Background........

I've finally begun to build a 3mm coro Sopwith Camel. Firstly i'll post some pics of the plane i'm copying. It was designed by a mate (Bernard Gonsalves) a fellow hang glider pilot who will be refered to as Speedy from now on . I think you'll agree it's a awesome little design. I will post the plans a litttle later in the build. Just for a little history, speedy's Camel is the third of his designs. He first built a Fokker Tri all in red coreflute, it looked very cool, he then built a neiport then the Camel. The build process evolved to the point where the Camel was the perfect compromise between weight and strength. These little babies are incredibly strong, so mock up dogfights will be no problem, most big impacts can be fixed at the field or backyard with a bottle of zap. All of Speedys WW1 aircraft have been powered by a GWS geared 400 running on 7cell 600mh Nicd, maybe the triplane was direct drive. Performance with this setup is ample. Materials used are 3mm coreflute/correx/whatever the hell they call it in your world, Zap or equivalent ca, Zap Blaster/accelerator and lite ply. Another product used is slightly expanded plastic, it's used by sign writers and comes in a range of thicknesses, i'll try and find the trade name for this product, it is very lite and very strong, it's used to form the bulkheads, ribs and other bits and pieces. Speedy has used piano wire for the under carriage. Speedys camel is only rudder elevator, hence the not so scale dihedral in both wings.

My design........

I am going to fit my Camel with a Typhoon Micro 6 brushless outrunner , here's the rcgroups thread on this motor ----> http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...5&pagenumber=1
I'm also gonna use a 2s2p 1200 Etec Lipo to power it. i'm also gonna fit ailerons and use carbon fibre for the undercarriage, wheels, wing spars/strurs and engine mount. I am doing this to mainly save some weight and also 'cause it will look cool. Well here's the first photo... enjoy :O)

Here are my templates for the Camel

And my cut out coro camel

Here are my ribs cut out of 2mm lightly expanded palstic.
FYI - if you live in Brisbane Oz - Go to Brisbane Flute Supplies at Pentex St Salisbury and dig around in their industrial bin, they don't mind. I have enuff 3mm coro and the plastic stuff to build 200 Camel's. They just throw the stuff away :O) Just can't be real picky about the colours.
A note on the ribs - They are only a rough guid and will need to be trimmed to ensure a nice fit.....

First job is to cut the flutes along the wing to allow the coro to bend with the ribs. This is easily done by neatly cutting in the middle of the hollow of the flutes. I have made a tool out of acrylic which is used to squash the cut flutes into the hollow, this allows the wing to bend along the rib.

Here's another to show you what I mean

Instead of using ply as the main wing spar I will be using a carbon fibre arrow shaft. The top wing has no dihedral just like the real thing, so a straight piece of carbon is only required. The main spar doesn't run the full length of the wing. As you can see I taped 4 of the ribs together an drilled a hole thru them the same diameter as the arrow shaft.

The coreflute will need to be sanded to allow the ca to bond. Some guys use a primer for this job

Here is the completed top wing, note the outer ribs have been cut shorter for my ailerons, leave these full length if going rudder/elevator.

And another more detailed shot showing the spar and wing join using some scrap 2mm coro. This isn't neccesary if you use a single piece of coro, however if building only rudder elvator a 2 piece wing is needed. I didn't have any black coro big enuff to make the top wing in one piece

Here's a shot of Speedys spar setup in case you wanna go that way

The same way we cut the flutes for the wing to bend we'll need to do the same for the fuse. here you can see how i've cut them, this allows the turtle decking on top of the fuse to be nicely rounded. The top of the turtle deck has been taped on the other side

another

Here's a shot of the fuse joined with a strip of 2mm coro and the front bulkhead fitted, I have used a piece of the plastic stuff in the 4mm thickness. Not bad for 1/2 hour of work ..... Coro rocks

An inside shot