guitarsbanjo

My 8 year old needs something to practice flying, so I'm doing a half-a-dussin. I have the magazine and just scanned it, traced it in Design Cad and modified it to make it easier to build. Built up wing with flat bottom wing for one thing. Hopefully, if I do a build log it will force me to finish it. I have a lot of half finished planes, lost interest somewhere along the way.

I could have just blown this up from the magazine scan, but I thought it was distorted because I assumed the rudder hinge line would be 90 degrees to the horizontal stabilizer, but apparently not, because both planes on the plan are off, and I can't find anything else on the plan that appears to be askew. Anyway, my redraw has it 90 degrees, and I just made an arc that was very close to the original for the rudder.

Again, I want my 12 year old and 8 year old to do as much of the building as possible, eventually I think we will build one for each of us, with some modifications to make them different. If I have some colorful covering we may do a "Stop That Pigeon" theme. I figured a pure flat bottom wing would be easier to build. When I cut out the fuselage sides, I will probably cut the wing saddle with 0 incidence, I usually prefer it that way. I figured it was easier to lay it out that way on the building board than to go through the trouble of re-doing it on the drawing.

Austin

guitarsbanjo

So, again to make it easy for them, I decided to stack and gang sand the ribs. I hate making ribs that way, the next batch I'm going to cut the stack all at once instead. The blade guide on my old Ryobi band saw broke a few months ago, and the part is no longer available. I think I can make something that will work, but I found this little Rockwell saw for $99 about a month ago and thought I'd give it a try. So far, I'm liking it. It's basically an upside down jig saw. I sold myself on the idea because, unlike my bandsaw and any of my scroll saws, it is capable of cutting metal too. With it mounted like it is, it is much easier to use than a jig saw, and unlike just mounting a jigsaw upside down, it has a little arm that you adjust to keep the material down on the table. So far, for my purposes, I'm thinking I like it better than either the Bandsaw or the scroll saw. The small bandsaw blades are too flexible, I had problems with the blade actually bowing inside the wood when I cut something like maple or oak.
Here I've already used it to cut rib profiles in some scrap formica I found. In the first picture I'm ripping the balsa into 1" strips, I know, it would have been faster and easier to do this with a ruler and a razor knife, but hey, I'm testing the capabilities of my new toy. Second picture I have the 1" strips cut, now I'm using the miter gauge to hold the 3 strips square, and the rip fence is set as a stop block to cut the rib blanks.

Austin

for some reason that first picture is tinted blue when I look at it, but not when I blow it up, strange.

guitarsbanjo

and finally for today, the progress on the actual ribs.

The plan for the moment is to use the Thunder Tiger .071 that Randy Randolph gave me. I wished I'd have thought to ask if it was the one he used for the magazine review he did. Good guy. Anyway, we like it because it looks like a "big" engine, and were not looking for super power. I do have a Norvel .061, but it has no throttle, and an AME .049, a T.D..049...and other options. I should probably do electric these days, but for now that's not the plan. My 12 year old has an AP .09 that he wants to put on his, when I build mine I'll have to decide if it is going to be Electric or use one of my other engines.

Also, this first one is going to be without ailerons, the next one will be 4 channel.

Austin

Tony A.

Nice job! I'll be following your progress.

Have fun!

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Nice subject for a scratch build..!
To be practical, I prefer flat bottom wings for most 1/2 A projects.
I've never seen a saw like that. For cutting metal, I hate using my jig saw only because it spits out jagged, red hot shrapnel every where.

guitarsbanjo

I'll try to post more about the saw as I go. It uses jigsaw blades, so anything you can cut with this. And since it cuts downwards and has a vacuum port sparks probably woudn't be an issue. I'll make some updates later this week.

And my thinking was I've used flat bottom wings, and up to about a .25 size they don,t bother me,except on outside maneuvers.

skaliwag

My Feedback: (1)

Actually sparks could be an issue if they are sucked down on previously made sawdust or combustibles.

guitarsbanjo

I thought about that too, but I've personally never had a "red hot" spark from cutting with a jig saw, now a grinding wheel is another story. Sharp little pieces of metal flying, now that's another story. But I've never seen a spark myself, so I'm not worried in that respect. I don't use the vacuum port myself, if I'm going to do something particularly messy, I just move it outside. But this little saw doesn't make that much saw dust, again, think jigsaw and not table saw. My last post wasn't very clear, I was doing it from my tablet, and after I read it I didn't think it was worth the effort to try to edit it. But it uses jigsaw blades just mounted upside down. The little red "button" on the left, is actually a little slide lever, slide it over and the blade just pops out, stick a different blade in, and continue the work. It will cut up to 1.5" inch, I've used it to cut a standard 2x4. And since it uses jigsaw blades there is a good assortment, skinny blades for scroll work, diamond blades for tile, metal blades, thick wood blades...it's actually pretty useful so far. I've used it without the arm, the arm makes it a little harder to see the cut line. But, when you cut something like the formica I used for the rib templates, it will bounce the material around quite a bit. The little arm is pushed down until it touches the material, then tightened in place, and it make the piece stable, holding it against the table top.

guitarsbanjo

alright, I finally had a little time to work some more on this. Remember, I'm trying to make a "kit" basically that will be easy for my 8 year old and 12 year old to assemble with as little help as possible.

