Sethhunter

Thanks Bob for the info. How would you describe the SE5a's performance on the OS120 pumper? Marginal (toe curling) or (more than) adequate for scale flight? I'm also curious how the 300V will nestle in the (1/4 scale?) Albi? Hidden or exposed heads?

Thanks

VNulk

Hey Seth,

I had a ST3000 in my Alb D.Va weighing 26 lbs and was able to get very good scale flight but not enough to get a good stall turn or wing-over, nor enough to get out of a bad situation. I replaced it with a Q50 and the plane came to life in all manuevers. With a 18x8-10 I have nice handling at scale speeds and when I need a little kick, it kicks, still not overpowered but really comfortable and good sound with lengthened exhaust to head exhaust on other side of engine to exit out the scale exhaust above. I had to get used to a head and plug sticking out of the woodwork below but I prefered that to not having a complete scale engine above. As far as I know, I never lost points due to the engine protruding.

Vern

BobH

My Feedback: (2)

Seth the SE5a's flight envelope is scale. She flies just like the full scale plane.
The 300 V is mounted inverted in the Albi and it has a shorter profile than the older Enya 240 V. So it fits well within the Fuse.

Sethhunter

Thanks everyone, this has been very helpful.

It dawned on me today that an upright engine was trouble in the making: I'd need to remove the faux mercedes to get to it, remove the guns to get to the mercedes, remove the upper center wing section to get to the guns, remove the outter panels to get the center section off...

Right about now an inverted ZDZ40RE is leading the list. HP to spare. Inverted solves the cooling problem. Removable cowling to get to the engine controls.

PS - I wrote Herbie at Herbie wheels to ask about weight. He estimates his 190mm diameter wheels weigh 400 grams (pair). Thats a big savings over the 775 grams for the AZM wheels, and I think the Dubro are up there too. He must be using very light material for the tires. Does anyone know anything about the durability of his tires?

Sethhunter

Anyone have a source for the German stencil font? I've searched the popular font download sites and spoke to Gary at Getstencils and haven't found it. My next step is to recreate it from the photo's unless there's another lead!

BTW - Smithsonian Air & Space magazine this month (NOV 06) has an article on photographer Philip Makanna's (best known for "Ghosts" av-calanders) photos of the Paso Robles-based the Aeroplane Collection, including the DIII (below). Also pictured is an N11, N17, EIII, Sopwith Baby, Bleriot, and others.

Just coincidence this came out the week Fly Boys opens?

Erich_Prinz

Hi All,

Fascinating thread. I came across it doing some research on this aircraft after pulling down plans from a free flight site for a 'jumbo scale' version of the DIII. (You can all snicker now.)

My model obsession started much like Tom's back in the early 70's. My dad was an Army officer assigned to duty in Greece of all places. In near isolation I did my best to build and learn. It took two years of kit building before I had anything actually fly!

At this point in my hobby obsession, anything that flys is of interest -- 3D foamies, IMACC, pistashio, you name it. Time is the major limiting factor.

So this FF jumbo scale Pfalz (go ahead and snicker again) is going to be converted to electric RC. In between all the other half finished projects the hand drawn plans are getting converted to CAD files for parts to be laser cut. This thread has been quite an inspiration and has gotten waaaaaayyy too much of my attention. :-)

Tom, the picture of your airplane flying is one huge inspiration - it's made it's way into my iPhoto album! Of all the color schemes I've seen, your's is most appealing and will certainly make its way on to my project. Here's a link for the other inspiration:

http://www.ffscale.co.uk/cp6.htm

This is a peanut version of the Neuport. I have an incredible amount of respect for those who can build at that level of detail in such a small space (under 13") and have those things actually fly. We're talking grams!

Seth, keep the photos coming. What an incredible project. Can't wait to see it in the air.

EP

Sethhunter

Hi Erich,
I share your amazement of that peanut scale. Wow - incredible craftsmanship! How big is the jumbo scale plane? I'd like to hear more about the design and where you found the plans, etc.
Thanks!

