First this is the first time I have ever done any thing like this on the computer. Thou I have been building all my life. ( with a short break to raise 5 children) So let me apologize for my mistakes in advance.

I thought I would like to build a C/L model converted to R/C (a park flyer but not 3D). Of all the plans I have looked at. The one I like best Is the RASCAL from May of 1957 Aeromodeller by R.G Moulton.

The first thing was to print out the plans at 150%. Because the oringal is to small for R/C equipment I have. The modify the plans for a brushless electric (maybe an E-Flite 300), battery, ESC, receiver and servos.

Because the C/L only uses vertical controls I need to add ailerons and rudder.

The vertical stabilizer appears a little small to me so I think I will enlarge it 25%.

This should be an interesting project - I built Ron Moulton's Rascal way back when it was first published, Frog 150 diesel powered, it was a nice little model. Lots of pretty control line stunt models out there that would make good electric R/C conversions, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. Good luck Trying and enjoy the build.

It seems appropriate to post this Rascal painting. Designer Ron was a lifelong friend (more than 50 years). One of the few things we disagreed about was that I try to remain totally traditional, whereas Ron updated his tastes and ideas with technical progress. I'm sure he would have loved this electric RC Rascal.
Last Christmas, the Raynes Park MAC Christmas card was this lovely painting by Mike Cummings, who kindly offered me the original watercolour, which I scanned for it to be permanently visible on my PC. If you look, you can see Ron, with his old Royal Enfield. I miss him.
Brian

Nice painting. I'd buy a print of it for my workshop.

My apogees for being away for so long. Right after the holidays my wife fall and cracked a vertebrae in her back. After getting her back on her feet, I had a stroke. So far it has not been a good year.

I did manage to get the foam version completed. As you see in the first picture I modified the plans to take a E-RC BL400 1200vrpm. Sorry, I do not have a CAD nor do I know how to use one. So I worked off the plans with paper, pencil and ruler. I decided to leave the top block C as the battery hatch cover. This met that I had to make a firewall to mount the motor to by coping f1 and f1a which I placed 1 ¼” from the front of the fuselage with 0 degrees offsets. And extend the tank shelf from the firewall to f1a for a battery shelf. F3 remained the same. I also enlarged the vertical stabilizer and rudder by 25%. The rest of the fuselage construction remained the same as shown on the prints.

For the wing ( sorry no pictures ) I made 4 ribs minus the trailing edge out of ½” blue foam. Then cut 4 sheets of Dollar Tree foam board for the skins and a 1” x 18” x ½” high density foam for the webbing and embedded a 1/8” diameter carbon fiber rod in it. Then using the fold over method made two wing panels. Then using high density foam made two wing tips. Wing panels were the glued to gather with 30 min. epoxy. The ailerons were then copied from the plans and made 4 from Dollar Tree foam board and doubled up to make them 3/8” thick, then hinged to wing panel using packing tape. Servo was mounted on the bottom of the wing and connected to the ailerons on the bottom of the wing.

The horizontal and vertical stabilizer was made according to the plans using foam board double thick and reinforced with carbon fiber rods. A little paint and she is ready for testing.

Using three 8 gram servos, Spektrum Radio and receiver, E-RC BL400 1200vrpm and a Castle 36 amp esc.


Trying to attach pictures and videos but keep getting error code 500???????
Will try again later

Good to see you back with this project Trying, and so sorry to hear about your rotten start to the year, hopefully things will get better from here.

The system 500 upload problem was system wide, I experienced it last night but it is OK now, please do try again to post the pictures, I would love to see them.

Best wishes

Here are the pictures of the first test.

Bummer! Was it the problem with the receiver elevator function or did this happen in the crash? If it wasn't this then I would suggest that your balance point was too far aft - sounds like classic nose light behaviour. Remember the old adage - "nose heavy aeroplanes don't fly so well - tail heavy ones fly ONCE" Hope you can fix it and try again, with that short tail moment and relatively small tail plane I would want the CG to be at 20 - 25% of the wing chord, definitely no further back.

no balance point was right on on the glide test. but I had been having an intermient problem with the reciever elev. fuction in the preflight but I thought I had fixed the problem.

Maiden Flight started out well, She flies!! But due to my inability’s ended disasters. My fault, I tried to so and dropped the transmitter. Little control of left hand yet. So now I can start on my Wood and Tissue version but next time I will find a real pilot for the flight test.

trying to upload a video but its in AVI?? How do I get it on the thread??

Started with the wings

Fuselage together

That looks great, Ron Moulton would be pleased.