I am a real nuby to EDF and although I have put together and flown an F35 and Sky Ray with 64mm fans, have built a bandit for 55mm fans, have the construction done on a 17" bandit for 30mm fan,and started a Cougar for a 30mm fan, when I got the two fans, one is a GWS 30mm with a HobbyKing 1015 with a 10500 kv that produces 17 grams of thrust on 1 cell, the other is a HobbyKing 30mm with the 1230, 4500kv that procduces about 43 on two cells, someone said the 17 grams thrust wasn't useful, so I figured a test bed was needed. I drew this thing up to look somewhat like the piccolo that Fio flew at the end of Miyazaki's Porco Rosso. It has been through a couple of "that looks about right" changes and here are the working drawings and first article.

I may cut out a cockpit in the front that will run from about halfway down the fuselage back to the fan inlet.

I am thinking of just rudder and elevator, or whatever that is called when you have a "V" tail. I plan on two little carbon pushrods run through a couple of eyelets or small tubing attached to the tail boom in a couple of spots.

I am trying to get rid of all the white space on the pdf and can't get Illustrator 9 to just print what is in the print area to the pdf. ack!

Interesting little jet Len.

Here is the pdf in letter page size format - tiled.

Thank you Sir!

I didn't cut the wing at the shown cut marks, but added another piece the same size for the gull wing which makes the wing a bit longer.

The fan tube is not the right size on the drawing. It needs to be big enough to hold the fan (snugly).

The equipment is installed, I plan to use some fine carbon fiber for the pushrods which will go in next.

The second picture shows the new larger tail made from lighter 3mm depron.

At this point the cg is about a third back on the wing.

The carbon rods and linkage are in, not sure if there is enough travel. The plan was to run the carbon thru a couple of tubes tied to the tail boom, but it looked like too much binding so it is free and perhaps too flexable. Here is a shot of the linkage on the servo and one of the tail. The tail is not a good angle to see the linkage so I will redo it tomorrow. I first got it all together on the servo then stuck in the control horns but didn't glue them, then measured and bound the linkage to the control horns, then glued the horns. That way the lengths got fairly close without resorting to some sort of adjustment provision.

The fan maybe capable of putting out more than 17 grams of thrust on a single cell. I put the cell on a charger and it was still taking a charge when I called it a night and stopped it. It was down farther than I thought and the test wasn't run on a fresh charge.

looks great. porco rosso is the best move ever. Followed by castle in the sky followed by totoro. well all of his movies are GREAT!!! and his museum in Japan is out of this world.

I will be making porcos S21 and i will try to attempt on boss' airplane. and now prob this.

Thank you for posting.

Miyazaki obviously has a great love for aircraft, there is flying and aircraft in nearly every movie he made. My daughter fell in love with Kiki's delivery service and that led to watching all his movies. Porco Rosso is one of my favorites.

The control rods were flexing too much so a support was added. It is just a piece of carbon rod and a couple of split tubes so they could be put over the control rods. The slits were rotated so the epoxy would seal them and attach them to the support. The rod was epoxied on to the tail boom first. A little masking tape held the parts in position for the final little joining blob of epoxy.

The receiver was moved to the next compartment forward (the middle one) to help the ballance.

The rear of the bottom is flat and the front is two pieces attached in a slight "V" like a seaplane bottom.

The canopy was cut out and another will be laminated from 1/2" foam and shaped to fit. If I wanted to fly it now without a canopy, I could try it. It weighs 61 grams now, ready to fly, without a new canopy.

Nice little plane and Myazaky is fantastic, cool idea to make one from Porco that movie has a lot of strange flying machines. Looks like it's going to have a lot of power.

The 17gram thrust unit (with single cell) was used and there were doubts that nearly a 1 to 4 power to weight ratio was feasible. I tried a little test flight yesterday. It was probably a bit windy, but the first attempt rolled to the left and nosed in. Fortunately at this weight it didn't damage anything. The controls looked like they were a bit off and eyeballing the wing may have a slight warp. I gave it full right (still not enough control throw) and it flew straight, but would not hold altitude, it just looked like a nice glide.

Next I will up the power to two cells (which will require changing the esc) and drop the control rods from the top holes in the horns to the bottom.

I think a lighter build would have worked out ok and may try it later.

One thing I didn't mention above, when the slots in the fuselage were cut for the wings, a notch in the former was also cut for the wings to wedge into at the proper angle. There are three very small carbon whiskers (about 6mm long) in the wing gull joint, I am not sure it contributes much strength, but the carbon was in front of me and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

GWS glue {which is somewhat like UHU POR or Creative - I would call it contact cement, you put some on each piece, let it dry some and then put the pieces together) was used for most of the construction except the gull joints, the wing to fuselage joints, and a few spots noted above, which were 5 minute epoxy.

The wings are pretty much without dihedral at rest, but flex up a bit in flight.

When the modifications are in I will try to get the daugher to run the video capture.

Upped the battery to two cells. The ready to fly weight is now 81 grams. In spite of the wind a couple of test flights were attempted. The increased air blowing over the tail made it hyper responsive and it stood on one wing and then the other before impacting the earth. Second crash broke loose one wing and one side of the tail. I have learned a few things from this, one is that one cell is hard to make useful so as a minimum the Cougar will be outfitted for two cell operation. Another is that weight builds up fast.

I need another 30mm fan, one is in this thing, the other in a little Bandit which is nearing completion. The Cougar needs one.

I went for one of the new GWS 40mm fans and have another larger Cougar a little farther along than the first one for 30mm. That has my interest at this time so I will be awhile getting back to this one. Some of the planned improvements are new wings with some carbon stiffeners, I am thinking 1mm by 3mm in 3mm Depron (maybe in two places) for the new wings. Also some built in dihedrial instead of relying on wing flexing. Lighter construction all around using 3mm Depron instead of Bluecor.