I know trainers are kind of boring, but I'm just putting the final touches on a Kadet Senior ARF. I converted it to a tail dragger and installed a .61 four stroke engine (inverted.) I think she looks pretty sharp as a tail-dragger ... but yes, it still looks like a kadet ... maybe I should say it looks *sharper* as a tail dragger. :-) I learned to fly in the early 80's on a Kadet Mk I. Then I built a Kadet Mk II and learned to land. :-) My hope is to be able to experiment with some aerial photography with this project.

I have a pictures and additional comments on my web site:

http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/Mode.../Construction/

Regards,

Curt.

You'll like it as a tail dragger. Sure would look nice with a set of wheel pants.

-Cheech

Hmmm, you are right. I'll have to browse around the LHS and see if they have anything that might fit ...
Last time I was there poking around I saw they had some aluminum stock in an airfoil shape and thought it
might be interesting to make some dummy wing struts from that. On the other hand, the weather for this coming
weekend is looking pretty nice, so I might just finish up the "must do" items and call it good enough. :-)

Curt.

Very nice finish. A Kadett is not just "another trainer". It's a real fun plane, like a Cub in many respects. Maybe some floats, hmmm?

Safe Flying!

Hey, I just wanted to let you guys know that I maidened my Kadet Senior ARF this afternoon. I just can't get over what an incredibly sweet flying airplane it is. I'm suddenly a huge SIG fan. :-)

http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/Models/Current/EGN-1/

I was the only one at the field so I don't have any new pictures, but it flew *really* well. We had a bit of a cross wind this afternoon, but that was actually kind of fun because the Kadet lands so slowly, you really have to crab it a lot to hold the runway centerline in even a moderate cross wind ... on the last landing I touched down on the left main, rolled a couple feet, then plunked down the right main, and rolled out the rest of the way ... this plane seems to give you enough control and moves slow enough so you can do those sorts of things. I had no tracking or stabiltiy problems with the tail dragger configuration. In fact, it seemed like it came out just about perfect for 3 point landings.

It will fly level at just a couple notches over idle power ... but for being a big slow trainer type airplane, it does really nice axial rolls. I don't quite have enough power (61-FS) to hover on the prop (I tried a couple times) :-) but I do have enough power to lift off after just a couple feet take off run, and it will climb out very steep. Landings are the opposite though ... even at idle throttle she wants to float and float and float ... and float ... and float some more. I found that I could cross control the rudder/ailerons and slip a little bit to bleed off altitude, although I still need to practice that some more since I'm not very smooth with it ... especially close to the ground where you need to be smooth.

I am just really really really impressed with what a fun relaxing airplane this is to fly. I felt like I needed/wanted to use the rudder *much* more than your typical sport plane. I had to laugh at how slow it will fly. I was puttering around at just a couple clicks above idle throttle and the engine sounded like it wanted to quit at any time it was running so slow ...

It seems like everyon in my club tends to fly hot shot sport planes or extras or warbirds .... bigger, faster, louder, and I've tended to go that direction too, but this plane is a really fun change of pace, and it's a lot of fun to work the rudder and ailerons together and actually feel like you are accomplishing something useful.

Fun, fun, fun!

Curt.

I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it. Flies just like my Senioita, only BIGGER!!

Hehe, yes, it's the biggest plane I've owned/flown so far. I managed to fit it in my Jetta with the back seat folded down. That was quite a relief since I was expecting to have to borrow my brother's suv whenever I wanted to fly it. I'm putting together a Rascal110 for a work project. I suspect that will *not* fit in my Jetta. :-)

Curt.

Looks good Curt. The Senior is a lot of fun. It does float but that can be fun. With a good head wind you should be able to get it to stand still. If the cross wind is to strong you can land across the runway, traffic permitting. You will enjoy that airplane for many years to come.

Hi Curt:

Your Kadet Senior looks GREAT! I am building one too, and have been wondering why all the other pics I've seen seem to have the main gear too far aft ... as behind the forward cabin former, and they all seem to look destined to be nose-over candidates. Or the nose seems too long. Or, they just don't seem to look "right". Yours just seems to have the perfect proportions, at least in my opinion.

