Hi everybody,

Can someone explain to me how should I beginn to build a plane from a plan?
Should I stick with scotch tape first the plan onto a wood surface? Should I protect the plans to prevent damages?
Which material is the best to protect them?
Is it important to use T pins? Which is the aim of using T pins? Where should they be inserted? in the building board?
What kind of tools are also needed (pins, pincers,...) and for what (fuselage, wings,...)

I thank any help from you.
I just want to know the best conditions, the best way, to beginn building
I realize that these questions can sound easy to answer. Not for me!!! I promise

Alberto

Quinoa,

You can start a few ways. I like to either copy using zerox the parts you will need to have templates for, if the plans do not come with them. You can also use tracing paper, trace the part use a glue stick and put the tracing on some poster board. Gives you a template pattern you can use over and over again. You can cover your plan with a plan protector see LHS, probably not Hobbytown. or I use clear saran wrap. Good luck with your project, and when you build from plans the saticsfaction you get when you bring it to the field will be doubled.

Crash

I hope this isn't your first plane. You shoild build from a kit the first time just to get an idea of what you are getting into.

OK, first thing is to go and get 2 high quality (accurate) copies of your plane made that you can cut up and/or mark on. Keep original clean/perfect.

Hi again,

Any other ideas of the above mentioned questions?

For sure IĀ“m going to make a copy of the plans before I start.
Bruce, what do you mean with you hope thatĀ“s not my first plane?

Alberto

Hi Quinoa, I just finished building a rubber-powered free flight model from a kit that's called a Guillow's Lancer:

http://www.guillow.com/GuillowDetail...=22&FamilyId=1

I have a couple of larger RC kits that I'm getting ready to build, and I bought this little free-flight kit to practice before starting in on a larger, more expensive project.

I built the Guillow's Lancer on a coffee table in my living room. I purchased a 2' x 4' sheet of cork at an office supply store and rolled it out flat on top of the coffee table for my building surface. I set the plans on top of the cork and then I covered the plans with wax paper to protect the plans.

The Guillow's Lancer is a die-cut kit that requires a bit of cutting with a hobby knife to work the parts free from the balsa sheets. The wing, tail, and fuselage are built directly on top of the plans, and I used t-pins to hold the wood pieces down in place while I glued them together with thin CA glue. The t-pins and the wax paper are both resistent to sticking to CA glue, so once the parts were dried together, I could simply unpin them and then peel them gently from the wax paper.

This kind of kit is pretty easy to make with just an xacto knife and/or single edged razor blade, some thin CA glue, some fine grit sand paper, and a pile of t-pins. I applied the tissue paper covering using plain white school glue thinned with a bit of warm water. I originally tried applying the tissue paper with Midwest Aero Gloss dope as per Guillow's instructions, but the dope dried very quickly and the tissue didn't end up sticking down as well.

This type of kit was a really good introduction to building from plans. I feel much better prepared to dive into my larger projects now that I've worked through this little free flight kit and ended up with a final product that looks like an airplane.

Hi bigedmustafa,

what do you mean with die-cut kit. I donĀ“t understand this word.

ALberto

By "first plane" I mean the first plane that is not an ARF or RTF. It would be best if you have built a kit before (this is what bigedmustafa meant). A kit consists of a box of pre-cut parts. Ribs, spars, fuselage sides and all that. Very little or only minor cutting to do. Once you have one of these behind you it is much easier to know the process of cutting the parts in building your own kit and assembling it from plans. When building from plans all you have is a set of rolled/folded drawings and perhaps a wood list.

Anther type of kit is what is called a "short kit". This has all the ribs and formers and other "detailed" cuttings already done and provided. You then need to provide various sticks and sheet stock to complete the build.

bigedmustafa, the larger Guillow's kits are easier to build since they take the time out to properly die cut the parts out better. I picked up a Guillow's Javelin kit and the die cuts were so weak, it would be impossible for anybody to distinguish where to cut at, I recently built their 34"
Stuka, was much easier in that area regardless of the fact, it's a much more advanced design.

I of course did convert them to e-flight, photo's are attached, the Javelin, I took the plans, blew them up 200% and scratch built the plane, turned out really nice and is kind of a kick to see a toy plane from yesteryear flying at 200% scale with modern rc gear.

