Have decided to do nose mod to this fuse rather than build a whole new fuselage just yet. Took a stanley knife to the cockpit area and opened up a wedge to make the bottom of the nose come flat in line with the rest of the belly. Added thin wedges of foam to fill the gap and glued it back shut, will put a fibreglass bandage around the rhinoplasty tomorrow.

Now I remember why I love building with foam so much. You can bend and change things so quickly. Fantastic for trying new ideas and changing them as you go along.

While the glue dries on that, am cutting more foam to make the 'belly bulges'. Na, I can't keep calling them that, lets go with sponsons. Ok have started cutting out the sponsons. Bamboo edges for strength. The whole assembly will be covered in fibreglass cloth and WPU for more strength.

next time you can use balsa as the leading edge instead of sanding the foam, it will be much stronger.

Which leading edge do you mean? The sponsons have a bamboo LE, the wing has a 3mm carbon fibre strip in the LE. Do you mean the tail surfaces?

Originally Posted by WMD

It makes the whole plane look more like a big cargo transport than the nimble weapons platform I was aiming for. To be fair you did say Hercules at the beginning didn't you?

How about stub wings like the Apache attack heli? (for the real macho look)

Put bombs - rockets - cannons - drop tanks on 'em

Now you're talking my language. Lots of hardware hanging out on display. I'm not sure how to do that *and* have belly landings too. Visually, if not functionally, I'm hoping the sponsons that I'm doing now as a test will look like they could be either landing gear fairings or perhaps some kind of weapon mount.

I do like the idea of using the 6th channel to release bombs and/or fuel tanks from under the wings. That'd work.

Ok, sponsons are finished now. 3 layers of 6mm deprom to make the thickness, then a cosmetic sheeting of 3mm depron that forms the slope down from the top. Sanded and fibreglassed with WPU.

This makes the effective width of the fuselage now 90mm at the widest part of its footprint. Have just thought to myself, this would all have been rather simpler if I'd just built the whole fuse wider to start with. 90mm wide instead of 54mm. Doh.

I like the wing section. I have been playing with the idea of a similar section but haven't tried it yet. I certainly looks better than a flat sheet and is easy to bevel the LE to fit. Did it give a good rate of climb and a better glide engine off?

Looks kinda COOL Come to think of it the fuselage/canopy does look a bit like an apache

Where are you getting the glass cloth from? I can only find glass tissue around here

Cheers
Frank

The wing section is great. I'd say the glide with power off is twice as good as a flat section. This is first time I've done it exactly this way, but I'm sold on it now. Rate of climb is just down to the thrust available I'd say. Either way she goes vertical if you point her upwards and open the throttle.

The glasscloth I got a while back, mail order from here - http://balsamart.co.uk/store/index.p...&cPath=109_199 - it's in a bag I labelled as Flair 25gm=0.9oz - What's glass tissue like? is it lighter?

Ok, all done. Nose has been lowered, sponsons have added, prop rotation reversed. She's ready for more take-off trails now.

AUW has now gone up to 512g what with all that extra foam, glue and fibreglass. Mind you she flies so nicely I'm tempted to stick in the bigger battery and she if she stays up there all day. What I mean is I don't think weight is an issue. Yet.

Jackal_09_B - Have updated the Sketchup drawing, so here's the latest version. It now shows sponsons drawn at correct size and placement, shows flat belly and lower nose, also I have corrected the tail width now (12mm), and the drawing now shows scale thickness to all tail surfaces parts.

Also been thinking about a low-tech camera mount for shooting on-board video, using the Kyocera Finecam SL300R. It's just a simple cradle to help angle the lens down 3 degrees from horizontal, and some extra strong rubber bands. Best make sure the landings are smooth with this arrangement.

And here's the camera mount cradle made up from depron and strapped onto the wing with rubber bands. Seems pretty solid. This way the camera pretty much at CG location. Camera weighs 150g so that makes the total weight 662g now with this setup.

On board video - flight test number 1 here is a total 2min 10sec of twin engined pov video fun. How many trees in the way?



http://s896.photobucket.com/albums/a...Vid_test_1.flv

The next one will show me sticking her into one of them there trees.