Hi everybody,
here is my first thread. Since I joined RC Group I've learned something more than I knew because of modellers shared their experience so why shouldn't occur again with my own experience, so let's go on.

When I fall in love with a plane sooner or later I got to build one, this time is the turn of CL415. I'm a scratch builder mainly using balsa, plywood and styrene foam, this time, after having built three depron jets a F15 and a F18 thanks to Steve and a SU27 thanks to Thomas I accepted tha challenge to bulid a 50" CL415 entirely made out of depron ( except for the wing spar).

Once obtained a good three view and imported within autocad I designed formers, ribs and all other templated in order to start cut the depron.

Started with fuselage where the formers, floor and roof are 6 mm thick while the keel and sides are 3mm thick.

more pictures

sorry here are the pics

main undercarriage attched

front nose and roof

cabin almost completed, yet to be sanded with 300 grit sand paper.

Ciao
Francesco

thats cool man, look forward to seeing it finished.

Grande !
ehemmm,... great ! My most loved airplane !
It's just on my drawing board.

Antonio

PS. Look at PM

Looks very good , go on !!!

Greetings from vienna

Rudi

Yes, more please!

Hi
I have some spare time to post the remaining pctures up to now.
Back portion of the keel completed with 3mm depron.

Prior to cover the remaining part of the keel the nose wheel and its servo have been put in place and the main wheels reinforced in order to avoid them moving during take off and landing.

That's all for today.
Ciao
Francesco

I have always liked this plane too. Your work and presentation are outstanding. Thanks for sharing. I hope plans will be available someday.

keep the pictures coming--great job!

walt

Brillante, assolutamente brillante

Ralph

Here I am
Thanks for encouragement, some more pictures are available.
The keel is completed, the front nose also completed, other details will be applied later on.

BobM1200 I drew a lot of autocad sketches to define outline dimensions templates etc etc, I don't know if it can be defined a plan but can help a lot in cutting depron. I can provide either a .DWG file to be opened with autocad or a .PDF. However as I was saying it is not a debugged plan ,it may occur that some component once cut has been sanded and sanded to make it to fit or had contour adjusted and this did not produce a drawing upgrading.

Ralph is your Italian delicious because you have Italian origin ( your family name should came from Italy) ?

Fuselage cabin with unfailing dust which sticks to the back of the windscreen as soon as it has been firmly glued in place.

Started with tail, after a long meditation on all moving tail or conventional elevator I opted for traditional elevator. Fin and rudder are formed by three layers of 6 mm depron. The inner layer has the channel necessary for the elevator servo lead and has been lightened. Once glued together leading and trailing edges has been formed to shape by using sharp blade and a lot,lot,lot of sanding.
I have to say that 18mm of thickness give a scale look to the tail eventhough the weight increasing will punish me when I'll have to balance.

As per vertical fin the elevator has been made by a inner 6 mm layer duly lightened and the upper and lower layers made of 3 mm.
The elevator has been divided into two pieces which will be hinged to the stabilator and coupled by a hardwood rod through the fin.

more pictures

Looking good nibbio!

Should you feel like sharing a set of plans I would love a set. I just took a 6 month contract with the Ministry of Natural Resources in Ontario. These puppies will be sitting out on the ramp all summer, and i will be dodgeing them regularly. I would love to build a model of one!

Dan

Started the best part of the plane, at least for me.
According to the three view and the scale choosen, wingspan is 150 cm. (60") not 50" as erroneously indicated in the thread title ( shoul I have to start a new thread??).
Maximum depron sheet dimension is 125 cm so I had to cut two strips 75 by 19 cm glued together.

Main spar is balsa 5 mm two strips 75 x 2,7 cm. joined and reinforced with two 1mm plywood strips CA glued. Once marked all the guide lines on the wing panel started glueing main spar, secondary spar ( where the ailerons are tape hinged), ribs and two full wingspan 6 mm depron strips on the front in order to be rounded to form leading edge.

