Dereck Woodward
Oct 01, 1996, 01:00 AM
<html>
<head>
<title>The Clancy Lazy Bee</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p><b>Three rules for happy E Flight </b>
<ol>
<li>Build it light. </li>
<li>Don't make it heavy. </li>
<li>Take off all the weight you can. </li>
</ol>
<h2>Let's start at the very beginning - </h2>
<p>After flying "Lazy Bee's" for over two years, I'm biased. Yes, one of the
fleet makes noise and gets oily. It also does touch and goes off a picnic table and a
rolling circle. At times you can stand a little racket. This isn't going to be a
"glue part A to B" review, it's about living with these fat little cartoon
models, week in, week out. I might even mention the noisy one - it is so "noisy"
that I have flown it on quiet nights behind my house and no-one but the local kids knew
there was an airshow going on! First off - there is no such animal as an electric or glow
Bee - they are identical apart from what spins the fan. Take a look at a magazine advert
picture - the glow engine mounts onto the front vertical former, the electric motor sits
on the horizontal plate below it. </p>
<p>The glow Bee came first - slightly. It is built lighter than most electrics - but is
tough. The heavier they are, the harder they fall - the Bee is very light and shakes off
what other structures see as a crash. With its structure and tight turning abilities, it
wasn't long before Andy Clancy figured out that if it didn't make noise, he could fly it
in many locations that a squealer wouldn't be accepted. </p>
<p>Hence Bee #3 rapidly acquired an Astro 035 and a stretched wing - from 40" to
48" span. That involves longer sticks and two more ribs - nine instead of the seven
in the short span wing. Again, there is little difference in the kits. </p>
<h2>Let's "B"-uild! </h2>
<p>Some folk will tell you that a Bee is tricky to construct. The instruction book is 40 -
yes, 40 - pages long. If you can read and figure out the best end of a knife to hold, you
can build a Bee! If you decide to just buy the plans, you get three sheets, the tailwheel
leg with a pre-bent coil spring and that instruction manual. It even shows you how to
build a widget (that's English for a neat gadget) to cut out the circular windows. </p>
<p>Mostly it asks that you cut a stick to length, glue it to another stick and repeat
until you have finished. Is that so difficult? The body is built in time honored fashion
with two sides mostly made from sticks. The longerons are spruce, the uprights
(shorterons?) are balsa. The fuselage sides are then assembled like Andy tells you,
without formers, with temporary cross-braces to hold the sides square until you get the
cross members in place. </p>
<p>Formers? Well, there's one! A ply "firewall" is laminated from three
1/16" ply pieces. The UC box is two ply rectangles and two pieces of 1/8" square
spruce. There are a few neatly cut balsa pieces that form the windows. Sal Taibi's
Superior Balsa does the diecutting - it is superb. When you get the sides joined, you add
small gussets at the corners - this is what makes the structure really strong, yet allows
it to flex enough to take a beating. </p>
<h2>Don't procrastinate - laminate. </h2>
<p>This might be fading away, but the original Bee has laminated curved outlines -
wingtips, rudder and elevators. The new "Speedy Bee" and "Lazy Bee
Special" have curved outlines made up from sheet segments - if you know about
`"ten cent" rubber scale, you know what I'm talking about. Seems modern
modellers don't like laminating. </p>
<p>That's a shame! When a dead receiver crashed my triple motor E Bee, the laminated tips
were all that survived from the wing. I also ran a Bee backwards into a safety fence
(please don't ask!) and it took five minutes to fix the mangled rudder with cyano glue.
You take four pieces of 1/16" balsa, soak them, glue them up with thinned Elmer's
white glue and pull them round a former made from an old cardboard box. Leave to dry
overnight. That's the "secret" of laminating - the result is tough and light. </p>
<h2>Anyway - </h2>
<p>Once your laminated outlines are done, you join them with seven or nine ribs, depending
on your chosen span, a couple of spruce mainspars and a few balsa sub-spars. The LE and TE
are different - the LE is two pieces of 1/4" square glued together, for example. </p>
<p>Why not one piece of 1/4" x 1/2" ? Once again, Andy Clancy's great
engineering style. Look through your hobby shop's wood rack to learn about how straight
stripwood isn't. But take two lengths of 1/4" square, eyeball those inevitable bends
and glue the strips together with the bends in opposition and you end up with a stiff,
straight LE. </p>
<p>A fair amount of wood will hit the floor when you carve the edges of your Bee's wing to
shape. Read, the instructions, visualize what you're aiming for, put on that dust mask and
enjoy! Finish-shaping this wing is very therapeutic and only takes as long as you'd lie on
the couch watching two bad TV shows anyway! </p>
<h2>Shake a Tailfeather! </h2>
<p>I've already covered the laminating business. The elevators and rudder are light and
tough. I add a 1/8" square spruce or basswood trailing edge to the horizontal stab -
this stops them breaking if they get caught in water while in floatplane mode. It also
gives a good guideline for the "figure eight" stitched hinges (use the thread
Cox sell for 049 control lines - works great. Lock it with a tiny drop of thin CA glue in
the holes). That's one of but three modifications I made to my various Bee's. </p>
<p>Mine have never acquired the holes in the horizontal stab, the weight loss is trivial
but if you like `em - do it. They do add a certain charm if you're into see - through
covering materials though. </p>
<h2>Somewhere to sit down </h2>
<p>Students of aviation history will recognize the landing gear - from the Henry Mignet
HM14 "Flying Flea". A straight length of 3/32" wire runs in a ply box.
