frisconick

Hi all,

I just received my X-29 from Curtis at EasyTiger Models. Plan is to document the build and test flights. Please feel free to jump in with questions/comments.

The box arrived in good shape and well packed. There was a small crack in the canopy, but Curtis already said he'd replace it. As a side note, I had a rather bad experience with a chump F-18 recently and was wary about getting back into the EDF thing. But my confidence is high. I've had several occassions to call ETM and the phone is always answered by Curtis and emails are promptly returned.

The model is great looking, excellent covering job, with laser cut formers in the fuse. Although I wouldn't recommend this model unless you've had some building experience. It's the typical translated instruction manual, but Curtis is working on an "english" version and you'll need to do some drilling and fitting. The main wings would not fit all the way onto the joiner spars attached to the fuse. A slight sanding on the top and bottom of each joiner solved this minor issue.

Next step is the landing gear (fixed, for now) and canards....More to follow.

Thanks,
Nick

frisconick

The rest of the goodies showed up today: motor, ESC, Fan, Servos. I bought the package that had everything but the retracts. The last "package" deal I bought didn't have a name or number on anything. No way to tell specs or find replacements I'm very pleased to see that the motor is a Scorpion, arriving in its original box; a Turnigy ESC; and servos I have found online and have some impressive reviews posted by other users (Hobby City). So far, so good.

Nick

frisconick

Mounted the canards with no problems. After drilling the holes, I had to file them out a bit to get both canards at exactly the same incidence. There are long and short metel rod spars that supports the canard into the fuse. The long one is aft. I notched both ends of the longer rod to give the epoxy something to bite into to prevent the anything from coming apart. Rough up the FG on the fuse for good epoxy bond. I used a little masing tape to hold everything in alignment while it sets.

frisconick

Fixed landing gear was no problem. It's the typical tricycle nose gear block. It's mounted with blind nuts that are already in the former. I drilled a hole in the bottom of the fuse for the strut and made it a bit elonged; more open to the rear in case there is flex on a hard landing so it won't crack the glass. The mains require a hole to be drilled for the struts. I also had to clean up and open up the slots in the fuse so the piano wire sat flush. No big deal. Drill the holes for the nylon restraining strips and you're good to go. I used some thin CA to harden the wood after I threaded the screws in once. The kit comes with phillips head screws, but I prefer to use socket heads, so I substituted here. There is some fiberglass cloth laid over the mounting blocks, but you'll probably want to slap some more epoxy in these areas, or even re-glass some of them. It's a bit loose on mine.

frisconick

Must be a small limit for images. Here are the mains....

frisconick

And finally, the loose glass....

That image didn't turn out all that great. Will post another later.

NIck

frisconick

Got the wings attached. You'll have to dremel out the area shown on the root at the fuse for the servo lead. There is a plywood former just inside the root so just let the dremel tool ride around same shaped hole in the plywood backer. I traced the shape of the wing on the fuse so I know where to rough up the FG and slap the epoxy. You'll need to open up the servo holes in the wing panel a hair. I marked the area to remove, scored the balsa sheeting with a razor knife, then dremeled the ply underneath; a two minute job. Use plenty of epoxy glueing the wing halves on. I mixed up the first small batch of 30 min to cover the wing joiner and socket, the next small batch to cover the wing root, and a third small batch to cover the FG on the fuse. The wing is shaped perfectly to use a bungee cord to keep it tight against the fuse while the glue sets. I like to have enough epoxy in applied so it oozes out of everywhere. Keep plenty of paper towels and alcohol on hand to sop up to ooze. Better too much than not enough.

frisconick

There are three larger servos. Two are for the ailerons and the third handles the nose gear steering. You'll have to open that servo mounting tray a bit too. Another two minute job. It's very tight in there. My plan is to bend the linkage as shown because the servo sits a bit highter than the steering arm on the LG. Still not sure how I can get my big hands in there to make it work, but......I will.

Nick

frisconick

The manual calls for the aileron linkage to go straight back from the servo arms to the ailerons (along the direction of flight). This is going to cause some wierd geometry as the aileron moves because of the severely swept wing. I think I'll hook mine up perpendicular to the hinge line like you would normaly do. If anyone sees anything wrong with this thinking, let me know before I jump off the cliff !!

Nick

frisconick

Next step was to mount the vertical stab. After I epoxied it into the intermediate piece (not a clue what that officially is called), let that cure, then glued that into the fuse, the stab was very flexible in sideward movement. Not much help in a knife edge. I first thought I didn't get enough epoxy between the fuse and the other piece, but what was really happening was the fiberglass fuse was flexing. You can see the balsa block the stab is glued into (the fuse is inverted). There is nothing supporting it. The former around it was not adding any stability. I cut out a small plywood plate to Hysol across the top of the balsa block and to the fuse itself. It's setting up now, so I don't know if it will solve the problem, but best guess is it will.

More to follow.

Nick

Very rigid now!!

SJN

Thanks for all the pictures.