Servo holes cut and motor wires layed down and brought within nacelles.

Nice Work!

That is so freakin awesome nibbo! This, too, is one of my favorite planes. What are plans for power?

Ailerons servo installed.
Next phase will be covering top wing with 3mm depron.
Ciao
Francesco

Hi flying4fun
Thanks for kind words, the power set up will be two GWS EPS 350 C (5,33:1) with 8x6 SF props. These motors with 8 Ni-Cd cell battery pack will give a ground thrust of not less than 650 g ( two of them). I already test one of these motors within the F18 and F15 and work beautifully.

The reason why 8 Ni-Cd instead Li-Po is beacause I have several packs and also 3S Li-Po seems to be too much voltage for such motors 2S not enough.

However a good management of the throttle stick could allow to use 3S Li-Po and have a very long flight time.

Ciao,
Francesco

DAF,
Let's keep this in English so I can follow this great thread.
Francesco,
Great job. This is going to be good!

J

Absolutely beautiful !! I'd call it a work of art !

First time I see a foam plane build like a balsa plane, so well done. I LOVED the pictures too.

Will be very interested to see the final result, with hopefully a nice video to watch.

Thanks for sharing !

Wow can't wait to see more!

eX

Hi John,
absolutely in English, I saw you started a thread on Macchi, I'll promptly give it a look as soon I'll post these pictures.
Some wing covering has been done and the wing put on the fuselage to see how she looks.
Not bad, I have to say that once the depron panel is curved simply scrubbing it on a sharp table egde and treated with UHU glue on both the panel and ribs, spar etc etc the attching procedure is very simple and by applying a gentle pressure the top covering remains firmly in place. It is important to properly cut the sheet and when attaching be sure to place it carefully where it has to go because it immediately sticks.

Patrick that's true, being a traditional modeller I simply followed my building know how only changing the raw material.

Ciao,
Francesco

Three more pictures before wing covering.

Beautifull!

You're doing a super job on this build Francesco, any idea what your weight is so far?

J

Hi guys, did you have a good week end?
we didn't so I've been working on CL415. First operation I did was cut ailerons. Before applying wing top covering I cut the lower surface then with piece of piano wire marked the top from the bottom and with the help of a ruler and sharp knife detached the ailerons.

Cut away another strip 1cm wide in order to bevel the aileron then tape hinged to the wing and verification it is properly working.

John I made a weight forecast in the range 850/900 g.( 30/32 oz.)

Once verified everything is working linked to the servo.

After ailerons was the turn of the supports for motor mounting within nacelles.
While curing with the help of two long sticks have been aligned and set at 1° negative for down thrust.

Central wing top cover cut to measure, glued and then sanded.

Ciao,
Francesco

Beautiful, just beautiful work Francesco. Our weekend wasn't good either, cool and very windy.

J

Originally Posted by J Morgan

Beautiful, just beautiful work Francesco. Our weekend wasn't good either, cool and very windy.

J

Same here in south France !

I find your wing profile very thick, what kind of profile are you using ?

Bye

Hi Eric,
basically is a "home made" profile in terms that looking at the three view in my hands and also observing pictures of the full size aeroplane the profile is very thick and short chord. I choosed then a RSG-34 / RSG-36 from S. Duranti's Profili archive which mostly matched the real one.

Ciao,
Francesco

MAN!...:eek" Really,really nice! I was thinking of trying something like this in blue fan fold.. This thread gives Me LOTS of ideas! Had to sign-on & watch! Bob

Hey Bob good idea, let me know , I haven't seen any FFF supplier here in Italy, it would be funny to play with that stuff.
Now let's continue.
Wing completed with winglet and other detail.
To secure the wing to the fuselage I create a groove in the front wing retaining block ( styrene foam block) where the front part of the wing hooks up; a balsa strip on the rear where two nuts for wing screws will be glued.

In order to improve the stiffness just under the wing I reinforced with a 6mm thick piece of depron cut to measure and glued on the inside walls of the fuselage.