"Springing" is rubber bands looped around the wire, under the fuselage and over
the other end of the wire. Further springing is from the Trexler balloon wheels that
Clancy Aviation recommend. </p>
<p>These rubber inflatable tires have been around American aeromodelling since the late
1930's and, while an occasional pain to keep inflated, add much to the Bee's charm. While
modern tires work fine, they just don't look as good as those fat little Trexlers. </p>
<p>Here's another mod. The stock landing gear works well, but puts an 11" prop tip
close to the ground. Thus arose what is known in my BeeHive as "Strimple Training
Wheels", after Dick Strimple, a local Bee driver of note. </p>
<p>Something provides an anti-rotation "lock" inside the undercarriage box -
mine has a "V" half the depth of the box. The gear legs outside of the box bend
down to place the wheels about an inch below the fuselage bottom. Band in place as before
and it will keep your expensive wooden prop out of the weeds. This was
"invented" in several places simultaneously and works so well that it has Andy
Clancy's approval. If you can't figure out what it looks like - Email me your snailmail
address and I'll send you a picture! </p>
<h2>Big wing / Little Wing </h2>
<p>As I said, the kits are the same. If you like steady, relaxing flying - go for the
48" wing. I once hopped a thermal for a tad under 20 minutes on 1400 mah cells.
That's the wing I showed off at KRC 95 - flying a circle over the grass strip and hopping
off one wheel two or three times a circle. </p>
<p>The big wing will let her loop. The roll is a downward lottery. It works good on floats
as long as you don't turn crosswind in a breeze. It's the one for the flier who wants to
fly like the old-time models, but doesn't want an old time model. I flew one for months
and thoroughly enjoyed it. </p>
<p>Then I went short span! The difference is chalk and cheese! I can do loops, rolls,
Cuban Eights, reversals, even spin. That short wing has 540 square inches of area, so a 42
ounce Bee has a wing loading of around 11.2 ounces per square foot - need I say more? </p>
<p>The bottom line - build one of each! While you're laminating, make four tip bows. They
spend more time drying than anything else, build the fuselage in the meantime and then the
extra wing. If soaring gets boring - slap on the 40" and blow out the cobwebs. </p>
<p>To give you more options - Clancy is now selling the "Lazy Bee Special" with
a slightly different wing - no dihedral, big ailerons and either 40" or 48" span
again. This is one mission adaptable model, no mistake. </p>
<h2>Motive Power </h2>
<p>I've seen about everything lashed to that stubby front! Master Airscrew cans and
gearboxes, AFG's, exotic European motors, a geared Speed 400 - I've heard of them all in
Bees. The motor fitting is a wooden "V" block on the front shelf. Two bamboo
dowels run across the fuselage under the motor, rubber bands lash the motor down. A little
agricultural perhaps, but some get gussied up. One in my native England has a fully cowled
motor and a dummy flat twin - the neatest I've seen. Maybe this winter I shall clean up
mine! </p>
<h2>Steering Gear </h2>
<p>As light as you can get it! Mine has two Futaba 133 micro servos - they've been there
since she was built and do fine. A Hitec Micro receiver with a Dean's whip antenna does
the clever stuff while an Astro 210 handles the amps. The Astro controller just sits there
and works - no long manual, it won't turn on until it "sees" a really low idle
and it barely gets warm on seven cells and 25 amps. </p>
<p>I used to like BEC's until I lost a flight pack connector on my
"Puddlemaster". They don't fly far with the controls locked hard over. Not the
BEC's fault to be sure, but the airplane died all the same. A small flight pack nicad is
not too much to carry suddenly, and a 250 mah pack in the nose flies the Bee safely for
long enough. </p>
<p>My radio gear moved up from the lower floor shown on the plan to the upper cabin. The
"Lazy Bee" has a very narrow fuselage and it is a bear to get at your RC gear
down there. Mine is on a level with the cabin windows, which makes the servos very easy to
get to. </p>
<h2>Wrapping up your project </h2>
<p>Mine is covered in Litespan - this British made heatshrink tissue is slow to apply and
punctures fairly easily, but is very light. I don't think there is anything lighter around
that would do. It does tend to hole if you stare at it hard on occasions though! I've seen
Bee's covered in everything and they all fly well. If you must use standard Monokote,
watch out for overshrinking on the elevators, though it can be done without pretzel'ing
them. </p>
<p>If you've ever noticed that Bee's tend to have the same scalloped color scheme, it's
because the patterns come with the plan, so it is easy to do! Both of mine were done
straight off the plan to an amazing degree - very unusual for me! </p>
<h2>Bought Almost Ready To Fly </h2>
<p>If you decide "to Bee", you'll find that you suddenly are enjoying building a
model as it used to be done. If you build with a check book, try one of the local builders
who turns out a decent old timer - I bet they'll enjoy taking your money to build you a
Bee </p>
<h2>How a "Lazy Bee" grew a real sting </h2>
<p>So far you've had a kit review. Now, I'll switch to what a review involving just one or
two flying sessions won't tell. Just what is it like to have one in the hangar as a long
time flying buddy? </p>
<p>My Bee - and it is still pretty much the same model I've had for fifteen months - has
seen a steady escalation in the power department, for one thing! She started with what
Graupner sell (through Hobby Lobby) as the FG3 - a Speed 600 with a 3:1 reduction box.
