Building Giant EDF Commercial Jets

[SonicCruiser]

:) I'd like to build a 5-7ft sonic cruiser, and I just wanted to know If anyone has any suggestions before I start looking into things. I'm thinking balsa for strength, maybe 25lbs, so what edf's and what motors?
Post any pics you have from building your planes ;)
http://www.as-st.com/ttd/planes/refimg/bsc.gif

[Thomas B]

That size will take a large investment in 120mm fans, large brushless motors, lots of lipos or A123 cells and some BIG ESCs. You are looking at a couple of thousand bucks or more, most likely, just for the power systems

Doable, though, but is this your first EDF?

The plane itself will likely fly fine..the semi scale clone of the Sonic Cruiser made by Multiplex called the Sonic Liner flys great...it is about 4 feet long.

One with a 5 foot span would be about 7 feet long, I think and one with a 7 foot span would be about 9.8 feet long.

I think a large one would fly really well.

Here is mine zipping by on pusher props.

[SonicCruiser]

Ouch! Maybe I should settle for something a little smaller for now... 4ft sounds doable, six feet sounded cool, but i wasn't even thinking about costs. Hmmm. I should rethink this for a bit.

I think I'll try something about half that, so 3ft length. Then I can Figure out what I like etc. and build bigger from there.

[GDown]

Why balsa? You could use foam to keep it light and still get the strength as long as you use some ply and balsa supports throughout. I'm guessing you could keep the weight below 12# and use a couple of 90mm fans.
It's still going to cost somewhere around 750$ so that is something to consider unless you have some stuff sitting around.
And, I agree with Thomas B. If it is your first edf then i would suggest something smaller and easier to handle.

See attachment for evidence that a 7.5 foot span plane can weight less than 12# even with the batteries (A123) installed. The body and wings are more than strong enough and are primarily foam.

Thomas B: I've save a picture of your plane some time ago and look at it every so often to try to make myself push this plane to the front of the list. It's just such and amazingly different plane, and your's looks great.