I was planning to brace up the fuse bottom ahead of that former, to get the gear ahead of the leading edge of the wing just a tad.
This seems to be what you did ???

Also what did you use for main gear ???

It seems like you used the stock 3-3/4 in. wheels ???

What size prop are you swinging ???

Thanks for the help,

Russ

Hi Russ,

Thanks for the compliments ... I kind of eyeballed the gear dimensions, but it came out in the right ball park so I'm pretty happy with it. I wanted to avoid having them look too short or two tall ...

Yes, I installed the main gear just ahead of the forward cabin former (i.e. just ahead of the leading edge of the wing.) Ground handling is great. It's robust, it tracks well, and I can do near perfect 3 point landings (relative to my lack of piloting skill anyway.) :-) If you are careful you can touch this thing down with amazing gentleness. I've seen no tendency to nose over when taxiing or landing in grass.

I special ordered some aluminum gear from TNT Landing gear. They have an order form where you specify the various dimensions and a week later or so, your gear shows up ... it's about $25 a pop, so not extremely cheap, but it's all prebent exactly the way you want and has a nice professional look. If I had it to do all over again, I'd probably go a little thicker or a little wider on the main gear because it does have more flex in it than I was expecting. That hasn't been a problem though because on landing it touches down gentler than I ever would have imagined or expected.

I did go with the stock wheels ... I figured there might be a chance I would need to fly off a less than ideal surface so I stayed big with the main wheels. They seem like a pretty nice match for this size plane.

I'm running an ASP (same as Magnum) 61 four stroke swing a 12x6 prop for starters. That seems to be a pretty good combination. There's no point in trying to overspeed a Kadet ... things start to vibrate and that just slows you right back down. :-)

Some day if I get really bored, I might go buy some aluminum stock in an airfoil shape and make some fake wing braces. That and some wheel pants would be a slick addition.

I'm a moderately experienced sport pilot, so I wasn't expecting a lot out of the Kadet in terms of fun, but it's really great! It is big and slow and you can work the rudder and see the effects of slipping. You can do cross wind take offs and landing "by the book" and see the effects and have time to play with the cross controlled surfaces. It's *really* cool ... and does really nice rolls for a trainer ... better than my super sportstser 40 ever did. I'm thoroughly impressed with this airplane.

That said, it is slow and it basically can't go fast. If you over power it, you'll probalby start losing important pieces. So you just have to accept it for what it is and isn't and enjoy the classic stick and rudder piloting, and incredibly smooth and gentle landings.

Good luck with yours! I'm going to go fly mine this afternoon if the rain holds off ...

Curt.

Here's mine with an ASP .75 stroke. Gears are GP 1/4 Giles. Wheel pants from Lanier 35% Giles kit.

It is one of my all-time favorite airplanes to bring out on a lazy Sunday.

This is quickly turning into one of my all time favorites as well. I just got back from flying my Kadet all afternoon and trying to work out some kinks in a brand new engine (ebay special.) I think I have it running well now, but I had it die on my a couple times. I think I'm starting to get the hang of doing slips on final to control the decent rate. On my one big dead stick landing I clipped the grass at the near end of the field and rolled out right in front of me ... and all I can say is it's the plane not the pilot ... :-)

Curt.

Curt:

You're wecome for the compliments !

You've done a very thoughtful job of converting that trike geared Kadet Senior to a "Taildaragger" ! And, once again, it looks GREAT in my opinion.

I am in the process of "eyeballing" everything ( as well as procrastinating ), as mine will be electric powered, with taildragger gear / floats, a hi-res still / video camera, and a vieo downlink camera / xmtr / battery packs, etc., so there is a lot of info to gather. To say nothing of waterproofing the electronics ( which I have down pat ), but still a lot of variables. The "rules" say it should be swinging a 16 in prop ( although I am going to attemp to reduce that to a 14 in. ) so as to not have the gear / floats look too gangly. It's first life will be a ROG taildragger configuration, no cameras, and I will go from there.