This, seven cells and a Master Airscrew 11 x 7 or 10 x 6 will give enough performance for
a Bee to be a practical and sprightly performer. </p>
<p>With the FG3, she flew well on the 48" wing. She hopped a thermal, flew in the KRC
95 Night Fly, looping, stall turning and skimming the grass in tight turns with five
lightsticks lashed to her to help out. You need confidence in a model to do that - that
was out first time in the dark. </p>
<p>She also flies off water on the triple float set Clancy sells, though a little top
heavy and prone to tip over in crosswinds. With a model that can do a landing circuit
inside a baseball diamond, there is seldom a problem in landing too far away though! </p>
<p>But I'm a slimer driver by nature. While I can appreciate the majesty of gracefully
riding nature's thermal energy, a melding of pilot and model effortlessly staying aloft in
unseen currents of rising air - that isn't my style. I take off, turn out with a wingtip
flicking grass blades, pull up, snap roll and fly aerobatics until the juice runs out! A
common saying about my flying is that my wheels are only on the bottom in the pits! </p>
<p>One wet Saturday, I found myself with a 40" span Slimer Bee wing that needed
recovering and an Astro 05 G whispering to me from the shelf. The wing was recovered to
match the E-Bee fuselage, a new mounting accommodated the Astro brush housings and testing
proved that a Master Airscrew Electric wood 11 x 7 would shift air in menacing fashion.
Sunday, it had stopped raining. </p>
<p>My Bee had its sting! She headed off the runway like she couldn't wait to hit the air,
powered on up and we went at it. Now I had a model that would, in the words of Cassius
Clay "Float Like a Butterfly and Sting Like a Bee". (You'll know that great
sportsman as Mohammed Ali, habits die hard - sorry). </p>
<p>With control throws as high as I could handle, the "E Bee" is a delight. She
rolls spectacularly fast in that peculiar Bee fashion - you hit full rudder and full down
elevator together, with the covering and prop making a buzzing sound as she rolls. Loops
are tight and she'll climb through a couple if you ease off in the vertically upwards
part. The Cuban Eight is as comical as the Bee itself, but fun to fly. </p>
<p>Inverted is a lottery as you try to balance a stable airplane with a big battery weight
now above the wing! To get the wheels back on the bottom slowly, squeeze on a tad of
rudder and let her fall over and back to level flight. To really snap back upright, I pull
hard up and left or right for a half snap out to level. If trainers were as self righting
as Clancy's little ball of fun, we'd all learn in days. </p>
<p>Mine has spun with an aft CG, it is fun but she comes down very fast. As I don't fly
too high with my E Bee, I seldom have room to spin so I keep the balance that tad forward
of the spin-able point by battery positioning. </p>
<p>The hottest maneuver I can do is one for when the charge is fresh - it needs POWER!
Full power, dive, then pull up to just past vertical. Before she slows, I push full down
and right or left. If it works, she'll yaw nearly 360 degrees before falling out into a
full power spin. When she's pointing where I want, I pull her out, back the power and
cruise off for the next trick. </p>
<p>That's one plus for not having her "spinnable" - pull up elevator hard and
she'll still behave. </p>
<p>The front is currently occupied by a Graupner 3:1 gearbox with a hot ferrite from a
hobby shop in London, England. It draws 21 amps on a Master Airscrew 10 x 6 wooden
Electric prop, has adjustable timing and replaceable bushes. It also gives a minute or so
over what the AF05G did, with the same performance, more a case of a better match to the
model than any slur on the AFG 05 (which now flies my highly modified Skyvolt like a
dream!) </p>
<p>At KRC 96 I was promptly surrounded by folk asking "How do you do that?", How
does she fly for so long?" (I get nearly eight minutes of aerobatics per 1700 mah
pack-full) and the inevitable "how can you do that for so long?". It's a tribute
to Andy Clancy's design, I just fiddled with the options until I got there. </p>
<p>At the SMALL FunFly down in Little Rock, Arkansas, I saw Andy Clancy fly his with a MEC
6:1 gearbox and WEP motor on ten cells! The weight is a bit much with ten aboard - but it
really moves on out. </p>
<h2>The "Down" Side </h2>
<p>No - this isn't about what I dislike about the Bee. If you don't like the ways in which
she flies, you just need another type of model. This is about what happens when it goes
badly wrong. </p>
<p>I have tried to re-shape my Bee on several occasions. It takes abuse far better than
many. I actually cracked her up the weekend before KRC 96, when I ran out of juice trying
to do one more circuit and hit a hard pathway - hard!. It took me two hours Sunday and the
split longerons were re-joined, an additional gusset took care of an area I didn't trust
fully and she airworthy by Monday night. </p>
<p>She's far stronger than any sheet structure. This stickwork has a lot of give before it
breaks, with enough rigidity to handle flying. That means you build a lightweight
structure that is optimized to fly, but will bend under a high, sudden load (a crash!).
