Stickbuilder

Junky,

Belleview is just up the road (27/441/500) from me in Leesburg. Looking forward to a get-together for we Sunshine State Waco types.


Or maybe someone has a better idea. Let's hear about it? Not just limited to Florida Brothers, but anyone would be welcome. Who wants to get the ball rolling?

Bear in mind that we have Brothers from all over the world, and the expense and logistics of making this trip will be a real bear.


Bill, Waco Brother #1

Errol Levin

Hi Guys

Welcome Peter Du Plessis from South Africa.

From another South African. Drop me an E-Mail.

ERROL #204

Jaybird

Still assembling my Great Planes WACO ARF. Final engine and radio installation are done and I've been working on a way to make the top wing panels removable from the center section. I ended up gluing the spar joiners into the outer wing panels and added basswood blocks inside the root ribs next to the spar box to screw into on the center section and drill into for 4-40 threaded brass inserts on the outer panels. The panels are secured with heavy nylon straps and once the interplane struts are attached it's quite rigid. I used Robart control horns and clevises for all the control surfaces instead of the kit supplied nylon horns. I hope to finish it up and test fly this weekend.

I'll try to add pictures when it's working again.

Jaybird

rccrasher65

My Feedback: (35)

Welcome new brothers, Dadrivet and Peter. Enjoy the ride!! George

acerc

Robert,
Growing up in Zephyr say's it all. And some how I knew someone would understand what I meant. Your club sound's like the perfect candidate to host such an event with the small private airfield. Just let us know when. I'll be there!

jmdunstan

Re: Aluminum struts for the 1/5 scale WACO

I have received a preliminary quote from Abell Hobbies of $100 for aluminum sheet struts like those described in several previous posts.  Brandon at Abell told me that if I have a few cut in one order, the price would be less.  The struts would be about $75 if the cutouts in the base and legs were omitted because Abell could then make the struts in-house rather than needing to have them cut by an outside CNC shop.

Please let me know if anyone else wants to place an order so we can all get a little break on the price.

Jim

rcjunky67

Ace and Stick, our field could maybe handle 50 to 60 people at best. Not much room for parking, but if iether of you would be inclined to pm me , then I could give you directions or feel free to check out our webpage at www.belleview skypirates.com and check us out . I'd love to invite anyone to come and visit. We are not an AMA sanctioned club, but we number about 60 members or better. As far as setting this up, I'd be the first to say, I wouldnt know where to begin. And I've not been to any bigtime events like topgun,so I'm none to familiar with how to go about organizing such an event.But there is another local field here in belleview called the ocala flying model club that is AMA sanctioned , and they have a paved runway that is beautiful and they also have concessionsand more than one porta-potty,wich I belive would be paramount for such an event.I'll be glad to check into it and see if using their facility would or could be a possibility, no promises though as I am not a club member there,yet .It would be a wonderful venue for such an event. plenty of parking too. And ace, yeah z-hills is the greatest little town that you could'nt wait to leave... though it has change quite a bit in the past 20 some odd yrs since I left, and now they even have a flying model club called , the can-am flyers. and thier field is somewhere out near Wesley chapel. But again I'd really love to have iether of you come up on the weekend and check out our local clubs and give me some input as to what it would take to make this happen. As alway's thank's

dadrivet

apologies for not leaving my name it's martin and i'm from telford in the uk thanks for the welcome

regards
martin waco brother #225

peterduplessis

My Feedback: (9)

Thanks for the Welcome guys ..
I've got the kit ... and the Moki .. now I have to find the time!!
Any tips for the AMR kit will be greatly appreciated

Peter #224

rccrasher65

My Feedback: (35)

Dan,that bird is looking pretty darn good. I hope you got the problems straightned out with the gear. George

mrdhud

My Feedback: (48)

George,
I was able to bend the right side of the gear in a little more and straiten the gear with in 1/8� I can live with that hated the thought of ripping the gear back out.

Welcome Peter & Martin to the Brotherhood looking forward seeing your Waco’s come together.

mrdhud

My Feedback: (48)

I have a question for anyone with any ideas. I thought I’d like to scale the bottom center of the wing to make it look a little more like it’s part of the fuselage but I have those big dang screws holding the wing in place in the way so I was thinking of some way I could build the screws in to the wing and maybe reaching down threw the cock pit and securing the wing threw a removable floor.Any thoughts on this idea??

ceije

Dan maybe this will help, on the Barth the lower center section is hard mounted when stringers are in place, i made it a seperate unit and placed 1/4" ply in the fuselage along the longrons to aleign with the wing section where i placed balsa blocks, drilled ply and balsa 5/16" for mounting hold downs and countersunk the block for mounting screws. all thats visible from underneith are 4 screw holes. it doesn't detract and works well. hope this gives you ideas. enjoy

Chris melhus, ceije 196

"sometimes you have to build it a little wrong to make it look right"-DAVE PLATT-

rc_wings

Today Ron's (WB#213 rone1948) WACO took flight. Few little mods to be done and should be a nice flyer. Good to see it finally take to the air and does not get any better then watching a WACO flying around! Maybe next time we will get a few shots while in flight.

