DelRay

I built this Nosen 310 about 18 years ago, and I'm glad to say it's still in service. The three piece wing spans 120" and the weight is right around 37 pounds. The pneumatic retracts are by Robart, the aluminum wheels and pneumatic brakes I machined myself. I have a 2 ltr bottle for the retract air supply and another smaller can for the pneumatic brakes that are controlled by a proprtioning valve that is servo actuated.- 0 to 100 psi. I glassed it with Parson's .6 oz. cloth and used Envirotex finishing epoxy, then automitive primers and finish. The two original O.S. 1.20's that were on CH Igniton units have been recently replaced with two, new Saito 1.20's and two on-board glo units. The front gear door is by no means scale, but it gets it covered up. The rcvr. batteries are SR, the primary pack is 2200 mah and the back-up is 1500 mah. controlled by a Jomar changeover switch. The two rcvr. switches and air fills are located in a compartment on the nose hidden by a hatch cover. I took two Ace strobe light kits and remoted the strobe lamps to the nose of each wing tip tank, the strobe circuit board and battery/sw are located in each tank. I used Envirotex to mold the lenses for the tank strobes. Access to the wing securing pins and glo driver switches and charging ports are under the removable nacel hatch covers. A total of eleven servos are used. A Futaba radio on 50 mhz is used.

CK1

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Well Done DelRay . You are inspiring me to work on mine .

DelRay

Chris, glad to hear I might be an insperation to someone, I'd better think about that. Good luck on the project, anxious to maybe see some pics of the build process.

slevin1

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Del Ray,
I have this kit. Have not started building it yet. Could you please post pics showing how you have the 3 piece wing set up.
Saul

DelRay

Saul, I checked and I for some reason don't have any pics of the initial build of the wing, at least I can't find them at this time. I hope these shots will answer some of your questions, they give the general idea of the method I used to attach the wing tips and secure them in place for flight. The receiver tubes in the center section are aluminum tubing, i.d..400, I don't recall where I got them, it might have been from an antenna I built and had some pieces left over. You should be able to find tubing to suit your needs for this, I just used what I had on hand. The female tubes go through four wing ribs, and are secured generously with slow epoxy. The male pieces in the wing tips I machined from stainless steel tubing for a little more sturdiness, maybe a little overkill, but I know they won't bend. I built the entire nacell and then cut my hatch covers in them, giving me access into the tank area, and as you can see, a way to get into the securing pins for the wing tips. The yellow arrow indicates the locking pin hole for the front pin.
The wood stands I made from some wood dowels and plywood, they really make storage of the center section nice in the shop, and make assembly at the field a "one man" task, letting me get the main gear down and the nose gear unlocked and down easily before assembling the fuselage to the wing. I can cycle the gear, make pressure checks, etc. while on the stands. I hope these pics help you some. If I were to do it again, I would probably use a single, larger diameter male/female tube combination with locating pins to align the wing pieces. I added the pic of the strobe light in the nose of the wing tank, maybe something you might want to do when you get to that part of your project.
Jim

slevin1

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Thanks DelRay. That is VERY helpful.
Saul

F2G-1

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Jim, how does your plane fly? Any engine out experiences? 38 lbs with 1.20 4 bangers - makes me think i'm grossly overpowering mine! I'm putting the new twinsinc system in mine, but hopefully the G38's will be as reliable as there reputation. But just in case, i'm putting a really BIG servo on the rudder! HA!

Your bird looks great. When I see the nosen 310 it time-warps me back to when I was a kid drooling over the nosen advertisements in RCM, I remember those big, red, full page ads like it was yesterday! What I would have gave to be that kid holding the transmitter next to the 310 in their ad!
Its too bad they dont make them anymore.

Now to pick a color scheme......

DelRay

F2G-1, no engine out nasties so far, P.T.L. for that, huh? On the 310 there isn't any side thrust like there is on my Bobcat, so I would assume, and we know what "assuming" does, that a large rudder servo would be helpful. With the 2 degrees offset in each motor on the Bobcat, it doesn't even slow down that much with an engine out scenerio, I would bet it would be a different story with the 310.
The original O.S. 1.20's that were in it from the maiden powered it very nicely, so the two, new Saitos should be even better. I had thought of an engine sync system for mine in the beginning and decided not to, although I'm sure the technology now is much better in that area than it was when I built mine. I would guess there's pros and cons on adding the sync system.

A little story here of the maiden flight of my 310, it was at a small airport about 40 miles east of where we live. Not a huge airport, but not a small grass strip either. We did some taxi test, tuning, etc. and then taxied out to the main runway (15) and off she went. The first flight we opted to leave the gear down and just see how it flew, everything went perfectly. I might add, that I did take a good friend along to do the honors for me, I was shaking so bad, I would have dropped the transmitter for sure. After about ten minutes we decided to bring it down and check it all over. Everything looked fine, we refueld and up it went again. This time we retracted the gear and it did as it was supposed to. This is the neat part of my story, as we were up on the second flight a full scale came into the pattern, and we made our plans to land and get outof the way. The full scale on approach was , you won't believe it, a Cessna 310. Gear down and looking like it was going to touch down. Well, the gear went up and "she" smiled and waved as she passed by and then she was up and out of the pattern just that quick. We just stood there and smiled at each other.The personal plane of the fella that managed the airport was a 310 also. I was hoping she would come back and give us a ride, sadly, that didn't happen.
My 310 flies very nicely, no bad habits, looks very nice in the air, and the two four strokes in sync sound great. It scoots right along at a scale speed although I have seen one that flew like a pattern ship, it was fast, it had hopped up gas bangers on it and a one piece wing (good idea there).

