barfus1

I was curious if anyone has built the Sig Monocoupe?
How well does it fly...
and could I convert it to electric R/C?
thanks Mike

E-Challenged

There are a lot of threads about conversion of Rubber models to electric R/C on E-Zone. I'm flying a Guillows PT17 . Successful conversion of small rubber jobs to electric R/C is not a simple casual project. Selecting a motor/geardrive, prop and battery pack is tricky. I always recommend that a beginner build a larger (45-50"w/s) plane designed for geared 6v Speed 400 and 8 500AR nicads with typical micro-sized gear, then work your way down to 36" and smaller. It's a lot harder to get the small ones past the test flying stage to where they are a pleasure to fly.
Take a look at the Hobby Lobby Super Cub or the Blackburn Monoplane.

BMatthews

I've got the Sig kit of that one. The model is quite detailed but would still build up quite light. As far as RC goes your best bet would be an .010 engine with one of the new sub micro airborne packs. There's not a lot of wing area what with it being only about 20 or 22 inch span and 3 or 3 1/2 chord. If you did set it up for electric perhaps the new Li-poly cells would keep the weight down. But you'd still want to go for the lower capacity batteries to help there as well. And finally it would still be quite heavy as an electric so don't try to fly it too slow. Pick a gear drive that takes a smaller, faster prop to let the model move out a little. I would say that you'd have to keep the weight under 4 oz's to have a decent flier with a model of this size.