so once again, a little overkill using the new saw to do something I could have done with a razor knife, but in this case, I think it was well worth it. I ripped some 1/4" hard balsa into a trailing edge and a leading edge. I'm really starting to like this saw. When I tried this with my little Ryobi 10" band saw the blade wandered all over the place, these are straight and square. I need to shape the 1/4" te, but I'm thinking about making some type of jig to cut the angle in it with the saw. and there is the picture of half of the wing dry fit together. I notched the TE with 2 hacksaw blades taped together,this makes a notch just right for a 1/16" rib. I figure this serves 2 purposes, as you can see here, the wing stays together without being pinned and the ribs line up and stand up. And second, since this is going to be a bare minimum open structure wing, this adds some rigidity to it, I could have accomplished this with triangle gussets, but this makes assembly easier. I also had to enlarge the spar notches, I originally cut them for 3/16" spars, but I only had balsa in the right size, and I figured that wouldn't cut it for a plane I want to survive training an 8 year old, so I had some 1/4" hardwood and I enlarged the notches to fit them. Again, this is dry fit with no glue, so I will break it back down, and once the kit is complete I will let them build it with some coaching.

guitarsbanjo

I tried this little trick I learned from one of Randy Randolph's little tip things in one of the magazines. I've done this before, and got terrible results, but I thought I'd give it another shot. I got the same poor results. All of the ribs came out inconsistent. The flat bottom is easy enough, but trying to keep the gap the same on the curved upper is just a pain. and then the thin exacto blade wants to wonder in the grain sometimes. I'll stick with just drawing another rib pattern for the thinner ribs next time. I started to throw these away and make new ones, but I decided to just sand them all to the same size, and they'd be good enough for what I'm building. I don't need NASA spec's and tolerances here.

Austin

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

The ribs look good from here. Your boys are getting great experience seeing how a project gets planned and managed.

guitarsbanjo

thanks C.P. , hopefully they learn to plan a little better so they don't have to re-cut the spar slots on their projects. I'll admit, this one is sort of a cut-and-paste affair. I printed out the profile view at 1/3 scale so it would fit on a piece of paper. Going to show Brandon how to take measurements with calipers and mark it of on a larger sheet to enlarge it. We don't need no stinkin' full size plan. A reference line, a few reference points, and a flexible piece of wood to fill in the lines. Close enough is close enough. The formers are going to be made wide enough to house the radio gear and the motor comfortably, so I'm definitely not going strictly by the plans, just cut and fit on some of it. I have lot's of irons in the fire right now, but hopefully we can get this done in a timely manner.

Tonight we flew a little bit, and then, when the wind died down, we took out the ringmaster bipe he built last year and flew some more after it was too dark to safely fly the rc planes. I removed the wheels for a little better performance and was teaching him how to hand launch a CL plane, he did good when I launched for him, but when he launched for me the first time, one of us did something wrong because it flopped on it's back and was flying inverted, it flew inverted, but I could not get it to come over on a reverse wingover,. I've never really tried to fly a baby bee inverted because it doesn't have a "stunt tank", I had no idea it would run that long before it finally died. Talk about having a tiger by the tail. Full down would stall the plane, but just a little less than full down would send it rocketing towards the turf. Fought it for about 500 laps (ok, probably more like 5) before it finally quit. No damage, dusted it off, fired it up, and the next flight went according to plan.

Austin

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

That was a great description of how a "Die Hard" handles a bad launch...!
Part of good Project Management is being able to take a mistake [spar notches] and making a cost effective remedy that loses minimal time.
It's actually SOP for me to freehand cut spar notches that are too tight, then spend extra time [like a jeweler] making the notches just right. The rib's contour doesn't interest me as much as the spar fit. The contour gets "averaged out" after you either sheet it or cover it with film.

guitarsbanjo

Ok, I know I'm slow, but I got around to drawing up the "plans" tonight, which for my purposes means I sketched out the parts I need to cut out on a piece of poster board. I like using poster board for small plans, that way I just cut out the parts for instant templates. The tail feathers I will print up from Design Cad on card stock, I just thought it was more trouble than it was worth to print out the fuselage and try to tape it all together and get it straight. I'm off work tomorrow, so I hope to get the parts cut out of balsa so I will have a more-or-less complete "kit" to start some building.

Just a quick note, I printed my plan at 1/3 scale on a piece of paper, that way it would fit on a standard piece of paper, and I could just measure the points with a pair of dividers and walk it off 3 times, then connect the dots.

Quick question, I need to find my construction article for this, but I wonder why I had to move the firewall forward 3/4" to get the propeller where I want it with the TT .07. Maybe it was drawn for a Black Widow? I'm going to use the built in radial mount, but I don't think that even with a motor mount a T.D. would be that much longer, and I had a baby bee handy, so I know it's not longer...but my black widow is put away and I didn't feel like getting it out to measure it.

guitarsbanjo

We've done some work on this, we're just slow; and Travis has been getting a ton of homework at school. The wing is built, needs trim and sanding, this picture, he's posing! Anway, we pinned it all in place, and I give him a little cup of glue and a bamboo skewer that he dips into the wood glue and applies to the joints. That's the best way I've found to keep him from using way too much glue. I'll try to post some more soon.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

That photo is a keeper for the Family Album...!

My guess is the Black Widow with it's larger tank is longer than your TT .07.
It's nice to have built in extra room to accommodate any engine in that size range.

guitarsbanjo

I have a black widow,and a tank extender, but I think I've lost the longer screws! But, I have a TF Baby Flite Streak I built about 30 years ago that I need to re-cover, I'm kinda saving the widow to put back on that. I also have a Tee Dee and a throttled Norvel I could use, and a CL Big Mig. I just figure for a "trainer" the TT might be just the ticket.

Austin