NoCal, NO TELL.....you guess.....?

[Rifleman]

Well I finally started, after going over my stack of plans.......gee it was not an easy decision, and after much deliberation, I almost felt like a hung jury......(wife smiles) .....but the decision was helped by the fact that I had a Walt Mooney plan on hand already blown up from peanut to bostonian or nocal size......so here we go.....images are in the camera of the beginning stages and already I have two wings, fus, stab, and fin/rud framed up....weight so far is 1.9 gms so this will not be a competition plane and only a sport model....basic structure is 1/16 sq.......
Here are the usual tools which I use....I get chastized all the time for my use of Cyanno.........

[Rifleman]

now with that first one posted, I just knew I would get questions on the stripper......on old friend of mine made this for me and I cherish it.....it has replaceable blades which key into a dimple in the lower surface of the top deck....there is a pressure spring to aid in holding the wood up against the upper deck when cutting thinner than the max .....max wood in here is just a hair under 1/8 , but with a swipe or two of sandpaper, you can get it through....the adjustment knob on the top is from a consumed underarm deoderant container...spring is from an old injector razor loader,....block of wood was scrap and the plexi was scavenged from a sign maker........blade holder was scrap alum....the man was a craftsman with watchmaker intellect !....Thanks Murray wherever you are, and enjoy whatever you are flying up there !

[Rifleman]

This was my starting point........

[Rifleman]

more ribs and pins.....

[Rifleman]

Now that all wood parts are in, its time to get the glue and then remove some pins and grab a nail file(sanding stick)

[Rifleman]

After sanding, here is where the framework for the lower wing came out............ .5 gm

[Rifleman]

Using the lower wing for reference, along with the plans of course, its time to tackle the upper wing and make the allowances for the notch which gives the pilot some 12 o'clock high visibility.........

[Rifleman]

Upper wing is glued and sanded now.....its starting to look like the scale is stuck........guess I used wood from the same sheet....

[Rifleman]

Verified as not stuck, this shot of both wings shows its true,.....half a gm each..........

[Rifleman]

I don't want to give it all away by posting too much of the plans or even the entire fuselage profile, but as you can see, I have a start on it here.............hoping this is not .5gm also or I may just believe I have a sticky spot on my balance !

[Rifleman]

Here is the fus with the false rib removed. Its only use, is to make locating the wing in the fus easier and more precise at this stage.....I may have a three or four point wing attachment here and it will tie in with the upper wing to enhance the integrity of the assembly.............

[Rifleman]

Glad to see these numbers.......fus is .4 so total with wings is accurate but not as light as it could be...........

[Rifleman]

Framing the stab,.......all 1/16 sq with huge chunks in the corners to make life easy.......next one will be done with forms and bent wood.....

[Rifleman]

weight on the stab.....?.........

[Rifleman]

wings fus and stab.....total is still adding up, so I will trust my balance from here on in.........its been a while since I have used my trusty triple beam.........

[Rifleman]

Using the fus as it stands, you get to build the fin/rud with as good a fit as possible............

[Rifleman]

Drop it on the scale and .............

[Rifleman]

both stabilizers after sanding........

[Rifleman]

Parts total now..........two wings, fus, stab, fin/rud.......1.9 gms......I can't wait to see how much that changes once I get some tissue on it.......still have wheels and gear legs.....cabanes and interplane struts.......windshield, motor stick, prop and prop hanger, rear mtr mount.....gonna be around 8-9 total.......any body else got a guess on finished weight ?......I'm sure by now, someone will have an idea on the model.......

[J Morgan]

SE-5a,right? Very nice work.

[BMatthews]

That's a '5 alrighty. Nice work.

I guess you know that you built a handicap into this model by choosing the biplane that needed the landing gear and the two wings compared to a WW2 or whatever that can be modelled with the gear up and save the weight. But contest flying isn't everything, is it.....


Geez, it's taken me 25 years to realize that I can say that and mean it... :D

[Rifleman]

For contest work, I have a nice little razor back jug.....this one is just for fun and to show the guys here on the island, how to get one to fly and still not take painful lengths of using forms and the like......these guys have to start somewhere, and I guess I have the most experience around here so its up to me to lead by example.....we'll see how they all take to it.

[BMatthews]

Rifleman, I just noticed where you're based. Good to see more free flight in BC.

There's a SAM and an FAC group in Seattle that are fairly active at holding contests and such. If you or anyone else in the area are interested in coming down with us contact me at matthews@smartt.com .

[Rifleman]

Hey "B" its nice to be seen and looked at.....you may know a guy I used to fly with many yrs ago. ...I heard that Gary Hunter was around this area for a while.....we flew together back in Markham in the 80's, but when I came west, he moved back east.....I did see him last May when I was out there for a first revisit......in case you aren't aware, I have a Canadian Hotbed thread in the Electric/Indoor and Micro section....shows some of the electric stuff I was involved in before leaving Ont.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=74297&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

[BMatthews]

Sorry, don't remember any Gary. But then I lived in Ottawa for about 7 years during the 80's so we may have passed like ships in the night.

