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Joined: 12/7/2001 From: Andover,
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I got a little more work done on the HurriKane during the Twins whoopping of Texas (I take that as a good sign).
I really like Dan's firewall design, that you can see in the next picture. Its three parrts that make up the total 1/2" of thickness.
The first part is a 1/8" ply part that is tabbed into the fuse that gives the firewall the proper incidence. It also eliminates the need to toothpick or pin your firewall.
The second part is 1/4" ply that gets glued to the first plate and ends up flush with the end of the fuse sides. Once this is glued in, you can sand the end of the nose flat.
The third part is another 1/8" piece of ply that secures the center of the firewall to the outside sides (and top and bottom) of the fuse. It really ties the whole thing together.
I have an unused backplate mount that I use to put in blind nuts, and to sand the fuse down to it.
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Joined: 12/7/2001 From: Andover,
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Next, time to mount the servos.
Dans servo tray is setup similar to mine, but I'm not sure what throttle servo he uses, as it was too big for a Hitec 85 and too small for a hitec 225. I assume JR, but not sure which one. I used Expert SL 451's for the elevators, enlarged the tray to fit a Hitec 225 for the throttle, and my standard Heavy Duty JR gold switch fit perfectly.
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Joined: 12/7/2001 From: Andover,
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Now that the servos are in place, and I can get the wires out of the way, time for the bottom sheeting.
Dan's kit came with a single piece of long grain balsa like I use to supply with my seeker kits. I've found that using cross grain sheeting tends to be stronger, so I borrowed a set of cross grain sheeting from one of my kits.
I glued it up, leaving a gap at the rear so I can get the pushrod ball links in place later.
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Joined: 12/7/2001 From: Andover,
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Heres the last picture of the night. We fly off of a pretty thickly planted grass sod farm for our 428 races. When you land, the plane really does not land. It kinda stops, and sometimes flips over on the tail. The area just in front of the seeker tail tends to be a weak point landing in these conditions. The Hurrikane is stronger right at the tail joint, but looks to be about the same just in front of the tail. I epoxied some .007 thick carbon fiber laminate to the fuse sides to help strengthen the area.
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Joined: 12/7/2001 From: Andover,
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My overall impression so far is that this looks to be a very well designed kit. The precision of his cuts is very close to the minimum required sizes, so not much sanding is required. This can be good, but you gotta be carefull. You don't have a lot of room on the nose to get the firewall at 2 1/4", so be carefull getting the blind nuts in the right spots. The wide point of the fuse is right at the TE. You have a little room, but not much. Be carefull sanding down the tabs that slightly extend past the fuse sides.
You can see that Dan is an engineer, he has very tight tolerances.
I'm having fun building something different, can't wait to fly it.
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Joined: 6/28/2002 From: Arlington Heights,
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Great stuff!! Keep it coming. I really like the addition of the composite tail!
Gary test flew the HurriKane in florida, and after a couple passes he was able to put it on the course.
I test flew the Laser V, which uses Bruce's Shot Gun wing. The fuselage construction is the same for both. The difference between the two airplanes was moments and airfoil. I tried to use the moments from Dave's seeker on the Laser V (originally named BNK, which stood for Bruce, Norman, Kane) and ended up with the CG too far back. We added some lead to the nose and flew it. Once the CG was moved forward the plane grooved very well. The main difference between the Seeker and the Laser V was that I added two formers and a doubler in the tail section. The next release of Laser V's will have the same tail moments as HurriKane, because the HurriKane CG came out right on the money.
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A little more progress tonight.
BTW, the Twins are undefeated since I picked this scheme, they knocked off Texas again this afternoon. I hope the fact that Dan is from Chicago doesn't effect our 4 game series this weekend with the defending world series champs.
Not much left to do untill the wing is done, so I worked on the pushrods tonight. I like the 1/8" rods available from Darrol Cady at www.darrolcady.com
The inner hole is a slip fit for 2/56 rod. I glued in a piece about 2" long, leaving about 1/2" of threads for the ball links.
Things are pretty snug in the tail area, but I think it will be ok. Heres a picture from the bottom.
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Joined: 12/7/2001 From: Andover,
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One of my favorite tips, that I've shared in the past, is to get your elevator servos set up on the radio before you attach the pushrods to the servos.
Get the servos arms centered with the radio, ball links attached on the elevators, and then glue in a piece of 2/56 with z bend attached with slow setting epoxy. After you shove the rod into the CF attach it to the servo arm and attach to the servo. Keep some paper towels handy as the epoxy likes to ooze out of the rod as you push it in. Turn the radio on, leave the sticks at neutral, and put some clamps or use tape on the elevator surfaces to make sure everything is centered.
When the glue dries, your pushrods will be perfectly centered on the servo with no adjustments.
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Joined: 12/7/2001 From: Andover,
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As you can see in the picture, the servos are lined up very nice. I offset them just a hair of center, forward of 90 degrees. You predominately use up elevator, so with full up the arms are close to perfectly centered at 90 degrees to the arm. Not sure if this helps much, but it makes sense in my mind.
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Joined: 12/7/2001 From: Andover,
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I know Randy posted this in another thread, but I wanted to add it here also.
He got the Mylar painted up with Red and Blue today, and only needs the White before bagging to the wing. Looks great to me, as long as he doesn't send me a 2 lb wing
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RE: HurriKane Kit - 
