Club members aluminum covering
 

Well last weekend a new guy at my club brought a plane of his own design. He doesnt know how to fly but built this plane. It weighed a ton and didnt have wing spar. If you picked it up by the wings they flex. The real kicker is that it was covered in aluminum. After an instructor kindly said it was not flyable he decided to get a mustang pts. He said he want to build a warbird and cover it with aluminum. He claimed people do it. I was kinda surprised. His goal is to fly in circles with scale war plane( the exact opposite of what i like to do). So my question is whether or not this guy is nuts. An aluminum covered flyable rc plane. If it can be done im sure itll look cool but ive never heard of it.

RE: Club members aluminum covering
 

Hi!
It has been done many, many times before. But it's not common.

RE: Club members aluminum covering
 

I am sure that it has been done, but it is just not practical, for the reasons that you already stated, its too heavy. I remember an article in MAN that showed a true 1/4 scale P-51, I mean even down to the rivets on the brake pedal. It was covered in aluminum, but I am not sure that it ever flew.
If all he wants to do is to fly cirlces in the sky with a P-51 more power to him.

Josh

RE: Club members aluminum covering
 

Thats what i thought. I actually did do a little research and found only one article inwhich it was done and it was practical. It sounds like thise guy is having fun with his projects. Hopefully when he learns to fly we will discover the more practical ways to do it. Thanks for the reassurance that i wasnt crazy because i never heard of it before

RE: Club members aluminum covering
 

Introduce him to Flite Metal.

Scott

RE: Club members aluminum covering
 

Interesting that we're 10 years down stream from when this all began & all
the Toledo, NATs. Top Gun, Scale Masters, World Jet Meet, FAI, winners and
magazine articles... In the scale community we're pretty much a house-hold
word :^)

Flite-Metal© is .0015 inch thick self-adhesive aluminum, used to replicate
appearance of a full size aircraft finish. Flite-Metal© weighs .0022222 ounce
to the square inch. Flite-Metal© is not Mylar, polyester, poly-vinyl, poly-
propylene, or an iron-on plastic laminate. It is dead soft aluminum with a wide
elongation factor capable of up to a 25% of area mass stretch to conforn with
concave and convex curves on any airframe.

We answer application and use questions within RCU when the subject of "The
Real Thing" appears.

You can cover in litho plate and various construction grade aluminum laminates
and with specialty alloy aluminum foil. Flite-Metal© is specialty alloy foil.

RE: Club members aluminum covering
 

Flite metal look really neat. I'm sure it is popular but i have zero interest in scale warbird. I will definately tell this guy about it. He however was trying to use 1/16 inch aluminum.

Hey guys - I'm new to the site - thought I'd chime in.......about 8 years late! I don't know about covering an airplane in aluminum but I remember years ago (early 1970s) when a couple of guys used to come to our site with airplanes covered with sticky sided shelf paper. Many of us would watch them fly their birds - and they did fly - and laugh at them under our breath. The joke, however, was on us as they were having a great time at MUCH LESS the expense we had in our airplanes. Man, those planes sure were ugly - just imagine seeing one decked-out in red plaid!!!

My buddy builds all his rc airplanes in metal... Not flite metal, genuine metal skins, ribs, spars, the real stuff and they are riveted together. He competes at topgun with them as well.

They may not be as light as some of the kites you can get in a rc airplane but they fly very well and scale like.

2.4Ghz antenna placement is gonna be a pain with a metal skin!

He has been doing it for 20+ years. Funny thing is, Jr/Spektrum is the only one he has ever been able to use with no problems at all.

what about under the canopy behind the pilot where the scale radio goes

There are ways of doing an antenna on the surface of a metal skin. You cut a half-wave narrow slot in the skin and feed it across the center of the slot. But you would need the right person to know how to do it.