Now covering top af nacelles after having glued on the motor support a square wood in order to screw the EPS 350 and wing securing system.
It seems to work however the first balancing attempt revealed what was my fear:
Tail heavy and battery pack to be fit almost in the nose, I have to think to a good solution.

Three more pictures of the Cl-415 almost completed.
Ciao,
Francesco

Great job Francesco!

J

i'm scratch building a wood version of this plane
alot more time consuming than the foam
do you have plans made up?
i'd like to build a foamie version too
with a foamie, i'd end up with 3 planes,
foam,the wood one in progress,and a large 1/4 scale gasoline powered

This is an amazing build. Keep us posted.

Do you have plans for your model? This is now on my "Next Plane to Build" list.

Thats good work, but you can always tell the balsa builders who are building with foam from the foam builders

hows that?
ribs?

Hi guys,
as far as the plans is concerned I have the drawing I made with Autocad in order to create templates to cut depron, however as I was saying previously, these drawings have not been upgraded when I had to sand a little bit more a piece of foam which didn't fit well once cut. I will make a PDF version of the .DWG file and will post it but remember it is not a plans.

Center of gravity.

I put the receiver and ESC inside, installed one motor ( second is on order), taped a 70 gr lemon within second nacelle in order to simulate the motor weight ans as expected the battery pack should be fitted just behind the nose wheel.
Looking at the pictures I have of the full size plane I noticed a wheel door just in the position where a battery box need to be fitted. So i cut a rectangle on the keel where a battery holder is glued.

I also added on the nose what shoul be a FLIR ( Forward Looking Infra Red system) so the junction of the four panels at the front nose is well hidden.

I wiil start painting.
Ciao,
Francesco

looks great
looking forward to the .....er.......plan/drawings

At this moment I can post the .PDF file cause I haven't seen in "Manage Attachments" any possibility to post a .DWG, should anyone can tell me how to do it I'll post it.
As far as the .PDF is concerned I simply trasformed the autocad drawing into a .pdf file which, I presume can be scaled up to reach the desired size ( I'm not familiar with this procedure ) and printed.

Hope this help !

Ciao,
Francesco

i noticed you scaled it to 8 1/2x 11 inch
do you have it full size?
i can tile print this pdf when full size

Wow, thnks for that. I think i'm gonna try my hand at this one. Up here in yellowknife there are a few of these around. Real pretty airplanes.
Cheers

Hi Derailed,
I really didn't know to have scaled it to 8 1/2 x 11 What did is simply open autocad file, copy and paste on a word page (.doc) an then transform into a .PDF.
Let me know how to do for a full size PDF, note that the autocad file is scaled 1:10 so when I plotted had to set the plotter at 10:1. I hope this is understandable.

Ciao,
Francesco

and now painting.
I used acrylic water based paint and a dear old brush, it is amazing how a very smooth surface treated with 300 grit sandpaper is esy to be painted by brush. You can cover a large area very quickly and the more the colour is clear the more you can not notice brush traces.
Here are some pictures

Ciao,
Francesco

more pictures

sorry here are the pictures

That paint will probably come off in water.

Really I don't know, I have to test on a scrap piece of depron, however it is not my intention to land on or take off from water. I also painted same way both Steve' jets (F18 and F15) and it seems that even with humid grass the paint didn't came off, but it may be different with water.
Thanks for the warning.

Ciao,
Francesco

here's the prototype planes
slight difference between yours and mine

http://photos.airliners.net/middle/1/1/4/795411.jpg
http://photos.airliners.net/middle/3/8/5/802583.jpg

Originally Posted by nibbio

Hi Derailed,
I really didn't know to have scaled it to 8 1/2 x 11 What did is simply open autocad file, copy and paste on a word page (.doc) an then transform into a .PDF.
Let me know how to do for a full size PDF, note that the autocad file is scaled 1:10 so when I plotted had to set the plotter at 10:1. I hope this is understandable.

