ProfLooney

Hey guys for the past couple years I been doing a lot of WWI designing for the UK Dawn Patrol. I told them i was going to take this year off and do some stuff I been wanting to do.

A few years ago some of you may remember I was in the process of designing a 1/6th scale ME 410. I used to talk designing with Vance on the phone a lot and he said it was one of his favorite german planes and he had just started designing one at the same scale. If I know a major designer like Jerry or Vance is working on a plane I usually back off and let them do it and pick another plane. So I backed off and started work on a plane Vance really liked and always wanted to build for himself, but didnt want to do a full blown set of plans due to not seeing a market for it. So I decided to start the Martin B-10 Bomber. I got most of it all lofted up but have some problems to iron out with it as to how to do some stuff.

over the past few years Vance and I had discussions on the 410 figuring out incidences and airfoils and sharing documentation. I had gotten as far as framing mine up and vic catalson had done foam wing cores and tail feathers for mine. everything fit really nice when I dropped the project. Since Vance really liked the plane and really wanted to get it drawn up and now cant finish it, I figured to honor the many hours we spent on the phone and finish it for him.

So that is the background on this project and though I will be offering 1/6th and 1/5th scale plans my prototype will be built at 1/4 scale. Specs and pics of the design to follow.

Joe

ProfLooney

Specs:

Length: 123.6"
Wingspan: 162.5"

Root Airfoil: NACA 23018 - 636.5

Tip Airfoil: NACA 23010 - 636.5

Incidence: 2 Deg.

Washout: 3 Deg.

Dihedral Center of LE: 3.75 Deg

Stab Incidence: 1 Deg.


Points of interest in design:

Standard flaps. (Vance and I at first thought it had fowlers due to lack of reference material. Later we discovered it just has standard flaps.)

Wing mounted Engine coolers with butterfly style flaps. ie the top and bottom rear portions both open up at the same time.

Ailerons Hinged underneath with large mass balancers attached.

Leading edge Slats

8 different nose armament configurations available.

Pilot and Rear Gunner inside large bubble canopy with steel tube roll cage.

Remote control operated fuselage guns.

Very narrow rear fuselage. will be the hardest part figuring out how to operate the control surfaces and keep everything hidden. fuse only 7/8" wide at the rear on a 1/4 scale and only abt 3/4" on a 1/6th scale. that leaves little to no room for control horns, however offsetting them as far to the side as possible might make it work.

the rest of the plane is pretty straight forward general stuff.

So thats the overall Specs on the plane.

Joe

ProfLooney

Ref Books being used:

Mushroom Yellow Series Messerschmidt ME 410

Squadron Signal In Action #147 ME 210/410

Militaria 130 - Me 210_410

Profile 161 - Messerschmitt Me 210_410 Series

Wydawnictwo Militaria [033] - Messerschmitt Me210 - Me410

ProfLooney

now for some screenshots

ProfLooney

ProfLooney

Ok so that is what I had  done last weekend. this week I lofted up the Nacelles. I was going to work on the canopy and LG next but figured I would work on framing first. I talked to Mike Cramer over at wingspan models abt the Landing Gear. they are P-40 style.

Once I finished the lofting I began slicing the lofts apart to give me my rib and former shapes.

Joe

ProfLooney

I like being able to do it all as a solid first in solidworks as then I know how it will look when sheeted and i also know everything will fit together.

Joe

ProfLooney

above it shows the retracted wheel straight up thats just because it was just a rotated sketch so I could get an idea of the rotation degree I needed. I will draw up the parts and do it correctly later on.

well tonight I started on the upper shell framing. I been trying to think of the best way to do the nose and figured as I go along to just try and make it as universal as possible so that people can easy choose whichever configuration they want without having to redesign the thing. the nice thing abt this plane is with the engines so far forward I think the big thing will be trying not to add too much weight up front so you dont have to add lead to the back end to balance it out. all the weight on this plane is on top or forward of the CG.

ProfLooney

Ok I got the stringers added and pretty much the front end framework finished. I still need to add the cockpit details which will frame up with the fuse top.

tomorrow is babysitting grandson all day and tomorrow evening and this weekend will work on the tail feathers and their attachment etc.

jumpinjan

Joe,
All your wing tips (main wing, rudder, stab...) and trailing edges are too sharp, they need to be radius. Also, it doesn't need washout on that nice wing planform.
Jan

ProfLooney

no they all fine jan they perfectly match my 3 views and thats what matters especially so that people that might want to compete have matching documentation. like anything there are so many 3 views out there you pic the best and go with that. mine came from the mushroom yellow book. and the washout is what vance had come up with and with the shape of the tip foil it is needed. it has that flat angled front end of the bottom part of the rib. all the details were worked out with me and vance over the last 2 or 3 yrs to give the most accuracy as we can to the full scale aircraft.

with my contacts in the uk a lot of my info was also from my uk mates with access to the full scale at the museum over there. I believe its at duxford.

Joe

jumpinjan

Lol, I don't care about your darn 3-views...lol...I'm thinking of the builder that's building your design! You need to put MORE volume in the trailing edges & tips. They are too sharp, and after all the building & sanding is done, some of the trailing edges & tips will be lost.
Also, being a two engine model, its going to be flying pretty hot. Fast models don't need washout!!!

ProfLooney

well most real planes dont have big roined edges they all sharp. I have built several planes like that. just look at the spitfire you talk abt a sharp TE. thats why you glass them. if a person prefers to slightly sand a radious on the TE fine but you would never get away with that at a competition.