Erich_Prinz

Seth,

From the site Small Flying Arts: http://www.smallflyingarts.com/Free_...free_plans.htm a list of all their contributed plans. Some CAD, most are drawn and scanned in. The Pfalz should be in the 30" span. I've not taken the time to measure and convert yet as the scanned drawings are overscaled by some 40% and there isn't a scale bar to work with.

Here is page 1 of the 6 pages Clint drew out (reduced the file size for easy upload.) Funny, the notation next to the download indicates the plans were reduced to 50% - that is inconsistent with my initial measurements from various parts on the image file.

Sethhunter

Looks like a fun aeroplane! Looking forward to seeing it develop.

Sethhunter

I spent the last week trying to produce a font that looks like the the photos but I haven't been able to create anything that looks better than "billiekid" stencil font available (free) on one of the font sites. Part of the problem is I don't have a picture that magnifies well enough to really see what the sariff and breaks look like. Another problem is I don't want to spend big bucks on a font library. Anyway, billiekid looks pretty close, and I did replicate the numerals as best I could. Attached pics show paper printouts for size check before ordering stencils. Also got the tail covered and stitching on the elevator. Not a very productive week!!

arspievack

Seth, While you're my guru on these things (and I haven't checked yet), the weigths under the cabane look too big to me. Have you checked them against a photo?
The rear fuse and rudder look okay. I'll look later to check me, but wanted to ask you to look again. I repeat, this is the last Pfalz it's got to be right.
I'm with you all the way
ars

Sethhunter

Please don't stop questioning things - I'd hate to make a mistake!
There is some variation in the weight tables; the common picture of the crashed DIIIa 8282 having it's guns removed shows empty/payload/max weight of 725, 180, 905 kg. By comparison, 8143, 5855,and 6021 are 695, 220, 915. I don't know what the weights were for Fritz Hohn's DIIIa 8009, or for that matter, if it was two lines or three. Dempsey illustrated 8009 with 2 lines, but he wasn't very careful with that detail. e.g., he shows Schaefer's 5855 with no weight table, but photos clearly show three lines.

I have found two pictures of DIII.a's with legible two-line tables - the same weight as the DIII: Leergewicht 695 kg, Zulassige Belastung bei vollem Tank 170 kg. BTW - thanks for having me take another look: I missed the umlaut over the a in Zulassige. I may go with two lines to avoid obvious conflict with Dempsey.

arspievack

Seth
The issue I was raising was the size of the lettering not the data on the fuse.
I'm sure the weights were all over the map. Thanks
ars

Sethhunter

Thanks Alan, I misunderstood - but it was a good exercise for me to recheck anyway. The length I think is right (the second line in the 2-line table extends nearly from the access hatch near the fuel line to the pilot step). I think it looks bigger because the stencil font I used is heavier than the real font. I tried various ways of thinning out the letters, but nothing I did looked quite right. Caligraphy was never my strength. Open to ideas...

arspievack

Seth,
Thanks for checking on that I trust your judgement and just have been too busy to look for myself.
On my Pfalz I did them all by hand using a very fine artist's pen that allowed me to adjust the thickness of the line.
I did it with a magnifying glass after a lot of practice sessions. because my model was a smaller scale than yours I had the advantage of people not being able to pick up any small flaws and since I assumed the real one was a stencil it would be okay if there was a little "bleeding" around the edges, as there usually is with a stencil.
Onwards -upwards

The "picky" red baron

Erich_Prinz

A quick update on the progress of this mini-rc-scale project. Going through by hand and digitizing the parts for this particular model. The parts have a 'hand drawn' feel since it's quite literally a trace of the original drawings.

Once digitized, these parts will be laser cut. I'd rather spend 5 hours digitizing than an hour hand cutting parts, but that's just me.

Sethhunter

Hi Erich,
The traces look good. What program are you using? I use XaraX which is a graphic design program (not a CAD program) I bought for another purpose. It's a bit expensive but has the advantage of being vector based which allows me to drag control points and adjust slopes to align the trace to the scanned image, rather than edit by bits.

Erich_Prinz

.
I'm using Adobe Illustrator on a Powerbook. There is another app called Model CAD by the folks who put out TurboCAD that runs on XP. It's a little kludgey but works well - just not as flexible. It won't take the jpeg graphic or the file converted to wmf for some reason - so back to Illustrator.