Got to meet and fly with some of the guys out of Toronto on a couple of occasions. I met Mike T and Peter Alnutt and a few of the others. Great bunch of blokes they were too.

Never met Jack M but heard that he's a great guy to be around.

Hope we can meet for some flying sometime. Keep in touch.

[Rifleman]

Ottawa eh, so then you must know Dan O........I found a pic of him on the FAC site ......images of Geneseo 2000.....he and I are standing behind the Ford Tri-Motor........

[J Morgan]

Rifleman,
Any progress lately?

[Rifleman]

been sick for over a week but did get some tissue work done.....will try to post some this weekend........

[Rifleman]

Here's a couple of views of the way the prop hanger and prop shaft are bent into a pig-tail and non-climbing hook ......takes a bit of time to learn it, but once you use one you will see the benefit of never having the rubber climb and twist itself off the front end...........

[Rifleman]

I know this is a big jump to covered from frame work, but I got my fingers in the glue and didn't want to stop and wash my hands to use the camera, once I got started....the flat frames are rubbed with glue stick, then dropped over the tissue and left with a book on for pressure for a few mins....then trim close and using a mix of 75% water:25% glue(white-Aliphatic resin, your choice)I go around with a brush to take the tissue around the first bend and seal down.....razor blade is used for final trimming........takes a bit more time and patience for the wing with its camber.....look at how my weight has changed for the two covered wings ....

[Rifleman]

since this was to be a sport model and not for competition, I used full 1/32 sheet for the gear legs and even a hunk of 1/16 for the spreader bar....wire inserted for the wheels

[Rifleman]

As you can see, I use a drop of Cyano for a wheel retainer. I've been doing it this way for yrs on all my own homemade wheels. Axle is .015" wire, ...wheels are bushed with tubing from Cyano....works for me.

[Rifleman]

While this drop of Cyano cures on the end of the wheel axles, nothing can be moved or you won't have wheels which turn. Use anything that you don't need for the next half hour...wing assembly is supposed to be jigged but I did it the hard way.... floating in the air in my hands.......I must be crazy to try it this way

[Rifleman]

Now after all assembly has been done and things are checked for position and straightness....you wack a huge ball of clay on the front and test glide it.....I still need to make a prop, but after the fifteen or so, flights to the floor, I think I need a new engine as well...........wish I had a vid of the initial glide.....even surprised me

[Rifleman]

A bit of the structure here shows I really did use large lumber in this design, so if you think you might not have success, think again.....all NoCals fly great.

[Rifleman]

With a prop to still make, I got this poor shot to show where my weight is now....hair under 6 gms but that will grow, as it takes over 2 1/2 gms of clay to get it to glide properly now.....once the prop and rubber are on, it will be flying at 9-10 gms.......heaviest NoCal I have ever made........all basic structures are 1/16 sq with lots of sheet parts too.......all struts though are from 1/32 sht

[KnifeEdge51]

Rifleman,

Looks great! I'm pretty sure mine'll come out a bit heavier than yours. If not, I'll sure be surprised. I even made a little CA applicator tool similar to yours, but even then I think I put just a bit much CA on my structures. It sure looks good "in the buff" though. :D I showed it (my Fw-109) to a friend, and he kind of laughed. He'd never seen anything quite like it. I told him to just wait until he sees it flying. ;)

Nick

[Rifleman]

Prop...........you only need four parts.....I did the prop shaft earlier and showed the bends so now its only the wood parts....two blades and a spar.........I select the blades with similar grain, as much as possible.......then soak and tape to a form to dry..........here are mine....I'm lookin for a prop diameter in the area of 7 1/2".......don't want to spin off those turns too fast.

[Rifleman]

With the blades drying, I get a spar ready with a hole drilled to the same size as the prop shaft.....then I get out the trusty prop jig.....been used lots but still works......should be self-explanatory, for use......one blade at a time.........next shot shows spar in alignment notches

[Rifleman]

All we need now is dry blades and we can apply glue, but for now, you can see how the spar is trapped in the notches. As this is done I will pin each blade, one at a time, to the angled part on the right......

[Rifleman]

Should have the blades to glue in tomorrow morn and will assemble after work tomorrow night, but for now, here is another view of what this prop is going to pull through the air...........

[Rifleman]

PROPS DONE.....................6.3 gms before rubber, which I consider not bad for a sport model.......I have flown a 5 gm model in competition with only 48sq in of wing area and did over 5 mins so this one shows promise in enticing the new guys into more than "sit and wait" for spring and outdoors.....1st flight, Friday night.....................