Your input has been most helpful, and I thank you for that !!

Thanks a bunch,

Russ

>>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>>>>>>>

Volfy:

Your ship also looks great, and as Curt's, has those same nice proportions / lines !!

Thanks for the input,

Russ

Great Job and nice engine instilation. Just started mine and I have several questions. I plane to use an OS 70 FS inverted as you have done.

Questions: Did you use the original gas tank and if so how lond can you fly EST...?
Any problem with the Muffler next to the plastic cowel (Looks Great)?
Saw an Eletric with Vent holes in the front of the cowel had planed to do that any Thoughts?
You said you had several dead sticks?? Just a new engine or possible problem??

Thanks For your time in Advance and would enjoy any further imput you have with continue flight testing of your plane.

One more question. How much rudder does it take for Corrd Turns



Drrgill Gil

Nice job on the Senior. I wanted to convert my on LT40 to tail dragger service but it's still hanging on the wall as of now.

I've noticed how the popularity of the Kadet Senior has increased tremendously since they came out with the ARF. There are three at the field I fly at but they are always fighting problems with the nosewheel. heh heh

Enjoy,

Jim

Hi Drrgill,

Yes, I just went with the original tank. I think I could probably do 10-15 minutes at high throttle, and a *lot* longer if I putter around at just above idle throttle. I didn't have any problems with the cowl (it's plastic/fiberglass reinforced so it's sturdy.) I finally broke down and spent the money on a dremel tool and that makes doing cowl openings ***so*** much easier. I haven't actually flown with the cowl on yet, but hadn't planned to open up more holes than is necessary. I was running a brand new engine on this airplane and it's my first 4 stroke. I think I had it adjusted too lean and after I richened it up by quite a bit it started to run much more reliably. I'm not too worried about it, and it's certainly no fault of the Kadet. :-) I think it was mostly cockpit trouble. I'm planning to do further flight testing with an fma direct copilot and perhaps even a gps/flight computer so I'll try to keep my web site up to date if I learn anything interesting. As far as rudder and coordinated turns go, from the ground, I can't tell if aileron only turns are coordinated or not, so I'd say you don't really have to worry about rudder too much when flying the plane. But, the Kadet responds really nicely to the rudder, so if you want to practice slips and play around with adding rudder to make your turns better, this is an excellent plane for that. I've found that getting my slips under control with this plane has been a huge asset towards getting my landings on the runway. The Kadet is such a floater, it will putter past at eye level and not even want to land. But if you can do a bit of (controlled) slipping at key points in your approach, you can bleed off the altitude you need to put the plane down about where you want to.

Regards,

curt.

Hi Curt,
Your tail dragger looks great. I just bought one about 3 weeks ago after waiting 3.5 months to get a red one. I am thinking about the tail dragger myself. How far apart is your main gear tires? If I go this route I may add a little bit as you stated.
Thanks...Brian

Hi Brian,

Just took a quick measurement for you and the aluminum gear (not the tires) is 16" wide. Add the axles and that puts the tires just a bit further apart. The stock wheels are about 4" diameter and my aluminum gear is about 4.5" high so that puts the airplane 6.5" above the ground at the main gear. In my opinion this gives pretty good proportions for the Kadet, but I don't think there's any set rules, adjust to your tastes and I'm sure you will be fine. I have plenty of prop clearance (12" prop) so I could have gotten by with smaller wheels or shorter gear if I had to. I've brought it around pretty hard (fast taxi downwind and whipped it around at the end of the runway) and have had zero sideways tipping problems so I think 16" is plenty wide. But again, I'm sure you could vary all those dimensions by quite a bit and still have a perfectly great performing aircraft. My numbers are not optimized for anthing other than my visual tastes, and they seemed to work out pretty ok. No side-to-side tipping problems, plenty of prop clearance, no tendency to nose over, even in grass landings, and I like the proportions, so I'm happy. :-)

Regards,

Curt.