Ahh, yes, to pick a color scheme, another important part of the project. So many variations, it's hard to decide what to do. I went with automotive products for the painting as the hobby paint products were cost prohibitive at that time. Any pics of your project yet, I'd love to see them.

I did manage to pick up another Nosen 310, built and covered (Monokoted), for $100.00 a few years back. The main reason I bought it was for the nose gear, it was a Robart just like the one I have in mine. It's rough, to say the least, but I might get it down from overhead in the garage and re-do it someday. I got a bunch of miscellaneous stuff with it also. I can't say what the wife called it, p.o.s. comes to mind. I'll quit yakking, Jim

Robby

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Now this type of story makes good reading..

Thanks Jim...

handyman_alw_

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Jim,

Reading your story made me think back to my first 310. I was at the airport in Ft. Smith Ar. and low and behold this 310 P lands and taxies up to the ramp and I must of looked like a little kid with drool running down my lip for the pilot walked over to me and we started talking and thats all it took I got the pilots name and phone # and he let me take a bunch of pictures of his plane. I ordered the kit and when it arrived i took it to a friend to build. a project that i had planned on taking 18 months to complete was built and ready for paint in 3 weeks. The man who built it was retired and i think spent every waking minute on this plane. When the plane was completed I called the man with the full size 310 who lived in texas and told him it was done and that we where going to test fly ours the next weekend, to my surpirse he asked if he could come up and get some pictures of the two planes together before we flew her. I was so excited that i don't think i slept much that whole week waiting for sat to arrive. Sat did finally arrive and my builder and my wife and I all arrived early at the airport to put our 310 together and wait for the full scale to arrive. Out of the clear blue sky from the west it came it's lines all to easy to see and know what was coming. The pilot by the why was a retired navy pilot so as you would think set it down right on the #s. She taxied up and after a few minutes she was shut down and her little sister was beside her and the cameras where clicking at a furious rate. After the picture taking and the tear down of the smaller 310 the pilot asked if we wanted to go for a short flight and of coruse we said yes. I got to sit in the right seat and watch every move he made. We where gone about 30 minutes before returning to the airport and to real life. We then all headed for the model airplane field to see if ours would fly like his. He video taped the whole flight which went off without a problem . A couple weeks later I got a copy of the video in the mail along with a note from the pilot that he had submitted the pictures to the Twin Cessna Flyer which is a club for twin flyers and they put out a monthly news letter. Much to my surprise a couple months later I got two copies of this letter I call it a leeter it real was a full color magaizne in the mail and low and behold there where both of our twins on the front cover of the magazine. Like yours mine is now almost 20 years old and my love for this airplane is stronger now than ever for now I have 3 nosen 310's and one top flite 310. thanks for your story jim it has brought a lot of old memories back in to view.

Allen

DelRay

Nice story Allen, yours sounds a lot better than mine, we didn't get the ride. The maiden for mine was on good ol' 15 at the Monticelo airport, and Paul, the manager did have a nice 310 at the time. I'm still wondering why that good looking gal that came into the pattern in the full scale 310 that day never came back, I would have loved to look at her..........................airplane.
You mentioned the entire flight of yours was videotaped, I'd better dig that video of mine out and take a look at it. Paul G. did the maiden honors that day, I could barely hold onto the camera.
I did buy a second Nosen several years ago, and it's built, that's about all I can say, the main reason I went ahead and bought it was the Robart nose gear in it. It also had some miscellaneous stuff, and a set of pneumatic/mechanical mains that I think were made in Italy, craziest darned things. I was thinking of getting it to look like the military version you have, but on second thought, I opted to change my 337 over as it was already a good flying plane. I still might dig that 310 out and glass it and paint it a piece at a time, that spirit hasn't moved me in that direction yet.
I do have a new pair of Saito 1.2's on mine, thanks to Meesh for snagging me a couple last year, I had two on order at B K Hobbies for several months, same ol' story, back ordered. I did get some run time on them last year, but still need to do some more running and tweaking before we get it to the air. Wendell will be my designated pilot, I shake way too much on the first flights.[&o]
I did remove the CH Ignition units that were on the O.S. 1.2's and now have two onboard glo drivers, although the ignition units worked very nicely.
Boy, that Top Flight 310 really looks like a nice one, I drooled when I seen the add, it sure looks like a full scale in the "in air" photos I've seen here. We'll have to go for a cup of coffee sometime Allen, we'd find something to chat about, maybe.....................Cessna 310's, just a guess. Jim

handyman_alw_

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Jim,
yep maybe we can get together at the CR war bird thing in july.

Allen

DelRay

That sounds good Allen, I'll be there, hopefully with my converted 337. I ordered the paint for it yesterday from Nate at Klass Kote. There's usually some very impressive planes in attendance, I'm anxious to see Dwayne's 12' B-29, but I don't think it's close to being ready for this year. I'll check your military 310 out and get some ideas for the conversion on my other 310, when the spirit moves me to do that project. Jim