Ciao,
Francesco

sounds like i need to multiply the size by 10?

I think so, however I gave .DWG file to a collegue of mine and he returned a list of .PDF files I'm going to post.
It seems that he had already scaled up the drawing but had the need to make different .pdf files for different portions of the enlarged drawing.
As far as your prototype pictures unfortunately I was not able to open, I only see two boxes with a red X inside.

Is anyone else able to see Derailed's pictures ? ( in case is a problem of my PC).

Ciao,
Francesco

thanks for the files
i changes the pics to links
you will be able to go to the site for the pics

i was able to take the first pdf file,convert to jpg,use my professional photo software and make bigger
saved as jpg,convert to pdf then tile print in larger size
lol

i saved both your files
they are very useful
thank you kindly

ya gotta love these canuck birds
lol

Not sure what is more amazing. This model or the fact that you've built a beautiful flying boat and your not dreaming of or intending to fly it off of a pond somewhere. I have floats on my Beaver and so far only landed on grass because there is no handy pond. Sure wish I had one!

I put floats on my Twinstar, after painting it with a similar paint. Take a can of Minwax Polycrylic and spray away. Seals it up nice, puts a little gloss to it, and so far has not shown any signs of paint run/bleed. This airplane has gotten plenty wet! It was upside down for 10 min after a wind gust tipped it over. Good luck with this. This is my new favorite plane on the ezone! I loaded the plans, and will attempt to build this soon. Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes. It's nice to have all these "fields" at my disposal. Georgeous plane. Can't wait for flight reports. BTW, what batteries will you use? I have two GWS350C (5:33 to 1) ready to go.

Originally Posted by Rocketman1092

That paint will probably come off in water.

That's why on my sea plane, I use humbrol enamel paint. This paint is have scale color and is water proof.

Bye

Hi evrybody.

Rocketman I left a piece of painted depron in water for a period of 30 minutes, the water had no paint traces however rubbing the surface with a cloth some paint residual came off.

Grejen unfortunately I leave very near the coast but to find a pond I should drive 100 km far away, however who knows, providing I'll put floats under the wings.

Clevis I spent long time at Minneapolis/St. Paul back in 1990 when my company had a joint venture with Honeywell and saw how many lakes you have over there ( and how many,many,many mosquitos) I'll try with 8 cell Ni-cd 600AE. Ground test I made with one EPS 350 and 8x4.3 SF prop gave a power consupmtion around 5A, so two of them should suck 10A full throttle for a flight duration of 4 minutes. I'll try also Li-Po, but I'm still making a bench-marking on them. This week end I will test accurately power consumption ,static thrust with 8x4.3 props and let you know better.

Eric thanks for the advice, humbrol enamel paint can be found everywhere, also at the model shop near to me.

Painting is continuing.

Closer view.

A couple of picture in sunlight and the all up weight of the model ( 860 gr). The only missing is the wing painting completion ; BTW the RC set up is not one of the lightest( old 9 channel Futaba RX / Jeti JES 50 ESC/ four HS55 servo).

Ciao,
Francesco

originally posted by Derailed
i changes the pics to links
you will be able to go to the site for the pics

Unfortunately when clicking on the site it start to open it but after half an hour is still searching.

Ciao,
Francesco

Francesco,
You've done a wonderful job. Good luck on the maiden. She sure is pretty!

J

Thanks John
coming from a master modeler like you the compliments gain in value.

Ciao,
Francesco

nibbio,
Is that about 30oz? Iv'e had pretty good luck with 9 Kan 1050s. Might give you a few more minutes of flight. Anxiously awaiting maiden. If you are ever back in MN, bring the plane. You can fill her up with insecticide, and help with our mosquito population

Hey gang,
The Canadair is completed, not maidened yet. This week end the weather is not good, I only had the possibility to take a small video under the only sun ray. The video because my son is on a trip with classroom and stolen the familiy digital camera so I took some snap shot from the video.