Even it breaks, it is surprisingly easy to cut some more sticks to length and rebuild it. </p>
<h2>Odds and Ends Dept. </h2>
<p>The wing is attached with skinny #19 rubber, eight at a time, and I scrap them after
one or two sessions as they deform permanently, but there is a bolt on wing option I
intend to fit one day. As it means cutting into the wing and fuselage of a model that
flies fine anyway, I can live with the rubber bands. </p>
<p>There are details on the plan for removable stabs - handy for transporting or storing a
Bee if space is tight. If space isn't tight, there is a 150% "Big Bee" version
available. Its 60" or 72" wing needs the likes of an Astro 40 or DeWalt on a
gear drive with 21 cells. If that doesn't sound large - measure out an area 72" by
21' and see if it will fit in your storage area. </p>
<p>Battery access is best done through a side hatch, which replaces an area of covering so
structural integrity isn't affected. It means wiggling a pack back into the fuselage and
seating it on VelcroTM - no hassle, a pack can be changed in moments. Motor access is
superb - most of my motors have been in the Bee's nose at some time. </p>
<p>If you live in frozen wastelands - get the float set! My old foam floats make great
snow skis - just fit the mains, leave off the tail float. It'll cut four foot do-nuts in
dry powder on the rudder! If you can't be bothered - just hand launch her and land back in
the snow on the wheels, but the floats are fun on dry powder. </p>
<p>The local joke is that if you hand launch a Bee too fast, she has to slow down to
flying speed! For a laugh, I usually call "parking" instead of
"landing" on my home site. On grass, she will land with a roll out of inches
even in the calm - my target is a six feet wide patch of mown grass on the end of a tarmac
strip. </p>
<h2>Living with a Bee </h2>
<p>It's the most fun I've ever had with a model. In twelve years of RC, I seldom keep a
model more than a few months, modify the heck out of other folks' designs and usually
design my own anyway. </p>
<p>Apart from those funny Lazy Bees - they still amuse me after over two years and a
staggering number of hours in the air. Guess I may move on one day - or I just might not!
Not a bad deal from a light, economic model that makes me smile every time I fly her. Let
a "Bee" into your shop and you might catch that infectious grin as well. </p>
<p>So, you can't live without one of the little fat fellows in your fleet? Well, a Lazy
Bee is easy enough to catch. Even though I've never heard of them in hobby shops, your
"local" may have one. That way you can pick up the few other bits you might
need. All the big mail order houses seem to have caught on so you can do some armchair
ordering - at least for the big box. </p>
<p>Another possibility is to call Clancy Aviation direct - you can bet you're talking to
guys who speak Bee! They can help if you can't figure whether you want mild or wild,
ailerons or not or whatever. This is one company where the CEO knows all about his product
- he developed it from the concept to the kit. </p>
<p>One point - Clancy Aviation is one-stop shopping. Order a kit or plans, a set of three
Trexler wheels for your model, a syringe to inflate them (more effective than a hand pump
- and cheaper too!), Litespan and BalsaLoc for a lightweight covering job on your new
model. If you decide to go that route, don't forget to tell them that Dereck Woodward says
"Hi" and that you read all about it in the "E Zone" . </p>
<p>Whatever, the "street price for a "Lazy Bee" kit runs between $50 and
$60 - depending on the options you go for. Of course, you're going to add a tad for
covering materials, wheels and the odds and ends that you'll always need to go flying. </p>
<h2>About the author </h2>
<p>Dereck Woodward is a 47 year old Englishman whose first words were "quarter grain
balsa". He lives just north of Washington DC with his North Carolinian wife Sue, Joe,
a hairy guitar playing teenager, and two large Boxer dogs. Dereck's modeling interests
start with RC and go up to indoor freeflight. When asked why he doesn't build larger
models, he claims that all his RC models are large compared to the models he really likes
- 16" indoor profiles! </p>
<p>Dereck is fairly new to electric flight, the attractions of smelling of castor oil,
being deafen by squealers and developing a nervous twitch from big models flying close to
the pits have faded. He suspects he may be another "electric only" flier in the
making... </p>
<p>With around 40 years of modeling, 24 published plans and a sports column in an English
RC magazine, he also suspects that aeromodelling may not be a passing fad. </p>
<p>Sue says he is just practicing for the day when he can claim to have been modeling
longer than anyone else.
