Here is the final version of my new bipe which flys really well now, using the radio from a ‘Chariot’, bit car. It’s 18” span and weighs 11.2 grams. The only mods iv’e done are to increase the RX aerial length and double the transmitter aerial length. No mosfet has been fitted as the model is quite spritely. Its great fun practising ‘touch and goes’ on a picnic table, or the roof of a car. It will land with hardly any forward speed, if a blipping motor technique is used and it sort of parachutes down.
It’s mainly made of traditional building materials. The wings are removable for transport and for tweaking of the incidence angles. I have used dried grass for the plug in and variable pitch and diameter prop blade tubes, also the wheel bearings and the plug in tailplane tubes.
It would probably fly without the bottom wing, but I would guess it would need some motor downthrust to fly properly.
Recently the motor (from a chariot car) started to loose power so I replaced it with a, 4.5 ohm one. I happened to be checking the motor I had taken out and found the pinion gear was slipping on the shaft. So I glued it back on again and and put the original motor back in the model again.

The idea behind building a biplane was to have more wing area and reduce the wing loading over an earlier monoplane bit plane, but I am not sure if the biplane flys any better, because I have read that 15% or so, of an aeroplanes drag is produced by the wing tips, and a biplane has two sets of tips!. I havn’t been able to directly compare the two types of plane, because the motor/radio combination used in the ‘Chariot car’, set up produces considerably more power than other types of ‘Bit car’ radios that I have used.

Here are some plans for those interested, which includes much more information and plenty of hints and tips on construction.

The other Graham

I'm not sure what's happened with the pictures? There is only an icon. They are jpg's the same as I normlly use.

Sorted, Seems OK now.

Here is the thread for my first bit plane. It's a 26" span monoplane (Moth) and plan:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117583

More pictures

Sweet little plane Graham. Well done!

Magnificent!!! Might try one when i actually get some free time. Thanks for this goody!

thx buddy for the pictures because without them I couldnt fix my reciever which the cords were mixed up so I ended up resoldering the way your setup is and it worked. thanks a million.

Isaac

Nice The close up pictures are sure a good teacher. I've got a way to go to.

Me Likes!
How do you steer it?

Cypher,
It's steered by an actuator mounted remotely from the rudder placed just behind the wing, and connected to the rudder by invisible thread, (as used in dressmaking). It's barely visible in the first photograph. The thread to the rudder can be just seen in the close up photo of the rudder. The plans make it much clearer how all this is set up.

The other Graham

Graham

That is one of the prettiest stick planes I have ever seen.
It is a good weight too. I bet it flies really slow.
Thanks for sharing and posting plans.

Billy

Graham, very nice model. Would you say it can be comfortably flown in a 15'x15' room?

Michael

Michael,
nice to see you are still posting.
My home made actuator doesn't centre very well (no centring magnet) so it tends to turn tighter to the right than to the left. I would say it turns in about 15' circles to the right and wider circles to the left. With perhaps a bit more dihedral and a better actuator I think it could be made to turn a lot tighter

The other Graham

Thats a very nice plane indeed. Thanks for sharing your plans so freely. I think i'll dig up one of my old chariots and build one. I was also thinking that you could probably make on heck of a rogallo wing out of these also.


Greg

are u useing the original steering motor for steering or did u use an actuator? if u used the motor id love to see a picture of how u riged it

thanks,
the Ari from the OC

Ari, you should consider reading the posts before asking questions:

Originally Posted by Graham Smith

My home made actuator doesn't centre very well (no centring magnet) so it tends to turn tighter to the right than to the left.

Michael