I still use wax paper between the plans and the balsa, it's really nice since nothing sticks to it, the only real catch to building from plans only is getting the proper size for the pieces themselves, it takes a little practice and you'll be cutting them larger then what you need, sanding/whittling them down to size, going back and forth, overlaying them onto the plans themselves, but since much of the time you are going to have identical parts, after you make the first one, you use that as a jig to guide your exacto around, also, make sure you are notching out the area for the stringers or what ever after the general piece is cut out after seperating it from the balsa stock or you'll have alot of broken corners.

After you build the first one, you'll likely be leaving the die cut stock in it's box and making your own pieces from scratch on kits you purchase in the Guillow's lines since you'll have a higher quality piece since you can control where the grain of the wood is at rather then worrying about keeping the die cuts efficient to maximize your stock. Lazer cut kits are really easy to do and if you have never done a kit before, may be the best way to go for your first one. Also, I don't do tissue paper any more, not with the advent of plastic sheeting they have these days, it's so much easier and much less toxic then going with the traditional paper/airplane dope meathod.

Also, had to edit this and add, some people make reverse copies of the plans on their computer and print them out with an ink jet printer, then lightly misting the balsa, "lightly I say" and with the printed side facing the wood, iron it causing the ink to transfer onto it so you are cutting along the lines. When I was a kid I used to like the kits where all they did was print directly to the balsa itself rather then die cuts, made it more challenging.

Hello,

I am building my first plane right now and I am doing it from plans. It is a boxy fuse. with all a straight wing.

I would not suggest this to anyone. The only reason I am doing it is my father built this plane from plans and many others. That and he had all the material already.

It has been constant phone calls as to how, what, why, and where!!!!!

Best of luck to you if you try it but I would get a ARF or at least a kit before trying this. There is so much info that the plans assume you know and is not printed on these things.

Either find some one to hold your hand all the way through this or spend a lot of time asking questions here on this forum, the people here seem helpful and super knowledgable.

Hope this doesn't hurt your feelings.

Best of luck either way.

Del

A good flatbed scanner can copy parts of the plan to make cutting templates. I temporarily glue the template on the balsa using a very light misting of 3M 77 spray adhesive and then cut out the parts with a scroll saw or disk sander. Then the paper can be pulled off. If you have a laser printer or Xerox copier, you can put the print face down on the wood, wet the back of the paper with acetone, and the print will transfer directly to the wood.

Your first plan built project should be something simple, for example, Randy Randolf's "Bee Tween". Don't be afraid to change things, it's not like the sky will fall if the plan isn't followed exactly. I frequently make minor design changes, for example, aluminum landing gear instead of wire or electric instead of glow.

Be careful using any home or office scanner. Often they do not make "exact" copies but rather some that are slightly off in dimensions.

I have to completely agree with you Bruce, I've been into the computer stuff way before it was popular, I'd have to expand on that one and say stay away from old tired scanners, those are really bad in that area.

Take your plan to a place like Kinkos or similar and get your copies done there. Explain to them that you will ONLY accept EXACT copies and stick to it. They can calibrate their machines to do this. Take a suitable measuring device with you and check your copies before accepting them.

As a general suggestion about building from a plan. First make a materials list of what you will need to build the airplane. Now you know what you need to have on hand, plus, you have looked at the plan fairly carefully to make the list. That is a good thing to have done. Then I make up a flow chart as to what I build first, etc. This saves me building something and then having to rip it apart to install something which I overlooked (been there, done that!) Again, this makes you look at the plan and think about what you are doing. Always a good thing.

I usually build the stab and elevator first. This gives me a completed structure pretty quickly and makes me feel good about my progress.

I used to. Then I built one kit that was VERY stingy with the balsa and found I would have needed to do the internal framing with scrap pieces from the long fuselage stringers! Grrrr. Now I build the longest parts first and keep the scrap. You could still do the tail pieces first, provided you have "packaged" the long wing and fuselage parts together and set them aside.

Now I lay out all the pieces and sort by length. More than once I have found I used a long piece and cut it . . . then found a shorter piece in the box and had to replace or splice to get the length I needed. In a biplane, build the upper wing first. I ALWAYS forget to do this and usually end up with the lower (often smaller) wing done and too short a leading or trailing edge piece for the upper wing. D'oh!

What kind of material do you use as building bord, to be able to insert pins,...?

Is it important to use T pins? Which is the aim of using T pins? Where should they be inserted? in the building board?
What kind of tools are also needed (pins, pincers,...) and for what (fuselage, wings,...)

