Chris,

Another great find on the video front. Something cool to settle down in the man den later with some popcorn and soda and really check it out in the peace and quiet. Thanks.

Fred

Freddie,

Your craftsmanship is awesome! Your custom rotor is very cool! Its reminiscent of the old school 1950s ducted fan free flight models...but a lot smaller. I bet your cambered blades are pretty efficient too! Hopefully the thrust is enough to overcome the induced drag from the delta planform. With your light weight construction you should have no problem.

Originally Posted by Freddie B

Next the cockpit section using round template #1, and Template #2 which looks like a contoured rectangle. Weight between 0.3g - 0.4g. I left the webs a bit thicker on this section since it is frontal, skinny, and will take some landing loads.

Fred

Ive got a question . How do you line up your templates on the top and bottom of the foam so that everything is nice and square when cut ? especially with 2 completely different shapes .


Chris

Originally Posted by pdawg

Freddie,

Your craftsmanship is awesome! Your custom rotor is very cool! Its reminiscent of the old school 1950s ducted fan free flight models...but a lot smaller. I bet your cambered blades are pretty efficient too! Hopefully the thrust is enough to overcome the induced drag from the delta planform. With your light weight construction you should have no problem.

I thank you Bret, and I so hope you are right. I'm betting on the fact that it will. Only the Big Man knows for sure. If it works then we have something new to contimplate as we think of designs and builds!

Fred

Originally Posted by Wilfor

Ive got a question . How do you line up your templates on the top and bottom of the foam so that everything is nice and square when cut ? especially with 2 completely different shapes .


Chris

Hi Chris. If you go back and look at my templates, they were done in halves. In other words the Fuselage sections were only drawn as a half, so I scribed a crossed set of lines for the middle, then laid the pattern on one side, flipped it over for the other.

Now all I had to do was draw a line around the circumfrance of the foam, align the lines on the template (I used top and bottom lines) set the pins to hold, and cut.

If that does not make sense, re-post and I'll stage a photo to show what I mean. I'm sort of too wordy sometimes and it may be hard to follow my explinations.

Fred

Simple and makes perfect sense probably why i didnt clue into to it . I was thinking you had some machinist trick that you were keeping to yourself

Please Continue

Life is busy, so some catching up is in order. Can't stay up too much later so I'll try to get part of the progress done first.

Fan was placed into thrust/fan tube, and since it is slightly tapered, I sanded a paper thin piece of foam to help center the front of the shroud. A bit of silicone was used as glue. Finally the fan is installed and it shold be in to stay unless some day surgery is needed for repairs, or retirement of the airframe.

Fred

Time to cut out ailerons and hinge them. Note my hinges are 1/8" wide (3mm) using my favorite Mylar Drafting Velum material.

Fred

Hooked up RX and servos, tested them for Delta Wing mixing, and also needed to remove Micro JST connector from ESC to mount onto the Molex connector type Orange RX. Ready to get them into the wing and fuselage now.

Next layed out components on the airframe to pre-balance and see where everything will be located so that adding weight to balance should not be necessary.

Fred

Going with heatshrunk clear canopy. My best stuff long enough to cover my plug is the Trinity Brand, sub-C Cell stuff (Think RC Cars here). That is Trinity, not Turnigy.

So a small piece of foam was fashoned as I added some glass along the way. This part is so small and fragile that heat was affecting it without the glass and epoxy to protect it. Better now.

A conduit tube and some scrap foam was used to fill out the mass before applying heat. Shrunk product shown.

Fred

A bit of rough trimming, and a weigh in shows 0.4g. Ouch plastic is always heavy. I will be doing more trimming of this canopy before mounting so hope to shed some of that weight.

Fred


Well, when the smileys come out, it's time to go to bed............

Cool, I like the look of that metal fan. Really looks like a turbine.

Thanks. I like it also, but that isn't fair for my vote, as I'm the one that made it! LOL.... It does put out good power from my motor though.

Fred

As discussed, final trimming of the canopy saved weight, a whopping 0.1g, isn't that exciting. The black lines are just for trimming purposes and will be removed later.

What may be exciting is a small test I did today in the man cave, so more on that later.

Fred

So now we need to make cutouts for the servos in the wing. My orange 2g servos are a bit wider than my airfoil so I will center them. All electronics and mixing tested befor installation.

Next I routed the ESC wires, and also did a cutout into a duct so the ESC will get some cooling. The poor old LiPo will not have cooling, but at maximum of 8c discharge, on a 20c battery, I'll take my chances. This airfram is just too small for my electronics to have everything I might want.

Coming together quickly now.

Fred