Fiberclassics 330L w/BME Evo, Pipes, Aitronics Stylus and HiTecs  
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Fiberclassics 330L w/BME Evo, Pipes, Aitronics Stylus a... - 2/14/2003 2:17:28 AM   
Kris^


 

Posts: 1222
Joined: 1/16/2002
From: concord, NC, USA
Status: offline 		hello all, and welcome to the step-by-step buildup of my Fiberclassics 330L 33% IMAC plane. I'll be building this model over the next couple of weeks, equipping it with a BME Evo on Canister mufflers, using an Airtronics Radio System with HiTec servos and NiMH battery packs. My object is to give an overview, in as much depth as possible, into the construction of this plane and powerplant combination, what problems I encountered and how I overcame them, a final HONEST weight and review of it's flight characteristics, and how I go about dialing the model/powerplant in.

First off, people are going to ask. . WHY the FC330L. A number of reasons. First, it is designed as a no compromise model, to fly as well as the company designing it can make it fly, yet still be not only affordable, but be able to be mass-produced on an assembly line. The second reason is that I am a NOTORIOUSLY proud scratch builder, using a lot of different materials, techniques, and ideas in my models, some of which are just a WEE bit out there. to this end, if I built a KIT, it would just be another story of "This is how I bashed a Carden/AEroworks/Aerotech/Nameit to get what I wanted out of the plane. the FC330L is not a kit, but a pre-molded aircraft, so "bashing" is a bit difficult to do. of course I will do some slight "modifications" basically because I will be using the lighter BME Evo102 rather than the DA100 the plane is designed around. third, i will have to live with this plane throughout it's lifespan, hopefully a period of many years. I can't see a reason to be building something that I might not like, or will disappointed with, so I may as well finish out an extremely capable aircraft and fly it often for my own enjoyment, as well as competition. Lastly, the FC330L has been reduced in price from its original $1900 USD to about $1495, and with shipping and a set of wing/stab covers comes to about $1600 (your prices may vary). if you look at the current crop of 33-35% planes, buying a kit, or ARC or ARF, then finishing it out, can easily come to that price, for just a finished airframe!! so, it seems that the FC330L is not that far out of line with the Kits and ARF/ARC's it is going to compete with from a price/size standpoint.

Now, WHY the BME Evo102? Again, several reasons. . first off. . it's NOT a DA100, which the aircraft is designed around, so it gives me a bit of "Builders license" to do some things to adapt the lighter engine to the plane, and experiment a bit. Secondly, I will be getting one of the new BME Xtreme 110's in the near future, and it will drop right into this plane in place of the Evo102. Third, the projected weight of the plane is about 24 lbs, more than light enough for the BME to easily power around. AND, most importantly, I have a BME Evo102 sitting on the shelf, complete with a PEFA canister setup with custom headers, a few props, and associated gear for it. The decision not to use a DA100 in no way reflects a slight against the engine. It's a GREAT motor, and if I had to do this from the ground up, without the Evo on hand, I'd be very tempted to go with the DA100 instead.

Why the Aritronics Stylus radio setup? I have one on hand, purchased form Branwell McClory about 18 months ago and never used. Everyone uses JR or Futaba it seems. . why not get Airtronics into the act. it's a VERY capable transmitter setup, and a lot more radio than this plane will ever need.

Why HiTec servos? Cost, efficiency, I LIKE them, and I've been using them for over 2 years with almost no problems. My second choice would be an all JR radio system, with my 10sx and 8411's, but I prefer the HiTec digitals and HD analogs, so that is what I will use.

Why NiMH batteries? simple. . they cost no more than NiCads, are about 25% lighter for the same capacity, and I have 6 flight packs on the shelf. I've had bad luck with Lithium batteries in the past, and I really don't want to go that route again, even if they were given to me.

SO. . I hope you will all enjoy this thread, and how it proceeds. I look to have the aircraft flying by Feb 26th, my Birthday. I'll include daily updates and commentaries as the project progresses.

Questions are welcome, but please. . NO BRAND LOYALTY WARS !!!!!!!!