Hmmm...some issues with the server in uploading images, so will have to try later.

acerc

Dan,
The blind nuts and thumb screws, like I did my Cub, should work real well for that wing.

Jaybird

Got some glamor shots of my GP ARF outside for the first time today. It's too windy for a test flight but it's supposed to be great tomorrow.

Jaybird

p.s Can't post any pictures, but you know what it looks like anyway.

rcjunky67

[quote]ORIGINAL: Jaybird

Got some glamor shots of my GP ARF outside for the first time today. It's too windy for a test flight but it's supposed to be great tomorrow.

Jaybird

p.s Can't post any pictures, but you know what it looks like anyway.
Hey jay , how did your top wing idea work out , and did you ever come up with any kind of telescoping rod setup for your aileron stuts? Or did you decide to go without them . And can you let us know how she feels with the servos that you decided to use? I've not gotten mine yet ,still saving the $$$ needed , but that's all I've got left to get before I'm ready to start assembly on mine.thanks for your input

Jaybird

Hi Robert,

The top wing assembly seems to work really well. It's a lot easier than handling four sets of screws, washers and nuts twice to remove the carry handle and attach the senter section. The panels slide in part way, the sevo connections are made and then they are slide all the way in and two screws are inserted in each side.

I haven't done anything with the mock aileron pushrods or wire rigging at this point. I also went with the stock tailwheel wire instead of the DuBro unit.

I hope to maiden it today if I can get my new Saito 125 running properly.

Jaybird

handyman 220

My Feedback: (54)

Jaybird

I really like the way you are attaching the outer wings.I'll probably do the same when I get around to assembling mine. Seems much easier than the stock set-up.

rcjunky67

Best of luck to you Jaybird , to dang windy for the light weight stuff I took to the feild this morning. Got a pretty good storm coming in off the Atlantic, Byrle I believe their calling it. Hopefully it will be calm in the morning .I've finally gotten my ultimate 1.20 done , and hopefully I'll get to take her up tomarrow . She's my first step up from the .46 & .60 -.90 size stuff I've been flying.And I'mwanting to get some wingtime with it before I get started on my GP WACO. Best wishes

Jaybird

I saw the news reports on the storm and it didn't look like fun. The winds were a lot higher up this way than forecast too. But it turned out be be good thing as it gave me an excuse to break in the engine some more and work on the idle and top end settings. I'm still running it very rich and at idle it would load up and sputter and almost quit. I had run it in the back yard a few nights ago for a tank full. I had the cowl on at first and it got really hot and I took it off for the rest of the time. I had it off at the field today and it would barely warm up so I ran a tank full through that way and then put the cowl on to get it warmer which worked well. There was a large crowd at the field and they kept asking if I was going to fly it, but my plan was to run it on the ground and check all the systems. Besides, the wind would really get blowing at times and even the 35% aerobatic guys were getting blown around. It did clear out late in the day and the wind died a bit so I decided to taxi my way through the last tank of fuel. A couple of runs had the tail up and it was ready to fly but the gusty winds reminded me that it wasn't a good idea. I did kill a lot of black flies though. They were all stuck in the exhaust residue (see the picture when I can load it). We might get a break in the rain tomorrow afternoon and I have just enough fuel left for a couple of test flights.

Jaybird

rcjunky67

always best not to take chances. dang those black flies .we've got the dreaded lovebug season to contend with , and there sure is alot of them. it does'nt look good here for today. still windy and rain on n off all day.good luck jaybird. I'm gonna try to get some pic's today , if I can I'll post some

rcjunky67

TO ALL VETERAN'S PAST AND PRESENT, THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SACRIFISE'S AND HARDSHIP THAT YOU'VE ALL ENDURED IN THE NAME OF  FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY AND THE CIVIL LIBERTIE'S WE ALL ENJOY. YOUR SERVICE TO THIS COUNTRY AND ALL AMERICANS, ONE AND ALL, IS ETERNALY APPRECIATED!!!  ' THANK YOU' AND GOD BLESS YOU

Jaybird

WACO maiden...finally! The winds calmed a bit at the very end of the day and switched to out of the north instead of the south so I loaded up and headed to the KVMA field. A quick assembly (aided by the center wing attachment and bolting the struts with the brackets attached) and pre-flight followed by a thorough run up and I was ready. The take off roll was down wind so I would not have to try and go under the telephone wires right at the north end of the field. The tail came up as I applied a little back pressure to the stick, but it just kept running along the ground until I finally gave enough for lift off. It climbed out great but I had to hold a lot of back pressure until I could get some up trim and then it flew nice and level. A couple clicks of right aileron had it doing a nice hands off level pass up the field. A few circuits with a stall turn and loop at half throttle were very nice. I climbed to check the stall and saw that it would almost crawl into the wind until it would finally stall and drop the nose and then get right back to flying again. A couple of passes down the runway to gauge the speed and the last attempt put it right on the tarred center runway. I wanted it on the grass however to help slow it down, so as it reached the north end of the runway where the access road and phone lines are I steered it off into the grass and stopped. Yeah! I even had my official WACO t-shirt on (thanks Mitch). No in-flight pictures or video but I will have some later I hope.

Jaybird

nine o nine

My Feedback: (1)

Looks really good Jaybird. Patience always pays off. Mitch