My Durafly Skyraider will soon be carrying the American Standard ordinance.

Finished the gear and not completely happy on how it turned out. I didn't bother to vacuum bag them and free hand fiber-glassed it. Not too smooth. Finally, gave up and painted them and the aluminum paint just shows every blemish. Well, it's a foamy so I guess I should be overly critical, but man I must me rusty with the glassing by hand. Next on the list will be the Horizontal Tail.

AD-1 Skyraider (2 min 57 sec)

Second flight of my AD-1. Got the ailerons under control by dialing down my dual rates to 65% and upped the Expo to 15%. Still a little twitchy in the video, but the plane felt good. Overall, a great solid flyer with what seems are no bad habits except nosing over on grass. I am going to put Super Cub stock wheels on it as they are more round and half the weight for the same 2" size 3.5 grams.

Landing gear fairings are 90% done. Not really happy with the stock SR-10 gear angle, but for now I am just going to fly with it and see if it really matters.

Finished up the landing gear extensions and very close to finishing the fairings. I also am having second thoughts about my CG location and decided to not use the SR-10 Stinson prop adapter and instead go with a lighter one. I think the CG might be a little more aft then I calculated. For now, I won't mess with the down thrust angle as -3 could be -2 depending how accurate the incidence meter really is.

Norseman 2nd flight.wmv (2 min 23 sec)

Second flight and still driving me crazy with the diving like it's still nose heavy. I know the video says tail heavy but I meant nose heavy. Third flight I removed the 808 #16 camera from where it was to move it back, but the velcro wouldn't stick anymore hence no video of the third flight which went way better. CG looks good on the ground but in the air it still needs some up trim to fly level at full power. Now I think the motor has too much down thrust and the solution is to tilt it up with some washers. I'll put the incidence meter on it later to confirm the degree.

Here are the pictures I promised. Landing gear fairing and center section of wing. Stock SR-10 landing gear with a small 1.25" extension will make it scale.

Well I decided which paint scheme to use. I can't seem to get away from ambulance planes. The cowl will be challenging. A back up plan will be to make it the 4th fighter groups grocery getter which just has a red cowl, but same aluminum overall. This 320th group U-64s was the same group Glenn Miller went down in. I have almost finished the landing gear fairings and will post pics soon.

Well I maidened the Norseman today and good news is it flew, but was nose heavy. It took a lot of up elevator trim to correct from wanting to dive. I am using a 2200mah pack pushed all the way to the back of the battery tray and that is not enough. I guess I will have to start moving stuff inside to make it less nose heavy. With 2200 it is a little heavy. My friend Chris suggested that I use a 1300mah to dial the CG in and then mount the 2200 later. Not a bad idea.

After doing some research for a book for a friend of mine I came across this hidden gem of a plane. The Noorduyn Norseman. Made in Canada during the mid thirties it looked surprisingly like the Stinson SR 10 that was sitting on my bench. After crashing the Stinson on maiden I had to buy a new wing. After flying the Stinson I realized it had the glide ratio of a check mark and wasn't to fond of flying it. So I dropped my Super Cub experimental Fowler wing on top of the Stinson fuse and it was a near perfect match. I just cut out the aft section of the wing to accommodate the bevel in the Stinson fuselage and then salvaged all the wing mounting hardware out of my old crashed wing. Less then two hours later I had a new plane. I will maiden it this weekend and report back the results, but it should fly like a Cub, but be classic in its own unique way. There is a fantastic website for the Norseman athttp://www.norsemanhistory.ca The color schemes will blow you mind and this plane was used for both civilian and military. The U.S Army/Air Force bought many of these and called them U-64 as utility/transports. All that is left to make the conversion complete on the Norseman is to take off the wheel fairing, get a new cowl and change the horizontal stab to look more scale. Oh, and paint it. That will be really tough with all the choices.

Finished the L-5 leading edge slat. Now just need the weather to cooperate for a test flight. This plane currently has no flaps installed, but will flair out on landing like it does even without the slats. This could be very fun.

Cut out L-5 Stinson leading edge slats

K-76 Stella is back on track after a small Stinson detour one SR-10 and one L-5.

Finished my canopy conversion for my Stinson.This is an ambulance version. As you can see the canopy frame was not a complete conversion as I wanted to save some foam integrity in case of a mishap. Not much left to do except shorten the wing strut and add the leading edge slat. Callie did a good job on the graphics. Oh, and for all those people who think "Liaison Planes" are not warbirds read this http://http://www.americanheritage.c...over?page=show Five howitzers at your disposal is way more firepower then most planes had.

Almost done. You can't see it, but the plastic is already test fit in the last photo.

Decided that an airbrush was not going to do this plane justice so I got out the exacto and started to make the windows.

Test flew yesterday. Not perfect weather. Slightly gusty. Scared me that it started porpoising and I added all the down trim the radio would take. Flew pretty good after that. It really can flair out on landing. Just like a bird. No Flaps. I tried flying without the Dual rates on and it was extremely twitchy. With Dual rate on it behaved rather tame. This is basically a test bed for finishing techniques and flying characteristics for my Stella. No Fowler on this plane. Basically stock Super Cub innards and wing with the exception of the modified tail and ailerons. Stock DX4e transmitter too so none of my fancy expo and mixes. Came home and reduced the elevator throw significantly and finished off the landing gear to make it look more scale. The funny thing was that the elevator looked perfectly even with all the down trim from the radio. I could have sworn it was centered before the maiden flight.
I also ordered the graphics to copy the L-5 OY-1 at the Planes of Fame Museum.

Finally finished a project. I did this in two weeks. I have so many unfinished planes that I am braking my arm patting myself on the back for completing this. It's not perfect, but at least it's different and more importantly done.

Got really bored this weekend so I took my spare Super Cub fuselage and converted it to an L-5 Sentinel. Just used the projector to do a quick three view in the size I wanted and then knocked out most of it in four hours.

I improved my original design to get more extension on the flap. The solution struck me as I went back to the internet to due more research. I was going to go back to try to do a hybrid of vice Fowler flap, but this version is so simple I now look at my super cub wing and think my previous attempt was over engineered. This is the real deal and so so simple. What the picture doesn't show is the cam follower of the pivot point the gives the flap its side to side rigidity. I am going to order some small flange bearing to keep the resistance low. I also abandoned using cheap servos. MG65 is a must. My FS55 just can't handle even the slightest load in the flap retracted position. Final version will be carbon skinned.

Finished repairing my Cub after a reversed trim malfunction on my part. I went down to test fly and there was a huge crowd that was there to witness an 15' A-10 Warthog filled with paint that some guy from Aero Vironmental drone made to crash into a wall. Got it all on my new #808-16 camera. I also solved my Full Fowler Flap concept. I will post later, but it true Fowler and very simple and light.