The new Senior Telemaster kit is here and so is the time to get serious about designing the mods I've had in mind.......a multi piece bolt on wing, probably struts, flaps, outboard aileron servos and enlarged rudder area. The point of this post is to solicit and incorporate approaches others (you) have taken along these lines. I envision the bird as a tail dragger powered by one of my existing engines (OS 46, OS 61 or Saito 65) but that's open too.

Your thoughts, ideas and hopefully pictures would be most welcome and included in the plan and posted as the build goes along. Thanks, Blue

Do a search for Senior Telemaster on this site and you'll get a ton of information.

That's what makes this site so cool. Free exchange of idea's and information.

Cheers,

Thanks, I've been following the Giant Telemaster &Senior Telemaster build threads for sometime and have done the searches you suggested. I couldn't agree with you more regarding the value of information exchanged via RCU. I'm planning quite a departure from "stock" on this one, so I'll be looking for both ideas and critiques of my intended changes to kit plans before the build.

I made the following changes

1. got rid of the dihedral in the wing but it's still one piece and it's bolt on
2. Moved the aileron servo(s) outboard
3. Rudder and elevator servos in the tail
4. Entire area where servos use to go is now a bomb bay/camera bay with working doors.
5. Enlarged the rudder by several sq inches
6. Electric powered

I have yet to fly it (waiting on battery money) but the CG is perfect with 850g's of weight in the battery compartment.

Here are the mods I made to my 40 size tele. with flaps and an Irvine 46 engine. Will stand still in a headwind and flaps deployed.

Bud

Thanks Mike, I think I caught some of your mods in previous posts. I'll be interested to hear of how the flat wing approach goes. I was concerned about the servo weight in the tail in such a light structure. Glad to hear it's balanced out even with the long moment arm.

Thanks Bud, It looks like outboard aileron servos, some dihedral, sheeted wing to make a D tube structure shear webs ? Am I close to right? Nice looking job! Really appreciate the pics.

COOL PLANE

I'd have to agree with MikeFreas,

I tried to stay with the original design for posterity reason but had a devil of a time with having enough rudder surface to keep the nose straight down the runway during take-off. That's even with a very gradual increase of the throttle. I added another 25 square inches of surface area to the rudder and it improved dramatically but if I were to do it again I would have went with a little more.

Cheers,

I HEARD CEDAR HOBBIES IS MAKING A GIANT ARF ABOUT 100"WINGSPAN.

I did a bit of work beefing up the tail for the servo mounts. I used solid wood pieces about twice the width of the servo on each side epoxied in the tail. I don't think it's going any place. I want to see how much weight this thing will lift!

I've been wrestling with ways of doing a multiple piece wing. Std two piece center joined probably with the aluminum channel and bar insert. But have also been giving thought to a three piece.......flate center section with out board piece having 2 to 4 degrees dihedral. Struts at the joint The idea coming from the Flyin King and some glider designs. There's some pros and cons but the resultant polyhedral (?) is interesting. Your thoughts?

I bought one of the older ARF versions, the wing uses two hardwood spars. The leading edge is sheeted to the spar, top and bottom.

I found a set of "Vortac" flush head captive wing bolts at an old hobby shop and drilled and tapped a nylon nose gear mount to accept the wing bolts on each side of the fuse, it worked out pretty well. It's very strong and doesn't take up much space in the cabin. The front of the wing is mounted via "hardwood dowel method.

I use a Flutes tooling dual strut nose gear and use an extra servo located on the bottom of the plane to steer, If I ever want to go to floats it will be real easy to run the rudder control off of the nose gear servo. I also went with an aluminum main gear and 4" Sullivan Skylite aluminum hub wheels.

Telemasters are neat airplanes, I had one of the 40 size and sold it. I've kicked myself ever since. When I found an ARF version on *bay I snapped it up. Now you can buy them again so....I snagged another one and stashed it. Just in case...

I've heard about guys that have had the same Telemaster for years and have flown it for hundreads of hours, been covered and re-covered three or four times. Apparently thier forgiving nature contributes to thier longevity.

That some real clever stuff and well worth copying. Using a drilled and tapped nose gear mount as a wing bolt receiver makes so much sense! One of those "Why couldn't I have thought about that's?"

I used a couple 1 1/2" squares of 1/4" plywood and mounted the nose gear blocks to the squares using flat head countersunk screws from the back side. The plywood makes a larger "foot" so it glues to the cabin sides a little better and beefs it up somewhat. It also allows the nylon mount to clear the lip that runs along the side of the cabin for the foam wing saddle tape.

I layed out the wing bolt holes after I made all the pieces then drilled the holes through the wing. To mount the "feet" you just install one wing half at a time so you can get a clamp in there.

To check out the photos click on "Gallery" icon near my screen name, I think they loaded alright.

