Hi Jason,

maybe the former slots need some trimming, sometimes the inside corners are a bit rounded from the cnc machine.

also reinforce the splice with some thin .007 carbon, light fiberglass or tow....

cool....

Thanks Dean,

I'll reinforce the splice at the same time the ply doublers are glued in. The stringers seem to fit nice into the formers and the formers fit nice into the fuse sides. I suspect the tabs on the formers are a little longer than the thickness of the fuse sides which causes them to sit up a little. It could also be that there is a small radius in the corners of each tab which is holding it up. No dramas either way.. :-)

I see your name on Chris Moon's new site as the webmaster... Cool! Looks like a nice simple site which is the way it should be...

Cheers
Jason.

Thanks Jason. I am still working on the "official" logo but it's coming along.

There is some cool stuff there..

Is this whole plane covered in film, paint or a combo of both?

Mark,

Fuse and rudder are paint and the wings and stab are covered.

Larry

Mark,

Very pretty airplane in person as well. Larry did a great job on it. And more importantly Chris can fly the snot out of it.

Arch

Hey thanks Arch but that covering job really has a lot to be desired. The scheme is good it's just the workmanship on that covering and yes we are going to fix that very soon.

Larry

G'day Mike,

On the electric box mount, you probably need to make the cut-out on the firewall a little bigger for the motor to go through. The AXI 5330/F3A won't fit through the firewall. Easilly fixed though.

Cheers
Jason.

Because of a motor change (okay, several), I had to relocate the batteries right behind the firewall. I built a tray as shown before. It was meant to be a prototype with a more finished and lighter version to come later, but it worked well enough that I haven't gotten around to building another one yet. There isn't actually a lot of room up there, there is a firewall support between the firewall and the top stringer that gets in the way with batteries. If you lay the batteries on their side, as shown, you can get around this. Not sure where other guys may be in their build, but this was a sticking point early on as to where and how to place the batteries.

Tom M

hey guys, what size wheels are you running in your vf3's for grass and do you have any special tips to keeping the pants on (wheel pants that is) when flying off a grass field?

My son Chris and I both use the 2.50 lite Dubro wheels. We fly off grass here in Florida and have no problems. We use the lite weight NMP axles with the pants side sandwiched between the axle and landing gear. Then a small screw through the landing gear back into the pants just above the axle to keep the pant from rotating. It's simple and easy to do and it works.

Larry

I'm running the same setup as Chris and Larry. No problems here and I'm flying off thick grass,

Arch

Arch, Remember the wheels you pulled off your airplane over in Munford? Seriously, they looked like tail wheels when you pulled them out.

I'm using a modified Wayne Galligan technique. I took this picture from Bob Pastorello's website, www.rcaerobats.net. I don't know if he drew it or if Wayne drew it, but I wanted to give credit for the original picture, as I took it and modified it. With the smaller wheelpants that we're using today, I actually use 2" DuBro foam wheels, and I fly off of rough grass at my home field with no issues.

What I do is take my wheelpant and figure out the inside width. I'll subtract the width of the wheel that I'm using, and give myself about 1/16" fudge factor. I make some appropriate thickness discs out of plywood, I've used both light ply and aircraft ply. Generally this works out to be around a 1/8" plate for the smaller wheelpants that I use. I drill a clearance for a 6-32 screw in on, and a clearance for a 6-32 blind nut in the other. Glue the plates into the wheelpants, with the blind nut end towards the gear leg, and put the blind nut in after your glue is dry.

Get an appropriate length 6-32 screw and thread it in from the outside of the wheelpant. It will pass through the wheel and go into the blind nut and into the gear leg. Put a #6 washer on the backside of the gear leg and a lock nut and you're in business. I don't even use a anti-rotation screw, as it's not necessary and I like to keep things as simple as possible. Alternatively, you could thread the screw in from the back side of the gear leg, and instead of having a clearance on the outer disc, drill and tap a for a 6-32 screw. You have to be a little more careful with this method; first, it's a little more involved as you'll need to cut threads all the way up to the cap on your screw, and you'll need to have a pretty exact length so you don't go through the outside of the pant. Also, you need to ensure that your wheelpants are strong, because if your pant splits down the seam, you'll lose the wheel.