</body>
</html>
<head>
<title>The Clancy Lazy Bee</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p><b>Three rules for happy E Flight </b>
<ol>
<li>Build it light. </li>
<li>Don't make it heavy. </li>
<li>Take off all the weight you can. </li>
</ol>
<h2>Let's start at the very beginning - </h2>
<p>After flying "Lazy Bee's" for over two years, I'm biased. Yes, one of the
fleet makes noise and gets oily. It also does touch and goes off a picnic table and a
rolling circle. At times you can stand a little racket. This isn't going to be a
"glue part A to B" review, it's about living with these fat little cartoon
models, week in, week out. I might even mention the noisy one - it is so "noisy"
that I have flown it on quiet nights behind my house and no-one but the local kids knew
there was an airshow going on! First off - there is no such animal as an electric or glow
Bee - they are identical apart from what spins the fan. Take a look at a magazine advert
picture - the glow engine mounts onto the front vertical former, the electric motor sits
on the horizontal plate below it. </p>
<p>The glow Bee came first - slightly. It is built lighter than most electrics - but is
tough. The heavier they are, the harder they fall - the Bee is very light and shakes off
what other structures see as a crash. With its structure and tight turning abilities, it
wasn't long before Andy Clancy figured out that if it didn't make noise, he could fly it
in many locations that a squealer wouldn't be accepted. </p>
<p>Hence Bee #3 rapidly acquired an Astro 035 and a stretched wing - from 40" to
48" span. That involves longer sticks and two more ribs - nine instead of the seven
in the short span wing. Again, there is little difference in the kits. </p>
<h2>Let's "B"-uild! </h2>
<p>Some folk will tell you that a Bee is tricky to construct. The instruction book is 40 -
yes, 40 - pages long. If you can read and figure out the best end of a knife to hold, you
can build a Bee! If you decide to just buy the plans, you get three sheets, the tailwheel
leg with a pre-bent coil spring and that instruction manual. It even shows you how to
build a widget (that's English for a neat gadget) to cut out the circular windows. </p>
<p>Mostly it asks that you cut a stick to length, glue it to another stick and repeat
until you have finished. Is that so difficult? The body is built in time honored fashion
with two sides mostly made from sticks. The longerons are spruce, the uprights
(shorterons?) are balsa. The fuselage sides are then assembled like Andy tells you,
without formers, with temporary cross-braces to hold the sides square until you get the
cross members in place. </p>
<p>Formers? Well, there's one! A ply "firewall" is laminated from three
1/16" ply pieces. The UC box is two ply rectangles and two pieces of 1/8" square
spruce. There are a few neatly cut balsa pieces that form the windows. Sal Taibi's
Superior Balsa does the diecutting - it is superb. When you get the sides joined, you add
small gussets at the corners - this is what makes the structure really strong, yet allows
it to flex enough to take a beating. </p>
<h2>Don't procrastinate - laminate. </h2>
<p>This might be fading away, but the original Bee has laminated curved outlines -
wingtips, rudder and elevators. The new "Speedy Bee" and "Lazy Bee
Special" have curved outlines made up from sheet segments - if you know about
`"ten cent" rubber scale, you know what I'm talking about. Seems modern
modellers don't like laminating. </p>
<p>That's a shame! When a dead receiver crashed my triple motor E Bee, the laminated tips
were all that survived from the wing. I also ran a Bee backwards into a safety fence
(please don't ask!) and it took five minutes to fix the mangled rudder with cyano glue.
You take four pieces of 1/16" balsa, soak them, glue them up with thinned Elmer's
white glue and pull them round a former made from an old cardboard box. Leave to dry
overnight. That's the "secret" of laminating - the result is tough and light. </p>
<h2>Anyway - </h2>
<p>Once your laminated outlines are done, you join them with seven or nine ribs, depending
on your chosen span, a couple of spruce mainspars and a few balsa sub-spars. The LE and TE
are different - the LE is two pieces of 1/4" square glued together, for example. </p>
<p>Why not one piece of 1/4" x 1/2" ? Once again, Andy Clancy's great
engineering style. Look through your hobby shop's wood rack to learn about how straight
stripwood isn't. But take two lengths of 1/4" square, eyeball those inevitable bends
and glue the strips together with the bends in opposition and you end up with a stiff,
straight LE. </p>
<p>A fair amount of wood will hit the floor when you carve the edges of your Bee's wing to
shape. Read, the instructions, visualize what you're aiming for, put on that dust mask and
enjoy! Finish-shaping this wing is very therapeutic and only takes as long as you'd lie on
the couch watching two bad TV shows anyway! </p>
<h2>Shake a Tailfeather! </h2>
<p>I've already covered the laminating business. The elevators and rudder are light and
tough. I add a 1/8" square spruce or basswood trailing edge to the horizontal stab -
this stops them breaking if they get caught in water while in floatplane mode. It also
gives a good guideline for the "figure eight" stitched hinges (use the thread
Cox sell for 049 control lines - works great. Lock it with a tiny drop of thin CA glue in
the holes). That's one of but three modifications I made to my various Bee's. </p>
<p>Mine have never acquired the holes in the horizontal stab, the weight loss is trivial
but if you like `em - do it. They do add a certain charm if you're into see - through
covering materials though. </p>
<h2>Somewhere to sit down </h2>
<p>Students of aviation history will recognize the landing gear - from the Henry Mignet
HM14 "Flying Flea". A straight length of 3/32" wire runs in a ply box.
