I've never seen or heard of Cluster's channel wing. Upon first looking at it
you would think it would send a plane into a nose dive. Looks like a split
ducted fan, wonder how a four blade prop would work?
What did you try building it out of? I would think s&t would be out but it could
be carved & sanded out of a balsa block or insulation foam. A lot of work not
to mention getting two exactly the same.
Find any scale flying models with the design that use two motors? That would
make some model.
I think it would work very well with an AA since you could still keep it a pusher
and yet move the motors up to help CG. Wonder how well it would turn?


Making tapered wing sections is not any more difficult than making the straight
sections. Lightly score the foam with a ball point pen like micro suggested and
then heat. Near the tip I lightly scored a spider web pattern to the underside to
round it out and then cut off the excess foam after hot gluing.
I'm convinced any style of wing can be made this way.
Make sure you use the 1.5mm cheap plates (the kind that cracks and you're
food falls off) not the 2mm good plates. The 2mm is too heavy and hard to
work with.

Ferndale,
the cell is a fullriver 130mah, i know a site over in the UK that carries them, the guy that owns it a good guy too, he's as quick as he can be. here's his site: http://www.indoorflyer.co.uk/

neurotex,
i think the idea behind the Channel wing is that there is more wing area in the half circle, and the half circle also has a high lift producing airfoil in it. with the prop pulling the air in through the half circle, its accelerated over the top secion of the airfoil, producing more lift than a conventional wing would. its sort of the same deal as the AA Jet, with the motor directly in line with the wing itself, pusing the wind over the airfoil. but, since there's more wing area in the half circle, and the prop is pulling all that air in over the airfoil, it produces gobs-o-thrust. very interesting idea.

i tried two differant ways of building the channel. first one was indeed a S&T build. i buit it to fit an AA prop, but it was so small i couldnt cover with the tissue well enough, it was just one big wrinkled mess. the 2nd try i used some foam and sanded one. it looked promising, but kinda heavy. i'm now realizing though that the durobatics foam would probably work perfect for it, it wouldnt be too hard to draw up some wing ribs to give the right airfoil. my idea now is to go buy another one of those new silverlit SingleWing flyers. it has a 4.5" prop, so the duct wouldnt have to be so small. another option would be to use the 3 blade prop from the tail of a GyRotor. a 12-14 inch span plane might be just about perfect. there's some .pdf files on that site that have the Langley test results, if it really works as well as the numbers show, its certainly worth persuing!

your wing turned out really clean looking, should be nice

nick

Micro,
I believe if you go to a crafts store you can find styrofoam cylinders of various sizes. If you cut one of those in half and then hollow out the inside to whatever diameter you need it could work. I'm not sure if their styrofoam would be strong enough for a wing, but maybe you could instead use it as a mold? Just an idea...

The AA jet isn't really the same idea because more of the prop's circle is beneith the wing, only a small portion of it gets above the wing. That could be a new mod idea though!!! Mounting the motors on top of the wing should increase the flow over the top of the wing thus increasing lift!!! We could try the same thing on the bipe as well!!! I wish I wasn't such a broke college student, each time I came up with a new idea I'd buy a new one and mod it! Oh well...

Snit

Hi all, after grumping last night about adopting new planes to quickly, I think I did it again. Has anyone heard of the air hogs entity? Two prop and it seems to be 3 channel. That looks like an elevator back there. I'll shoot some pics and let you know more later. Yeah, I bought it. It wasn't even in the computer system at Target. Tim

hello i have had these airhogs for about a month or two now... and i notice after flying these things dust and hair gets in between the moto shaft and the prop and so i tryed to take the prop off and ended up accidently pullin the whole motor off.......somethin also went wrong with the motor but i dont remember.. so needless to say i had a plane with only one motor on it well i was thinkin of a way to rebuild it and i took one of those rc zipzap motors there basically the same size as the stk motor and wired up the motor and now it works like a dream........so if ne of u experience what i did just take a zipzap motor and run the positive to the bottom of the motor and run the negative to the outside of the motor and it works like a dream

