Y'all still working on your Tiger Moth?

As you can tell, we haven't worked on the biplane with any real seriousness since we started the ghoul in the beginning of October.

Our progress thus far: I made a motor mount, installed it and installed the motor using zip ties. I've put the aileron servos in an unusual place midway between the top and bottom wing on the wing struts. I'm still sorting the ailerons out.
To install the bottom of the fuse, I was thinking of using glue but I used gorilla tape on the inside and extreme packing tape on the outside to save myself some work. I made struts of carbon fiber rods for the tail including an one within the coro flue to stiffing the tail surfaces.

Right now I'm working on attaching the fuse to the wings. I've got it measured out more or less and am figuring out how to make the connection strong. I may need to add something like a rib for the fuse to strengthen it and a bottom layer for the wing and just use rubber bands to keep things on.

Things are looking pretty light and the back section with the bottom attached is really strong too.

I think our ESC may be faulty, more to come on that.


There will be more progress in the next few weeks. I think this could be an FPV airplane in the distant future.

Cheers.

This is no longer a team effort as my girlfriend and I broke up. I'm going to finish the plane as a memorial to the relationship.

The wing joining system will work by sliding prop halves on the front of the wing into the fuse and the pulling the rest of the wing into place. Vertical prop halves fit through slots in the wing and will be pinned in at the bottom of the wing. Rubber bands will go around the wing's trailing edge and onto a dowel on the fulse.
Hopefully that will keep things in place and it wont break on a hard landing. It should keep things aligned nicely.

I looked into using hot glue with coro and tried it myself. It seems to be good enough and I'm using it for joining non-major parts together like face to face coro reinforcements. Hot glue is soo much faster than gorilla glue!

I reinforced the bottom of the fuse (not attached yet) in front of the wing for landing gear. I should be able to chop up some skiis I found in the REI dumpster. the laminate is coming off but the fronts are perfect!

Our speed control crapped out on us after the first flight on the cool ghoul. I just got a new one from HK in the mail.

I accidentally shorted out the 6 cell battery we had for the airplane and it's puffed up. I've seen worse but I'm not sure if using it is going to be all that great. I may have to get 4 2200mah batteries to harness together for a 22v 4400mah battery. I think my worse case scenario is that the battery starts on fire while I'm flying, melting a hold and melting the wires and speed control. I'm considering attaching the battery on the bottom outside the airplane and shielding the airplane with thick aluminum foil. What's the worse that could happen? (That is an actual question)

After looking at some of the old biplanes from the 20's that only have ailerons on the bottom wing, I'm considering doing the same myself. The servos as they are will require me to use four fairly heavy push rods and more carbon fiber for four ailerons. Does anyone see something majorly wrong with that idea?


-Paul

I did a little research on how the biplane would fly with just two ailerons and learned that full size Tiger Moths only have the bottom ailerons. This makes life easier for me. I'll be cutting off the current servos and adding them to the bottom wing. I think I'll put the ailerons closer to the center of the airplane to take advantage of the propwash. I want to just put a carbon fiber rod to stiffen it up. Hopefully that will be enough.

Glad to see your back on the build! To bad as far as the relationship goes.

So I spent hours upon hours tinkering and googling how to solve my ESC problem. it turns out I was just confused as you can program it using a standard controller, (who knew?). I guess that's one of the downsides to jumping headfirst into a hobby without an experienced buddy, there's so much to know.
Thank god for active forums like this to get a little help with things.
I now have an extra ESC but am ready to move forward.

I haven't decided on any hatch ideas that I liked so I'm just sealing up the bottom with the electronics set up already. I'm sure I'll never need to get to the elevator and rudder servos or receiver. . . yep, I'm sure I wont. .
My goal is to have the other ESC and bottom finished tonight.

If that ESC has a BEC (battery eliminator circuit) and you're planning on using that to power the servos, I'd reconsider.
ESC BECs have been known to fail if the current draw of the servos is relatively high (big, high-torque servos and large control surfaces). You're far better off using a separate Nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery pack to power the servos and receiver.

Originally Posted by Kevstra

Glad to see your back on the build! To bad as far as the relationship goes.

Thanks for the kind words Kevstra, It's good to have good stuff to do like this, especially right now.

Originally Posted by rockyabq

If that ESC has a BEC (battery eliminator circuit) and you're planning on using that to power the servos, I'd reconsider.
ESC BECs have been known to fail if the current draw of the servos is relatively high (big, high-torque servos and large control surfaces). You're far better off using a separate Nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery pack to power the servos and receiver.

Rockyabq,

Do you know if the ESC fries or that it wont supply enough power to the servos? If it's just that the servos wont have the umph needed when I'm on the motor hard that's something I'd just deal with at the moment.

i worked on the plane for another few hours tonight (til midnight). I made my goal to attach the bottom of the fuse. It was a bit tricky as it bends around the aerofoil shape where the wing connects. I had to make more cuts on the holes where the front connectors on the wing go into the fuse bottom but other than that it went pretty smoothly.

As I write this I realize I just sealed in the aileron servo extension that connects the servos to the receiver without putting it through the bottom. Oops. That'll be some time to fix.

I've also made some progress on the front of the airplane. I think I'm going to go the easy, ugly route and just make a cone and tape it in place.

As you can see the strings have become loose over the months of it sitting. The airplane sags a bit (see image) I'll be re-doing all the string as well as re-taping the leading edge connection of the wing ribs.
Next goals: Finish the front and make landing gear w/ skis.

I'd really like to have this bird up in the air before the snow melts.

Hopefully I'll have more progress tomorrow.

It's not a matter of "oomph" to the servos. If the BEC receives too much current draw from the servos, it can fail. If it does, that's zero voltage and you have no servo control whatsoever and no voltage to the receiver. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's catastrophic.

Originally Posted by rockyabq

It's not a matter of "oomph" to the servos. If the BEC receives too much current draw from the servos, it can fail. If it does, that's zero voltage and you have no servo control whatsoever and no voltage to the receiver. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's catastrophic.

As a newbie, I know I'm pushing my luck with alot of things I'm doing that I don't understand.
I think I'm going to try to wing it as is supposedly this ESC has a decent BEC in it.

HK talks up the BEC and so does a reviewer. (I know, HK's sites aren't always legit, I'm still crossing my fingers I don't burn it up.)

-Paul

My progress for today:

Fishing the aileron servo extension wire from the fuse, bending landing gear wire, cutting skis and making a tail skid.
Hopefully I'll have the landing gear installed, the nose finished and be working on re-doing the rigging before tomorrow night is over.
The idea of this thing being finished is still foreign to me after all these months of impossibly slow going. Hopefully that will change soon enough.

Looking good!

How does the CG feel?

Also, how does the tail skid function? Will it fill with snow?

Originally Posted by Kevstra

Looking good!

How does the CG feel?

Also, how does the tail skid function? Will it fill with snow?

Hey. I realized before I went to bed that I put the wrong side of the vitamin container on for the tail skid. Ooops. I added the other (correct) side on top with packing tape and I'm going to pretend (to offline people) that that's how I meant to do it as it has more ground clearance now. It has no ability to change the direction of the plane, it only serves to protect the rudder/ elevator.

The CG with the the little 6cell battery is about perfect, it's a little less than 1/3 back from the on the bottom and 1/3 back on the top wing.
I might add more batteries later on which will be a problem as I made the nose long so it would balance without ballast.

Looks good so far .