BTE Venture 60 is ready for maiden
06-30-2007, 02:39 PM
#1
Thread Starter
BTE Venture 60 is ready for maiden
I thought I'd post a few pics of my recently completed Venture 60. This kit is easily the best quality kit I've encountered. The machine cut parts are perfectly formed, the balsa selection was excellent, clear instructions , just a superbly executed kit! But, I can't leave well enough alone so I did some modifcations. I put the rudder servo in the tail to counter the extra weight of the FG cowl. A hinged hatch covers the fuel valve, charge plate and on/off switch. I made a custom FG cowl to enclose a ST .61 sidemounted with a Pitts muffler. The pilots head turns with the rudder. The only structural change was to box in the wing joiner in the wings. If you like the 4* series planes, you might consider the Venture as an alternative. My thanks to Bruce Tharpe for an excellent kit!
06-30-2007, 09:47 PM
#9
Thread Starter
RE: BTE Venture 60 is ready for maiden
The pilot is a Ken doll. The head already turns but needs a bit of work to loosen the action. A shaft that can accept a screw is epoxied to the head and passes through the neck/body. then a servo arm can be screwed to the shaft and attached to the rudder. Hope that helps. I may get to maiden this thing in about a week, I hope.
07-01-2007, 09:32 PM
#13
RE: BTE Venture 60 is ready for maiden
Nice job on the cowl. You will love the way it flies. It is my favorite plane to fly right now. I have had it for 2 years. Wasn't the build a nice one? Everything so smooth to begin with, and the fit was great.
07-03-2007, 11:13 AM
#16
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Denton,
TX
Posts: 432
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
RE: BTE Venture 60 is ready for maiden
Great looking Venture. I completed one about a month ago. [link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_5723966/mpage_3/key_/tm.htm]see my build thread[/link] What did you do to color the landing gear?
07-04-2007, 10:57 PM
#17
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: NtheStiks,
VA
Posts: 324
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
RE: BTE Venture 60 is ready for maiden
Gorgeous plane!!! Could you elaborate on how you built your cowl? I'm always looking for different methods of making those things.
07-05-2007, 06:09 AM
#18
Thread Starter
RE: BTE Venture 60 is ready for maiden
Thanks guys. The landing gear was painted with Balsarite(helps it to stick) and then covered with Ultracote. I may pull it off and just polish the aluminum sometime in the future though. The cowl is made with the lost foam method of construction. make a foam mold, cover with packing tape, fiberglass the mold to thickness. when dry pour some lacquer thinner on the foam to desolve it. The rest is just sanding and finishing. It's time consuming to sculpt it out, but very rewarding in the end.
07-05-2007, 10:42 AM
#19
Senior Member
My Feedback: (18)
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Formosa, ARGENTINA
Posts: 2,370
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
RE: BTE Venture 60 is ready for maiden
You can also paint aluminum landing gear with lustrekote. Just clean it good with alcohol and ruff it up some with fine sandpaper. It looks good, matches the monokote and is fuel proof.
08-25-2007, 06:55 AM
#22
Thread Starter
RE: BTE Venture 60 is ready for maiden
A little update on the maiden and subsequent flights on this bird. The maiden flight was, I hate to say, lousy. I had too much down elevator dialed in-that helped to make things interesting. Then the muffler came off in flight. Luckily, it was hanging by the fuel tubing so I didn't lose it completely. Here's the worst problem though. Mind you, I did not crash this plane, it didn't contact the ground at ant time, except for landing. When I landed it, I had a broken leading edge and a cracked elevator. When I got home and tore into the wing a bit further I found 6 broken ribs and a whole bunch of broken shear webbing. It looked like the wing flexed violently and twisted. The fix-I tore off all of the covering to rebuild the wing. I installed 2 spruce spars going from the wingtip trailing edges to the inboard leading edges-epoxied through wing ribs and shear webbing. This strengthened the wing from twisting. I thought about sheeting the leading edge also, but it wasn't really necessary. I reglued the elevator and added 2-56 wire braces like on the Somethin' Extra. Very solid now. I'm still dialing the plane in, but I can say it's a great flyer now.
