Gloster Meteor 10th Scale

[fuelsguy]

Hi All,
This is the start of a build on a Gloster Meteor Mk 3 at 10th scale or 52 inch wingspan.
The plane is finished and it flies!
I photographed most of the build of the interesting bits and this thread will serve to show how I did things.
Some specs:
Wingspan 51.6 inches
Flying weight 50 Oz
Propulsion: two Hyperflow EDF units
Motors Electrifly Ammo 24-45-3790
Batteries 2 2100 3s lipo each feeding one motor, I plan to try 4S 2100 sometime soon.
Each motor is pulling about 200 watts on 3S.
Bungee launch
The main "challenge" for this was to build the model so the small Hyperflow units could power it through scale inlets and nozzles rather than going to larger than scale nacelles that show up on a lot of EDF models.
I hope to get photos of the model in flight this week sometime now the Seattle weather is cooperating.
Ivor

[tallyho]

Hi Ivor,

Very neat. Quite probably my favourite eary jet. I wish I had the skill to make one from scratch. I guess I'll have to wait for PN designs to produce their kit, if it ever happens.

Matthew

[AirX]

Fuelsguy,

Nice work. I love the 50's and 60's era aircraft.

Cheers,
Eric B.

[fuelsguy]

Finally we have some nice weather so this thread is on hold for a few days.
Here is the first shot of the build. I'll fill in on the spar and nacelle construction in the next few posts.
Ivor

[stacker]

fuelsguy,
Wow! super job on a tough subject. She sure looks sweet.

Cheers--Stacker

[fuelsguy]

well, Seattle weather cooperated at last.
Ivor

[Pippin]

..great plane! Grat job!
I guess it is the F3: V1-killa.
Love this bird.

[stacker]

Super!!

Great in flight pictures. Looks like the real plane in flight.

You need to make a scale V1 to chase.

Again, great job---Stacker

[fuelsguy]

Thanks for the praise, I'm really pleased it flies nicely.

I did sketch up a V1 for it to chase but it's small at 10th scale, so I didn't pursue it. I suppose I could hang a V1 off the wingtip so it looked correct.
Ivor

[Thomas Nelson]

I've always admired your stuff, Ivor. Great looking, scale-sized nacelles. Look at those tiny exhausts!

tn

[glenn7e]

A real beauty Ivor,looks so natural in the air.
Glenn

[J Morgan]

Another great job Ivor!

J

[jhspring]

Ivor, it looks lovely. This one has been on my "to do" list for a long time. Do you have pictures of how you managed the main spar carry through? Having the engine nacelles smack in the middle of the wing has always been problematic when considering EDF, which is probably why most folks went pusher.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Hans-Joachim]

She looks wonderful in the air and on the ground, Ivor!!

HJ

[mtflyr]

Ivor,

Awesome! Love it but those wings on the Gloster are fatties :D

Next on my list too.

Pete

[fuelsguy]

Fatties?
I couldn't find the real airfoils, only cryptic references, so I had to pick something from the period of the design.
ivor

[fuelsguy]

To continue the build, here is a drawing of the nacelle design.
The central structure is a 1/2" doughnut of pink foam sandwiched between two 1/32" ply doughnuts. The Wing Spar is 1/2" wide and is sandwiched between the two ply doughnuts to create a banjo frame.The center hole is sized to take the EDF unit but to stop it at the first ridge on the outer ring of the EDF. This locates the EDF and takes thrust loads.
The rest is pink foam turned to the outer shape of the nacelle. More on this later.
The inlet and exhaust ducts are 56mm rocket tubes glued into the pink foam sections. The front section has a 1/4" balsa front carved/sanded to give a nice smooth inlet. The exhaust section is positioned to line up with the EDF but with a space to allow EDF removal. The gap is filled with a section of tubing cut lengthwise to fit over the 56 mm tube, so it can slide along the tube to allow EDF access and then slide forward to provide a smooth flow duct. The nozzle is a piece of tube cut and re-sized to the correct diameter, with a section of pink foam to smooth the transition between diameters.
A 90 degree wedge of pink foam is cut from the aft section of the nacelle to allow access to the EDF. Holes cut in the foam allow the motor wires and the aileron servo wires to get into the inboard wing section.
Hope all this makes sense. It does provide a good way of building any EDF nacelle/fuselage.
Ivor

[fuelsguy]

