Hi all,
Here is the beginning of my TF Contender build.

Keep us posted. You're gonna love the way it flies. A buddy has one & absolutely loves it.

Yes indeed, keep us posted on your progress. It will be a sweet flying plane on completion. Good Luck, Dave

I have one sitting in the rack waiting to be built. Looking forward to your build!!!!

Memory lane.. Man that was the go to plane back in the day, really loved the several I had... Looking forward to the build, might even have to pick one up for a OS60 I have laying around..

Jimbo

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: larger">You are going to love the Contender, it is the one plane that always goes to the field with me. The only complaint that I could muster up if I had to, is the shape of the rudder causes pretty bad adverse roll coupling. Some people have changed the shape to fix that, others just learn to fly it as it is. Mine is a rocket with a HB .61. What are you planing on using for power?

My "build thread" HERE: http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_10448191/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm</span></span></p>

I currently have one on my building table right now. I'm just about to build the ailerons and the wingtips. Then on to the fuse. I'm thinking about a side or inverted engine installation, but an unsure on how to proceed. How about you, any mods planned?
Thanks, Zip.

I modded it into a taildragger with retracts, also added 1" to the rudder but kept the original shape. The rudder does cause some serious adverse roll, but I also found that with the flap down it doesn't. You can cruise around with the flap down right on the deck just above idle and it handles great doing all rudder turns. I wonder if that was intentional or just lucky. Two other friends that built them at the same time as me enlarged their rudders and made them like a Cap rudder. They said it helps a bit but does not solve the issue of adverse roll. I'm not sure if it has any effect, good or bad, with the flap down.

Great looking plane smithcreek. That thing must of picked up with the retracts. Its pretty hot with out them.

Here is my Contender that I completed several years ago. Powered by a Jett .46, which is more than enough for this aircraft. The upturned wingtips apparently help with the roll-coupling though I haven't played around enough with it to determine how much of an affect they really have.

The adverse roll was taken care of by the upswept wingtips in the instructions. I built mine that way and it was solid as a rock. This was a known problem with the original design and that's why they suggested building with the upswept wingtips if you didn't want the roll coupling. Mine met with a different problem. I was flying one day and a fellow club member turned on his radio and it happened to be the same frequency that I was flying. I had the pin but he made a mistake and my plane paid the ultimate price..........it went straight in at full throttle.............[&o]

Did he do the right thing &amp; get you another plane ?? THAT is an unwritten rule at our club !!

I built mine with the upturned wingtips, The adverse roll is still there though. The "meat" of the rudder is so far above the thrust line, the wingtips just can't remove it all. If you know that it's there and fly coordinated you will never notice it. Either way, I still wouldn't trade away my Contender for anything!

Yes he did!!! He stood there with a blank look on his face, looked down at his transmitter and saw his mistake and then said........"looks like I owe you a plane". He asked me what I wanted and in a couple of weeks I got a call from the LHS that my plane was there.

Iloved every Contender Iever built. Isold one, crashed two and now have one that is ready for the first flight. Haven't flown it yet, but it is going out soon. Iput a new OS55 in this one and it sould move out nicely. Can't say as Iever saw a bad Contender. The second best plane Iever had next to the Kaos......................

Ed

How's it coming along jquid? I hope we didnt chase you off!
Zip

The adverse roll/yaw coupling is due to the perfectly flat low wing. Raising the wingtips does the same thing as adding a few degrees of dihedral. This problem can't really be fixed by shaping the rudder although any rudder area below the wing will help a little.

Charlie

Has anyone tried programming a little aileron mixed in with the rudder to counteract the roll effect? Does it work, and if so, how much aileron?

Did the build ever get finished? Pics?I just received my kit in the mail yesterday and will start building tonight. I'll try to post pics along the way and I'm sure I'll have a bunch of questions. My only other kit build was an Uproar converted to electric. That build was quite simple so I thought the Contender would be a good second kit.

The original Contender was designed to be extremely fast to build. The original kit could have the "bare bones" assembled in 8 labor hours! The wing was flat because you could use 48" pieces for the wing spars and leading and trailing edges. That made it simple and light!. The thick wing made it stronger as well as made it have good low-speed handling. A lot of good ideas went into the original design.

The more-recent kit was re-engineered because all of the original tooling had been worn to the point of uselessness when Top Flight was acquired by Hobbico so many years ago.

I've tried it. Doesn't not work well. If you can add enough aileron to keep it level you find out you also need a considerable amount of up elevator to keep the nose from dropping. Aerodynamically I don't know what the term is, but you have to add so much opposing control surface that the plane gets really wonky. The plane then slows down with all that drag and the forces change and what you programmed for one speed does not work, so the plane starts getting out of whack again and eventually stalls or snaps. I'm going to cut off my straight wingtips some day and try to raised ones. Two friends tried enlarging the bottom of their rudders and that helped but did not even come close to curing the issue.

When I built my Contender I had read about the issues with the adverse roll so I built the upswept tips and added to the bottom of the rudder. This seems to have corrected the adverse yaw problem. I can jab the rudder stick back and forth and the plane will just wagg it's tail and no tendency to drop a wing. Rolls are nice as well.

Can you be more specific on the rudder mod? Did you make it like current 3d capable planes?

Here are a few pics,
I left the top of the rudder the same chord and doubled the chord at the bottom of the rudder. The problem with the original rudder design is there is 70+% of the rudder above the thrust line, as rudder is applied the plane will roll opposite of the rudder input(left rudder=rolls right). The change I made in the rudder brings the surface area lower on the rudder and closer to the thrust line.

I just drew the change out on the plans before building. I sent my plans to a buddy who is supposed to put them into CAD and laser cut 2 of them in a 30cc size.

BTW: I put approx 100 flights on my Contender last summer, it is a blast to fly.