Hi all, unless your buying the entity to mod, I don't recommend it. It is using a nimh battery and can't generate enough power to overcome the weight. The control is also particularly poorly designed. My biggest beef however is that they didn't use the correct hardware on the props. A prop nut came off in flight. Prop nut and propellor are somewhere in the yard. This is the first air hog I've had that is nose heavy. If they put a lipo in it and redesign the controller this might work. The motors are really noisy as well. Back to target it goes. Tim

I put together a rough fuselage just to see what could be done
with the 1.5mm foam. I started out with two balsa sticks and then
glued the formers to them. Then I cut the body panels to shape
and scored them heavily with an x-acto on the outside. The
panels where then shaped around a steel rod to bust them into
the concave shape and then glued.
The scoring looks like aluminum sheet metal so I first gave the fuse
a black wash and then dry brushed over that with acrylic silver.
From start to finish about an hour and a half- the same thing done
in s&t would have taken me 10 times as long just to save maybe a
half gram.
The finished fuse weighs 3.6 grams.

micro, you could probably build a channel wing with this stuff, trouble is,
where would you begin?

Hi All,

Have been out traveling for the last 3 weeks. Had lots of time to tinker and invent. My 4 motor plane is still running, all though I broke the solar cell in two (did not cover it for sake of weight) and had to remove it.

Parky50 , Neurotex & FERNDALE AIR FORCE: Thanks for the compliments.


micro builder: I had the solar cell attached to the inner 2 motors at first but found it worked better when routed to the charge input. The motors on the outside are from a jet. I think they would be better used (for turning purposes, the jet motors being larger) if brought inside and the stock motors placed outside. Lots more work though. Would definitely not turn as super fast as it does now.


Megabyte-2: Thanks...Plane is still flying...I took my 4 motor plane all across the US and every were I went people were just amazed at how cool these planes are and that they were so cheap.

Keep on building and posting guys, your advice and pictures have helped alot.

For the rest of you out there here is part 1 of my contribution to the effort.

God Speed Aero Aces...!God Speed...!

Part 2 LANDING GEAR THAT STANDS UP TO MANY TAKE OFFS AND LANDINGS

Landing your plane takes alot of abuse...You need sturdy landing gear....Then try these wheels.


-You will need a sturdy piece of thin steel rod. I have found that a large salt water spinner spoon are excellent. No paper clips, they bend to easy.
-A soldering iron
-Wheels form a small race car
-Jewelry metal crimping beads
-Small piece of sturdy balsa (or light weight wood) 3/4 x 1/2 inch by 1/4 thick

-First cut the spinner. I found that a piece 2.5 inches or 6mm works best for stability purposes.
-Next bend the very end of one side up to about 45 degrees and about 1/8 inch from end.
-Place first wheel on and one metal crimping bead.
-Place one more metal crimping bead and the other wheel on.
-Now bend the other end of spinner wire up 45 degrees and 1/8 inch from end.
-Now crimp the metal bead 1/16 inch from inside end of Wheel and solder in place.
-Do the same for the other side. Be sure not to melt the wheel as th rod gets hot. Be prepared to blow air on to it.

-Cut out the piece of balsa as described above and make a notch towards the front and thick enough and deep enough to hold the rod in place but not allowing to much play to keep the landing gear steady. (Tight is best)
-Place wheels in notch and super glue.
-Now super glue the balsa to the under base of the plane. (Make sure you're centered and perpendicular). Careful not to cover the charge port and let dry real good.
-Paint black and your ready to fly.
-Glue a piece of curled up aluminum cut from a can on the rear tail...works great.

You're ready to go....Now try taking off and landing. P.S. You get better take off results in mono mode.

