morane-eindecker thingy
 

New scratch build... when the thing is finally standing up off the building board., that is some kind of milestone!

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

What are you using for plans? Looks good already!

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

I put in a few more cross pieces and removed from the board - but no other progress.... my whole evening getting the other heaps ready to go to the field tomorrow.

I used the dimensions and three views from the Winsock book and try to design for roughly 1/8 scale. No other plans. Unfortunately, there is very little dimensional data to be had, apart from length and wingspan. There are three views in the book @ 1/72 scale but you have to be very careful taking measurements from these drawings.

It's not scale construction anyway, because the top forward decking and cowl will be one piece for motor and battery access. I did this on a previous model and find it to be a useful feature.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Yeah but if it is a Morane-Eindecker thingy, what markings will you use? :)

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Not sure about the markings Chevelle....this is going to be, uh, merely the .... prototype! Probably will be stand way off scale at best. Will be trying some new (for me) techniques on this design - particularly I hope that the full-flying tail will work dependably. I'll be glad if the darn thing flies at all.

Anyway, made some aluminum bendy-things today....don't look at them tooo closely!

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

There is not a straight line on this fuselage plan....

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

I didn't have a clear photograph or drawing of the skid-support/ rudder-hinge pylon contraption. My main concern was the that the rudder (hinge points) would end up aligned to each other, absolutely vertical, aligned to the fuse. THat is a lot of aligning. So my idea, to have the upper and lower rudder hinge points start out as a single tube which is put through the horizontal tube and goes down ~1/2inch into a hole drilled with the Dremel-drill press into the wood fixture. Then the pylon struts are soldered on. The pylon supports are two pieces, i.e. on each side the front and rear strut is a single bent piece. WHile the thing is still jigged up, the hinge tubes for the stabilizer are soldered on and the alignment is ensured by putting the tube through both hinges while they are soldered. Finally, the golden moment, it can be bolted onto the fuse with just a little bit of fuss to get the front struts aligned to the fuse, and using the wood block to help with alignment.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

After about a pound of solder in the whole thing... at least it all seems to have come out pretty square -

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Now for some real fun...epoxy together the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-flying elevator. I just hope this half-baked idea actually works....
The shapes of the elevators didn't come out perfect to plan. Note to self... practice bending Aluminum tube.
It's only a prototype. Right!

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Great looking metal work! I'm only very slowly gaining experience with soldering (both regular and silver soldering). I think the geometry of this tail bracket along with the undercarriage is really the most difficult part of an EIII. It took me absolutely forever to figure out a system for the stab and rudder of my EIII. I ended up using a tail wheel bracket on the top of the rudder and an A-frame of wires (later covered with styrene tubing) for the lower bracket so that I piece of music wire run through the bracket, through the rudder, through the top bracket and then back into the rudder like a hinge. Attaching the stab basically involved large amounts of epoxy, some large styrene tubes, and a couple of computer ties. All painted up later to look like welded (and painted) steel tubing.

Who know how I might have approach it if I had know how to solder at that point. BTW, it looks like you're going for a Pfalz EIII, is this right? Unless of course it turns out as something else! :D

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

I do forsee one problem though. You'll need to be building in a cutout in the rudder to accomodate the connector bar on the stab. In the original the rudder center line is behind the stab connector bar. And this neccessitated having the rear skid supports angled backwards about 15% beyong the 90%. As I said the geometry of the original is a bit complex but if you deviate from it you end up having to make other adjustments elsewhere. All the all the EIII was a very carefully engineered aircraft.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

I squinted at the pictures in Datafile 59 (and 16) and am nearly convinced that the rudder-line is in front of the elevator on the Pfalz-E-type. Unfortunatelly, don't have any clear photos of the tail workings. I did notice how the rear-skid supports on the Fokker Eindecker are angled back - the Pfalz does not seem to do this. It looks to be the same as the MOrane Saulnier design. IMO, FOkker really simplified the geometry of his full-flying-tail monoplane by putting the rudder behind the elevator. On the Pfalz, there is a noticeable cutout in the rudder to allow clearance of the elevator behind the rudder line... but as I discovered building the model, it is a real task to get the shape just right to allow the rudder sufficient movement and to clear the elevator line. (and I certainly don't claim to have a perfect scale-implementation here!)

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Actually, I think it's looking GREAT!!! And you are probably right about the Pfalz anyway. I look forward to how you do the wings.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

From the too much information department.....

