Looks good!

Did you mean to glue the nose block in upside down?

Bunnies on a Plane? Looks great so far TJ... It seems the weather is cooperating with your build also. My backyard is so flooded, I couldn't get to my shop if I felt like building today!



Edit: darn near impossible to post an image in the response while typing on an iPad.

Originally Posted by DT56

Did you mean to glue the nose block in upside down?

No Skegs on my airplanes!

Lucky for me Hoss, I have two spare rooms in my apartment now. One for building and one for storing. Eventually I'll switch them around and use the bigger of the two for building. Sunday is my normal flying day, I spend almost all day at our field, but I think it'll be a wash today .

Here's one of those cases where if I had it to do over again, I would do it differently.

The Rudder and Elevator Pushrods come in two pieces and need to be joined using a solder coupler. What I should have done was to join these prior to assembling the Formers into the Fuselage sides and installed them as I was glueing up the Fuse. The reason being, the pass-through holes in the Formers aren't large enough for the solder coupler to pass, and now I have to solder them inside the fuselage. It can be done, but it would have been much easier to do outside of the Fuselage.

The pushrod exits were a little tight also so I needed to sand them a bit for a smooth operation without friction.

I also installed the Servo Tray and glued it in from the bottom side using wood glue.

The tops and bottoms of the fuse will be done at a later point when I get these pushrods finished. Then I'll probably turn my attention to the wings and get started on those .

Hey TJ,

Don't know if you know or not but if this bird is like the OlyIII, the push rods cross near the exit. I know there was someone that didn't realize this and had some problems. Looks great, enjoying your build.

Cheers,

Don

Yeah, thanks Don. I don't know how that could be missed really. If you don't cross them, then you have to bend them, and I don't bend unless I have to.

I'm considering drilling out lightening holes in the Horizontal and possibly the Vertical Stabilizers. It has an asthetic appeal to me, and some would say a benefit of weight savings, though I'm not sure it really amounts to anything considering the featherlite contest grade balsa used in these parts.

Thoughts?

While the weight savings in the tail won't be a lot, it should be kept in mind that it will reduce the nose weight required by a lot. My rule of thumb is take a gram off the tail and take three grams off the nose.
But I think it would be worth the extra work just for the better looks.

I cut nice holes in the stabs of the SkyBird and found that it did indeed noticeably reduce the weight needed in the nose. But a word of caution. I think I cut them a bit too large. I had a mildly hard landing and I had a break in the horizontal stab that required removing some covering and laying small strips of carbon fiber on the inside edges of the holes at the break. I would keep the holes somewhat small since the ultralight balsa will break easily.

Originally Posted by dayhead

... take a gram off the tail and take three grams off the nose.
But I think it would be worth the extra work just for the better looks.

I've heard of that rule of thumb before ; and you're right, it just looks good .

Originally Posted by MajorMal

I would keep the holes somewhat small since the ultralight balsa will break easily.

That was a concern also. What did you use to cut your holes? I was thinking of conical sanding stone in the drill press.

Originally Posted by dwells

Hey TJ,

Don't know if you know or not but if this bird is like the OlyIII, the push rods cross near the exit. I know there was someone that didn't realize this and had some problems. Looks great, enjoying your build.

Cheers,

Don

Using the short length of plastic tubing furnished, cut a 3/4" length to be used on one wire where the wires cross to eliminate touching. I use a light weigh piece of balsa stick between the fuse sides, touching the tube. A small dab of silicone on the stick and tube will hold the tube in place.

Ray
Sky Bench ... Woodys Forever
http://www.skybench.com

Thanks Ray, that's pretty clear. I was on your site last night skimming over the build instructions. What wasn't as clear is where it mentions using small pieces of tubing along the length of the pushrods inside the fuse. The guide holes in the formers keep the pushrods right up against the fuse sides. I would think adding anything between the two would create more friction (servo strain = battery drain). As long as I've got free movement, I think I'll skip that step.

Originally Posted by Tango Juliet

I'm considering drilling out lightening holes in the Horizontal and possibly the Vertical Stabilizers. It has an asthetic appeal to me, and some would say a benefit of weight savings, though I'm not sure it really amounts to anything considering the featherlite contest grade balsa used in these parts.

Thoughts?

It is a tough call to make. Some of the tail group pieces at times are way to light weight to consider cutting holes, others are prime candidates. Strength is the main consideration. I agree, the holes look great when sized properly.

Other ways to keep the tail end light weight:

Pull - Pull control on rudder ( Sullivan products ).

Do not cover fuse from behind the wing to end and the tail group with heavy heat shrink covering.

Sand ( use a Perma Grit sander to save time ) the elevators to a taper. Possibly, cut holes in the elevators only.

The most important aspect of weight savings in any sailplane is making the wing tip panels as light weight as possible. As well as the rear fuse and tail group. This has more to do with flight performance than overall weight. Due to the large wing area of the Sky Bird, saving a few grams of weight in the nose is not noticeable in flight performance.

There is also the question of choice of battery/rc components and location in balancing a sailplane.

Make a ballast system. Check my Gulf Coaster building tips for good photos of a two tube ballast build.



Ray
Sky Bench ... Woodys Forever
http://www.skybench.com

Originally Posted by Tango Juliet

Thanks Ray, that's pretty clear. I was on your site last night skimming over the build instructions. What wasn't as clear is where it mentions using small pieces of tubing along the length of the pushrods inside the fuse. The guide holes in the formers keep the pushrods right up against the fuse sides. I would think adding anything between the two would create more friction (servo strain = battery drain). As long as I've got free movement, I think I'll skip that step.

Had a local flyer skip that step on his OLY lll, ended up opening the fuse bottom and rigging some sort of tube system.

The distance between the formers is large enough to allow bowing on the push wires.

Experiment: cut 1/4" long pieces of tubing, place one mid way between each of the rear fuse formers, including the exit slot. Use a small dab of silicone to glue the tubes ( with wires inside ) to the fuse side. After curing see if the wires bind. Mind don't, maybe yours will.

Ray
Sky Bench ... Woodys Forever
http://www.skybench.com