Redmoon

Red moon those are awesome mods.

neurotex, that plane you're going with looks like a toon GeeBee - cool! there's a thread going on over on RCG in the micro/indoor section, its called 'my 2500...mmm' and its got a couple pics of a plane that looks like what you're building also. what type of foam are you using?

redmoon, thanks for the info on the solar cell setup. your LG is pretty nice too, how long/short is the takeoff distance?

nick

I thought that too once it was finished- a contorted GeeBee. I wasn't going
for anything as far as design, just gluing pieces together to see what was
possible with this type of foam... which is the 1.5mm cheap foam pie plates.
The stuff is surprisingly easy to work with and by cutting panels and scoring
it, you can make any shape imaginable.
I used to build sci-fi models some years back and this stuff would be great
for building some kind of RC battle mech or robot.

EVEN BETTER LANDING GEAR

No soldering required. Can be made in 15 Minutes

Metal Rod.
3/4 x 1/2 x 1/4 Piece balsa with small notch for axel.
2 coffee stir staw pices. Apx 1/2 inch. The small size works best.


Bend one end of rod up 45 degrees.
Add 1 wheel then the two pieces of coffee straw.
Add the other wheel and bend other end of rod 45 degrees.
Place in knotch on balsa, add glue flip over.
Place on the Rx of the plane just befor charge port.

Redmoon

Built a Strato Streak wing out of the 1.5mm foam into the same
dimensions as the balsa wing I made. A little heavy at 6.8 grams
but that was expected. This second batch of foam plates I bought
yesterday is slightly heavier than the ones I used with the first wing
even though it's still 1.5mm thick. More transparent and coarser too
so I'm going to hunt down some other brands for the next project.
I'm sure the wing could be made even lighter if I cut down on the glue
and use a carbon rod or thinner stick.
Installed it on the plane that's been patched up so much it's a
flying glue glob. It's a true air HOG now. Weighs a ton but
still glides nice. Now if it would just stop raining.

Hey guys I recently bought an x twin / aero ace and Im concerned how long/ or how many charges you can get with the tx batteries?

thank you.

Snit,
i missed your post till just now. thanks for the tip on the foam cylinders, i actually tried some fake plant potting foam for the 2nd try on building the channel. i sanded it all down as much as possible while still keeping the airfoil shape, it would work for AA gear but i was originally going to use it for the aero soarer gear and the foam just weighed too much (almost 2 grams - doesnt sound like much, but 2 grams should be close to the AUW for an LRF).

neurotex, have you tried sanding the foam plates? most of the weight of the thin foam materials are all in the outer skin. this is usually because of the cutting done with a hotwire cutter, it melts the foam and compacts it, making it heavy. using some heavy grit paper to remove the skin and then some light grit paper to smooth it out would probably drop your weight quite a bit, although the streangth in the foam will drop as well.

maiden-crash, you should be able to get at least 10+ charges on a set of TX batteries. i noticed your RIP to your planes, and i just gotta ask, how did you kill the stryker? i've gone through 2 airframes so far, over the past 3 or 4 years. the first one was mostly 2 part epoxy by the time i was done with it

i'm moving out of my house tomarrow so all my projects are on hold indefinetely - a serious pain in the butt, especially with the channel wing idea, i'd really like to get that one finished (having to move out happened rather quickly and unexpectedly). i'll hopefully get to start back up soon. this also means i wont be able to finish up the mod thread links, but i'll get back to it as soon as possible, there's still lots of good mods and planes between page 100 and 143!

nick

20-30 full charges

I've sanded down some of it but sanding too quickly melts the foam and
causes it to flake up. Belt sanding causes way too much heat. I'm at the
point now where 1.5mm is just enough to give it the best support.
On this next plane I'm building the extra weight of the wing will have to be
compensated for by lowering the weight of the fuselage, which will only
be two sheets of 1.5mm glued around the lipo. The RX will be installed in
the wing.
I've found some different foam plates, the ones I had before, which are
lighter and should knock off a gram or two.

