Sobox Vampire

[seanpcola]

Hi all,

Well, thanks to hurricane Ivan my house and model shop got 5 feet of sea water which in turn did quite a number on my stuff. I was able to save most electronics and about half of my models (stored high and sealed) but my Vampire, under construction, went under. I washed everything (except RC system, junk) and clamped the wings down for drying. They appear undamaged and the sheeting seems to have stayed bonded to the foam but I really don't trust them. The last I heard from Sobox is that the Vampire is no longer available. Does anyone out there have either an uncompleted, built or crashed Vampire they would like to sell? I can't leave a project unfinished and I will not let that storm get the better of me! :mad:


Thanks,

Sean

[CHARLIE BRITT 7]

Sean,
Glad to see you back on line. Bring us up to date on the rest of the Pensacola glider flyers when you get time.
Charlie

[seanpcola]

Hi Charlie,

Yep, feels good to be at least a little back to normal. I have not talked to everyone in the local gang but they are all accounted for and I don't think anyone else got too much damage, just Tony (Fiorentino) and I. I heard Rusty Rood had some tree damage to his house but of course he is a building contractor and I am sure he got it all fixed ASAP. Lucky for him as they are predicting at least two years backlog for roofers, contractors, electricians and so on. I had over 30 large scale sailplanes (1/3-1/2 scale) of Tony's stored at my place and they all went under too. We saved most of them (thanks to composites) but of course all electronics and hardware, retracts and such will have to be replaced or refurbished. Tony's airport took a lot of damage, destroyed hangars, mucho trees down, power, water and such and we have been working on it to get everything back together before our scale fly-in comes around in February. Asher Carmichael did not get much damage since he lives in Daphne which is about 40 miles from us and to the West, which makes a big difference. Guess that about covers it. Anyone that reads this and lives in my area please jump in and let us know how you made out.

[CHARLIE BRITT 7]

Thanks for the report Sean.
Glad to hear you are still doing the Feb Scale Bash,
what are the dates for it.
Charlie

[seanpcola]

Pensacola Aerotow will be held Feb. 4-6, first weekend in February. Hope everyone can make it!

[seanpcola]

PS: Still hoping someone out there has something to sell regarding the Vampire!

[xtc]

sorry,i dont have any vampire parts either but i do have a sobox harpia and im looking for a nose cone ,the harpia is the vampires little brother and im wondering if you still have a nose cone around for either e-power or pure glider??
thanks xtc

[seanpcola]

Hi xtc,

Sorry I don't have a spare nosecone. My Vampire only came with the non-powered nosecone. I guess I have not seen any info on an E-Vampire and frankly I have not gotten much info on the Vampire in general. I have posted forums looking for flyers that have had any experience with this model but no replys. Have you flown your Harpia and if so, what is your opinion? I am going to attempt to get the Vampire in the air as soon as I can, depending on how the wings survive drying out. At this point they look OK but..... may not trust them.

[xtc]

i believe that i am the only one that powered the harpia and it was very hard to work every thing out to get her to balance with the flight gear but it was worth it

the glider flys great although i still need to play around with mixing,its a full house so its taking a while to figure out launch settings,aileron rudder mix etc

i dont have many other glider pilots in my area so i dont have much to compare to but so far im very impressed with its energy retension

my harpia cam out on the heavy side with the electrics but i didnt even touch the performance.

this winter i would like to get a standard nose cone for mine so i can pull the battery and motor cone off to convert to pure glider

i built mine with that in mind so the battery sits right on the c/g,its a get system but,as i said before very hard to work out,not much room

did you know that the harpia/vampire has a fair bit of carbon on the top and bottom of the spar? i dont think the other sobox planes have this.

i dont think you need to worry about water damage with those wings provided they didnt warp.

i heard a story of a guy with a first plus that wanted to color his wings with food color and water but he did soak [he rushed it] one side at a time to get a differant color on either side
becuase he only did one side at a time,it twisted so he put the whole wing in the tub,let it swell,removed,dried out slowly and it worked,,that wing has been wrung out on the slopes for yrs since
i didnt have any instructions either but i did pick up a lot of info here in regards to the art hobby gliders that use the same skins,also this man here in canada www.soboxplanes.com


hope this helps

xtc

[seanpcola]

Nice looking plane and the conversion looks good. I used about the same technique as the other guy with water damage. I had to wash the wings to remove all of the salt, then clamped all panels with straightedges until they dried thoroughly. What I am a little concerned with is not knowing what type of glue Sobox used to bond the skins, if it's epoxy or poly resin, no problem but some manufacturers use different types of contact glue and some of those are water soluble. I had that problem one time with a Falcon 880 that someone else built, I got one panel wet and a few days later the skin started debonding. I do know that the Vampire has a pretty nice CF top and bottom spar cap, the whole thing looks plenty strong. I did deviate from plans by bulding and bagging all wing joiners out of CF instead of using the supplied steel joiners. I made them longer and tapered to spread the load in the boxes (spar) over more area without adding weight. I hope that soon I can fly this thing and see what happens. I feel pretty confident but again I think the wild card will be the skin to foam bond.