People have their opinions about products. .so be it. this will not be a place to bash products or give other people a hard time about what they use. I will personally report any posts of such nature to the moderators and ask that the individuals be censured for it.

Now. .ON with the show . and enjoy.

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Day 1. . the plane - 2/14/2003 2:47:19 AM   
Kris^


 

Posts: 1222
Joined: 1/16/2002
From: concord, NC, USA
Status: offline 		De plane De PLANE!!!

yes, its a real plane. . whoopee.

As assembled, with landing gear wheels, tail gear, and all parts in place, but no radio, paint, engine or anything else, weight is 13 lbs 12 ounces with my Wally-World digital fish scale. It does not SEEM that heavy, but it is. the dark red "stripes" are where I have already ground down the parting-line flash from where the pieces were molded together and applied filler putty. In the directions for assembling the plane, fiberclassics says: "composite parts have seams. They are there today, and they will be there forever. You will have to get used to them, or you'll have to touch up. . . . . .In Europe (oh YEAH. . over THERE)modellors take them as a sign for high tech composites, even more, they like to show them and don't like them to be covered or hidden"

WELLL. .I'm SORRY folks. . I paid $1600 for this plane. . it's NOT going to have SEAMS!!!!!

Other flaws in the finish include some places on the left upper wing where it looks like someone dribbled release agent in the mold right before they started the layup. Several large "drops" appear in the gel coat. otherwise the finish is very good in most places. The Red underside paint for the wings and stabs is affected by alcohol, and tends to start smearing a little if you go to remove uncured epoxy with a rag soaked in alcohol. . .So. . NO ALCOHOL on the painted surfaces please. It kind of makes you wonder if the planes pained parts could hold up to nitro based glo fuels.

more pics and notes to come

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< Message edited by Kris^ -- Feb 13 2003 9:56PM >

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Day 1 #2 - 2/14/2003 3:06:55 AM   
Kris^


 

Posts: 1222
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From: concord, NC, USA
Status: offline 		This is a pic of the forward inner fuselage area. As you can see, the wings use a floating blade spar arrangement with anti-rotation pins and nylon thumbs nuts to hold the wing tot he fuselage sides. . one of the anti-rotation pins on the left wing came loose while I was tightening it, rotating in its mounting block. I'll probably wind up gluing it back in place with epoxy. teh floating blade spars mate into the opposite wings root, locking the wings together and are not supported on the sides of the fuselage. All joining stresses for the wing-fuselage interface are at the alighment pins.

You can see the Carbon Fiber laminated landing gear bolted into place. I used a fender washer on the outer holes to help spread the loads in this area, hopefully preventing delamination or breakage of the landing gear in case of a less than perfect landing. the instruction manual stresses that the planeis not meant to be 'beaten around" so I assume this also means no rough landings if possible. LG holdown bolts are about 1/4" diameter, way overkill for the application, as I use 4 8-32 bolts to hold the aluminum gear on 40% planes and the LG blocks will rip out, or the gear bend, before those #8 bolts break. These 6.5mm bolts are about 50% thick than a #8 bolt, and are stainless steel. Changing to smaller bolts would probably save a couple of oounces in this area.

The Main Gear is Carbon Fiber laminated wood in the area where the thru-holes are drilled for the bolts, but seems to be solid composite construction for the legs. I'm going to try REALLY hard to land this baby softly every time.

A medium sized Haigh tail wheel is used, and I had no difficulty mounting it with the stock nylon straps and #4x 1" screws from my own parts cabinet. Wheels are 4.5" H9 wheels, drilled to 6mm holes and bolts w/locknuts are used as axles. the wheel pants are relieved to match the LG legs, a nice touch, and it all fits together nicely.

more to come

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Day 1 #3 - 2/14/2003 3:12:16 AM   
Kris^


 

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From: concord, NC, USA
Status: offline 		The "Business end" of the fuselage, where all that power is mounted. The cowl has plenty of width to accomodate a 100cc motor. Small punch marks are already in place for the DA100 bolt pattern, but figuring out the proper placement for the BME's bolts should not be a problem.

