Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Guy's getting ready to crack the box on one and just wondering how much scale detail I can bash into it. Like to make it a two piece wing, scale flying tail, correct landing gear ect'

Just staring to collect the documentation to get the details

I'm really set on building the fuse as a open stick structure behind the cock pit , but wondering if I will create so much drag I'll defeat the airplane. ???

Also question the grade of material for the open structure of the fuse, I could rip clear pine , cedar, or spruce, or even sub balsa. Most likley I'll end up antiquing it with some type of stain.

What's the best over all material to use ? Cedar is brittle, good oily stitka spruce hates glue, basswood is rubbery, pine could split. Leading toward pine.



Know it's a lot of work and discarding lot of the kit but doe's a E-3 fly worth a hoot if the fuse frame is left open for the looks ??? Any one done It - Old Retro -E-III ???

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Eindeckers did not have open fuse structure, they were covered. As far as the rest, as in any scale model, it is up to your skills and imagination.

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Lots of good ideas here:

http://www.angelfire.com/indie/aerostuff/eindeckero.htm

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Are you referring to their 90 size Eindecker? It is 1/5 scale I believe. A friend has built one of these with the stick structure behind the cockpit (covered with fabric), & it flies just fine. I did mine per the plans & it is sheeted. In retrospect, I wished I had done mine with the open structure as it would look very nice with the antique solartex fabric.

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Thannk's for the link's guys ! Gives me the incentive ! Plan on incorporating just about everything I've seen.

Really going to the open stucture behind the cockpit,. Hoping clear pine will be a good substite still pondering the glue and stain compatability . Any other wood selection's please feel free tpo critisize

Pretty positive I've seen some older photos of the stucture without covering. Birds were active duty, and must have been due to repairs in the field , structural rework after combat ect. Was worried about drag

Trying to hunt down a Squadron Signal publication of a E-3 walk around ect. to pick off the details I have a pretty extensive collection of documentation but the 1 on 1 close up'as are pretty elusive. Maybe I can trade off one of my others. My Barn's collection of old Litho's is lacking on the E's.

Like to get good details of the frame work, tail skid, & gear to examine if it does' articulate. Also appears the ribs are going to have to be thinned down a bit. Most likley I'm going to cover it in old school Word Tex and grub it up with lots of coffe grounds. Use Litho plate behind the cowel and start looking for spun salad bowels or dog dishes to scour up and antique.

ANy one with links to site's containing old lithograph prints please chime in.

Jack Haggerty - Gallery - on RUNRYDER = re ;: GREYEAGLE

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Good questions - I bought some genuine Alaskan sitka spruce years ago for a boat spar project and have been using the left overs ever since for airplane spars. I wouldn't describe it as oily at all. I never had problems with epoxy and the grain was beautifully straight, fine, and homogeneous. Like anything, depends on your source. Aircraft suppliers probably offer the most consistent premium stock. I would not recommend pine unless you plan on laminating strips. Otherwise the grain is not straight and if you try and rip a narrow spar in one piece, it will not be very strong. Cedar splits but can be obtained in nice vertical grain veneer (e.g., western red). Also used by boat builders but that too, I would laminate. For a solid piece, I think Sitka or bass are the best choices for overall strength and grain quality.

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

I don't know what your intent is with this build but I'd wager that no EIII was ever flown without the covering and remember that the EIII had an all-steel-tube fuselage not stained wood. Sounds like you really just want an "old-timey" look even if it's not scale...something like the Proctor Antic models which are what we might call "fantasy scale" in that no actual Antic ever existed. And if that's what you're after and you just want to have some fun bashing your kit, anything's fair game.

BTW, a guy in my club did a nice job on a scratch-built EIII from his own plans just from various photos found online. The covering is not what I would have chosen but it's actually more scale than 90% of the "eindecker" models out there.

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

I think the only Eindeker that looked like it had no fues. covering was covered in clear acetate along with the wings for" invisible" camo, so clear monokote can be scale!

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Creating a fully-functional scale undercarriage is a task that few EIII modelers take on. I did, and I'm glad I did, because it forced me to learn a lot about how the original was built. In essence, this was an early version of independent suspension which incorporated the novel idea of putting the suspension (bungees) at the top instead of at the bottom. So the side legs are attached (via pivots) to bars inside the fuse, which can move up and down on a center pivot. This explains the slot for travel that you see on the side of real EIIIs (and which is missing on almost all model EIIIs). Then there is the basic "inverted V structure" on the bottom of the fuselage that supports the whole thing. This will need functional cross bracing on the model. Then you'll need to figure out how to "hinge" the side triangles on the center supporting beam. I used electrical lugs.

This is really WAY too much work to do on a sport scale model though.

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Here's a list of mods that I'd do if someone were to give me one of the 90-size eindecker kits:

1. Replace the slab fuselage walls with 1/4" balsa structure from the wing area back.
2. Go with a full-flying rudder and tail plane
3. Make up a "sprung" tail skid (a must for hard landings)
4. Solder a slightly more scale-looking UC out of music wire.
5. Build a recessed firewall to allow a scale depth cowl (metal pot if possible).
6. Pull-pull on both rudder and tail plane.

The rest I might just leave the way is it an enjoy it as a nice fun-scale flyer.