I use this technique for several reasons. First, I hate axles. They're a pain in the ass, and it's always difficult to keep up with collars, or even the NMP axles with the locking 'C' ring, it's just something to lose and keep up with. Axles, especially the NMP, or MK ones, don't support the outer side of the wheelpant, and that's where you get a lot of broken wheelpants from them flexing so much. I don't know exactly how much this weighs, but it's just as light as anything else out there, you don't need to order something from Central to make it, I go to my LHS for the wheels and 1/2 mile down the road to the Ace Hardware for the screws. It's easy to make, easy to replace, and dirt cheap. I also think this is the surdiest way to mount wheelpants, and it definitely is the simplest for me.

Anyhow, that's my contribution. Remember, it's worth what you paid for it, but I highly reccomend it.

Yea Chris I do. What Chris is referring to is that over 2 years, I essentially wore out a set of wheels flying primarily off grass. My 2 1/2" wheels were about 1 1/5 - 1 3/4 and the pants held up fine. I think the most important thing when flying off grass is don't play around. Try to minimize the amount of time you spend rolling in the grass, and on landings, MAKE EVERY EFFORT to land as smoothly as possible. This keeps the wheels from compressing and the grass from grabbing a hold of the pants and pulling them off. With the 2 meter plans of today, the way they will slow down, on a grass field you shouldnt roll out more than 50'.

Arch

DEPS question...

I replaced the stock tubes on my DEPS with the Bondable teflon ones...the pushrods are pretty tight and take some pushing to get them moving. Is this normal? If I run a heli gyro servo on that pushrod I imagine it wont be very happy.

They should be loose enough to slide out. Sounds like u have a bend somewhere. Mike Wingos is so smooth the elevator droops when powered off. And these elevators are light. It is just that silky smooth.

Arch

Did you glue the tubes in with epoxy? I know I used 5 minute one time and the glue shrinks and creates binding in the sleeve.

bummer, the turtledeck and everything is on and these guys are in there Any suggestions to how to get them out and get some good elevator DEPS going?

Chris,

As Archie said get the bondable teflon sheathing part # T2070E-6 that is 6 ft or part # T2070E-B which is 10ft at 1.60 per foot. I had to do the same thing to a V2 and I think it was Pete C. that did this, but in the lower deck at the tube exits cut a hatch about 6" long so you can make sure you properly clue the rod sheathing in place. You will also make a latter support for the sheathing to be attached to from the exit through the fuse to the servo area. This is made with 1/4" sq balsa sticks. Glue the sheathing to sticks and every 4 to 5 inches wrap the stick and house with thread and CA that area. Make sure you test fit and and align everything before gluing to the fuse. Once things are correct with your deps and things work smoothly then reattach the lower deck piece. Below is the link to CST Sales. I hope this helps and I'm sure there are other methods that may work better but this was the best I know of and it works.

http://www.cstsales.com/index.html

Larry

Chris, if you take the DEPS/teflon sheathing approach as Larry describes above, be sure and keep the thread wraps 'loose' when you CA them to the sheath and support sticks. If you wraps the thread too tightly, it will drag on the DEPS rods where the threads wrap around the assembly. Don't ask how I know this...

Woodie

this is going to be tricky, I already have DEPS in there CA'd on a 1/4 square balsa stick at each former, its just not moving right...geesh, a pain! =)

I did a retro fit deps in my 3 before nats this year and had the same problems with the teflon sheathing from cst. It was binding very badly.

If you have the ladder system built you really don't need the teflon sheathing. So I yanked it out and rebuilt it with the standard stock-kit sheathing.

I'm not sure if it's because when you get the cst teflon sheathing it's coiled and it's impossible to straighten it thus making it bind or if there are some issues with the ID of the teflon sheathing that's making it too tight. One thing you could tray is sanding the carbon rods slightly.

on an older batch of the teflon sheathing I didn't have the binding problem. I think I am going to stick with the stock tubes from now on out....

It's not that big of a deal to yank the whole thing out and rebuild it, although it might take a while....

good luck!

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8784447

here's the post where I show my exit guilds for the deps. Doing that retro fit took like 3 days and I think I made the ladder 3 times to get it perfect - but it works great.

maybe make sure your exit is far enough forward to make sure you have a straight line from the servo to the control horn...

Yep I did that in a V2. Built the crutch, cut the hatch and installed it in about an hour. I think I posted it on Mike's site in the forum.