chasrb

Cubnut, I have used and assortment of data recovery tools in my position even on drives one would think irrecoverable, ie reformatted, no or bad MBR etc. The only ones I can't recover are the drive does not spin, for those you can send them in to specialized shops and they will recover what they can and at real high prices!

Even though you have rebuilt your drive there is still hope of recovering your files, you just need the right tool. Generally they cost around 100 USD.

chasrb

I agree with the wrapped hardwood, lots less cost involved. I made a cabane from Basswood and also made some 1/8 thick alum mount points to test out the process of connecting them in a scale way. My head scratcher now is: how to mount the cabane over the alum mount point. I tried a cutout in the cabane and was going to wrap 1/16 x 1" wide alum sheet at the bottom, but the securing that sheeting and its ability to withstand the torsion forces kinda escapes me right now.

I'll post a pic later today.

Cybertom

Charsb,

OK, now you are forcing me to make mine. It's a good thing to. To much talk not enough doing. I have some work around the house to finish today but after that I'm going to put one together and take some photos of what I did. I have the aero shaped tubing and aero shape hard wood strips that will fit inside with a little sanding. Here's what I'm planning:

1. Make some metal brackets that I can attach to the ends.
2. Slot the hardwood and pin the metal brackets in place with dowels.
3. Wrap the whole thing or possibly just the ends with fiberglass cloth to keep it together.
4. Slide the aluminum aero shaped tube over the whole thing and BINGO!

This configuration should be strong as Hell, still flex under heavy load, and spring back into position with the memory that the wood & fiberglass will provide. I'm going to look at the hardware that Sea Commander offers. It might make for good attachment points on the fuselage. I plan to make the attachment points so strong that the cabanes or bolts will fail before that does. The last thing I would ever want to do is tear into the fuselage to make a repair down the road. Making more cabanes would be a lot easier.

I should have some photos in a few days.

PS,
Please send me the Stearman manual on CD-ROM.

Aerobatic_Tom

Hi everyone. I have been gathering the bits and pieces slowly for my Stearman for the past year. Engine choise went via a Saito 180 to a Laser 200V. The Saito looked perfect amongst the fake cylinders, but I can simply not be without the 2-cylinder sound and general fantastic Laser engine package, even though it will require more work to hide it for scale apperance. I have also obtained two pilots from http://www.acesofiron.com. I have en order put in to Mick Reeves in the UK for wires and other small need-to-have's.

Apart from that I have been saving documentation and pics wherever I could get my hands on it. I will be putting all my pictures up in a web-album shortly to share with you. Info gathering has also included getting the excellent DVD from Tom against the promise to contribute to this thread (many thanks Tom, I will try to make it up to you :-). I recently moved to a larger apartment and was hoping to get the space and ability to start building. One year after the move I can conclude that there simply is not room (physical and emotional from wife's point of view) to get the thing put together. What I can do is to start building parts of the kit and stow them away for when I have the room to assemble and complete it. Plan is now to start on tail feathers and wings. At least I can report the progress on what I can build on this forum and give something back for all the excellent information handed out by you all. I have just printed the whole thread and was planning to sumarize the info in an xell-file that I can share.

With hope of showing some build pics shortly
Thomas, Stockholm, Sweden

outacontrol41

My Feedback: (9)

Welcome to our 'Stearman Club' and good luck on your build. Would love to see your reports of progress on this excellent kit.

Aerobatic_Tom

Thanks.

Started preparing the bits and pieces. A lot of the stuff is warped as h.e.l.l... Nothing I can not handle but it makes the build slightly more tedious.

Thinking right now about what to do of the elevator lĂ*nkage. Never been happy about the push action on the linkage to achieve nose-up elevator. Not having studied it to a 100%, my thinking is that I could come up through the stabilizer and meet a control horn on the upper side of the elevator. This would carry its movement inside the lower part of the fin. This would have to include either elev servo in the tail (not an option due to CG) or an push rod angle change in the tail. Dont really like that either. So.. push action for saving an a/c in high speed dive, or complex actuation design... hmm.

jack1933

My Feedback: (2)

Hi Herb Saw this old post and thot I would say hello. Did you get the super done yet? Still have the yellow one ( original 16 years old now) and the super red one with an awsome 7.7 cubic inch twin engine on it. Dont know where some of these fellows get the scale thing wrong, and the awful airfoil stab, oh well if one just wants to fly around with no aerobatic performance, so be it . Im getting ready to fly some IMAC this year, with the 40% Laser, with a 3w 150, will be 74, and will enjoy getting out there with the kids. Please answer this, would like to com. with you. Regards Jack Strickland

Marcol

Thomas,
You don't need to have any concerns about the elevator linkage in the Stearman, if you do as I did and use a carbon fibre push rod instead of the supplied hardwood one.
Make sure you support the push rod along its length in the fuselage.

These are the ones that I used. http://www.petetindal.co.uk/

If you use these make sure you order the end fittings with the steel bolts and NOT the Aluminium ones.

I use 1 Futaba 3302 servo for the elevator and my Stearman is now in its 3rd season with no problems.

If you need any more info just ask

Colin

Aerobatic_Tom

Thanks Colin for your input, I will give it some thought over a cup'tee and see what is decided!

chasrb

Marcol, thanks for the link. I wonder if they have a USA affilate that can sell the accessories?

