Just kidding.
I posted this over at spadworld.net, figured I would copy/paste it here as well. No reason to short myself on the bucketloads of knowledge you guys have that may not visit the spad forums.
By the way, the reference plane "Big Pink" is a creation of CrazyHerb's. You can check it out at
www.crazyherb.com He has some great photos and videos.
Paste
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was trying to fall asleep last night, musing over the idea that I was going to build a big pink within the year, when a thought occurred to me. If you were to take a standard "Big Pink" (the original version), taper the fuse on the top and bottom, stick the wing in the middle, redo the tail feathers, and put some slight under camber in the wings, you would have a pretty good looking Fokker Eindecker (which, it just so happens, is my favorite plane). With custom cowling, of course.
This lead to the thought of controls. Ailerons are just nauseously *wrong* on an E.III. Wingerons, possibly? So complicated. I was thinking you could make the wings very thin and beef up the trailing and leading edges with some very strong and expensive CF rod. It has to be flexible, see, for the wing warping. I've seen some pictures of how it worked on the E.III, and it's mind numbingly simple. I can't believe I couldn't understand it before. Functional and "scale" wiring would keep the wings from bending. Bracing wires that can move via pulleys or eyes. Would allow the wings to warp while still holding both wings level and not allowing them to flex upwards.
Wow, warping wings, how novel. Novel would also be tail feathers controls via pull pull within the fuse. Would also help solve the "WWI models are hard to balance" problems.
I would like to design the plane around a Ryobi 31cc as they're cheapest. What can I say? I'm frugal.
Some questions I am having are things to do with dimensions, weight, and propeller. I have no idea how to pick a general size to fit a certain engine. To make things more complicated, the wing hugging wires will bring allot of drag with them. I need allot of thrust, so a big propeller is required. I would expect that this type plane would be smaller than the Big Pink and probably roughly the same weight. I have no idea how to start picking my general dimensions, such as weight or size. If I knew the thrust, I figure I could play with things until they fit (at least, on paper). Given would be the thrust and wing loading (I could just pick a wing loading and try to match it, for the performance I want). I assume. I really don't know.
That is, I need your help on how to begin. Once I can figure out how I want to do it, it should be easy as pie. After all, this plane should be extremely simple (even with warping and in fuse controls).