ThankĀ“s for the inputs again!

Board? ceiling tile. 2ft x 4ft in size as used in interior ceilings Cost @ $3-5 each
Pins? varied use. Can be used to "trap" part and hold it down or it can pierce part to hold it. Thin pin is best for minimum damage if penetrating parts. T-pins easier on fingers and easier to remove than other types of pins.
Tools? single edge razor blades (buy in bulk to save money, hobby knife with #11 blades (spare blades too), long (needle)nose pliers, small clamps(clothes pins with springs in them often will do the job), small phillips and straight blade screw drivers, various sanding blocks with assorted grades of paper(non-cloggong type), covering iron minimum and heat gun very handy.

Hi

Start by studying plan for a while and work out how it all goes together and make a list of the the materials you will need.

To make the components i trace each different part onto drafting paper ideally or tracing paper, Then use a pin to mark the components through the drafting paper onto the balsa ( this can be reused later using the same pin holes to create very accurate replacment parts if needed) any parts that are the same such as ribs, fuz sides ,etc i glue a stack of wood together with the marked out piece on top with a pritt stick and cut out and sand all at once, they can then be seperated and end up identical. A band saw or scroll saw is very usful to cut the parts out although a hand fret or coping saw or scalpel would do.

If the wings built up i recomend using a wing jig which are very easy to make mine is similar to the one in the link except mine has 1/4 steel pianio wire instead of aluminium arrow shafts.


http://webpages.charter.net/rcfu/Con.../WJConstr.html


To use drill two 1/4" holes in the ribs with a pillar drill, if you havn't access to a pillar drill make a template to ensure the wholes in each rib are in the same place, mark on all the spars the position the ribs go, thread the ribs on the jig and assemble. As long as the ribs are all in the right place on the spars it can't really go wrong except you need to make sure the wing as w hole os squared up or at whatever angle its supposed to be.

Simon

Good point! Mine seems to be quite accurate however. You can check your scanner/printer by scanning a ruler and then measuring the print with that ruler. Check both length and width of the scan. By the way, the paper that plans are printed on can also shrink and expand with changes in humidity and the shrinkage is not nessesarily the same with the grain of the paper as across the grain. Fortunately, the sky does not fall if the model's dimensions are not perfectly exact.
Some things like fusilage sides, I cut and sand to final shape together, temporarily tacked together with 3m-77. It's more important for the two sides of a plane's fusilage to be exactly like each other than it is to be exactly like the plan. (if you want a nice looking plane, ugly planes still fly ok)

Office Depot sells vellum paper in 50 ft long rolls, perfect for tracing off of a blueprint. This paper is nearly transparent when it is layed down on top of a plan. Get a good set of french curves from a drafting suppy store to help you trace smooth curved lines.

I have several boards I pin to. A fiber ceiling tile, a cork bulletin board and, my favorite, a 16" x 48" x 3/4" board formed of balsa blocks. My worksurface is a 4 ft x 8 ft table with plywood that is leveled. I move the smaller building boards around under the plans as needed.

The "T" pins are multi-use and very handy. They position the part solidly, can attach parts together before gluing with CA (give them a quarter twist before removing to break the glue bond). Two on either side of a hard part, like a spar, can hold it without putting holes in it. You can even put two in on either side of a part and stretch a rubber band across as a clamp.

A good way to train yourself for future plans or scratch built projects would be to buy a kit for a Sig Kadet Senior or Kadet Senorita. What you get in that box is mostly a lot of balsa and spruce and a set of very detailed instructions on how to build an airplane out of it. The wing ribs and a few other parts are die cut for you but you pretty much have to make, not merely assemble the rest of the parts yourself. If you have already mastered a trainer, build the wings without any dihedral and figure out for yourself how to put ailerons on the wing. Turning it into a taildragger instead of a trike looks cool and handles well too.
After that you will be pretty familiar with model aircraft constuction techniques and ready to tackle more ambitious projects. Just like learning to fly, start with simple and small airplanes first and make baby steps toward that precision scale WWII multi-engine project.

Quinoa,

If I understand your situation, your have not built an airplane before. Hopefully, things will not be lost in translation (English to Spanish) and you will be able to understand what is said. The info given by the rest is all good. I suggest that you (not necessarily in order);

1. Find a building area to set up a good sturdy, FLAT building table out of the way (basement, garage, spare room). The kitchen or dinning room table may be both sturdy and flat, but you would have to move everything when it is time to eat. Cover it with Ceiling Tile (Celotex), Cork or a Balsa Building board as mentioned.

