To All,

I am interested in building a 90 sized Stagger Wing. I am looking for plans and/or collaborators. It seems most of us hobbyists tend to work solo. Anyone out there interested in sharing the fun of designing, building and flying a unique scale subject? Please let me know. I have plans for a 60 and giant scale, but looking for something in between. I'd like to kick off the project soon and start building in September.

Do you have or want experience in fiberglass, rigging, scale details, wood fabrication, covering, machine work and/or CAD skills? I am not looking for the "perfect participants", just the ambitious who would enjoy such a project. In the end, It would be neat to commission the work into a kit or magazine construction article.

Why 90 sized? I want something I can haul around using my car or Mini-van, I want to keep the cost in line, I want something big enough to look and fly scale, I would like to use standard BB servos.

Regards,

Bernard
Waukesha, WI

I'm currently working on a 1/6 scale D17S (64" wingspan). What wingspan do you have in mind? 1/5 would be just under 77".

Bernard,

What are the dimensions of the giant scale plans you have? What is the source?

Thanks,

Bedford

I believe you will quickly find out you are dealing with a 1.5/1.8 to 2.10 requirement once you get to 60-62" w/s on the D-17. The massive frontal area and basic flying trash can aspect of the fuselage will quickly eat up any 1.2/1.5 prop size much less a .90. You might want to consider use of a gasoline engine to get the prop and torque you will need.

The Paul Matt drawings will provide a good basis for designing your own. I believe SPPS will possibly have a planset from which you could carve out a great deal of short cuts as well.

Acqusition of a Byron Originals D-17 fuselage will serve the purpose of getting you into a plug even faster. I believe Walker has a gear for the D-17, maybe not in the proper size but that never held him up making the correct size:^)

Mechanos,

You have brought up some good points. It appears that a .90 sized airplane would be 15% scale. I was looking at the 52-60" span. under 1000 in2. This does not make a round scaling factor. Perhaps I should consider the larger 1/6 scale. The 1/6 scale would require a .120? I found the thread for the StaggerWing building project on IFLYRC. What do you think about the 1/6 scale? Anyone doing fiberglass on the cowl?

Beepee,

I will look at the plans when I get home and post the reply. The plans were drawing by a guy in Madison, WI. I forgot the name and scale. I thought the wing area was in the 2100-2300 in2 range.

Regards,

Bernard

As I mentioned earlier, the plans I'm drawing are for a true 1/6 scale (64" ws) which puts the fuselage at ~54" (I think, I'm not looking at the plans now). I have a 1.20 Saito and 1.50 Saito..... I'll probably go with the 1.50 and a 16x8 prop. Right now, I'm leaning towards built-up (stringers and formers) but half-way considering 'glass. I still have a good way to go to get the plans finished.

Mechanos,

Apparently the 64" WS version has been drawn up by Fred Novack. Kit Cutters offers the parts. It is all illustrated in the IFLYRC website at:

http://iflyrc.hypermart.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl

You may want to check this out. I was looking to go a bit smaller. I have the plans for the Flying Models .60 size variant at 48". It is a nice stand off scale subject. No retract details, nor does it look like there is the room. It lacks detail and slightly smaller than I would like. Perhaps the comments by Ed Clayman warrant this .60 plane to be a .90 sized subject. Perhaps the 64" version should go gas?

The Byron's kits seem to be untouchable when found. I understand you can get parts but not complete kits. This is still a bit bigger than I would like. Where is the SPPS info?

Thanks in advance,

Bernard

Regards,

Bernard

That's Ann Pepino... Scale Plans & Photo Service. Greensboro, NC. Jim Pepino's designs...but she has many others as well...plus photo docs.

Thanks Bernard........ I've seen that site and it did give me an idea or two. Designing it and drawing it is half the fun! That's why I decided to draw up my own plans instead of order plans from one the several sources I've unearthed.

Mechanos, whenever you get the plans drawn up, if you'd like them done in CAD I'd be more than happy to help you out there. I work all day long as an architect and in my spare time I have been farming out my CAD services for a local kit cutter, so I have plenty of experience in CAD (except 3D).

Thanks, but that won't be necessary..... I'm drawing them in CAD. I use Microstation, but can export as a .dxf which virtually any laser cutter can use.

The plans that I have are the Flying Models .60 sized, 48" wing span. The other set is by Lee Richter of New Berlin, WI. The dimensions of this design are (21% scale) 70" long, 80.5" wing span, just under 1900 in2 wing area. It calls for a 25-50cc gas. 5 pages.

I am still thinking about the best approach to building the model. With Oshkosh coming up in a few weeks, I have some opportunities to photograph the real thing and go forward.

What are you guys doing for retracts?

Regards,

Bernard

Hi;Just looking for some info.Tried to get on that site you mentioned about the Beech but can't seem to get in always get something about posting a search string?RCU sure seems easier to use tried there help line but no help there either.Know I am just not pushing the correct button somewhere.Find a list of things and the beech is there but hitting search doesn't seem to do any good.Have to go look at mine as have a partuilly built one,I believe from approx 1975 MAN plan about 60" has foam wings built up body p[lan shows retracts too,Forget what it show I think maybe a Veco 60 engine reported in article to be way underpowered but a tough plane.

I'm working on a larger scale Staggerwing myself (very large) so no one here will be interested in what I'm doing.
But for those of you who are CAD trained, I have scanned and converted the scans of the Staggerwing into a .dxf file that I'm using (and you can too) as the basis for drawing your own at any scale you want.

If you want it, PM me and make sure you give me your primary ISP email address because I don't think that RCU allows attachments in their mail system.

Highflight

Anyone else have problems with the link to my iFLYrc Forum? I have not done much with the Staggerwing lately. Been building some other non-critical models.

I can still get there just fine following the link above..... and I'm still waiting for you to post more pics of the wing structures

To all,

I found that I needed to be looking at the IFLYRC, Staggerwing.com and other sites by using Internet Explorer rather than Netscape. Check out the following info. You can also get to Travel Air, Beech 18's too. The links have 17G and S 3 view drawings with sections in jpg format. I ended up joining the Staggerwing museum in the process. Now I have to finish the project!

http://www.staggerwing.com/exhibits/york_library.shtml

Highflight, I will email you to get copies of the scans. That is awesome that you offer them to us.

Regards,

Bernard

What is everyone using for retracts? There does not seem to be much space in the wing to bury them in a 1/7 scale version. I appreciate your feedback.

Regards,

Bernard

My first thoughts were Spring Air Retracts. But now I'm leaning toward mechanical retracts. I know they seem to be weaker than some air retracts but I don't like all that air tubing, tanks, valves, and a servo - too much junk to put into the plane.

While we are on the subject of retracts, since I will be using mechanical retracts, has anyone got any experience with servo speed reducers. I saw one for around $10.00 (Dionysus Design). It will slow down the serovo rate to about 2 seconds end-to-end.

Any comments will be greatly appreciated.

BTW, I have added a Staggerwing section to the Photo Gallery on the iFLYrc web site ( http://iflyrc.hypermart.net ). Got quite a few photos from lot's of staggerwing modelers. If you would like to have your model included (on the bench or finished), send me an email.

Robart make a set of scale retracts in around 1/5 scale. They were going to be for Ziroli's staggerwing I believe. What ever happened to that?

Any size scale retracts can be built using boat winch or similar servos with cables or belts attached to the scale retract slide collars or any other similar setup.
I am putting them in my 1/12 scale Staggerwing but I am using a long servo arm instead of a winder setup.

The problem with other types of retracts is that the rotation angle is not enough to bring the gear down 90 degrees since the wing has some dihedral.