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Thread OP
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Thanks Steve. The weight is 20oz unballasted and wingloading is about 11 oz/sqin. Thermalling is definitely better than the standard wing version as some of the Foxes at our local slope with them can barely fly. I occasionally find some thermal and start circling to very good altitude.
Thanks again, 3810. Incidentally, I'm flying my Fox with my JR 3810 too. Anyway, my CAD drawing is more like draft in Autocad R14 version. But if you are interested, let me know your email address and I'll send a copy to you. |
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Joe, that ship I must say is absolutely exquisite!
I you can, I would also love to have a set of plans for that little beauty (God knows I've got enough untouched projects already ). I'll pm you with my email addy. I haven't used version 14 since high school but I love Autocad regards, Ray Reyes |
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Thread OP
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Thanks guys.
Ray, I've sent it to you through email. Steve, The place I live in is currently off-season for slope soaring and I only managed to fly it near the end of the last season, leaving me no chance to take any flight shots. The next season will start at the end of the year. Anyway, just a little history on the design. I have been sloping at out local slope for near a decade and few years back, there were some commercial Foxes appearing there. As far as I know, none of them seems to fly well or even sustain flight. The reason I can think of is that our local slope is quite gentle and the wind speeds are not sufficient to generate enough lift the make these beautiful mammals fly. When I browse through the websites of the manufacturers, I came to know that most of them are using thin airfoils like RG15. They make better aerobatic ships but they require better lift than out local slope can offer to make them fly. I flipped through an old issue of the MAN and got real interested in an article written by Dave Sanders who describe about small slope, big air soaring. I experimented with it and have successfully flown a few gliders at our local beach. One thing mentioned in the article is that, to make a glider flies well in small slope, try to select a thicker airfoil. I bought my first composite Duo Discus 2 years back and the first impression is that it's so damn heavy and wonder wheter it'll fly or not. The next thing I noticed is that it uses a very thick airfoil, thicker than what most powered trainer plane uses. When I first saw it fly, I'm convinced with the theory that Dave has mentioned. Before I wanted to design and build a Fox, I was trying to design and build an ASH-25! And it proved too ambitious for me. Needless to say I already ran into a lot of disaster just on trying to fabricate the wing cores. Then, I decide to try something with lower AR and a fuselage with straighter lines. I stumbled across a very good 3 view drawings in the internet that will provide me enough deatils and informations and I started tracing it onto the Autocad. As for the airfoil, I stick to a thicker one and settled on the HQ selections. It may not be the best aerobatic airfoil but at least it makes a plane fly. If the plane can't even fly, you don't even think about aerobatics. Anyway, the advantage of using a thicker airfoil not only it's more forgiving to fly, it has a much wider envelope of flight speed, which is very important for a plane designed without flaps or any other hi-lift devices. In light lift, it'll still fly while most aerobatic planes will sit on ground. In strong lift, all you need to do is to add some ballast to make it move. In the end, I feel so happy and lucky that htis project turns out so well after many hours of thinking and building, even though I did not even know whether it can fly or not. At least the hours spent on fibreglassing, sanding and painting the fuselage did not go in vain. Some of my other projects are not so lucky from time to time. |
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Nice success story Joe! Right on!
I've noticed that many of the larger scale models, with the exception of the Foxes, use the HQ series airfoils. They seem to work very well for the scale planes I've seen. I'm glad they worked for you! Interestingly, I have a small molded EPP glider called the "Easy" by Windrider. It is not a high performance or a scale kit (though it looks "scale-ish"), but it has a very thick airfoil. The plane flies nice, it does not penetrate so well in stronger winds but it flies nicely in light air, even with a fairly high AR wing. It is totally flat bottomed though, so inverted performance is not so good! Anyways, you need to put an aerotow release in your Fox so you can fly it in the off season! Have fun and feel free to post more pictures if you feel like it, I don't ever get tired of looking at the Fox. Steve |
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working on my own fox...a 2 meter robbe kit. fiberglass fuse, foam core wings. fox is such a great looking ship. congrats on your new build. its beautiful. would love it if you would post more pics...
p.s. what servos did you use? |
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Last edited by FirstOverboard; Mar 09, 2005 at 01:56 PM.
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Oh, and also of interest...what construction methods did you use?
for example, what did you use as a filler for fillets, gaps, etc.... what did you glass with? paint? stats? |
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Thread OP
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Sorry for the late reply as I was away on a vacation.
By this time, the Fox is over a year old. It's fuselage is constructed out of balsa using plank skinning method, except foro the nose cone and aft section, which are of hollowed balsa blocks. Gaps are filled with lightweight filler like Model Magic before covered with F/G cloth with finishing epoxy. It's then painted with Lustrekote spray paint. Wings are of sheeted foam cores covered with Monokote. Stab and rudder are carved solid balsa sheets covered with Monokote as well. I use micro servos like HS-81 for rudder and elevator and sub-micros for wings like GWS Naro servos. |
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Joe
Could you also email me a copy of the plan. i'll PM you my email address Cheers |
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Hi,
It is beautiful glider. I'm looking for his drawings to build a model airplane, but here in Brazil is very difficult to have access to these drawings. Please, could you provide me a copy of the drawings to build it too? Congratulations for glider, it is beautiful. Hamilton. hamiltondomingos@ig.com.br |
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