Achim Engels has kindly provided some construction photos from his [link=http://theaerodrome.com/forum/showpost.php?p=230216&postcount=798]Fok. E.III replica[/link] which I found quite interesting and informative. Also, the [link=http://www.collectors-edition.de/QAU/3-930571-70-6_english.htm]Fokker E.III - In Detail [/link] CD clearly shows the tail structure of the Fokker E.III replica at the San Diego Aerospace Museum. Based on the description of the Fok.EIII in the FTS CD - "The fuselage terminates in a simple horizontal tube. This was a feature that Fokker carried over from the French Morane..." my assumption is that the Morane-Saulnier, as well as the Pfalz monoplane, would have had a similar functional arrangement of the tail group.

For those who may not realize it, the Pfalz E type was a licensed clone of the MOrane Saulnier G or H type monoplane. (And the FOkker E type is definately NOT a copy of the M-S monoplane, but the tail structure I think is similar enough that a close inspection does suit my purpose). The design of the Fok.E-type, was supposedly highly influenced by the design of the M-S (but again, was not a copy). The more I think about it, I bet that FOkker took a look at the geometry of the M-S rudder, and realized that if he "reversed" the upper rudder hinge attachment clamp and put the rudder line behind the elevator axis, that it would simplify the rudder construction by eliminating the need to have the awkward cutout to clear the tube of the horizontal stab. Wild speculation of course.

I have of course incorporated this rudder cutout on my Pfalz model. After I soldered together the tail piece and rudder support, I realized I had to make a cut in the center-post of the rudder (refer to attached photo), which I could have avoided if I had designed the upper support as a clamp, such as the full-size. As shown in my earlier post, I installed both top and bottom rudder support at once, by putting the single-piece rudder tube through the horizontal fuse tube and soldered it. This approach due to F.U.D. about how well everything would line up in the end. Also soldered up the rear legs of the pylon strut while everything was still fixtured. Afterward, used rotary tool to cut out the un-wanted parts of the rudder support tube. I think it made the construction relatively simple this way.
In the end, it seems to work OK... is sort of like a door hinge ... the rudder rotates on a smaller diameter tube which is inserted through the bottom to "pin" the rudder into place. I assume that on the full-size, there would not be a cut out in the rudder center post, but can't tell for sure from photos.

I may still need to rework the attachment of the the elevator joiner tube to space it slightly more forward. The attachment of the elevator joiner tube is offset too much rearward, so that the cutout in the rudder barely clears the elevator joiner tube when the rudder is turned. I will only want a very limited control throw of the rudder, but regardless I think some improvement could be made here. ALso, the bottom part of the rudder, forward of the post, bangs into the front pylon strut on each side(refer to attached photo) when the rudder is rotated....again it doesn't matter much because I wouldn't want that much control throw anyway - it just bugs me, and serves to show how complex this whole arrangement really is!

Please excuse the long post... have been obsessing over this thing for quite some time!

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

That post to support the rudder and tail skid is exactly how SR Batteries does it on their 1/4 scale Eindecker. Good work! Have fun with this. Keep your weight down in the rear!

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

The more I studied Fokker's EIII and the more I understood why stuff was the way it was the less I saw it as a wacky flying machine and the more I realized that it was a marvel of careful engineering. Everything is just the way it is for a reason from the signature comma shaped rudder to the slant of the UC. If fact I found that almost every time I deviated in even a small way from a scale layout I wound up having to work around some problem that that created.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

I ran into this problem with my 1/4 scale SR batteries eindecker. I deceided to deviate from their design and do it with a full flying elevator. At first I simply did scale outline elevators with a carbon fiber tube for the pivot point, mounted inside the rear af the fuselage. It worked ok except for the fact that every once in a while the plane would start" porpoising ". Throttling back would correct it and it seemed it only happened when I was flying at full throttle( and even then, not all the time) I tried tightening the pull-pull lines but at a certain point the elevators began to bind . The problem persisted. A flame out and hard landing caused the one piece elevator assembly to break and I redesigned it with a two piece elevator inside a tube at the rear of the fuselage. I had to cut away part of the rudder to clear the tube at the rear. I think the porpoising problem was actually caused by positive Ackerman and so I have made my own control horns and hope to have the problem corrected by next week. I think the porpoising was a problem because with full flying elevators when you change the attitude of the control surface one side of the hinge line gets pulled up or down while the other side is forced up or down by air flow. This would probably not become a problem with push rods but with pull-pull both lines must remain taunt otherwise air flow can work against the input. Or maybe the problem only occurs when the elvator is in the nutral position or close to it adn the air flow forces the elevator in the opposite dirrection? anyway I have designed my contol horns so that the attachment point is right on the centerline of the pivot point. Wow, it would have been so much easier to just follow the directions!!:eek:

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Where's the fun in that! :D I swore up and down that I'd build my Flair Legionaire completely stock right down to the very last bit of kit-provided hardware. Well that promise didn't last long. I've added scale pull-pulls on rudder and elevator and that necessitated cut-outs in the stab, exit points on the fuse and an internal bracket for the dual elevator cables. And then I cut out the stock firewall to mount my Saito 56 correctly, trashed their music wire gear for custom silver soldered sprung gear, upgraded all the attachment points to hinges, beefed up the lower wing to prevent torsion, and added hatched in two spots on the underside of the fuse. Oh and you can bet that that simple music wire tail skid isn't going to make it onto my model.

With the Puppeteer kit I bought over the summer I've already drawn up plans to kit bash it into a 1 1/2 Strutter.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

you're probably right.I know as soon as I get it flying right I'll probably start fiddling with something else on it and causing more problems. I remember talking with you about doing a DH2 and since than I talked myself out of it. I am now concidering a scratch built Elll in 1/4 scale with wing warping. In the mean time I will do some spoked wheels for this Elll.and redo the markings for "509". Over the winter I will be repairing a 1/3 scale Pup. 6 1/2 feet long ! I'll have to drive with my knees up against the dash board! ti get it to the field.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Feep,
the porpoising effect that you described.... could it have been anyway related to how the plane is trimmed, thrust line of engine, or incidence angle of the wing? I hope I am not building a porpoise, or a rock, or any other non-flying entity!

If only I had waited a couple of weeks to design the tail: [link=http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/showpost.php?p=233383&postcount=817]construction pics of monoplane elevator[/link]

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

I think not. Although I had not considered other reasons until you asked> The kit is the SR batteries lasar cut kit and I built it as is except for the Full flying elevator. The fire wall comes already marked for the G26 so the thust line shouldn"t be the problem. The wings are plugged into carbon fibre tubes which are lined up in the fuselage with lasar cut holes so the incedence angles should be OK. AS I said, the elevator is the only thing I changed. It involved moving it back about 4" so that the pivot point was at the rear of the fuselage.That would throw the CG off a little. I adjusted that with weight and trim. I am heading out today with new control horns which seem to be more effective and I will revisit the CG issue at the fiield. I don't mean to down play what you are doing but in some ways, messing with an existing design can be more of a headache than designing your own. Although you are actually doing both. You are taking 2 existing designs and combining them. Than you are scaling it down and adding a different engine. What are you NUT?!!!:D

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Feep -
I was not trying to imply any deficiency in construction of your SR eindecker, rather, just trying to elicit some commentary about how the trim, thrustline, etc might have any bearing on the full flying tail surfaces. or vice-versa I guess. I am at this point fairly pessimistic, that my model is going to be squirrely to control, but I figured i'll take my chances anyway and try the full flyin tail just to make things interesting. and yes, I am quite nuts, thankyou!.

I was puzzling over this comment, and then later, when looking at the (poorly-chosen) title of this thread , I realised it might not be clear what this project is. A bit of trivia... according to Windsock Datafile 59, the term "Morane eindecker" was apparently used by the German pilots in reference to the Pfalz monoplane (which they were supposedly none-too fond of) , that was copied under license almost verbatim from the MOrane-Saulnier monoplane. Upper case 'M' and lower case 'e' I guess. In the study of the Pfalz monoplane tail construction, I make frequent reference to both the Fokker and the M-S monoplanes. Until I find evidence proving otherwise, I use the FOkker as the reference to the mechanical arrangement of the elevator. As has been pointed out previously on this thread, tHe Pfalz rudder is designed differently - as Abufletcher pointed out, everthying is "just the way it is for a reason". This is the part that I find most interesting - why is the airplane designed the way it is.

More pictures forthcoming... been working on the front of the model where the spinny-thing goes.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Don't worry, I didn't take it that way. I was in fact explaining what I did to help you understand that I think this problem was caused by my design of the elevator. I think what you will find is that the elevator as you built it, will be very effective and somewhat sensitve. Tests done by the British on a captured Fok Elll showed that it was very tiring to fly. That could be because of how sensitive the elevator was. The rudder on my plane has very little throw sense it hits the elevator . If your Pfalz rudder was designed after the Fok than I suspect the cut out was to give the rudder more throw and help the aircraft track better in turns. These planes need to be flown with rudder and aileron and I know I could use more.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

I appreciate the comments ... kind of info I was phishing for. Sounds like I need to limit the throw of the elevator, and make sure that the rudder movement is effective. I did remake the lower/forward part of the rudder where I had a problem with it banging into the pylon strut. However, I still have a problem that my rudder cutout does not allow anough clearance of the elevator. I plan to decrease the gap of the elevator to fuse, which I hope will help.

