RE: Yoshioka Dash Five Pattern Ship
Willygog:
The nose gear was center in the fuse. When I had my plane, Hatori made an offset header that routed the exhaust or one side of the retract. I used Spring Air pneumatic retracts on my model I had a friend that use mechanical retracts on his. He mounted the nose gear retract in the fuse just behind the nose gear tire. It worked ok but the servo was always soaked with fuel and it failed rather often. If I was going to build my Dash 5 now, I would still use pneumatic retracts. I believe that what I did to ensure the wings did not have any twist, warp or bow was to build some shims/spacers along the leading edge, trailing edge. I have used this method before and it works well. What I did was go to a local lumber company (would now be Lowes or similar) and buy an 80" long by 30" wide hollow skin door. I set this up on a table and checked to make sure the door was flat from end to end and diagonally from corner to corner. Once I did this I maked the door laterally (along the 80" length). I started in the center or the door (40") in and then drew lines every 2". The lines were drawn perpendicular to the 80" length. I also drew a line along the center of the door (15" in from either side). This gave me a center line on the door. Once I completed all of the lines and teh center line I could very easily opsition the wing spars. Once I did this I had a a surface that was prety well marked and I could duplicate measurements on eather side of the center rib. Once I did this I then glued the shims for the leading and trailing edges to the door. Once I had the shims in place I positioned the spar and ribs and began dry fitting the parts as best I could. Once I was satisfied with the fit, I began removing the pieces and glueing the ribs, spars and leading/trailing edges to one another. I edge glued all of the wing skin sheets together on a flat surface suing aliphatic resin glue (it sands much better than CA), block sanded them and then glued them to the wing with Elmers glue. Now days you could use any alphatic resin glue ( elmers, white glue or similar). Prior to glueing the wing skins on, I took some lead shot, put about a half pound in some old socks (washed them first) and tied a knot in the end of the sock. These acted as weights to put enough pressure on the wing skins to ensure they contacted the ribs. I used a few straight pins to hold the skins in place while I set the leaded socks in place and to hold the skins to the wood surfaces where I could not put any lead weights (wing leading edge). If you use this method, just be sure that you only use only enough weight to press the balsa skins to the ribs and spars and not so much that it bows the leading or trailing edge. I let the glue dry for 24 hours and then remove the wings. Turn them over and repeat the process . With regards to the power plant, I would offer this. When I bought the Dash 5 back in the early 1990's four strokes are not what they are today. I have been using YS engines in all of my 'Pattern" type planes and I would not hesitate to use the 91 in your Dash 5. The nice thing about using a four stroke is that you would not have to find an offset header for your 2 stroke that would allow the exhaust to clear the nose gear. I don't think you would need any muffler for the YS other than the stock muffler. I have aftermarket mufflers on of my YS 140 and YS 120 pattern planes to quiet them down for competetion but I use the stock YS muffler on two of my smaller pattern planes (one with a YS 91 and one with a YS 110). I would suggest that you just install the 91 with the stock muffler. there may be others that say you can nevfer have too much power but I am perfectly happy flyiing my 60 2 stroke models with a 91 4 stroke. I hope this ahs been helpful. Sorry I got so long winded.
Lotus 72. Just curious. I too used to be a huge F-1 fan but I got tired of Schumacker winning all of the time, the inability to get into the paddock, etc so I watch on TV but haven't attended an F-1 race in person for quite a while. I used to go to the Long Beach GP. My first race there wa as a corner worker and I was at the first race which was held using the old Formula 5000 cars. I absolutely loved to watch Shcecter, Andretti, Villeneuve, Lauda,Regazzoni, etc throw the cars around Long Beach. I used to crew on some Atlantic cars when Villeneuve (the dad), Steve Saleen, Bobby Rahal were driving Atlantics. When Long Beach went to the Indy cars I stopped going. I went to the GP's in Phoenix but didn't like the layout nor the accessability. While I was doing the Long Beach GP stuff I was also driving a Lotus 51 and then a 61 formula ford. Spent tons of time driving at Riverside and Long Beach. As I got older and "wiser" I decided that I could not afford to punish the cars to run with the other guys so I quit racing.
Ed