Finally the covering and some details to get a nice look. The decals are printed and applied as watertransfers.
The rigging and the build of the control wiring was also kind of tricky, but I hope it works the way I built it. Any way, I am ready for the maiden flight.
Wish me luck!...Continue Reading

After glueing all the ribs and wingroot I started the build with the wings. Upper and lower wing have some slight differences in construction, but basically the same. The lower wing is a bit shorter as it will be fixed to the fuselage. The upper wing will be fixed to a roof construction, wood and brasstubes.
Next step was the stabilizer. Very delicate and lightweight construction. I used some carbon rods instead of the bamboo skeewers provided with the kit.
The fuselage is also very lightweight, but astonishingly stable with this "crosswire" construction made of bamboo skeewers.
As the plane was intended to be motorized with a fuel engine, I had to reshape the front part for the electric drive. The engine is fake, made on my 3d printer.
Also the pilots were printed and then painted....Continue Reading

The build starts with the wings. First of all the very thin plywood ribs have to be topped with balsa stripes. Works best with the help of a jig to squeeze the glued parts together. However time consuming, 38 ribs to be glued.

Just bought a kit from the 70 ies on Ricardo (like ebay). Will be a lot of work, but I'm really looking forward to building this plane. It is a real builders model, lots of balsa, spruce and bamboo, and an incredible lot of hardware an wires.
Well, that's how it all starts.

Somehow I had to replace my green Ultimate, which disintegrated midair. So I was looking for some more stable stuff, but still lightweight and mainly Depron.
I very much liked the shape of the SBach 342. So I decided to build one with 1m wingspan with a profile wing. I had no plans with construction details, just a color scheme and the main measurings. Well here's what turned out. I have no idea wether it flies and how it flies, but for the (still winter and snowy) time it looks good in my hangar. I let you know about the result of the maiden flight
Hard to wait a few more weeks until the snow will disappear.

Finally today I could maiden fly the bird in light wind and sunshine. And it flew just like a real bird. After a few circles in the blue sky two other real birds showed up and were looking after the big intruder. No attack, just peaceful get together in the air. What a wonderful feeling.
Unfortunately no video

It was a holiday week and the forecast was bad. I decided to dig in the download plans and found a plan on the RCBirdz website. As I crashed or rather desintegrated my Ultimate (earlier posted in this blog) in midair due to high g load, I had an engine, a speed controller and some servos left. Depron is always in stock.
The Axi 1200 KVA is quite strong, so I blew up the plan of the Eagle from 37.75" wing span to 49" or 125 cm, which is just the maximum you can get out of a Depron sheet. To stiffen the wing I put a 6x1 mm carbon rod and laminated some glassfibers between the two layers of the KFM Profile. I also laminated the nose with some fibre as the carbon engine mount proved to be too prone to vibrations. The rest is basically according the plan. CG is very sensitive as all the heavy parts are very close to the CG but easily adjusted with the position of the Lipo.
It is still raining, and I can't wait to fly the bird and to mess up with all the crows in my neighbourhood ;-))...Continue Reading

Found time again to build some funny stuff. Its carneval time in Switzerland and I just finished this flying witch on time. Maidenflight was successfully completed yesterday, and today I finished the paintjob. It flies great by the way with a delta mix in the elevons and a rudder, all in the broom.
Thanks to Tom Schunk and his downloadable plan (FMT downloads).
However I modified the plan to a bigger size to carry a bigger motor and a bigger Lipo 3S/1200

I just maiden flew my SWISS DART today on beautiful and calm lake of Zürich.
Actually I intended to do some highspeed gliding on the ski first, but there was a little wave and hopp she got airborne. Well, therefore I continued and flew a few circuits. The CG seemed to be perfectly balanced but response to the elevator was a bit too strong. For the second flight I just added some expo (40%) on the elevator and she behaved very smoothly thereafter. Quick subsequent rolls however always ended in some murky manouver, most probably caused by the thrust vector. Alltogether she is fun to fly, and I hope we will have a lot of fun on the lake together.

And there she sits on the water (even after the maiden flight

Just finished another project today. Forgot to take pictures during the construction. Painting similar to the "Slow ride" from Aerofly SIM. I just liked it.
Plans are available on http://www.amjd.ch.
Website is in french. Basically just the drawings of the depron parts, no measures, no detailed construction hints. So I had to use a little bit of invention myself to finish it properly. Weight is 450 gr. Powered by AXI gold 1200 KV on a 1000 3S Lipo.

A big " Thank you" to Vleisie.
I adapted somehow his seadart plane and created my SWISS DART.
I used Balsa for the wing leading edge, integrated the pushrods for the elevons into the wing and used a different engine mount. I also filled the lower aft part of the fuselage with a boat shape.Driven by a 2000 KV AXI gold on a 3s 1800 Lipo.
Some pictures with the details before and after the paint job.
Isn't she a beauty?

Pictures are taken before the maiden flight: