot and so you can't linger with your cutting. Fast and smooth. If the foam is thinner or I plan to work slower with the cut then I bring the dial down even further to keep the wire from melting too much foam around it as I go slow. If the wire wants to grab and drag as you cut the wire temperture is too low.

I use two chargers...one is an old antique that has a max power output of 6 amps at 12V. That one is permanently hitched up to the hot wire table cutter and the dimmer used to get things right. The other charger I bought at Harbor Tool & Frieght. It has an orange face on it and was the best price for the various amp ranges it can deliver. They're charging at 12 volts at 2 & 10 amps, or 6 volts at 10 amps, and then it has a switch to select "crank starting" (no charging mode) of 12 volts at 55 amps. I knew when I saw that feature that 55 amps would power just about anything I wanted to think of, and could be tamed with a dimmer, so I picked the bugger up. Like $20 or so price range. I might have missed a feature or two (think it will do 10 amp cranking mode too, and 6V I think has a 2 and 10 amp setting. Either way, it's got plenty of goodies on it to find the proper setting for a cutting tool. Often, in fact, you can get it set to the proper power output without the need for the dimmer to control it. As a sidenote, I think the cranking/charging switch works with any of the 6 or 12 volt selections on that switch, and often use a combo of those to get what I want. Charging mode can be tricky to work with, as it has a "charged" circuit recognizer that can often turn the amp flow on/off when it fasely thinks the "battery" is charged. Often in that mode it will turn on/off/on again several times when making a cut. No biggie.

Again, please chime in with what you think is wrong but they do look like a lot of aileron-to-wing aspect to me. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious here? As you know, though, too big a control surface is better than too small. Radio rates can always be lowered to give the plane the desired control.

saucerguy

Along the foam cutter, I've never had my wire get so hot where it would actually glow, even with the smaller 12" bow, what I look for is the angel hair, once it reaches the point where it's producing it, that's the sweet spot and the wire can remain that hot all day long without worrying about breaking it. Originally I thought it was supposed to go through the foam like butter, which is what the little bow is doing now, but it's much slower then that, especially with the large on on the larger pieces.

Along the ailerons, mine literally stopped at the strut mount area, in fact, the gap between them, you could see the strut stock itself to give you an idea how close the tolerances were. I like to look to scale as well as what's on the market rc plane wise, luckily the kit had dotted lines as to where they were supposed to be which eliminated any guess work. You'll want to have your's slightly elevated to avoid tip stalls on your first flights since you don't have a dihedral, you'll see what I mean once you get it airborn. I also reccomend adding some additional struts between the fuse and the wing itself, there are 4 of them.

critterhunter

Will read/replay later, but here's this info...


Did some more work on the SE5a yesterday. After I had the ailerons cut out I hinged them with heavy duty dubros. They'll still get taped over for strength/airflow. Wanted to make sure they were perfectly flat in relation to the flat bottom of the wings, so I propped the bird up with boards and then installed the hinges with gorilla glue. I also had traced some straight lines on the boards so I could get them lined up with the trailing edge of the wing exactly right again, then used a ruler as a "feeler gauge" to adjust the gap between the side of the aileron and the wing so that is uniform as well. Now I just need to sand down the wing tips so everything matches there and is flush.

In the second picture you can see that I already installed a nose to tail carbon tube, and the top/bottom wing carbon tubes are sitting where I plan to melt out channels for them. Notice the relationship of them to the balsa wing struts. That should help transfer stiffness to everything as a kind of skeleton. They should be fine but I would have went from tip to tip if I had longer tubes laying around.

At one time I had a nice homemade hand tool for doing precision tube channel cuts that looked store bought and thus required less glue to fill the void between the tube/foam. That tool fell apart on me (bad wood) and so I've been hacking my way with a soldering iron on the last few builds. Although I was able to fill the nose to tail tube channel nice and flat with gorilla glue via tape and heavy weights/wood, I decided to make another hand tool before I melt the other two channels out. Problem is I couldn't get the wire I thought I had used for the old tool to work with any of my charger/dimmer combinations. It has to be stiff enough to hold a certain shape, yet have enough resistances to heat the bugger up. Going to have to find some other types to play with for that. My steel fishing leader just isn't stiff enough for anything but bows and table cutters where it can be spring loaded, so I can't use that.

saucerguy

I have some 16 gauge electrical wire that might do the trick for the channels, it's really stiff and I've actually used it as a quick fix when my soldering iron tip crapped out on me, so it can handle some heat and retain it's shape.

I've started on the p40(s), so far have two wing's set up, one has a dihedral, the other without, will see if there is any noticable difference, the forward fuse sections, jig wise have been created, once I get the aft sections created, I'll be able to rest easy, it's a complex shape, so had to break it up into 8 different sections, the wings were done in 4 different peices each.

browndodge

critter, I have used coat hanger wire for a shaped hot-wire cutter before, you do have to be careful though because it can pull a lot of amps!

Saucer, Those wings look really good, can't wait to see the finished plane!

I have been working on a large trainer lately and found out this weekend that I could not balance it without several ounces of nose weight so its back to the drawing board for the fuse.[] I want something large and survivable to maybe teach others to fly.

critterhunter

Then build the dual boomer! It's a perfect trainer if you want it to be. Thanks for the info/tips everybody. Here's the latest...

