Started assembling my new design today, hope to have it flying at least a few weeks before the new season starts!

Took inspiration from another plane that i'll never be able to afford.

I'll get all the structure together before i sheet it, just to see what its going to look like.

workers,

That is a very impressive frame, nice work.
Would you mind telling us a little more about it such as the thickness of ply used and weight to enable a comparison against a composite fuse.

Keep up the good work, I look forward to seeing your progress.


J e r

Hi Jer, the u/c and wing tube formers are 1/8 ply and the ones local to these are either 1/8 liteply or 1/16 ply. All the other formers are 1/8 balsa. All the sheeting will be 3/32 balsa.
As for weight, on my Skyline bipe i made this year, the fuz came in at about 1000g ready to cover, thats including canopy and rudder. Hopefully this one will be similar although there is a couple more formers. I think the weight is very comparable to a composite fuz.

Dan

You can probably tell from these pics where i got my inspiration from.

Hello

As Myvec and Skyline, awesome job, incredible, absolutely beautifull !
Theses pictures makes me very happy. thanks a lot.
Claude

wow wing design looks similar to the Oreka F3A plane

Claude, im glad you like them!

Yes the wing platform was inspired by the Oreka, i like the way it looks and presents in the air (pilot may have something to do with that).
I thought it would look better though without canalisers, so i drew my own version up.

Also, after flying the Skyline for a bit i reckoned, along with some good advice, that a 'p only' plane might be a good route to go down. It still has a pretty big fuz and the fin is over 500mm tall so i think it will still get through and F ok.

Its a bit of an experiment, but looking forward to seeing how it goes.

gp ?

Ep. Specifically an Adverrun single drive. Need to do a bit of refitting of the motor because i designed it to suit a hacker c50

Dan

Congrats. Where is the LIKE button?

Started the sheeting.

Bit more progress with the sheeting. Turtle deck done.
Started planking the nose and canopy. Does take a while this part 😀

Got the top decking finished now and managed to get the canopy off without too much effort.
Started on the fin..

Great looking design! I really enjoy the progress pictures 👍

Cheers
Finished the fin, now to get it off the board and crack on with the bottom

Sheeting the bottom now, this is going to be a bit tricky because of the tight curve up to the nose. I found with the myvec and skyline, the planks had to be soaked for the bottom/nose planking to get round the bend. As long as you dont want to finish it in one evening its not so bad 😀

Apart from a couple of things, the fuz is pretty much there now.

..

Wow! Amazing what you did with the strips of balsa to make those compound curves!

Its taken a while to get to this point. Little bits on the fuselage have taken longer than i thought they would.The wings are 90% finished, just the ailerons to cut out. They currently weigh in at 280g so im hoping for a rtf weight of about 375g. I'll be happy with that as they seem a bit chunkier than a 'normal' set of wings

Wow,
Looks very nice. Do you have any problems getting contest (light) balsa across the pond? It seems to be getting harder to find over here and when you find it, the price is steep!
-Will

Cheers.
No its not a problem getting it, it is more expensive though. Probably about double the price. I didnt go for contest this time, Balsacabin selected their lightest grade for me before it got into the contest grade.
Still think i'll be under weight, fuz came in 1000g including rudder and canopy, ready to cover.

A very impressive build. I would guess the wood weight might be in the 6lb per cubic foot (in our antiquated system) which is the top end of the contest range. Careful construction and engineering can save as much weight as lighter wood. Looking forward to the flight report, though hopefully in better conditions than what you saw last week!
-Will

Very nice design and work!

Thankyou very much.
Ready to cover now, hopefully flying in the next couple of weeks!