"Springing" is rubber bands looped around the wire, under the fuselage and over
the other end of the wire. Further springing is from the Trexler balloon wheels that
Clancy Aviation recommend. </p>
<p>These rubber inflatable tires have been around American aeromodelling since the late
1930's and, while an occasional pain to keep inflated, add much to the Bee's charm. While
modern tires work fine, they just don't look as good as those fat little Trexlers. </p>
<p>Here's another mod. The stock landing gear works well, but puts an 11" prop tip
close to the ground. Thus arose what is known in my BeeHive as "Strimple Training
Wheels", after Dick Strimple, a local Bee driver of note. </p>
<p>Something provides an anti-rotation "lock" inside the undercarriage box -
mine has a "V" half the depth of the box. The gear legs outside of the box bend
down to place the wheels about an inch below the fuselage bottom. Band in place as before
and it will keep your expensive wooden prop out of the weeds. This was
"invented" in several places simultaneously and works so well that it has Andy
Clancy's approval. If you can't figure out what it looks like - Email me your snailmail
address and I'll send you a picture! </p>
<h2>Big wing / Little Wing </h2>
<p>As I said, the kits are the same. If you like steady, relaxing flying - go for the
48" wing. I once hopped a thermal for a tad under 20 minutes on 1400 mah cells.
That's the wing I showed off at KRC 95 - flying a circle over the grass strip and hopping
off one wheel two or three times a circle. </p>
<p>The big wing will let her loop. The roll is a downward lottery. It works good on floats
as long as you don't turn crosswind in a breeze. It's the one for the flier who wants to
fly like the old-time models, but doesn't want an old time model. I flew one for months
and thoroughly enjoyed it. </p>
<p>Then I went short span! The difference is chalk and cheese! I can do loops, rolls,
Cuban Eights, reversals, even spin. That short wing has 540 square inches of area, so a 42
ounce Bee has a wing loading of around 11.2 ounces per square foot - need I say more? </p>
<p>The bottom line - build one of each! While you're laminating, make four tip bows. They
spend more time drying than anything else, build the fuselage in the meantime and then the
extra wing. If soaring gets boring - slap on the 40" and blow out the cobwebs. </p>
<p>To give you more options - Clancy is now selling the "Lazy Bee Special" with
a slightly different wing - no dihedral, big ailerons and either 40" or 48" span
again. This is one mission adaptable model, no mistake. </p>
<h2>Motive Power </h2>
<p>I've seen about everything lashed to that stubby front! Master Airscrew cans and
gearboxes, AFG's, exotic European motors, a geared Speed 400 - I've heard of them all in
Bees. The motor fitting is a wooden "V" block on the front shelf. Two bamboo
dowels run across the fuselage under the motor, rubber bands lash the motor down. A little
agricultural perhaps, but some get gussied up. One in my native England has a fully cowled
motor and a dummy flat twin - the neatest I've seen. Maybe this winter I shall clean up
mine! </p>
<h2>Steering Gear </h2>
<p>As light as you can get it! Mine has two Futaba 133 micro servos - they've been there
since she was built and do fine. A Hitec Micro receiver with a Dean's whip antenna does
the clever stuff while an Astro 210 handles the amps. The Astro controller just sits there
and works - no long manual, it won't turn on until it "sees" a really low idle
and it barely gets warm on seven cells and 25 amps. </p>
<p>I used to like BEC's until I lost a flight pack connector on my
"Puddlemaster". They don't fly far with the controls locked hard over. Not the
BEC's fault to be sure, but the airplane died all the same. A small flight pack nicad is
not too much to carry suddenly, and a 250 mah pack in the nose flies the Bee safely for
long enough. </p>
<p>My radio gear moved up from the lower floor shown on the plan to the upper cabin. The
"Lazy Bee" has a very narrow fuselage and it is a bear to get at your RC gear
down there. Mine is on a level with the cabin windows, which makes the servos very easy to
get to. </p>
<h2>Wrapping up your project </h2>
<p>Mine is covered in Litespan - this British made heatshrink tissue is slow to apply and
punctures fairly easily, but is very light. I don't think there is anything lighter around
that would do. It does tend to hole if you stare at it hard on occasions though! I've seen
Bee's covered in everything and they all fly well. If you must use standard Monokote,
watch out for overshrinking on the elevators, though it can be done without pretzel'ing
them. </p>
<p>If you've ever noticed that Bee's tend to have the same scalloped color scheme, it's
because the patterns come with the plan, so it is easy to do! Both of mine were done
straight off the plan to an amazing degree - very unusual for me! </p>
<h2>Bought Almost Ready To Fly </h2>
<p>If you decide "to Bee", you'll find that you suddenly are enjoying building a
model as it used to be done. If you build with a check book, try one of the local builders
who turns out a decent old timer - I bet they'll enjoy taking your money to build you a
Bee </p>
<h2>How a "Lazy Bee" grew a real sting </h2>
<p>So far you've had a kit review. Now, I'll switch to what a review involving just one or
two flying sessions won't tell. Just what is it like to have one in the hangar as a long
time flying buddy? </p>
<p>My Bee - and it is still pretty much the same model I've had for fifteen months - has
seen a steady escalation in the power department, for one thing! She started with what
Graupner sell (through Hobby Lobby) as the FG3 - a Speed 600 with a 3:1 reduction box.
