gboulton

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Thanks, Jim! I really must admit...I'm darn proud of how well that fuse came out. It's hard to tell at a glance it was ever wrecked, and it should look flawless once the covering's on.

Don't have any pics of the wings yet, other than what's in the original post. I'll get some up tomorrow probably.

Started on the right wing just a bit ago...it's gonna be a breeze to get back in shape, I think...should probably have it pretty much finished up in just a day or so.

And no...haven't heard a word from Jody yet...of course, this COULD be because i haven't sent him the motor yet! LOL Just kept not finding a time to run it to the post office last week. Supposedly, I'll have some spare time next week, so I'll get it out soon.

basman

Now that you have done such a good job the expectations on the cover job are high..............a greaat design we hope. Cheers to ya best of luck with the wings keep it coming. Are sure you didn't repiar this months ago then post all at once, because if projects could get out that fast off my bench ....................

gboulton

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Well, _I_ think it's a sharp color scheme... Others may find it less appealing. Either way, I won't be able to take any of the credit for it.

Color scheme will be 2009 Red Bull Air Race champion Paul Bonhomme's Edge 540.





It helps when you've got friends like Paul, who comes over for hours at a time, and is the perfect assistant!

bmapope

Fuse is looking good Gman! Congrats. Hate to hear about the wing. It would be kind of cool to have the wings in foam, and being that you know a great guy to laminate them.....well, there ya go!

gboulton

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Well, we'll see. As it happens, Paul and I found the counterbalance off the left elevator yesterday...apparently it had been dropped by whoever was carrying it in the day of the wreck. Now that I've got it, that's a fairly significant "scratch build" process that I won't have to go through.

Essentially that leaves the left wing as the ONLY major project that'll require significant fabrication and true "building" as opposed to simple realignment and patching. Given it's the only one, I might just be more motivated to accomplish it.

=========

One other tidbit...picked up a used original 50cc WildHare 540T yesterday, along with a DLE-55 to fly it. The question now becomes...how many Edges is too many? That's 3 in my hangar now.

Maybe I'll just get 7 more, and do the entire Red Bull Air Race compliment of Edges from 2009....nahh...Hannes Arch can bite me. 6 more will be enough.

pdm52956

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sounds to me like you're an "edge" up there Gordon.............yea I know, that's bad.

gboulton

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LOL

I prefer to think of it as "living on the Edge". I'm keeping you guys on the Edge of your seats, wondering what color schemes I'll do. Once they're all done, nobody'll be able to get a flight in Edge-wise.

Etc etc

=================

Quick update...left elevator is now back in one piece, all finish sanded and ready to go. That leaves only the two wings as far as any "rebuilding" goes.

sir crashallot

well superb progress, after seing the quality of your edge i went and bought the cmp staudaucher off ebay for a mear £5.50 hope the wood is as good a quality as urs is. reason it was so cheap is the guy trashed the plane and wrecked the origional wing. but he built a new wing for it and the wing looks nothing like the origional, but he has given me the origional wing in the auction so il have fun on that rebuild. anyway im saying all this and the plane has a mear 55 inch wingspan haha not half the size of your edge,

gboulton

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Look at it this way...with only half as much plane, you should get yours done in half the time!

LeeHunt

Look stop being silly and get back to work We are all waiting for the next bit.
Lee

sir crashallot

Are they that good an aircraft that you have developed an obsession for collecting them iv personaly never owned one so is it me or am i missing somthing[&:]

basman

They are very smooth - currently flying 77" mini craft edge dl 50 up front. Inverted next to nothing on the down input, knife edge all day till the cows come home or you run out of fuel.
They are point and shoot fly like they are on rails. Give one a go

gboulton

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Eh...it's like everything else in this hobby. Whether something is "that good" depends primarily on the pilot in question, and also on the airframe itself, and its manufacture.

Have I flown a miserable Edge? You bet. It was kit built, heavy as a brick, and its owner was a big fan of nose heavy airplanes with minimal control throws. I thought it was a slug, barely capable of the simplest aerobatic maneuver.

Of course, HE loved it, thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

*shrug*

What I DO think is relatively consistent amongst most of the Edges I've flown, and most of the pilots I know who fly one, is that the seem to be the most forgiving and stable in high alpha/3D flight. This certainly isn't to say that an Extra, or Yak, or Sukhoi, or Ultimate, or anything else can't be built and set up to be a 3D monster...it simply seems to me that the "average" out-of-the-box Edge likes the high alpha stuff best.

For me, though, it's mostly about what I call the "plane-brain connection"...and that's completely and totally a subjective thing, and has not one whit to do with one type of airframe being "better" than another. Edges and I just seem to "get along". They simply do what I expect them to do, in precisely the way I expect them to do it, every single time. I've said a dozen times...in over 100 flight, this WildHare Edge was NEVER in any danger or trouble unless my thumbs put it there. Not once did it ever surprise or startle me with something unexpected.

Granted, the WildHare 102" Edge is, imo, the finest example of the breed you'll ever fly. But even that miserable Edge I mentioned above still never surprised me, heavy as it was. Edges just...fit with my brain.

So...do I think it's the greatest airplane ever made? I dunno. For ME it is...for you, it might be a hunk of junk. I'd absolutely, however, recommend flying a quality Edge at some point though, so you at least know what you're missing.

sir crashallot

yeah i think i may give one a try, i actualy think i have part of one coming off the bay, i bought a bundle of wings off ebay for £1. amongst them are a pair of wing halfs that are either extra or edge wing halfs in mint condition, theres also a goldberg cub wing and some others including a red arrows wing and tail. i bought them for the wings as they are 70+ inch wing halfs and theres some fuselages in bin bags but they guy cant remember what fusses thee is, all in all off that same guy i ended up winning 3 complete airframes needing abit of work and modernising the rest come with plastic bags but all the wings are mint so im itching to see what the other half of these wings is in them bags. not bad to say i won the 3 airframes and the bundle of bags and wings for just £7.48 it will keep me quiet this winter and out the way of the girlfriend.
Any updates on your edge, certainly looks allot happier with ed and ge rejoined.

gboulton

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Not since Monday, no. Yesterday started our indoor flying season, so I went and spent a couple hours playing with foamies.