Once the file is complete, it get's converted to a windows meta file (wmf) which is opened in Corel 7 on the machine that drives the laser table. The laser table I have is old school; the drivers were written for Windows 3.1 - fortunately it works on '98.

I'm not familiar with the package you're using. Sounds like it's more than just for the hobby (or business justified the purchase!)
.

arspievack

and Seth, because I forgot to mention it but bet you've done this.
Sometimes I would draw the part or stencil very big and reduce it on a copier to very small ( which takes out the "edgy " lines)
I'll dig up the picture of the cockpit of my Westwind Whirlwind (Best in Shop at the 1975 Wrams show) done in 2" scale. Took me a year.
ars

Sethhunter

It seems Xara, a UK company, has renamed the product Xara Extreme For some reason, my copy is called XaraX1). It sells for about $80 @ www.xara.com. For CAD I use an old 2D version of Cadkey.

Allan - would love to see that cockpit. The last lettering I did by hand was the tail of a pup in 1974. Way to hard for me! And my hand is nowhere near as steady as it was then! Yup - copiers were the way to go before software and PC's made clean-up and scaling much easier.

It seems appropriate to mention in this thread the obituary for Peter Grosz appeared in our local Princeton NJ newspaper this week. I had no idea the author of Windsock Datafile 21 (and many, many other publications) lived locally. The scale modeling community will surely miss him and his enormous contribution to our knowledge of WWI aviation.

arspievack

Just proves how old fashion I am, I don't have the computer programs to do this stuff, I have trouble with my e-mail
best regards
will send the WW.
Tell me how to load it on this site
Thanks
ars

Mode One

Does anyone have any opinions on the differences of the flying qualities of the DIII, as opposed to the DIIIa? Most people seem to be more interested in the DIIIa, which has more horizontal stab. area. Between the two, I like the DIII better, however.

arspievack

Mode One,
Flying qualities, no. While the bigger stab made some difference in my selection of the two, the real reson I picked the III-a was it had better color/marking combinations when it came time to do the final depiction of which real plane i wanted to reproduce. My guess is that they'd fly the same. I think the III-a had more horsepower but that doesn't affect our models.
alan

Mode One

Thanks, Alan!

Sethhunter

Hey all,
I figured it was time for an update on my Pfalz. Most of the work lately is on the top wing. I tried a few new things which are highlighted in the pictures below. First, I decided to try making the ribs by routing a stack on a router table with templates. Worked very well, but if you design the stack to flip over (template on each side), make sure they are square to each other. The pictures are probably self explanatory. I mixed materials for the ribs; light ply for the full ribs, balsa for the false (partial) ribs. Cap strips are 1/64 ply.

I used Sitka Spruce for the spars because I had it left over from building a full-scale sailboat mast a few years ago. Very straight grain. I also laminated .014x3/8 carbon strips to the undersides of the spars. The yield strength of the carbon is about 20-30 times the strength of wood and of course flex modulus is high. Resulting spars are much stiffer and stronger. Pictures show cauls and clamps I used to laminate them together. To save a few $$, I did not run the carbon to the tips, only about 2/3 of the way out, on all 4 spars.

Starting to think harder about the aileron connection in the lower wing. Will probably run the cables into the lower wing, around pulleys and right into a bellcrank, then pushrod back to the root with a service hatch to connect with a mating pushrod exiting the fuselage. Any other ideas?

I'm not too happy with the stitching on the elevator; which is 40 wt thread under Coverite "tapes." The stitches look too big. I'll retry with lighter thread before abandoning it for other methods (glue lines, etc.) I've seen lots of conflicting sources on the stitch pattern used; wide-spaced looping stitches that appear as lines about 6" (full scale) apart, and sawtooth stiches with a full scale pitch of about 1". I tried the latter but it looks way to "busy" and big. I'm thinking the looping stitch on about .75" (model scale) spacing, with fine silk thread under the coverite would look better...

BTW - I just received a set of wheels from Herbie in Germany. They look great. Will post some pictures of them soon!

Dai - how's your Phalz coming???