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

are they weak behind the wing ? do they come with metal cowls ?

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Proctor has a kit and the fuse is built of dowells painted grey to look like tubing. I drew plans and built a small one that has wing warp, all flying stab and rudder and tail skid. I made the oleos functional and in lieu of rubber shock cord inside the fuse I used springs which are adjustable by socket head screws. If you take origional ribs and thin them you could probably build 'warpable' wing panels. Make them plug-in for transport. Just use one spar fore and aft and let the wires hold the wing. By looking at the fullscale construction you can duplicate the other stuff using piano wire, sheet brass and tubing. I've enclosed a close up photo of my warping crank. Notice on the crank that where wires connect there are two holes. The lower (closest to pivot point) is for the intermediate span wires and the upper is for the outer span wires. It has to be done this way or the crank will try to pull the mid-span section of the wing more than the outer. If you have any questions about it just e-mail and I will be happy to elaborate.

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

ARUP, nice looking EIII! [sm=thumbs_up.gif]

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

I should point out that both of the above mods would be messing with the aerodynamics of the kit's design.

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Well yes it would br messing with the original " kit design "

A. using 1/4" square balsa stock for the empanage structural behind the fuse is asking for a disaster for lack of integrity and strength for a .90 to 120 size with over 1000 square's.

B. the "Kit" air foil is a FAT Clark Y flat bottom airfoil with a very thick amplified root section, " slow -inefficient - tons of parasitic drag - no better than a line draw around my shoe sole.
in this case the thinner section will add both a bit of speed and increase efficiency for the limited HP available. Mr. F was no dummy.

C. full Flying pivoting stab, along with a full flying pivoting rudder put's 100% of the total surface area available fort both pitch and yaw = making both extremely efficient and sensitive.
may even get some "Real" dog fighting capabilities against those S pad's

D. shifting the motor back to conceal it deeper in cowl " scale" will bring the C.G. forward, providing further mechanical advantage of the full flying stab in pitch.


Yes it will change the kit - :D

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

Just some more ideas:
A. Use 1/4 spruce for the longerons (or, maybe, dowels like the Proctor kit).
B. Agreed- thin the ribs and build warpable wing.
C. Use exponential throws on your radio. Just slip some brass tubing over some wire and build stab and fin onto the wires.
D. Shortening the nose may cause c.g. issues and one option is to build battery box to mount on engine side of firewall.
The Eindekker was a crappy airplane but it sure is neat... and historically significant!

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

People here know that I'm all for "messing with kit design." If fact, I can hardly lay off it! :D My first ever RC model (built about 6 years ago) was the BUSA 40-sized eindecker and I ended up "messing it out of existence." ;) I didn't use the kit's fuselage, I didn't use the kit's rudder, I didn't use the kit's tail plane, I didn't use the kit's cowl, I didn't use the kit's landing gear or tail skid, and I didn't use the kit's one piece wing. I Did use the kit's wing (with ailerons) since, this being my first RC build, I wimped out on the idea of wing warping. In fact, I didn't even use the plans as I just enlarged the Nieto drawings to the scale of the kit's wings and scratch-built off those enlargements.

A lot of builders, including me at this point, might say that was a waste of a nice fun-scale kit. Why pay for a full kit, if you're only going to use 10% of it.

The EIII was a real "dog" of a dogfighter being outclassed in terms of maneuverability by many of the Allied aircraft that were its contemporaries. What it DID have was a forward firing machine gun that came as a surprise to a good many opponents. But it's still a classic and I love it.

I'm not sure I understand you here. If you use a scale depth cowl (roughly half of the BUSA cowl) then you'll be moving the engine backwards by several inches. So you'll need to compensate by somehow getting more weight forward.

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

I'm not familiar with the Balsa USA kit, but I encourage you to experiment with some scale enhancements. The only problem you might encounter is turning a 3 month project into a 30 month project...;) The thing is, you want to have an idea of how far you want to go before you begin. Look at some three views and photos, spend some time studying the aircraft. Pick out the changes you want to do, take notes, formulate a sequence, then have at it. Capturing the 'character' of the airplane can be one of the most difficult things a scale modeler will do.

Good luck on your build!

John

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

I got you now. Yes, this will indeed shorten the distance between the the prop boss and the C.G. position in the wing. Note that the wing on the BUSA eindecker is NOT in the scale location, bur rather an inch or so further back. If you move the wing forward to the scale location, which would amount to a major re-engineering of the fuselage, then the nose moment will be very short. And this means both that you need to get as much weight up front as possible (I had all three body servos, batteries, and receiver ahead of the CG) and you'll need to fight to keep the tail light, thus my recommendation for 1/4 balsa instead of hardwood.

On the original, the main point of "all that stuff behind the pilot" was to balance that big lump of metal up front. Is the aircraft too nose-heavy? No problem, just tack on an extra foot of tail! ;) We modelers have the opposite problem. Ah, if only engine manufacturers would start making heavier engines! :D

RE: Balsa USA 1/4 E.III Eindeker
 

[link=http://www.seidel-triebwerke.de/englisch/englisch.html]Seidel[/link] made a good start again. Fits perfect in a 1/4 scale, installation diameter (Ø) 230 mm :D
It's not a rotary but it's a start. ;)