2. Make copies of your plans, keep the original untouched as possible, cut up the copies to make the parts from. Carbon paper onto plain paper, tracing paper, tracing mylar/velum, xerox are all ways of making copies. Take your time when tracing to make the part as accurate as possible.

3. Use wax paper or plastic film to protect the plans from glue.

4. Use "T-Pins" to hold the parts flat to the building surface. Regular pins can be used, but they can hurt your fingers, are not as sharp (have a blunt "ball" point, so not to cut the threads in fabric vs a sharp "needle" point) and are more diffucult to remove. Don't try to pin through a small part or too close to the edge of a part, you can split them. Pin the part with an "X" shape over the part (small parts), trapping the part at the bottom of the "X" or use weights, clamps or tape to hold the part in place until the glue dries. See Charlie P.'s pictures.

5. Cut out all of your parts that are shaped (ribs, formers and such), making a "kit". Long sticks can be cut to size as you build, save your shorter sticks for in between places. The suggestion of building from a kit is very good, the simpler, the better (and not an ARF, these you assemble and not "build", major sections are built already). Don't try to build a super scale plane first, do a couple of simple planes (like the Javilin) move on to a more complicated plane, (like the Sig Kadet series) and get the experience needed before building the "big" one. Follow the directions give for the first kit or 2 and then you can change things like reducing the dihedral or making a tail dragger from a tri-cycle geared airplane.

6. Use a slower glue like Tite-Bond (yellow glue, carpenters glue etc.) rather than CA or instant glue. This gives you more time to position the parts correctly and you won't glue your fingers together. Use epoxy where needed or indicated in the directions.

7. Get someone experienced to help you build and give you advice. That person may have the bigger, more expensive tools (band saw, scroll saw, drill press, sander) that you can use to cut out parts and build with. And show you how to use the tools that you have. Many planes have been build just using basic hand tools (knives, razor blade, hand drill, copeing saw). See the other posts for suggestions on tools.

These are just a few suggestions, probably the most important is to get someone that can come over (or you go to thier place) to help (guide) you as you build your first plane or 2 or 3. A good place to find help is at the hobby shop or club field/meeting. This same person can also help you (or knows someone) learn to fly your plane.

Die cutting - Using a shaped cutting tool (called a "Die" ) pressed (with great pressure) against the balsa to cut the part out. It is like using a cookie cutter on dough to make cookies.

Laser cutting - Using a laser instead of a knife or saw to cut the parts.

Pillar Drill (British term) - Also known as a drill press in the USA.

Any questions, just ask. Good Luck

I forgot to mention, using magnets are a really good way to go as well, I use them often as an alternative to the pins, especially with the spars and formers to keep everything straight and level, you sandwitch them around the balsa itself and let their own weight hold the pieces down to the table. Also, gotta stress, your build surface must be perfectly flat or you'll have a warped plane from the get go, be sure to test your working surface area to anal extreems prior to pinning anything down, once it's glued together, there is really no going back. Also, gotta add, using CA "super glue" makes really quick work of stick building, but not reccomended if it's your first kit since you are likely going to be repositioning the pieces to get them to set correctly, dry fit everything prior to assembly.

Showing an alternative way to suppliment pretty much any wing with carbon rods that I use for most balsa builds, it adds strength and creates a rather rock solid barrier for when you crash the plane, it's actually easier to go this route rather then shaping the leading edge by hand and adds no noticable weight. You just gotta notch out the ribs to accomodate them.

ThatĀ“s not true. IĀ“ve buit two trainers but the aim of my question was to learn the best way/technique/tools to build.

Anyway, I want to thank all of your advices/suggestions. I have learnt a lot with them.

One more question, by using T pins am I damaging the balsa?

For those who are also interested in tools here is a good thread
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_5189293/tm.htm

Yes, but not enough to effect it in any structural way (unless you REALLY stick in a lot of pins. I do not stick pins in the spars. They're harder wood and there is a danger of splitting. That's when I use the rubber band between two pins trick. You should be careful when sticking into the edge of balsa - like sheeting over ribs - that you don't split the balsa. Titebond II or other white or yellow glues fill the little cracks if they do split.

It will also make your iron-on covering stick better initially and without developing air bubbles later on. It's true! The little holes allow the trapped air to escape.