Been lately workin on the undercarriage part. Made brackets to hold the l.g. struts which also have the slot for the axle to move in. Trying to make it as much like the original... there are a lot of good pictures in the Windsock #59, but it's still not easy to be sure of the details.

The brackets are each made of two folded pieces of tin. I am going to use a streamlined shape K&S Al section for each strut. But for development purpose, I sanded off basswood pieces to approximately same shape and size as the Al. The tin pieces are shaped around the struts using some steel brackets and the vise, then soldered together. The brackets will be trimmed up and lightened later.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

I am always getting hung up on small details... right now, I need to cut my Aluminum struts. Problem is getting the cut surface to match the fuse bottom at the right angle and such. I actually did the math to figure out the overall length of the struts - it has to be 3D math, because since the struts angle both forward and to the sides, there is no "normal" dimension in any of the three views. HOwever, when I cut the fake basswood struts, the angle of the cut was done using the TLAR algorithm . Perhaps one way to make the correct angle cut of the strut, is to do some more 3D math, to calculate the correct angle to use and make a miter jig to do the cutting. Heck, I - just - don't - know.

Meanwhile, i took some photos out of the Windsock 59 to show the Pfalz landing gear.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Man, them is some crazy looking struts on the original Pfalz! :D Until I started following your build I hadn't realized how really different the Pfalz was from the Fokker. I had just sort of assumed that the Pfalz was a "cheap knock-off" of the Fokker but it has its own unique consturction and look. Given the 1001 Fokker EIII models that exist in the world, I envy you your Pfalz.

BTW, I'm not sure if the steamlined aluminum tube alone will be strong enough. Two recommendations from other people here on RCU are 1) fill the tubing with epoxy and/or 2) slip in a piece of standard music wire. I can hardly wait to see the finished gear!!!

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

I cut the aluminum struts, which of course I made way more complicated than probably needed to be. I had previously made dummy struts out of basswood, which were cut to a calculated length, although the exact angle of the cut at the fuselage end was done ad-hoc fashion. I eventually theorized that I could lay out a planform of the strut on a piece of plywood, drawn in it's normal plane, and then could cut the end of the struts by angling the cutting tool appropriately. I made an angle alignment tool from scrap wood, based on the angle of the strut to the fuse seen on the front view of the undercarriage.

I want to test the idea that the Aluminum is strong enough without reinforcement. Maybe it will work IF it only is stressed in compression (or tension). I hope to make the entire affair rigid enough, that any forces will be absorebed entirely in the elastic band that will be bound around the ends of the axle.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

THe next part has to do with the attachment of the strut to the fuse. The b&w picture from Datafile 59 seems to show that strut fitting over some type of attachment bracket with a bolt through it. I want to create a brass fitting that each Al leg will fit over, such that the Al leg will bolt over it. It should be a snug fit....I think it's very important that this whole assembly does not have a lot of slop in the fit.

I found that size of brass tube that I could smash down which would fit snuggly into the streamlined AL stock. Now it's not easy to smash down brass tube. I put the tube between two piece of hardwood, flanked by spruce strips the thickness of which should limit the extent of the smashing , I then tried to squeeze with the clamps, and the bench vise, and even tried driving the truck on top of it. Eventually, I resorted to good-ol-fashion pounding with a hammer-thingy.

I cut the end of the brass aligned with the fuselage using the same jig as for the AL struts.

I turned the fuse upside down and used a bunch of blocks to align everything, basically trying to ensure the alignment of the axle perpendicular to the fuse. THen I took a spare piece of brass rod and soldered it across the front of the tin v- brackets.

In the end, I have effectively made a second set of "inner-struts" of brass,. which are fit into scraps of streamline AL which are then fit into the tin v- bracket .