I design the plane like the original what the builder does after is up to him. but if it had sharp trailing edges etc then thats what it will be designed like. this is a scale plane not a sport plane if someone wants a sport model they can buy a top flight. like said you need to sheet the wing anyways so you can sand it round if ya like but I design scale and have yet to see a real life plane with big round radiuses on the edges most of them come together sharp where the metal sheeting comes together. thats just the way I design I design it scale so it works for everyone and in case someone wishes to compete.

as for the washout the full scale had it so does the model it was there for a reason and thats to stop any chance of tip stall at low speeds and high angles of attack.

Joe

abufletcher

I'm with Joe on this. The design should be 100% scale and if some particular builder wants to compromise, that's up to him. One of the things I like about the CDScaleDesigns WWI kits is that the wings have a scale thin TE. This is accomplished by laminating 0.4mm ply onto 3mm balsa and most of the balsa gets sanded down.

Joe, you've sure come a long ways in a relatively short time with your CAD skills!

Lucky Dog

My Feedback: (1)

I'm just a flunkey, but I'd think washout would be good regardless.

foodstick

A buddy and I had blown up some plans and just sort of messed with this project a little. I can't tell you whose plans at the moment but it was some sportscale stuff. I think we went to about 114 inchs on the wingspan.

Do you forsee any issues with the relatively long nacelles? those motors end up way WAY out there. One friend of ours that builds a lot of twins was worried we might have some bad vibration or harmonics with the engines so far from the wing.. We were planning on using 25 cc conversion motors.
Also I have read that this plane tends to build VERY nose heavy.. Any tricks or ideas on that? We were planning on just building the tail pretty solid..and no attempt at weight saving back there.

With the size we had been thinking..and your even bigger build.. I am assuming that the planes wing will carry quite a bit of weight easily.

Also I haven't looked at any info on this plane in quite awhile..but doesn't it have rotating retracts? I can't say I am remembering that correctly. We had a set of large robart gear out of a Byron Corsair that seemed to be almost perfect for our 114 inch model.

I have my basic fuse boxed up, and it is a BOX! hahahah I even carved a plug for the EXTREMELY complicated canopy, and pulled some vacum form parts..I wasn't thrilled with the result, and my mold was much worse for wear than I would have liked...I ended up needing to make to frame pieces, and two clear pieces and join them together..not pro work I am afraid..

To anyone wanting to examine a bizare canopy, try figuring out that rear section..it is a nightmare scenario ! hahahah

ProfLooney

thanks ABUIhad a lot of practice with solidworks last year I think I did 7 designs for the dawn patrol.


Foodsticks you are correct on the gear they are very similar to the p-40 they fold straight back and rotate 90 degrees. I talked to mike kramer at wingspan and he is thinking abt doing a line of electric retracts and he says he thinks he has a set that will work for this plane.


as for the engines and nacelles I have some Ideas for that including having working hinged panels that flop open like the original to make it easy to access. I will know more when I get to the wing.

as for it being very nose heavy Iagree I wont be cutting too many corners in the tail for weight, but I am not going to overdo it either. I will just do the cores and the ribs from ply and not balsa. wont add a ton of weight but every extra gram back there will help.

as for the canopy thats not a problem with the shapes its actually pretty simple shape. I will try to find my drawings of it and when ya see it but basically it just goes from the bowed out center section to flat angled in the rear to match the fuse shape.

the fuse is like a box with a trapexoid on it until the back of the canopy then it goes to pure oval I remember I had to plank and 4 formers worth at that transition area just to get it to blend in when I did my prototype a few years back.

I will probably do the tail feathers similar to the way wingspan did his as it made it easy to go together but I will use my signature LE of ply ledge with balsa on top and bottom like in all my WWI planes this gives a really nice LE thats almost dingproof

Joe

foodstick

I guess as far as a complex canopy, I mean't for recreating it with vacuforming..it really wants to trap the mold into the formed plastic.. I sometimes wished I had just layed up a fiberglass section to make the frames from, and then filled in the windows with flat sheeting. I am sure there is a way to make it look good without too much hassle... I tried to cheat and carve my mold from some clark foam, and then glass it. I would have been better off going with wood. I am still a fairly amateur vacu former though, and far from proficient !

It really has a strange shape back there..the rear gunner must have had quite a view. I wonder how bad the distortion would have been on those side areas?

The plane always reminds me of a grasshopper when I look at it ... which of course is part of the appeal. Something vastly different !

I will most definitely be watching ..

abufletcher

I don't see how the length of the nacelles would matter at all in terms of balance. It doesn't matter at all that the nacelles happen to be "ahead" of the short nose since in this case the length of the nose is entirely immaterial. Just imagine, instead, that the fuselage has a "forked nose" and the tip of that nose is about where most other noses were on similar WWII aircraft.

Also I have a lot of faith in original designs. Why should a model be any harder to balance than the original? And keeping this in mind, I think you'd be wise to keep the tail as light as possible.

ProfLooney

thats how I was planning on doing the canopy trying to come up with a nice sturdy frame and use flat sheeting then frame on top of that.

as for the balance the nice thing abt solidworks is it has a design feature which gives the weight and balance point. so I can use that and make any adjustments as necessary. since the gear will be right on the cg they wont matter  but for the engines I can just throw in blocks of aluminum where the engines would be that is the same weight of the engines and will be really close as to how much weight I will have to add and where.

joe

ProfLooney

heres the canopy shots

dvs1

Very cool, this is definately one worth watching.

shanksow

My Feedback: (2)

Yeah, I want to follow this build myself.

foodstick

I am not trying to hijack or confuse this thread, But I thought you MIGHT like to see where I have left off on mine. Like I said this was a sportscale set of plans blown up...I will delete these pics later Professor if you would like ..so as to avoid confusion.

ProfLooney

naw you can leave them up thats fine with me. looks pretty good. I was trying to find pics of my proto but think i deleted them to save room on my backup dvds