Continuing the build:
The wing spar is a simple I beam made up of a 1/32" end grain balsa web sandwiched between two 6mm depron plates with 1/16" hardwood cap strips as the I beam top and bottom.The balsa is relatively flimsy and hard to glue to the flanges, the Depron provides a way of stiffening the balsa for handling and gluing the cap strips in place. They also make it easy to glue the ribs to the spar. You could reverse the build and glue two sheets of end grain balsa to the two layers of 6mm depron and then glue the caps on to give a box structure which would increase torsional stiffness for a small weight increase. I'll try that on my next build.
I developed a technique for building the wing by cutting a foam bed to the outside mold line, gluing the ribs to the spar then laying a piece of 3mm depron wing skin in the bed and gluing the spar and ribs to the skin on the bed. This keeps the wing shape aligned correctly. I showed this in my Ki-61 Tony build.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=756191
I didn't get a photo of the Meteor wing but here is the Ki-61 spar with the LE ribs attached. The LE skin is bent to a smooth shape to drape over the ribs by heating it over a hot air gun. If you are careful you can bend the 3mm depron to any radius you need down to a full 180 deg flat bend at the wing tip. The Meteor was a bit different as the nacelles were in the middle so I ended up doing four panels two inboard and two outboard sections. I built each section on a foam bed then glued them to the spar as needed.

More to follow,
Ivor

[fuelsguy]

In building the Meteor the nacelles needed to be cut from 2" thick pink foam to various diameters and tapers.
I built a simple "lathe" which was a long al. tube set in two bearings to which I could mount a "faceplate" with the foam attached.
The idea was to turn the al. shaft by hand while holding the hot wire cutter on the foam. This was just about OK, but the need to keep two hand holding the cutter steady and a third hand turning the foam was a bit difficult.
I then had the idea of driving the "lathe" with a motor. In my junk box was a gearbox-motor combination that I rescued from a dead printer.
Since the motor was about a speed 400 size, I connected the motor to an old brushed speed control and battery and used my servo tester to vary speed.
15 minutes later I had a powered lathe as shown in the photos.
With the addition of a couple of supports as "tool rests" I could now hot wire turn the nacelles.

An easy way of getting round parts at last.

Ivor

[J Morgan]

All very interesting and creative Ivor.

J

[fuelsguy]

Hi J,
I thought you would be interested in the idea.
Ivor

[fuelsguy]

Well, the fuselage is relatively simple, and follows the method developed by H-J, i.e. Make a cruciform frame from a side view and a plan view and then add lots of formers to provide the shape in 3-D. I use about a 4" spacing. I use a crude but effective way of getting weight out, I take a soldering iron and cut out areas from all the formers but still leave enough to support the fuselage until the skins are on.

I use 6mm depron for the main frame and formers, and cover in 3mm depron. I tape a piece of transparent plastic wrapped on the fuselage to draw the shape of the cover panel. Then I take off the plastic and lay it on a sheet of depron and cut around the shape, then glue it in place. For the first few panels I add narrow strips of 3mm depron over the frames so I get the panel shape at the outside shape of the fuselage. If you just use the former as a reference the panel will be smaller than needed.

The second photo gives a good view of the wing spar and the bracing for the dihedral break just outboard of the nacelle.

The tail feathers are flat plate 6mm depron, with balsa stiffeners along the hinge line on the fin and horizontal stab and the rudder and elevator LE. This gives a good structure for the hinges. The bullet was carved from balsa and cut to fit around all the depron.

The Canopy mold was carved from pink foam, given a liberal coating of spackle and sanded to a reasonable finish, not a John Morgan finish but OK, then I popped a canopy off the mold. The pilot came from my Ripmax Spitfire which died a sad ending, running into a power wire as I was trying to recover from a too slow launch.

Battery cooling is from the scoops around the gun ports, and the Speed controls are in the inboard wing section just aft of the spar. Cooling air comes from the EDF's as there is a small hole in the ducting where the motor wires exit the ducting. I leave this hole so there is some airflow and it follows the motor wires to the ESC's. I put a slot in the lower wing skin to help suck the air over the ESC's. You can see the slots in some of the flying shots.

Not much more to add to this, I built in finger holds in the under wing for launching as well as a bungee hook. I haven't tried a hand launch yet!.
I think the CG is a little too far aft right now so I plan on going to a two by 4S 2100 Lipo setup which will give more power and move the CG forward. I don't need the 4S power, but it's better than carrying lead.

More news when I fly again.

Ivor

[glenn7e]

Great work Ivor, how did you drive the elevators with the high tail
Glenn

[fuelsguy]

Hi Glenn,
High Elevators; nothing exotic I used a fairly thin push rod and curved it up from the fuselage to the elevator, slotting it in the fin until the last moment, ending up with the push rod at 45 deg. I put the control horn at 45 degrees to match. The only minor problem was making sure the horn had enough travel. I had the horn mounted on the cross piece joining the two elevator halves since the elevators start quite a long way out from the fin. I ended up with a small slot to give the horn room to move.
Seems to work.
If I had to do it over, I'd use wire to tie the two elevator halves together instead of hardwood to give more room for the fixed structure around the bullet.
The photo shows the installation and where I need to do a spot of touch-up work on the paint scheme on the bullet. The 616 Sqn. Rose emblem shows up nicely.

Ivor

[AirX]

Looking very good.

Eric B.