BSDGuy

I have a Dare Designs Cub I'm going to be building, but my youngest son was feeling left out. Since there's not really much space around here for bigger birds (I have to drive 25 min to get to the RC field), wallowed around in the LHS's back room and found a 30 inch WS cub. It's a rubber band powered plane, with the Estes brand on it. It's a nice looking balsa model, intended to be covered with tissue. Instead, I'm going to look at converting it to RC. I have 2 10 gr servos, a small ESC, and light radio (case removed), and weighing all the parts leads me to believe that everything, less motor and batt's will weigh about 4 oz. It should have around 130 to 140 sq inches of wing area.

An IPS on 3 small LiPoly cells will provide about 5-6 oz thrust, and about 30 mph for speed (screaming for a plane that size), and it would be run throttled well back to fly.

Now, can someone point me to the best way to save weight in making hinges, servo mounts, etc?

Also, the plane is not equipped for batt and radio access, so I'm going to have get a little creative.

It should be very slow and reasonably docile, as well as having plenty of power to avoid struggling to keep it in the air. And, with its ize we should be able to fly it in schoolyards and such...

Of course, it'll get reduced to splinters sooner or later, but the parts will be reusable for something else

Any input appreciated.