Right on all counts bluebikerblan. Thanks. Only 1" dihedral in wing. I basically kept the lines from the plans and eliminated the cabin area.


Bud

Here are a variety of photos illustrating my incorporation of a variety of suggestions made to modify my Senior Telemaster build of: A two piece hook and bolt down polyhedral wing, and expanded rudder, a number of reinforcement via ply formers, an emptied cabin bay area etc. There are a number of additional photo specifics if anyone has more specific interest in design or contruction technique.

Oops! Here's the pictures...........hopefully.

I like it.....Smiles

Some comments and explanations.

The two piece wing was accomplished with the use of phenolic tubes and aluminum tube inserts AND an aluminum C channel with an aluminum tongue insert wing joiner. Both are supplied by Sig Mfg. as replacement parts for their Something Extra and J-3 1/5th Piper Cub kits. The C channel wing joiner for their Spacewalker. I choose to make 1/8" ply ribs for those ribs where the phenolic tube and wing channel would be built in for added strength when epoxied in.

The polyhedral wing. The Senior Telemaster as designed is to be built as a one piece wing with about 3" of dihedral under each wing half which are joined by epoxied in dihedral braces. My shop is in my basement and I have either a PT Cruiser or a Ford Ranger PU for transportation. I either came up with a two piece wing design or had to forget it. I've built gliders with polyhedral wings (flat center sections joined with the outboard sections having dihedral). This what I choose to build. I used the supplied dihedral gauges and duplicated them to join the two outboard wind sections to the flat (when joined center sections). I also incorporated flaps for the two center sections and have added ailerons on the two outboard sections. 1 flap servo and torgue rod and 1 outboard aileron servo will be mounted in each wing half. ( 4 standard BB wing servos). 1/8" ply rib formers were also substituted for the as supplied balsa ones at the wing joints for strength and nos. 2,3,4 & 5 positions (all those which hold the wing tubes). Also likewise at the polyhedral joints. The wings were built on two long 1/4 " dowel sections and pre-drilled for the outboard aileron servo leads. As a building aid suggestion........build the wing in two 48 inch long sections. The plan being to cut each into 24 inch long quarters. One 48 incher to be the flat center sections housing the wing joiners and the other to become the 24 inch long dihedral sections. This technique helps greatly with keeping all sections flat and true on the building board until being cut for joining.

Fuselage mods. I had my reservations about trying to mount a bolt down wing on the substructure cabin area as it is designed and chose to beef things up quite a bit. First, I replaced the No.2 1/4" balsa former with a ply duplicate. I also designed a 1/8" ply web structure to laminate inside the entire cabin bay area balsa structure and reinforced the no.3 and 4 formers as well. I then built a servo/receiver bay aft of #3 and between #4 formers with a hatch to access. Rails will be installed to mount the pull-pull rudder/tailwheel and elevator controls.

The rudder will be essentially doubled in surface area via width wise extension.

Thanks John..........your help, ideas, photos and suggestions were most helpful and are gratefully acknowledged. The build has been a lot of fun and I'm particularly pleased with the wing joining techniques resultant strength and stability. With that and the gains in the cabin area, leading edge hold down I've decide NOT to add struts as I thought I might have to do.

Besides.............I hate struts! I'm in the midst now of installing the controls and will be looking for a color scheme soon too. I'm a thinking transparent colors, maybe a take off on the German flags black yellow and red..................hmmmm, wonder where one gets transparent black?

What did you decide on for power?

Thanks for sharing your build. Your wing design is Very interesting. Very well done. PLEASE let us know how it flies. I hope its not too stable, however its still a Telemaster, Right??
I'm in the middle of another Sr.Telemaster. I went the other way with my wing. One piece, flat, clipped one foot. :^)
Got my last kit from Hobby Lobby... Was a little disappointed with the wood ( warped )What was your experience with the kit. Your landing gear is thinner then others that I have seen which made me ask about your kit. Hobby Lobby also?? Thanks, Richard
Let us know how the maiden goes..........

That's a new OS FX .61 in the nose John.

Thanks for the questions.............forgot to mention. The wing being polyhedral as it is, is similar to that of the BTE's Flyin King and the landing gear is one I purchased from them. The reason behind doing so in this case has to do with just what you mentioned...........stability and intended purpose. Though narrower than the kit supplied version, it's of heavier gauge and gives an almost 8 inch wider stance. It also lowers the plane about 2 inches to offset the rise given by the 5 " wheels I put on it. I want to be able to land in VERY RURAL unimproved fields and flats. (read non-flying field conditions). This is also the reason I've included flaps and have gone for so much design reinforcement. The plane will also have one of BTE's pull-pull tail wheels on it when it's finished. Rough expected landing conditions have dictated stronger landing gear, wider stance, bigger balloon tires, stronger pull pull tailwheel and a lot of reinforcement throughout. As you imply this will not be an acrobat!