I tried building the channel for the channel wing last night and ended up using
the bottom halves from a McD's soda cup. The cup halves are strong enough
but after covering and bracing the channel it weighed 3.6 grams. That's 7.2
grams without the wing ends added. Finding something to give me the support
I need and keeping the weight down too is a challenge.

neurotex,
i've found that sanding blocks work well, or just a single piece of sand paper even. using just your hands to sand it will let you have a lot more control over the pressure and heat. its very time consuming to sand stuff like that, when i did the prairie duster, i spent more time sanding balsa than i did assembling the plane! it pays off in the end though, the first one i built i did no sanding on and the empty weight was 2 grams, the 2nd one i did, i sanded most the balsa as much as i could, and even though the 2nd one had the extra weight of tissue and adhesive, it still came out at only 1.7 grams.

maybe some 1/16th inch balsa would work for the bottom half of the channel to give you the streangth while keeping the weight low. then you can use foam or whatever else for the upper airfoil. do you have a picture of the ribs you plan to use for the channels airfoil? i retraced the one that was drawn in the 3 view, but looking at the pictures of the twin channel wing, it doesnt look the same. i'm wondering what the changes that were made from the Langley test plane compared to the twin channel version.

i think this project deserves a thread of its own, its got some serious promise!

nick

The final sanding was done with a block and 320 grit. But the whole
point of the foam plates was to make it cheap and quick. I wanted to
eliminate the time wasted usually spent sanding balsa and applying tissue,
which takes up 90% of the time out of constructing a s&t wing.
If I can find some 1mm thick foam for the top of the wings or cover it with
some thin plastic sheet bag I might save some weight there.
Also the sanding ruins the finish and absorbs paint. Best to spend just a
little extra time and cut and glue everything as clean as possible the first
time around.

Here's some pics of the channel wing. The airfoil ribs are foam in the middle
with the McD's cup bottoms as the ends of the airfoils. You can't tell from the
pics but there is an airfoil there.

Also a rough of the twin boom plane I plan to build using the 1.5mm foam.
With a 12" wingspan I guess the plane to weigh about 11 grams. This making
the fuselage almost profile and using CF rod for the tail booms. The other pic
is the extended motor mount.

neurotex,
your channel came out a lot better looking than mine! its a good start for sure. whats the chord leangth?

nice twin boom too, i had built a little balsa chucker that had a very similar design and it would glide very nicely. yours should be able to turn on a dime and lift like mad with the short tail moment, she's almost a flying wing!

nick

The chord of the channel is 3 inches and the AA prop just barely
fits inside. Any warping and it would hit the sides.

I've been wanting to build a twin boom for some time now. Hoping
I can make one quickly.

Speaking of balsa chuckers. I just got a 1942 Model Airplane News
mag on ebay and in it they have the plans for a bipe that flys with
no stab. Just has a rudder. Tailess Bipe or Mono?
Would be great for the AA.
I'll post the complete plans for it later tonight.

Finally getting caught up on my reading.

You guys are all doing some great stuff.

Microbuilder,
I the channel wing the one I read mentioned that is "stall proof"?

Redmoon,
Glad to hear it still going. Might want to put a "bunny" sticker on it. May the AA Rx God's continue to smile on you.
I wish all the AA Rx's we that durable.

Tony
ARS Software & Innovative Solutions
http://www.falcon1.net/~ars/rcmodels.html

neurotex, that tailess mono/bipe sounds pretty interesting. there's an old plane called the Skoda that had a similar design, no conventional horizontal stab, just a rudder. the horizontal stabs were mounted on twin booms, coming off the TE of the wing. it looks truely bizzar, but it does fly (i built a similar model to it with a ToonRacer body for the AA).

tony, the channel wing is supposed to have some amount of anti-stall in it, but the one thats supposed to really cut down on stalling is the Kline-Fogelman airfoil. i posted some pics on it one page back, post #3549. since a forward swept wing doesnt allow for much stalling, and since a canard type flyer is supposed to cut down on stalling, it would be interesting to combine the 3. i wonder, is it possible to have a forward swept flying wing?

nick

Skoda? I'd like to see it. The only Skoda I know is that funky little
foreign car.

Here's the plans for the tailess bipe. With some modification I'm sure it
could be built for the AA. The plans say, "This plane is one of the steadiest
fliers ever designed." I'd like to try it and see for myself.
For those of you in St. Louis, this plane might be a bit slick, so put a little
pine tar on your fingers to insure proper grip!