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Day1 #4 - 2/14/2003 3:16:52 AM   
Kris^


 

Posts: 1222
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From: concord, NC, USA
Status: offline 		Inside of the rear of the fuselage. In the rear you can see the rod from the Haigh style tailgear sticking through the tailgear plate. It's not the strongest of construction back there, and I will probably go in and put reinforcing plates against the bottom of the tailgear plate to ensure the rear of the fuselae is not crushed accidentally. The fuselage has only one former, around the front of the turtle deck (shown).

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Wings. . . . Aileron Servo Hatches - 2/15/2003 6:24:09 AM   
Kris^


 

Posts: 1222
Joined: 1/16/2002
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Status: offline 		I find it rather ludicrous that in this day of laser-cut everything in many kits, Fiberclassics has resorted to CNC router cut parts for the aileron mounting pieces. The buyer is provided with 4 sets of pieces, each set on one board of 5-layer lite plywood, and the pieces are router cut on the board. You break the pieces out, then finish sand them to shape. After positioning the servo on the mounting plate/hatch (which attaches to the wing in a recess with 4 mounting screws) and then using slo-CA to tack the mounting frame to hatch piece, I did a trial fit of the hatch into it's recess in the wing. No dice. The mounting bracket hit the edge of the recess and had to be shortened to allow a flush fit. The reason? I had installed the mounting bracket so that the servo fell through it, then screws went through the servo from the topside and into the bracket. this moved the bracket about 3/8" toward the edge of the hatch, necessitating removal of material.

Okay. . .Maybe the designers do it the other way, with the brass eyelets reversed and the screws inserted from the bottom side. There is not much room to accomplish this, however, since the body of the servo interferes a bit with a clear shot for a screwdriver to access the head of a servo screw from the bottom side. It can be done, but it's more difficult than the "normal" way servos are mounted.

Once I got that straightened out (I merely shortened the pieces in the two hatches I had already built. . the other hatches will be done "properly" to see if there is a difference in the way things work out) I tried to insert servo screws to finish mounting the servos. . LO and BEHOLD. . . the drilled holes in the bracket were too big for the servo screws, and they basically fell through the holes. . .I took some scrap ply from the leftovers of the CNC cut boards, and laminated small sections under the mounting bracket so that the screws would have some material to bite into. I used thick CA and kicker, then inserted the servos and the screws threaded right into the wood, finally establishing a good mount.

Attaching the finished servo/hatch assemblies to the wing was a bit easier. I pre-drilled the mounting plate in the wing with a 1/16" drill bit, using the already drilled holes in the hatch for a guide, then used #4-3/8 sheet metal screws to retain the hatch. It worked perfectly.

In the attached photo, please note the difference in the two plates of CNC routed pieces. One has a perfectly formed Servo mounting piece, the other has a decidedly angled edge to the same piece.m On the servo mount/hatch you can see where I had to under-laminate the mounting plate with scrap ply.

The Second pair of hatches worked a lot better, now that I knew how they were intended to be built, and I easily laminated a piece of scrap on TOP of the mounts, and screwed the servos in from the bottom side of the plates, after reversing the eyelets.

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< Message edited by Kris^ -- Feb 15 2003 2:11AM >

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Wings. . anti-rotation pin repair - 2/15/2003 6:40:13 AM   
Kris^


 

Posts: 1222
Joined: 1/16/2002
From: concord, NC, USA
Status: offline 		When I first trial-assembled the plane, teh left forward anti-rotation/retaining pin basically fell out of it's attachment hole in the root of the wing. There is no flange or head on the stud to prevent it form pulling out of the wing root, merely a hole with about 3/8" of mating surface and some ridges on the stud itself. The rest of the strength of the area is form the glue that hold the pin in place. NOT the strongest of techniques for something so critical on a very expensive plane.

Personally, I'd prefer that there was a flange or ridge at the back of the pin to mechanically make it impossible for it to come out of the wing. Losing one of these in flight can NOT be a good thing, since the floating spar will allow the wing panel to move up and down, changing it's incidence and putting a lot of stress on the companion retaining pin on that wing. if the flyer does not catch it. . quickly, total loss of the plane is a distinct possibility.

