The fleetwing is underway,took some time and the dividers and drew it up rather than take a chance on staples getting it right.The fuse sides will be 3/16" sheet with 1/16" ply doublers to the back of the wing with the rear frameing from 1/4" sq basswood and the rear turtle deck from 3/32x3/16" bass stringers with 1/8 balsa formers.The cowl will be 1/2" sheet glued up and the front deck will be planked with 3/16" sheet to ease cutting the battery hatch from it.The wing will have 1/16" ribs with the same for the Dbox sheeting with 1/4"sq bass spars and a few ply ribs to hold the gear blocks.The main gear has been moved 1" forward to take some of the load off the nose wheel and a tail skid will be fitted.Power will be an Eflite 32 outrunner fitted with a 13x8" prop and as many 2100ma 3 cell thunderpower packs in parallel as it takes to get the the C/G right.Time to cut some wood!

Subscribed Rab, will be following with interest! Enjoy!

ditto!
sparks

Rab - not sure if you saw my previous post, but if you would like scans of a couple of old Fleetwing reviews from RCM&E and RM just PM me your e-mail and I can send pdf attachments as they are too big to post here. I always find these interesting to read.

Good start, look forward to the build. The wood sizes you have detailed sound "adequate"

Ray

Ray-as soon as I get my Email sorted out so it stops spaming people at will I'll send it off to you.I drew the stab ribs this morning and started laminating some former stock for the fuse.I need to set up the table saw tonight and runup some landing gear blocks.

Got the gear blocks made and now need to clean the shop again before moveing on.The stab ribs profile out looking funny because the stab spar is parallel to the t/e and this moves the thick part of the airfoil to an odd location,some re work seems in order.

The stab is built,rather than ribs I went with the over/under capstrip system and it came out fine with the curves all nice and even.Weight is 1.3oz,not bad for a 25" span with a 6 " root chord.Next up is the fin/rudder,the fin will be built up from 3/8"x3/4" stock and the rudder from 3/8" sheet with some holes to lighten it up.This thing has a short nose and a rather long tail so I need to watch the weight back here.

Very nice Rab - and light too.

Nice work Rab.

Nice!

Thanks guys,some work is done on the fin/rudder but no photos yet.I had to do a lot of digging in the scrap bin to find 3/8" stock for the l/e and t/e of the fin and rudder that was hard enough.The rudder is built over a 1/32" ply core with lots of holes cut out,I thought I should stiffen the rudder up as I made it about 1 1/2" wider than Dave had it as it looked a bit small to get good knife edge flight.Fin and rudder weigh about the same as the stab at this point but are still in slab form waiting for sanding.

Knife edge flight! The only knife edge flying that I do is the into the butter tub then onto the hot fresh toast

Any flight I do is on a knife edge whether I crash or not!!!*

*model flight, I hasten to add!

Tail is done and the fuse sides started.Knife edge is with the wing more or less 90 deg to the ground-in my case most of the time less.The tomtitx3 will do a nice knife edge circle about 150' around,everybody thinks I plan it but all I need to do is keep the nose level with rudder after rolling it 90 and it just comes on around nice as can be,if the wind is up then I get an oval.

Good progress so far Rab - maybe you won't need a lock-in on this one!