This, seven cells and a Master Airscrew 11 x 7 or 10 x 6 will give enough performance for
a Bee to be a practical and sprightly performer. </p>
<p>With the FG3, she flew well on the 48" wing. She hopped a thermal, flew in the KRC
95 Night Fly, looping, stall turning and skimming the grass in tight turns with five
lightsticks lashed to her to help out. You need confidence in a model to do that - that
was out first time in the dark. </p>
<p>She also flies off water on the triple float set Clancy sells, though a little top
heavy and prone to tip over in crosswinds. With a model that can do a landing circuit
inside a baseball diamond, there is seldom a problem in landing too far away though! </p>
<p>But I'm a slimer driver by nature. While I can appreciate the majesty of gracefully
riding nature's thermal energy, a melding of pilot and model effortlessly staying aloft in
unseen currents of rising air - that isn't my style. I take off, turn out with a wingtip
flicking grass blades, pull up, snap roll and fly aerobatics until the juice runs out! A
common saying about my flying is that my wheels are only on the bottom in the pits! </p>
<p>One wet Saturday, I found myself with a 40" span Slimer Bee wing that needed
recovering and an Astro 05 G whispering to me from the shelf. The wing was recovered to
match the E-Bee fuselage, a new mounting accommodated the Astro brush housings and testing
proved that a Master Airscrew Electric wood 11 x 7 would shift air in menacing fashion.
Sunday, it had stopped raining. </p>
<p>My Bee had its sting! She headed off the runway like she couldn't wait to hit the air,
powered on up and we went at it. Now I had a model that would, in the words of Cassius
Clay "Float Like a Butterfly and Sting Like a Bee". (You'll know that great
sportsman as Mohammed Ali, habits die hard - sorry). </p>
<p>With control throws as high as I could handle, the "E Bee" is a delight. She
rolls spectacularly fast in that peculiar Bee fashion - you hit full rudder and full down
elevator together, with the covering and prop making a buzzing sound as she rolls. Loops
are tight and she'll climb through a couple if you ease off in the vertically upwards
part. The Cuban Eight is as comical as the Bee itself, but fun to fly. </p>
<p>Inverted is a lottery as you try to balance a stable airplane with a big battery weight
now above the wing! To get the wheels back on the bottom slowly, squeeze on a tad of
rudder and let her fall over and back to level flight. To really snap back upright, I pull
hard up and left or right for a half snap out to level. If trainers were as self righting
as Clancy's little ball of fun, we'd all learn in days. </p>
<p>Mine has spun with an aft CG, it is fun but she comes down very fast. As I don't fly
too high with my E Bee, I seldom have room to spin so I keep the balance that tad forward
of the spin-able point by battery positioning. </p>
<p>The hottest maneuver I can do is one for when the charge is fresh - it needs POWER!
Full power, dive, then pull up to just past vertical. Before she slows, I push full down
and right or left. If it works, she'll yaw nearly 360 degrees before falling out into a
full power spin. When she's pointing where I want, I pull her out, back the power and
cruise off for the next trick. </p>
<p>That's one plus for not having her "spinnable" - pull up elevator hard and
she'll still behave. </p>
<p>The front is currently occupied by a Graupner 3:1 gearbox with a hot ferrite from a
hobby shop in London, England. It draws 21 amps on a Master Airscrew 10 x 6 wooden
Electric prop, has adjustable timing and replaceable bushes. It also gives a minute or so
over what the AF05G did, with the same performance, more a case of a better match to the
model than any slur on the AFG 05 (which now flies my highly modified Skyvolt like a
dream!) </p>
<p>At KRC 96 I was promptly surrounded by folk asking "How do you do that?", How
does she fly for so long?" (I get nearly eight minutes of aerobatics per 1700 mah
pack-full) and the inevitable "how can you do that for so long?". It's a tribute
to Andy Clancy's design, I just fiddled with the options until I got there. </p>
<p>At the SMALL FunFly down in Little Rock, Arkansas, I saw Andy Clancy fly his with a MEC
6:1 gearbox and WEP motor on ten cells! The weight is a bit much with ten aboard - but it
really moves on out. </p>
<h2>The "Down" Side </h2>
<p>No - this isn't about what I dislike about the Bee. If you don't like the ways in which
she flies, you just need another type of model. This is about what happens when it goes
badly wrong. </p>
<p>I have tried to re-shape my Bee on several occasions. It takes abuse far better than
many. I actually cracked her up the weekend before KRC 96, when I ran out of juice trying
to do one more circuit and hit a hard pathway - hard!. It took me two hours Sunday and the
split longerons were re-joined, an additional gusset took care of an area I didn't trust
fully and she airworthy by Monday night. </p>
<p>She's far stronger than any sheet structure. This stickwork has a lot of give before it
breaks, with enough rigidity to handle flying. That means you build a lightweight
structure that is optimized to fly, but will bend under a high, sudden load (a crash!).