The quality of the pictures is not as good as coming from the digital camera.
I ground tested the model and it seems to have plenty of power. When holding her I gave full throttle and was quite jumping out from my hands. Static power consumption as predicted is 10 A and with 600mAh the flight time should be not less than 4 minutes, AUW 870 gr.

I hope to have maiden flight next week end since weather should be the same also tomorrow ( forecast confirms).

Ciao,
Francesco

I' trying to post the video I took but I'm not sure I'llbe able to do.

http://www.rcgroups.com/gallery/show...ll&si=Canadair

Ciao,
Francesco

Francesco,
Nice video, you forgot to give it up elevator!
And beautiful driveway I might add.
Hope your weather gets better, same problem here. Ready to fly the Macchi but still high winds here.

J

The weathers great here in New England. Perfect for the rocketry meet tomorrow .

Originally Posted by nibbio

I' trying to post the video I took but I'm not sure I'llbe able to do.

http://www.rcgroups.com/gallery/show...ll&si=Canadair

Ciao,
Francesco

Hi Francesco,

you did a great job !!! Congratulation !!! Thank you for the plan ! I am sure
sometime I will build it !

Greetings from vienna

Rudi

Hi everybody.

Finally I had today the time to maiden the Canadair.
Despite a strong wind I definitely had to fly and so I did. Preflight check, full throttle, a short run, let say 10 feet and I saw a beauty ,slow, scale take off. The plane gains altitude with authority and is able to maitain level flight with half throttle.

Frankly I had no possibility to accurately test all performances cause the wind which was really a little bit too much for a 60" model whose AUW is 30 oz.
It seems that I had to increase aileron movement but I'm not sure if wind affected the capability to turn to the right or it is right aileron, I'll check.

A friend of mine made a video from which I took some snap shots here attached. As soon as the video will be edited then I'll post it.

Ciao,
Francesco

more pictures

Also windy here in the nord side of the Alpes.

Great work ! Nice to see your Canair flying.

Bye

Superb

Wonderful! You're a braver man than I. 20 mph can be a little scary for maidens.
She really looks good in the air Francesco. Looking forward to the video.

Ciao,
J

superb !

It is realy refreshing to see very nice home build foamies.

Beauty!

Here I am back.
As usually I'm not sure if the video has been correctly posted. Below is listed the address given by gallery uploading procedure.

I had to shorten the video bacause even making a mpg1 with a low bit/rate it always ended with a video size more the 10Mb (gallery limit) so edited the video to have 1minutes and 20 seconds.

If you are able to see the video you can have the feeling about the wind strength.
Ciao,
Francesco

http://www.rcgroups.com/gallery/show...cat=506&page=1

Great job on this one! Ever since i've seen these guys flying around in france to fight fires i wanted one. Was thinking to build one a bit smaller for 2 S280 direct drives. I've got a dornier Wal, still haven't flown it properly, which has the 2 S280 direct drives.

Richard

-------------------
www.ricoj.rchomepage.com

Excellent work I would head for cover if I saw your plane flying overhead to avoid being drenched.

Francesco,
Great job, I could hear the wind in the video and could tell how the plane was fighting it! Glad you got it down alright.
You've done an amazing job with it now I hope you get a chance to enjoy it.

J

Thanks guys for your kind words.

Richard I don't see any problem with two S280 direct drive on a smaller model,let say 40" WS, in case let me know.

Don't worry Johnprov, I would surely drench you but just in case you were attacked by fire.

John I'll ask to my friend for another video, possibly without wind in order to show you how she really flies.
O.K. for "ciao" and "lasagna"(do you know what is it?) maybe continuing to converse by web you will learn more Italian words and I will know which is your first language (according to what your wife thinks).

Arrivederci,
Francesco

Francesco spends the extra time to write an article on his excellent work, on my request. I just posted it on http://plawner.net/

It is such a marvelous work that the more people see it, the better as it will inspire many to try to build such nice planes.


I specifically liked the "Balsa" type of building of this foamy Really special and nice !!!