My fix, for THIS pin, came in the form of JB Weld epoxy. One of the strongest epoxy's available, it takes 8 hours to cure and extremely tenacious. it's also very thick so it will not drip off the surfaces being bonded.

After roughening the pin and hole with some 120 grit sandpaper, I cleaned both with alcohol, then mixed a batch of JB Weld and applied a good amount to both areas. I made very sure to get a lot rubbed onto the inner surface of the hole in the wing root, and had a good layer on the pin, then slid the pin into place. A clothespin held the stud/pin in place till the JB Weld finished curing. The hole was decently snug around the stud, leaving less than 1/32" of clearance.

After the JB Weld finished curing, I tried to get the stud out by hand. . It was FIRMLY attached to the wing root now, and gave no hint of ever comng loose again.

There have been a couple of reports of this problem floating around, And having experienced it firsthand for myself, I have no doubt it happens a lot more often than it is reported. These may be assembly-line built planes now, but it would behoove Fiberclassics to pay a bit more attention to QC and make sure that Mr. Chen and Co. (in SE Asia where the planes are built) start paying a bit closer attention to their work.

See attached photo for what the repair looks like.

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A bit of paint - 2/16/2003 5:56:45 PM   
Kris^


 

Posts: 1222
Joined: 1/16/2002
From: concord, NC, USA
Status: offline 		After a HARD 12 hour day twisting wrenches on cars, I dragged myself home and basically died till about 9 p.m. Sooo. .not much building time, so I decided to address those seam lines I had puttied after grinding down the ridges. I taped off the area with masking tape, about 1/2" to the side of each line, to protect the ultra shiny white gel coat, then hand sanded the seams with 320 grit wet-dry paper. They came out pretty sell, not perfect, but a lot less offensive looking than a big 1/16" ridge sticking up.

I then re-masked the upper seam in the fuselage, so that I could paint a stripe lengthwise and up the fin, spreading out at the top of the rudder into a heavier stripe. Two light coats of automotive filling/sanding primer were shot out of a spray can, just enough to cover the red-tinged filling putty, and allowed to dry for an hour, then 2-3 coats of "Apple Red" paint (again, out of a spray can) using Rustoleums "Painters Choice" brand of paint were shot. The can of color was heated under hot water for 5 mintues before spraying, and THOROUGHLy shaken to get a homogenous mix. The result is a beautiful, shiny, and smooth red strip down the fuselage.

About right now a lot of people are DYING over the fact that I used "spray can" paint insted of "Automotive" paint. To tell the truth, if I did not TELL you it was out of a spray can, you would not be able to tell. The warming of the paint ensures a very smooth flow-out of the paint and lets it atomize very well as it leaves the nozzle. It would be almost impossible to get a better finish with a "professional" spray gun setup and externally mixed paint. After the gold and blue adjoining stripes are painted, using the same technique, I'll let the paint dry for a week, then clear coat it with some Black Baron Clear epoxy based model paint. It's fuel proof to about 20% nitro, and comes out EXTREMELY shiny. It's been my experience that the finish is as durable , smooth, and shiny as the better automotive paint-jobs, at a fraction of the cost and complexity of the process.

I'll submit pics of the finished color scheme after all the colors are done.

< Message edited by Kris^ -- Feb 16 2003 1:06PM >

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Hardware positioning - 2/18/2003 4:27:09 AM   
Kris^


 