Even it breaks, it is surprisingly easy to cut some more sticks to length and rebuild it. </p>
<h2>Odds and Ends Dept. </h2>
<p>The wing is attached with skinny #19 rubber, eight at a time, and I scrap them after
one or two sessions as they deform permanently, but there is a bolt on wing option I
intend to fit one day. As it means cutting into the wing and fuselage of a model that
flies fine anyway, I can live with the rubber bands. </p>
<p>There are details on the plan for removable stabs - handy for transporting or storing a
Bee if space is tight. If space isn't tight, there is a 150% "Big Bee" version
available. Its 60" or 72" wing needs the likes of an Astro 40 or DeWalt on a
gear drive with 21 cells. If that doesn't sound large - measure out an area 72" by
21' and see if it will fit in your storage area. </p>
<p>Battery access is best done through a side hatch, which replaces an area of covering so
structural integrity isn't affected. It means wiggling a pack back into the fuselage and
seating it on VelcroTM - no hassle, a pack can be changed in moments. Motor access is
superb - most of my motors have been in the Bee's nose at some time. </p>
<p>If you live in frozen wastelands - get the float set! My old foam floats make great
snow skis - just fit the mains, leave off the tail float. It'll cut four foot do-nuts in
dry powder on the rudder! If you can't be bothered - just hand launch her and land back in
the snow on the wheels, but the floats are fun on dry powder. </p>
<p>The local joke is that if you hand launch a Bee too fast, she has to slow down to
flying speed! For a laugh, I usually call "parking" instead of
"landing" on my home site. On grass, she will land with a roll out of inches
even in the calm - my target is a six feet wide patch of mown grass on the end of a tarmac
strip. </p>
<h2>Living with a Bee </h2>
<p>It's the most fun I've ever had with a model. In twelve years of RC, I seldom keep a
model more than a few months, modify the heck out of other folks' designs and usually
design my own anyway. </p>
<p>Apart from those funny Lazy Bees - they still amuse me after over two years and a
staggering number of hours in the air. Guess I may move on one day - or I just might not!
Not a bad deal from a light, economic model that makes me smile every time I fly her. Let
a "Bee" into your shop and you might catch that infectious grin as well. </p>
<p>So, you can't live without one of the little fat fellows in your fleet? Well, a Lazy
Bee is easy enough to catch. Even though I've never heard of them in hobby shops, your
"local" may have one. That way you can pick up the few other bits you might
need. All the big mail order houses seem to have caught on so you can do some armchair
ordering - at least for the big box. </p>
<p>Another possibility is to call Clancy Aviation direct - you can bet you're talking to
guys who speak Bee! They can help if you can't figure whether you want mild or wild,
ailerons or not or whatever. This is one company where the CEO knows all about his product
- he developed it from the concept to the kit. </p>
<p>One point - Clancy Aviation is one-stop shopping. Order a kit or plans, a set of three
Trexler wheels for your model, a syringe to inflate them (more effective than a hand pump
- and cheaper too!), Litespan and BalsaLoc for a lightweight covering job on your new
model. If you decide to go that route, don't forget to tell them that Dereck Woodward says
"Hi" and that you read all about it in the "E Zone" . </p>
<p>Whatever, the "street price for a "Lazy Bee" kit runs between $50 and
$60 - depending on the options you go for. Of course, you're going to add a tad for
covering materials, wheels and the odds and ends that you'll always need to go flying. </p>
<h2>About the author </h2>
<p>Dereck Woodward is a 47 year old Englishman whose first words were "quarter grain
balsa". He lives just north of Washington DC with his North Carolinian wife Sue, Joe,
a hairy guitar playing teenager, and two large Boxer dogs. Dereck's modeling interests
start with RC and go up to indoor freeflight. When asked why he doesn't build larger
models, he claims that all his RC models are large compared to the models he really likes
- 16" indoor profiles! </p>
<p>Dereck is fairly new to electric flight, the attractions of smelling of castor oil,
being deafen by squealers and developing a nervous twitch from big models flying close to
the pits have faded. He suspects he may be another "electric only" flier in the
making... </p>
<p>With around 40 years of modeling, 24 published plans and a sports column in an English
RC magazine, he also suspects that aeromodelling may not be a passing fad. </p>
<p>Sue says he is just practicing for the day when he can claim to have been modeling
longer than anyone else.
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