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

It has turned out to be quite an ordeal. But now the whole thing is kind of held together with a brass rod across it to hold the alignment. So the whole thing is move to a scap board, with the dimensions of the bottom of the fuse drawn on it. It is soldered to a pair of brass strips which are sized to fit across the bottom of the fuse. Each pair of legs has another v-strut in the center. In the rear, the v-strut holds a bell-crank for the wing warping. In the front, the strut holds the center of the axle and spreader bars. These struts I will fabricate and solder to these brass strips which the fake brass struts are now soldered to. Once that is done, the innermost portion of the brass strips will be removed. All but approx 3/8 inch of the fake brass struts will be removed, leaiving the portion to which the AL legs will be bolted.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Now I am stuck trying to figure out how to make this part...It will not be easy to make this front-center strut, and to get the fore and aft spreader bars to align with it..

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Here I making the metal piece that sits between the front v-struts...did not know how I could possibly get the spreader bars and axle lines up, then I rememberd I had this electronic prototyping board which just happened to give me the right spacing. I use the perf-board also to drill out some plywood pieces...which I used to make a jig. With everything held in place lined up, I can solder the spreader bars in place.


The spreader bars are 3/32 brass. The ends are a short section of 1/8 brass, cut sort of angled to fit against the inside of the tin bracket. The reason for using separete ends is because I know the real truth... that NOTHING can be measured perfectly, there is no way to cut exactly the right length of tube .

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Next job is the front v-strut. Like the main strut, it is angled in two dimensions. To cut the angles at each end, I draw a "normalized" view of it looking from the side, onto a piece of plywood that becomes the holding fixture. The height of the side view is the hypoteneuse of the triangle that the strut makes from the fuse bottom, looking at the front view. The rotary tool is then angled appropriately using a plywood triangle-template, produced from the dimension of the front view. Actually, I did not have good dimensional info for these struts, so took measurements the best I could, of the space the pylon would occupy, and also used some small sticks that I cut to get an estimate of the final length of the struts.

I propped up one strut with a bunch of blocks, soldered the bottom first, turned it over, did the top joint. Ditto for the second strut.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

THe rear strut supports the wing-warping wires bell-crank assembly. I have the two struts attached to a short length of brass tube, which is embedded into the plywood fixture and the struts are soldered to it as seen in the picture. This strut was so easy, less then 30 minutes to do, very easy because all the dimensions are true in one plane.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

One last bit that had to be soldered into place... is the part where the bungee wraps around under the axle on each side. Based on looking at photos in the Datafile with a magnifying glass.... I believe that it is actually the rear spreader bar, which is supposed to bend around underneath the struts on each side. However, isntead of trying to bend the rear spreader bar and struggle with aligning it, I chose to isntall the bungee wrap posts as separte pieces of brass tube.
FInally, everything is cut apart! which might seem counter-productive.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

It looks like I cut the spreader bars out... but in reality, those were not the actual spreader bars, they were merely drill guides. Those tubes were 1 size over. The actual spreader bars will fit through these short lengths of tube that I have left remaining on each bracket, and which I have now drilled through. I did not want to permanently solder the spreader bars in place, if I can avoid it. If I could tap them out, and screw them into the final assembly, then I could more easily reuse the brackets if the need should arise.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

You've done an amazing job at replicating this very funky undercarriage! It's a rare modeler who goes beyond simply strapping some music wire to the bottom on his WWI model.

I think part of the apprehension about doing this type of work is having to work with unfamiliar materials (at least from most modelers). Most of us feel a lot more comfortable with balsa and CA than we do with metal and solder.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

After reassembling everything one last time, check to see that everything lines up with the fuse. last chance to adjust the struts in the brackets before drilling the holes for the fasteners. WIth the position of the struts in the brackets marked with a marker. This was very awkward because it is necessary to have everything assembled together, in order to drill these holes through the struts. Finally after some more hacking and grinding the strut brackets are in their final form.

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

With a little paint, the tin brackets look pretty good. Everything is bolted together now and seems pretty solid. I hope the Al struts will work out okay, but if not I would at the very least like to have a very scale-looking wreck!

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

Thankyou for the encouraging comment Abufletcher... I gotta say, I was ready to throw in the towel a several times, this u.c. took two weeks to plan and execute, but I am pretty happy with the result now. Very anxious to get this "prototype" completed and tested!

RE: morane-eindecker thingy
 

The undercarriage looks really nice. I really like the brackets that the struts plug into at the "V" . Very scale looking. You've probably already thought of this but on the kit I'm building the instructions had me fill the strut tubes partially with JB weld. This was partially to help hold things together but it also strengthened the strut tubes considerably. The fastening bolts can be tightened up pretty snug without crushing the aluminum. There is a cotton plug it the strut to keep the JB where you want it.

Once again, wonderful job. The assembly fixtures alone would have scared me off!!

Randy