My hunt for a good hot wire hand tool cutting wire with the proper stiffness, thickness, resistance and guage has ended. I needed some more magnets for furture projects to hold hatches on and such and headed up to Pat Catans craft store. While I was up there I started looking around for potential wire and found some great stuff over in the reef making section. Non-stainless so I can solder easily to it, and various gauges to choose from. Made a new tube channel hand tool with it and experimented with one of my car battery chargers/dimmer to find a good heat range. Did some test cuts on some junk foam and the thing worked great. Much easier to do a clean and professional channel than a soldering iron or such, since the tool gets slid along the top of the foam and automaticly adjusts your depth for you as well. No more too wide of channels or sloppy cuts on those, which also means less glue needs to be used to fill up any gaps. My practice cuts were perfect, but I did get cocky and rush the two on the plane wings. They still came out much better than I could have ever done by other methods, just need to take my time next time.

Glued two carbon tubes into the top/bottom wings of the SE5a. Although it looks like the glue escaped the channel, it didn't really and is nice and flat with the wing surface thanks to tape, wood, and weights to hold it in. If you contain it this way you can really go overboard with the glue and it will be forced to compress into the poors of the foam without escaping. I always put some clear tape over the foam on the other side of a glue job like this because I have seen gorilla glue force it's way through foam and to the other side under enough pressure. Wings are rock solid now, and I'm about to install some flat carbon onto all four ailerons to keep them stiff and to mount my control horns/linkages to.

Big'N is about to get it's landing gear. I've got very little experience with successful landing gear so if anybody has any input for me that would help. What you see in the picture is basswood that I plan to mount the landing gear brackets to via screws/glue. Of course the basswood is going to be cut down to length. It will be glued flush with the foam surface on the belly. The gear brackets will be sandwhiched between another equal strip of basswood and the space between the two filled with gorilla glue. Is there an easier way or is this overkill? I just don't want the gear to break loose on me and don't care if it costs me more weight than it should.

Picture info: The "Charcoal" look of the cutter is because I got lazy and used a torch to solder the tip on.

Final Question: I'd like to hide the flat carbon and the horns on the bottom of ailerons. My problem is thinking through the linkage. Here's my plan: Servo control rod connectes to bottom horn hole on bottom aileron. That horn is linked via it's top hole through the aileron to the top wing aileron's horn's top hole, which is also on the bottom of that wing. Various mechanical puzzles to think through here. Does both horns have to be at the tail end of the aileron to prevent linkage "fold" slop between them, or would mid aileron do? Is the flat carbon going to block my control linkage between them? Will one aileron move at a different pace than the other due to linkage differential? Will I ever win the lottery. These are the questions on my mind right now... Could use some ideas here. I'd like to link top/bottom ailerons via a single control rod at mid-aileron and am hoping that the flat carbon will eliminate the need for having two instead (at the tips of the ailerons), but don't know. It might be one of those deals where I just have to dummy rig up the linkage and work through the mechanics of it? You mentioned the EZ links. Looked at'em but wasn't sure of what advantage they'd be. At the moment I'm just planning on using control horns, fully thread 2-56 rod, and nylon clevises.

browndodge

I forgot to mention my old standby for cutting slots and making pockets in foam, even flush mounting plywood plates and such...my trusty Dremel tool, a drywall/router attachment and an assortment of bits and very small endmills. Works great but does make a mess!

as far as landing gear goes, most people attach them in a way that they will break free in a hard landing and not cause too much damage to the plane. I've seen nylon bolts, nylon straps and have used double sided foam tape myself. It works great on flat aluminum gear.

saucerguy

The linkage, as in combining the ailerons from the top to control the bottom, you are just putting on two additional control horns and connecting them with a push rod. The reason you do this in the rear is for torque purposes. The ez connects are alot easier to adjust then clevises since you don't have to detatch the clevis to make the adjustment. Once you move onto using those, you won't want to go back to the old way of doing it, they are really the way to go.

More progress has been made on the p40's, the fuse ended up being 10 pieces, still have to create one more for the bottom of the wing, but you can see, it's coming together. The wings are loosly painters taped in place for photo purposes.

critterhunter

Thanks for the info to both of you. Hey, nice looking fuse! Go over to RCGroups and do a search in the foamie kit section for the word "PRINT" in the tittle. You've find it's started as a P51 thread but they threw up some really nice color prints of other planes, including your bird. Spray glue them to it and you'll be in business.

So, another dumb learning question here: I almost always keep my wing/tail flat in relation to each other (no incidence) and just load the wing via motor down/right. I was sort'a talked into doing it the "right" way on the bipe with the tail being raised 1/8" in front in relation to the flat bottom wing surface in order to load them. Now this has me scratching my head as to what to do with the motor thrust angle. Should I keep it flat in relation to the wing (my best guess), or should it be in line with the tail? I'm still planning to give the motor a tiny bit of right but since I've got the wings doing the loading for me I'm thinking the motor should be neutral in it's up/down relationship (?). Question is which wing to flat line it with?

By the way, I was up at Pat Cattans picking up some magnets for future builds on hatches when I found those laser bubble levels that stick to "any surface" and shoot a laser line across a surface for only $3. Picked it up, and I can see how it'll be useful for doing this kind of thrust/wings angle work.

saucerguy

Your incidence will be set with the upper wing, so you'll be keeping the lower one flat, my stabalizer was also flat as well, I didn't notice any quirks with it's flying habits.

My p40's are a combo of looking at regular stick plans from a few free flight birds, looking at the scale photo's and a little creative liberty to make it doable using all hot wire to cut it up. I'm going to use foam board with the paper pulled off for the tail feathers and I'm still debating if I should build the canopy and cowl out of foam, or try my hand at vaccume forming again for those areas. It is beyond cool getting to this stage of the projects, they are starting to look like the intended planes, I may even build another se5a in this manner.

browndodge

I agree with saucerguy on the EZ linkages, they are all I use now for pushrods.

Those planes look really good. I wish I had the time to make more hot wire stuff. And more room!