Thomas B

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Greg Covey had asked a question about my micro Shuttle in another thread. Thought I would start this new thread to help keep the other thread on topic.

Last year I noticed that the local Michael's craft store was stocking an old favorite of mine..the 10" span Guillow's Space shuttle foam FF toy. The price was an attractive $2.99.

Years back I had made several model rocket boosters that could loft this fun FF toy up for a nice long glide. I had even converted one to R/C using an Ace baby actuator ith the old Ace R/C Pulse proportional system....but it was heavy and glided VERY fast....and with rudder only, it was hard to flare for landing..

Anyway, I bought a few of these last year after I figured out that it had lots of conversion potential with modern gear. I chose a 2 cell 340 Kokam, a GWS EDP-50 with a GWS 3/3 prop, a GWS 050 ESC a GWS R4P RX and a pair of HS50 servos. All up weight is only 3.3 oz using this common stuff. It has a little less than 1/3 of a square foot of wing, making the wing loading about 9oz/sq foot and it is flying at about 14 watts...or about 70 watts per lb...

I added some Depron elevons at the trailing edge of the stock wing. This added some badly needed wing area and gets the model up to about 45 square inches of wing area. I used the stock 1 mm Depron vertial tail that comes with the toy.

I cut away the three foam representations of the Shuttle main engine nozzles and discarded them. The motor is glued to a narrow ply tongue and is all external to the back of the model, for better prop airflow and motor cooling. I cut away the top of the model at the cargo bay door lines and hollowed out the interior for the radio gear, as shown. I had noted the FF CG before starting the conversion, and kept the same CG for R/C.

Here is a layout photo, a before flight photo and launch photo at SMALL Steps 2004 last year.......

Thomas B

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And here are some flying shots....it is fun and rather challenging to fly. Mild in pitch, but VERY sensitive in roll, even with tiny throws and lots of expo. Flying photos are by my good friend Richard Ng.

Richard did a SUPER job capturing that last flight shot. If you photosmashed out the RX antenna and the orange prop blur, it would look REAL!

Greg Covey

Thomas,

That is simply an awesome conversion!

I'll be checking my LHS for the Guillow's Space Shuttle on my next trip.

Do you have a photo showing how the GWS motor is mounted?

DCM

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The motor is simply glued to a 12mm wide strip of 1/16" plywood and the strip is long enough to inset into the back of the fuse a little ways, using a drop of Epoxy.

I will try to get a closer picture.

Thomas B

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oops..forgot to log out of RCU while on my buddy Dave Hudson's computer and accidently replied under his ID...

Nitrocharged

sweet!
With the current micro r/c gear this could easily be under an ounce!

I havent seen one of these in OZ otherwise I'd give it a try myself. Those pictures ( minus the Ant. ) look like the real deal!

cleffdawg

that's sweet, keep up the good work and keep us posted on what you do with the other few you said you bought.

Thomas B

My Feedback: (4)

Well, even after the hollowing of the fuse, the foam airframe is nearly one oz, so a one oz version with actuators or whatever is not all that possible.

This cranked delta planform needs a lot of speed to fly well, so I think that you need to keep the watts per lb well up above 50. Hard to do with some of the micro systems in direct drive and the model needs more speed than you get with a gear drive.

Having said that, it could benefit from some weight reduction, but I would not part with the 2 cell 340 pack and the 12MM direct drive EDP50 system ans the performance it offers.