Cybertom

Latest DVD Shipment

I have shipped another 4-DVD to those who requested it. I have improved my methods and the DVD label is now printed directly on the DVD surface. I had some issues with the printable stick on labels coming loose over time which caused the DVD playback to fail. If anyone has had issues with their DVD label coming off carefully remove it and then use something like Goo Gone to remove the adhesive. If that's a problem or if it has become damaged in the process let me know and I will ship you a new DVD. Here is what the new printed "PT-17 1st Flight" DVD looks like:

PS,
This is a list of countries the DVD has been shipped to so far:
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Sweden, United Kingdom, USA (Florida, Main, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia)

Come on now... I know you can sing it... It's a small world after all... It's a small world after all...

chasrb

Tom, I shipped the PT-13 dvd to you today as well, it should be there Thursday. You ship me one of the new dvd's or is this a remake of the earlier set?

sbd-3

I have a question about the flair pt-17.... I am undecided about engine choices,I have a US-41, i had thought i would use,but now i am thinking it might a little big maybe a G-26 instead???? Has to be gas so anyone have any thoughts on these two engines???? THANKS...JERRY

outacontrol41

My Feedback: (9)

Jerry,

Unless you omitted half your bulding materials in favor of building a very light (read: weak) plane, you're going to end up with a 25 to 28 lb. Stearman. A G26 is good for a plane in the 14 to 18 lb. range. I seriously doubt a G26 will even get it off the ground. I started with a G38 and first flight was very jittery. The plane weighed about 26 1/2 pounds and was a big, weak brick. barely had enough power to bring it down safely. Go with a G62 and swing a 22x10 prop.
Sit down and pour yourself a good hot drink (it's cold out there!) and spend about an hour going through the posts in this thread and learn more about the power this baby needs to fly. Cybertom uses...I think he still does? a Robart radial engine for this plane which puts out around 10 hp. I know the manual says use a 1.8 four stroke but as they say in the UK where this plane is from - balderdash!
The Flair Stearman simply does not turn out, if built correctly, light enough to use such a light and underpowered engine. That's my .02 cents but like you I'm interested in what others may add to this.

Marcol

The original Flair Stearman flew (just) on a Laser 150. However the second prototype used a Laser 180 and flew very scale like.
Neil Tidey, the guy who designs the Laser engines, flies his Stearman with a Laser 180 and it's fine.

Having said all of that the Stearman can handle a fair bit of power. I have 2 Stearmans. One is powered with a Laser 240 V Twin and the other has a 45cc Mackay ( RCS) gas engine. Both of these need additional lead in the nose to balance. So a heavier engine like a ZG 62 would be fine, if you can fit it in the cowl.

I regularly fly a friends Stearman powered by a ZDZ 50NG which is the same sort of power as a ZG 62 and it's fine also.

Please remember that the full size only had about 220 hp so it was no Pitts special ! If you see the full size fly, energy managment is the key to performing aerobatics. It doesn't just power through them like an Edge or an Extra.

For my money a good 40 - 45 cc engine is just about right for the airframe.

The US 41 is only about the same power as a G 38 and , in my opinion wouldn't be quite enough.

chasrb

Cybertom and those who want to make cabanes. I had a friend do the measuring of the struts for me. I am attaching his pictures and measuments.

Aerobatic_Tom

Chasrb! That is excellent. I was searching EXACTLY that :-) Thanks.

chasrb

Glad to help! be sure to post a pic or two when you have prototyped your cabanes and mounting setup.


If you take that 4.5 x 25% = 1.125 wide on the front cabane which is only .750 wide now, that means the cabanes are out of scale by .500 inch. more for the rear one.

Yes?

Cybertom

Charsb,

Is there any way you can enlarge the pictures or increase the quality. I can make out some of it but it's not easy to read.

Cybertom

Chasrb,

Remember for what it's worth the Flair Stearman is only 23% of scale not 25%. 2% does make a difference. If it were truly 1/4th scale the wing span would be 96" instead of 89". I'm not really to upset about it because we wouldn't be able to find a 7-cylinder radial engine that looked appropriate on it if it was any bigger.

chasrb

Your right about the scale, I forgot that this is a little less than 25%. So it come out to 1.035 or close to 1 and 1/32nd. it does make a differenct, good call Tom.

Unfortunatly the pics are right off the email my friend sent me, I will see the orignials at the next club meeting I can note any diff if what I can read is better on the orignials.

Cybertom

Chasrb,

Are you referring to the width of the cabanes (1.125 vs. 1.035)? I'm guessing we can round that off to 1.0. I don't think 1/32 will buy us much.

I received the DVD in the mail. Outstanding! Where did you get the manual and the blueprints?

PS,
That was a lot of work scanning all of that stuff!

chasrb

I borrowed the manuals from a place I volunteer, they made the centennial of Aviation 1903 Wright flyer that was in Kitty Hawk for the 100 years of aviation celebration. Unfortunately the winds were not as kind that day as they were 100 years prior. They also do restoration of antique airplanes which I get to help out on occasionally. I felt very fortunate to have had a hand in building that Wright Flyer and also the 1911 B models they made.

The blueprints came from me begging a kind soul from a link in the Stearmans Restorer association.

I had planned on and still will index, all the documents into a couple of PDF files and then resend them out. I also have ton’s of Steraman photos segregated into folder by color. You are welcome to them in the next dvd should you want them.

riph

My Feedback: (26)

Check the Robart site click on RoboStruts, then OEM special order, scroll down to #PT-17 1/4 scale Stearman Dively to see a landing struts for the Dively. Click on Dimension Drawing. These might fit the Flair if you installed them when you built the fuse.

http://www.robart.com/RoboStruts/custom_made.aspx

chasrb

How are things in Carollton? I used to live in Grapevine. Went to Mike's for my planes and supplies. I picked up the Ziroli oleos for my Flair kit, there are some pics of them earllier in this thread if you want to see how I mounted them.