Super plane!
At my club in Eureka, CA. planes like yours are the most popular. The guys there have even equipped them with flaps, for ridiculously slow landings! The pilots are mostly retired guys with alot of RC experience, that have come full circle like you, to realize that a versitile, well behaved plane is the most rewarding to fly.
These gentlemen all wear matching hats, that have "OFC" on the front. It stands for "outstanding flyers club" they tell me.
I salute these men, who are much wiser than I.

3wire

CLOLSON......... You have taken this classical bird to a new level. I salute you! A couple of sugestions. Please get out the white paint and a small brush and go to work on the exposed bare wood. Then make a floor out of sheet balsa and install a pilot on it. My goodness, you can't have such a plane flying around without a pilot! Putting that aside, please give us some details on how you rigged your steerable tailwheel. Incidentally, I use the furnished fuel tank, power the model with a Magnum .61 FS and get 18-20 min. flying time. And no, the flying is not boring. Relaxing yes. However, the fun part is "flying the wing" and rolling it, and making great big 'ol loops. Try doing that while making a perfectly executed loop. Another side note here.....someone said that they are using an Asp engine in their's and "it's the same as the Magnum". Wrong! Same company, different engine. Anyway, congrats on a fine job, and again, please detail how you set up the tail wheel......Cheers!

Old Dutch, just to be fair, there have been many before me that have done similar things and done it much better than me, but I was having so much fun with this project and was so pumped after the maiden flight, that I couldn't help but post my experiences. :-) I always enjoy hearing other people's stories about their successes (even the simple ones like mine) and if I enjoy these stories, therefore everyone else must enjoy them too, right? :-)

Fixing up the cockpit is another good idea ... I now have more good ideas than time. :-) One thing I think I'd like to do is go get some airfoil shaped aluminum stock from the LHS and rig up some fake wing struts ... I think that would be a neat addition ... along with wheel pants.

As far as the tail wheel goes, this picture hopefully tells the full story:

http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/Mode.../img_2478.html

The downside to putting a servo in the tail is that I ende up with 10oz of lead up front ... the Kadet hardly notices this, but it was still a big annoyance.

Here is one pilot option I was considering:

http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/Mode.../img_2438.html

I had a fairly knowledgeable person tell me that the ASP was exactly the same engine as the magnum ... same company, same building, just different names stamped on the side for different customers ... but I honestly don't know for sure ... I'm only repeating what I heard. I do have the Magnum manual and from the exploded view, it sure looks like the same engine too me, but if there are subtle differences, I'd probably miss them ...

Please post some pictures of your Kadet!

Hey, is anyone out there going to the Sig fly-in in Iowa over father's day? They are within driving range for me so I'm half tempted to go down there. But I can't fit my family and my airplane in the car all at the same time ... what to do???? what to do????

Dang it, I knew the most expensive part of this Kadet project was going to be buying the minivan to haul it. :-(

Curt.

hey guys - i was seen your tread on the senior - i did a tail-drager 3 years ago & also did my lt- 40 - the steering on the nois wheel was giving me fits so i converted over - it is so cool to fly - on the tale- wheel - i used a sig tale-wheel and did a pull-pull through the fus to the rudder servo and used the reg.rudder push-rod using a hole along the side - i had to relocate the rudder servo in the rear of the fus . i used sulliven pull-pull bronze cable (very small ) and silver soider pull spring on the end - my main gear went a head of the front cabin former. i used agood size main gear it sets up about 8" or so - 3 1/2" wheels - it reminds me of a cessna 185 - well gotta go good luck have fun bill wrcflyer

Posted on another thread but here are some photos of the completed Tail Dragger. Thanks for all the great ideas on this conversion!!

The tail dragger conversion looks great! What did you end up using for wheel pants?

Curt.

Thanks Curt- The wheel pants are Patty Wagstaff 1/4 scale and 4" Tires. Works great on our grass field. Also the cowling and wheel pants are painted with Automotive paint. Then sprayed with clear enamel.


Gil