Posts: 1222
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From: concord, NC, USA
Status: offline 		With a molded fuselage the Plane is perfectly shaped, with a lack of anything inside in the way of structure or cross-bracing to attach things to. Thus, it is necessary to join a rudder servo/receiver plate to the fuselage at some point in order to mount these items. Fiberclassics gives you a glass-laminated balsa plate, already properly shaped to fit the fuselages taper near the bottom of the plane. It has two cutouts for the rudder servos, about 4" apart and next to eachother. The rudder pull-pull uses two specially made arms, joined by rods, to link the servos together and then attach to the rudder cables. I looked at the design .. okay it works. . it also looks a bit like a Rube Goldberg affair to me. It also uses two standard-case servos, where I wanted to use either 1 or 2 5735HiTec digital 1/4 scale servos for the rudder. So, out came a sheet of lite ply and my bandsaw, and in a half hour I had a plate that allowed in-line mounting of the larger servos, had a mount for the throttle and choke servos as well, a place for the receiver and enough room for a discrete external buss-bar strip for power distribution to all servos. A couple of vertical side-side "formers" attach to the bottom of the fuselage, the servo plate rests on top of them, and then the plate also attaches to the already installed landing gear plate.

Study of the picture shows the location of all the components on the plate, the already installed wiring and plugs for the aileron leads to plug into, main power cables and switch harness in place (using 2 JR superswitches in parallel), as well as a balsa "bulkhead" arrangement around the forward most rudder servo to protect it from direct heat from the canister exhaust system. since the forward wing-nuts have to attach to the studs along the side of the fuselage, the forward area of the plane has to remain open to allow access. This brings up the spectre of heat-related problems from the canisters radiating heat onto nearby radio components such as the servos and receiver.

To adress this problem, and allow the heated air to exit the fuselage, 4 pieces of 3/4" Carbon fiber tubing, used in tail tubes, were inserted into the belly of the plane, angled forward to gather the warm air inside the plane and direct it aft and out along the belly. They are visible in the photo, just forward of the servo/receiver mounting plate. After final fit and finish of the canisters is accomplished, a 1/16" balsa bulkhead will be inserted at the front of the servo plate, to protect the radio components as well as shield the wing floating spars from any direct heat from the exhaust system. At the forward end of the fuselage the holes for the canisters can be seen, where they will go into the engine compartment. There is enough of a gap to allow air to enter the forward part of the fuselage, pick up stray heat from the canisters, then exit the plane.

Since there is no direct air blast into the pipe tunnel holes, there should be no problems with excess pressure inside the fuselage. An additional measure, to further decrease the radiated heat form the canisters, will be to insulate them with CF/Kevlar hybrid cloth, 3-4 wraps thick. The cloth will be wrapped loosely around each canister, to allow air to penetrate a little and help keep it cooler than if it was totally enclosed in an insulating layer. It will also help prevent heat radiation, though, making things a bit less temperature sensitive inside the plane.

One last measure, suggested by Fiberclassics, will be to put a layer of thin balsa sheet along the top of the CF landing gear, to help prevent heat saturation that could result in failure of the landing gear legs.

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< Message edited by Kris^ -- Feb 17 2003 11:38PM >

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Canister notes - 2/18/2003 4:46:05 AM   
Kris^


 

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Status: offline 		I had to modify the LG plate assembly to get two pipe canisters to fit properly. Basically a small crescent shaped piece was cut out of the LG plate former using a rotozip bit on a dremel tool, then final shaped using a 5/16" dremel wood cutting bit. this gives enough room for the canisters to lay inside the fuselage in a low mounting place. Plans call for splitting some Large diameter silicone glo-fuel tubing and sliding it over the edge of the ply former where the canister will rest against it, then using the same type of tubing to "lash" the canister onto the former. A simple hole outboard of the canister, and another one inboard, and a second pair for the other canister, will allow the use of one piece of silicon tubing to hold both canisters firmly in their "mount" without putting undue stress on the canister itself. It will be able to move around a little, but not so much as to start flopping. Rearward movement will be limited by a piece of 1/2" ID silicon tube used for tuned pipe couplers in glo engines, attached to the balsa bulkhead in place to protect the wing floating spars from heat. The front of the canisters will be held by the headers and couplers attached to the engine.

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another shot of the canister setup - 2/18/2003 4:48:23 AM   
Kris^


 

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Status: offline 		An external view of the forward bottom of the fuselage, showing the holes for the canisters, int he engine compartment, as well as the exit tubes for the heated air. The fuselage bottom will be painted Midnight Blue Metallic, and the exit tubes should blend in, being barely visible.

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