I am building a hand full of Titanium flex plates for a friends Super Bandit..

The Material is 6Al-4V Titanium witch is very very strong and light...

I was just going to make a few of them but does any body else want some..

They are $75 per plane (six pieces) mostly because of the Material cost..


Eddie Weeks

Those are very cool. I wonder where this moves the fail point to?

Hey Eddie,

Will these flex plates fit the Balsa Bandit? Besides being very light and strong, does titanium exhibit more resiliency?

Skeet =5][/size]

LOL - I know watcha mean ... a fellow clubmember kept bending the wire struts on a pattern plane when landing it, so came up with the perfect solution ... titanium gear legs. Sure enough, they didn't bend on the next "landing" - tore the whole darn wing apart instead !

Gordon

My initial question sounds kinda jerky, I did not mean it that way!

I have seen reinforced flex plates hold up to some incredible loads in a composite bandit, the structure is very strong. I just wonder how it will finally fail.


My guess is it would pull the mounting blocks apart, which might not be too bad. The old failure mode always cracked the top of the wing.

I doubled up the rear carbon fiber plates on my Bandit and never had another failure. My experience was the strut tended to bend on the less than perfect landings. The structure is very strong. Easier to replace bent metal than bent paint.

Titanium wings next

I would much rather replace or straighten a strut rather then have to do paint work to the wing. It will take a real pounding to tear up the mounting points for the flex plates in the composite wing. The Titanium has a nice flex to it count me in for a set

Phil

I dont want to spot this wing in if I can help it!

Well said. Eddie I will take a set as well. Paypal or what?

I would never need these since I always make perfect landings, I just think they would "look" good.
Gimme a set, I wanna make my SB look better!!!
Where do I send money.
Scott

With the pattern airplane struts at least.. we found the titanium wouldn't bend but instead would just break. It took a lot more force to actually break them than steel but they never bent.

You guys are just landing to hard!

(I never failed a flex plate in my Balsa Bandit)....

Interesting discussion anyway... Nice to see folks that realise eventually... something fails....

David

They will get cut this week and installed next week.

When I am satisfied that they fit and are strong enough I will
start shipping....

I guess I will just take my friends Brand New Super Bandit and
drop it from lets say, 1-2 feet.. That should be a good test...
I don't think he will mind... hahah

Eddie Weeks

[email protected]

He shouldn't mind......he was dropping it from higher than that this weekend!

LMAO

Look what I found....

Poor Eddie, for the first time this past weekend I've considered believing their might be something to learn from those backwoods MS boys! While your skill landing downwind with no gear .................. in the grass ............... is second to none, I think them MS boys might have something on you for once (landing on the runway in the right direction [] )

You guy's crack me up.

A picture of Eddie as a baby

And his first poker game

His new Tattoo

His new palm pilot

The new Weeks family swimming pool

And for entertainment a good old fashion Lousyana game of horseshoes

Followed by a ride on one of Eddies newest creations......what an active imagination Eddie has!