Build looks great so far[sm=thumbs_up.gif]

frisconick

Took a few baby steps tonight: mounted the rudder servo: you'll have to remove the covering from both side of the servo mounting hole. You'll also need to cut out a wedge for the servo lead to go down through the fuse. If you look closely at the first picture you'll see. The servo is deeper than the fin is wide, so it sticks out both ends. I also got the front LG mounted. It's really a tight squeeze up there. Hope you have little hands.

wekenav8r

My Feedback: (37)

I really love this plane, thank you for taking the time to take pictures and document your build here. Do you know of any videos of this plane flying, or know of anyone who has built one? I'm thinking of buying one of these, but would like to know how good a flier it is.
Thanks again!

frisconick

I don't know of any videos and have not seen it fly. I wanted something different and this fits the bill. I'm going on Curtis' word about the flight characteristics. He is in fact, fine tuning the CG right now for optimum performance. Stay tuned !!

Thanks,
Nick

Arbo

Just checking in to watch the progress on this one...

bruff

My Feedback: (18)

Same here. Have any pictures of the fan mount.
Thanks,
Bob

frisconick

Haven't gotten that far yet, but hope to sometime this weekend. Will update the thread soon.

Thanks,
Nick

frisconick

Got the servo mounting holes opened up for the canards and elevators, cut and bent the linkages for the canards and ailerons. I finally got smart and now use a drill press to drill the three holes that mount each control horn. I can never get the holes parallel by hand, but it worked out great with the press. I used the supplied horns. I put a slight bend in each canard linkage just to keep the geometry a bit cleaner. The manual says to mount the servos and arms in the same direction so you don't have to use a reversing Y or another channel on your receiver. I opted to burn another channel to keep thing more symetrical. Aileron linkage was much more straigh forward, as shown.

Nick

Sorry, got one image in there twice. Not sure how to delete it.

n

mpope1

I wonder how affective the elevator would be on its own, without the canard. It seems so small.

Arbo

In general I'd think it would do OK, since with the forward swept wing, air would tend to move inboard, thus get to them pretty well. But the way this models wings attach to the strake there appears to be a ledge, which I think would work against that effect.

Just my 2 cents.

mpope1

I see what your saying, wings arent flush with the bottom of the fuse. I guess it would be a good idea to use the canards also on the 1st flight.

frisconick

The canards are quite large and airfoiled. Since the recommended CG is pretty far forward, I suspect the canards are a significant source of lifting surface. I will definitely have them enabled.

Mounted the servo for the rudder and Y'ed it into the nose steering servo. No reverser needed here if you watch which way the arms are moving.

The nose gear seems a bit short to me. The plane sits at a negative attitude. I set the gear up so that only an 1/8th inch or so of the strut is in the top piece of the steering block so it keeps the nose as high as possible.

Nick

frisconick

Now to the good stuff: mounting the fan:

Curtis will probably kill me here, but.......

The first image is a shot of the stock mounting rails for the fan looking aft. You can see from the second image, the rails put a negative incidence in the fan. The centerline of the fan on the mounting rails didn't match the centerline of the mylar (?) sheet that forms the exhaust tube. The fan was too high and negative. This sheet, when rolled up and in the fuse, is very rigid, so everything must line up perfectly. I removed enough of the rear fan mounting former to remove the rails and allow the fan to sit lower. It's not shown in these images, but I also removed the former above the mounting rails so I could mount the fan farther aft. I'm worried about getting the CG far enough aft with the big a*% battery I have.

With the mods, I was able to get the fan back another inch and a half, and get everything to line up properly. I'll need to cut new rails that are longer (towards aft) and shape them so the fan will sit in the proper plane (so to speak).

frisconick

A couple more shots of how the fan will sit when the new rails are cut.

The fan will actually sit a bit farthur aft than in the first picture, and the second picture does not have the new rails in yet, in case it's not clear.

This whole mod took about 30 minutes and one beer. I suspect mounting the new rails will be about the same effort. Should be in the air next weekend !!

Thanks,
Nick

Also, when you drill the hole in the side of the fan shroud for the motor leads, drill it a little closer to the mounting tab so you have more room to route the wires to the ESC. I'll have to dremel the hole I drilled so the wires come out more counter-clockwise.

frisconick

I cut and fit the new rails tonight. I used some 1/2 x 1/2 hardwood stock. Each rail is 5" long. The aft ends are notched to fit over the rear formers. I cut the front 1/4" or so of the rails down a bit so everything fit a bit loose. I dry fitted the rails, installed the fan, and lined it up with the mylar tube; then marked the four mounting holes. On the drill press, I drilled the four holes and inserted the blind nuts so I could use socket head machine screws instead of the supplied wood screws. The wood screws would have worked fine, but just personal preference here. I did one more dry fit to make sure everything lined up the way I wanted (still not sure I'm not digging myself into a hole here). I disassembled it all, applied Hysol as the adhesive and re-assembled. I snugged up the four mounting bolts so the rails would be flat against the fan flanges while the glue sets (remember, I left the fit a bit loose so the Hysol will fill in gaps and take up the slack). If you don't do it this way, you're liable to get the rails glued in a bit un-true and impart a twist in the fan housing when you tighten everything down. As you can see from the last image, the fan sits in perfect alignment with the exhaust tube and 1.5" farther aft than originally.

This was a quick fix that I think will make balancing a lot easier and just makes everything go together a bit cleaner.

I started off thinking I was going to build this model with no mods, but I'm sorry; I just can't help it!!

All that's left is mounting the elevator servos, canopy, run the wires, and figure out a way to "latch" the main top hatch. Should fly this coming weekend, weather permitting.

Thanks,
Nick