Hope to at least make a bit of progress on the right wing the next few days.

sir crashallot

Our club waits till we get a gap in the weather then we all rush to the field to try and get a flight in. iv personaly never been a fan of flying indoor though i guess i cant knock it till iv at least tried it.

gboulton

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With the price of electrics dropping so much, and some of the BNF birds out there being dirt cheap, you really ought to at least give it a go. There's some all-up RTF micros out there for < $300 (radio and all) and some BNFs < $200 that fly AMAZINGLY well.

For some examples...nearly ALL of ParkZone's micro stuff is just incredible. Just flew their "Ultra-Micro" P-51 last night...it's SUPERB. The thing looks fantastic in the air, is a real hoot to tool around with, and can be had BNF for $100!! Their little Sukhoi is a real aerobat too. It's a real zoo, but incredibly agile and capable, and also inexpensive. Then the Ember and Vapor are great slow-flight birds, just to feed the addiction, or help newbie get some training done.

On the Heli side, the little Blade MCX and MSR, and the Novus CP, all fly remarkably well..way better than you'd expect!

And then, of course, there's a few zillion various foamies out there you can put together to do pretty much whatever you want.

And don't overlook the fun of simple "silliness". As an example, our gang has been known to PYLON RACE the ParkZone Ember!! Heck, we even cut wings down, change props, take stickers off to save weight, paint tail numbers on 'em, the works! Sometimes it's an absolute BLAST to make planes do something they weren't even REMOTELY designed for. And hey...at

basman

oK so on the subject of 540 Edge, by accident I happened apon this the other night. Model FLight revamed there web site added some nice planes and this is one of them.
http://www.modelflight.com.au/shop/p...ra-503-10.html
Now I own the mini flight built version ( no longer in buisness ) but after some comparisions there aint much differance that I can see. As far as flight chactoristics this is a great flier. As it says, inverted flight needs next to nothing as in input from the up stick. Performs awesome 3d but when slowed down it handles like a ***** cat, no surprises droping a wing as gboulton stated in his well written describtion of of the edge.

Now I don't of this version personally, but if lives up to it's bother ( mini flight yersion ) then you are in for a treat. I powered mine with a DL 50 batteries back as far as I could no added weight for balance.
I was doing a build thread, but stopped when I worked out they where no longer available http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_86...tm.htm#8663174

Cheers

gboulton

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Sorry for the long delay on updates...

Holiday season of course, a little extra work sneaking in, and time spent on some indoor stuff has kinda kept me away from the Edge for a while.

There is a bit of news to share, however:

First, not going to be sending the 111 off to Jody as it turns out. Decided to go ahead and pull it apart myself (not like I haven't rebuilt a few hundred small engines in my day *heh*) and take a peak. Figured anything major enough to cause future problems would be fairly obvious to a "serious" look at things, without needing to completely dismantle the motor.

So, mufflers came off, inspected the the exhaust sides pistons through the exhaust ports. Plugs came out, they were inspected. Heads came off to look at the tops of the pistons. And finally, tossed a laser line on the center of the crankshaft, and spun it through several rotations. No, that's not a "perfect" way to measure things, but it ought to show any significant wobble or bend...and there was none.

Given that everything looked nice and clean and straight, there's no wobble, bumps, catches, or stickiness anywhere in the cycle, and the pistons appear to be as perfect as can be, I think I'll take my chances an just remount the motor. I figure the worst case is that I've missed some major problem (not sure how I could have, but always possible I suppose)...if that's the case, then it should show up early on in flight testing, when I'll be keeping things simple, so a dead stick won't threaten the aircraft too much.

Anywho, the even better news is that I heard from Tom that he's found me a brand new set of wings, at a very reasonable cost! I let him know this weekend to go ahead and send them my way, so hopefully they should be on the way in the next few days. Once they arrive and are stripped down, it'll be just about time to begin the recovering process.

gboulton

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Got an email late last night...wings are on the way! UPS says they'll be here tomorrow.

now if we can just keep the brown airplane smashers from damaging them! [:@]

sir crashallot

i used to test run the engine after a crash, put a tank or 2 through it while its on the bench, reason i say this is its easier to work on the engine out of the plane, glad the wings are on there way maybee we will see more progress

pdm52956

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Yo dude.........we need to take the old wings and install some molded custom winglets. That would be cool!

gboulton

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OLD wings? Bah...the NEW ones are getting wing tips like Bonhomme's Edge.

gboulton

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There be wings here!

Everything arrived in good shape, having cheated death and destruction at the hands of the brown airplane smashers.

This weekend, should get some stripping and prep work done.

gboulton

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Paul came over yesterday, and we finished up stripping all the remaining covering/adhesive from the fuse, and stripped the new wings. Did most of the finish sanding on any rough areas from the repairs. So, minus just a few last bits of filling/sanding on some old areas of hangar rash, she's ready to cover.

This prompted a run to the LHS for some covering, of course.

[X(]

$16/roll, and I figure I'll need roughly eleventy-nine rolls to cover this beast.

Best estimate, it'll cost me about $150 to cover this thing. []

Oh well...guess I asked for it.