[J Morgan]

Good Luck !

[Bob Chiang]

Rifleman,

Great looking model. Should provide the inspiration for lots of us to try (or re-try) a profile.

Are the wheels turned from foam? Care to give us a tutorial on wheels some day? (what kind of foam, how do you chuck them, what speed on the drill, how to color them, etc.).

[Rifleman]

Bob.......gotta tell ya.......these wheels are not "turned".....they are milled.........you need to make a tool that you chuck into a drill press........the tool turns and the foam is held stationary......you make the radius of the wheel in profile out of a piece of soft metal which needs to be held on a shaft by some means, this shaft is what get chucked and is only a tool holder........the tool I used was not mine, but I will see if I can draw up some semblance of what it looks like in use......with a centering pin, which will protrude through the foam, you can re-center the tool once you have milled the first side....the actual profile that you need to file into the metal, extends from the center(axle) outwards to the rim and then continues on to the tire.... this gives you both a wheel and tire which you can colour with whatever you can find that doesn't "eat" your foam.....will post an image of the tool in a bit, but first I have to figure out how to produce this image in photoshop ..........check later

[Rifleman]

OK , with all my trials and tribs of learning how to draw with a graphics manip prog....I think I figured out a way to show the tool for making wheels....and as I said earlier, its not my design but I did confer with Murray in the beginning stages as we tried to turn wheels.....boy, did we explode a bunch of foam, till the light went on and we decided to try a different approach.....this one works !
The shaft can be 1/4" tubing as long as you have enough wall thickness to thread for the set-screw, and you can cut your slot in it without too much trouble. The pin is really just that, a straight pin, point and all. The Blade which is really your cutter is a piece of flat metal, which can be 1/16" soft strapping, if you can get the profile that you want to use, then take a file and have a blast.......all you need to do is make one side. Thats the beauty of the tool, you don't need to match up sides.....it rotates and takes care of that for you. The bottom filed angle needs only to be less than 90 degrees, 89-88 will do as long as you get a bit of relief from the material as you " scrape " the foam into the shape you intend to finish with............any questions you can come up with will be dealt with promptly............KW

[Bob Chiang]

Thanks for the descriptions and drawings. Very clever, and the results speak for themselves. How slow do you run the cutter? I don't have a drill press, but it seems I could rig up a sliding platform to hold a dremell tool. The cutter could be soldered onto a small brass tube to fit the dremell mandrel.

I think the lowest speed on the dremell is 5000 rpm however.

[Rifleman]

Bob ....there is a way to get your Dremel slower, and all you need is a dimmer, an outlet box, and an extension cord......I made a speed control which will allow much slower speed on the dremel even if it has its own control......just wire the outlet box downstream of the dimmer and bring in power with an extension cord....works like a charm.....just remember that the contacts in the dimmer are not rated too high, so you can't use it for high current use...... its fine for a dimmer....will post a shot of mine later on........
....as for speed on this....if you spin the tool too fast you will have trouble controlling the rate of feed.....the foam may grab and then tear... we found by trial and error, how slow you need to go.....just make sure you feed into the foam slowly....very slowly......

[J Morgan]

Rifleman,
So how did that SE-5 fly?

[Rifleman]

Well, " J " other than the dutch roll, and a necessary thrustline change in the works.....its soooo slow, even I was surprised....have some inflight shots but will wait to use my camera to take some more, as the ones I have weren't all that good.....I have an F1.8 lens and don't need to use the flash.

[billystiltner]

rifleman that prop looks very big. could you give us some specs on the prop -dia,pitch,width,weight,form dia/angle? i guess the bigger the slower it will turn and thus the longer it will fly. i have seen pictures a peanut or pistachio with a large chord prop like that. i wonder what the limit is on blade width.

[Rifleman]

I wish I had a way to post some vids on here, but the file sizes are too large and I don't have any server space that I know of where I can leave them for download.....I got two good videos last night (Fri) of the SE-5 in flight.....doing a good honest minute. I know its not much, but its my first bi-plane and I feel ok with it. It was only to be a sport model anyway, so time is not of the utmost, although I'm sure there is more duration in a new prop.

I do have ICQ and can transfer to anyone who is interested if you want to get in touch with me on there
135256798

[moon]

Hi Rifleman
Your tutorial on building a No-cal has inspired me to give it a go.
I have a few questions however, I was wondering if you could shed some light on.

It appears that the ribs are cut from a template. What kind of airfoil is that?

How do you tissue cover a no-cal? pre-shrink and dope? Krylon?

And finally, I have seen balsa tubes used as motor sticks. What is the advantage?

BTW, I love the hook you bent for the rubber...But that's another tutorial!

Thanks in advance for any help in this matter.
Moon

[moon]

Bump