Originally Posted by crossup

Now you just need to fix it and wait for a truly dead calm evening which you can test with one of your lightweight fleet.

My favorite time is in the morning after it gets light but before actual sunrise. Living on the lake as soon as the sun peeks over the horizion, turbulence happens!

Thanks for the comments. I have some work to do, removing two servos, wiring up to slightly larger ones, repositioning them forwards etc. I have all summer. It will take a while.

Meanwhile, I have fun non F3P type of molded CF project that I will also pursue over the summer. Stay tuned.

I flew the plane, which I've decided to call the "Carbon Bender" this weekend at the Indoor Night at the NEAT Fair. It flies great. I'm still getting used to it. I can do nice slow loops and simple rolls. Luckily people who are much better pilots than I am were at the Indoor Night. I'll post videos of more of them when I get a chance. David Lockhart and Devin McGrath, both of the US F3P Team were there and they both flew it. David Lockhart was the pilot in this video. I'll post the video when Devin was flying it when I get that one up.

All in all, I'm very happy with the plane. Remember, it's smaller than a typical F3P plane. It has no air brakes. And, yet, it flies very slowly, and can do some pretty good maneuvers.

A bit of history, last April I had a servo malfunction on the elevator servo. It used two of the smaller and less powerful MicroFlierRadio 0.40g servos, which I also figured out were too weak. A week ago I replaced those with the larger 0.50g servo like I used for the ailerons. And, the Indoor Night at NEAT was the first indoor opportunity I've had to fly it. Our next indoor locally is in November. So, it will be a while till I fly it again.

This version is standard resolution. I've posted a link below to a HD version.

Carbon Bender (1 min 59 sec)

Looks and flys great!

Such a great build Gordon, it was great to get to fly it.

-A

Adam, thanks for also putting it through its paces. For those who might want a clearer video, here is a HD version I just uploaded.

Carbon Bender HD (1 min 59 sec)

Here's some more video from the Saturday night "halftime show".

NEAT Fair 2018 - Gordon Johnson's Carbon Bender F3P (3 min 40 sec)

The more I watch the videos, the more I see the rabbit hole in my future...

Mike C.

For those who are interested, I think that smaller sized planes with low wing loadings and flight characteristics similar to larger F3P planes are very possible. Others have done CF planes in the 14 inch to 20 inch or so size. If a plane this size appeals to you I think all the pieces are now readily available:

Coax Propulsion system with light weight props are now available from Ruslan. Weight is about 3.5g (depending on which of his drives) complete with props.

Servos that are lighter than lightened Spectrum or similar servos. http://microflierradio.com (Nick Leichty) sells his 0.5g servos for a new lower price of about $65 each.

Receivers are readily available from Deltang that weigh about 0.25g or so.

The China BL ESC are available and weigh about 0.5g.

Batteries in the 70mmAh capacity are readily available.

Airframe has to be constructed yourself. I did molded curved CF rod combined with straight rods. But, as others have shown, planes that use entirely straight CF rods are pretty straightforward to do. And, the people who showed that just using thick CA for the joints, and no wrapping and tying is a technique that works well.

So, in conclusion, all the pieces are readily available to do planes such as this in this size and weight range -- a size smaller than a typical competition F3P plane in the 33 inch size, and lower weight than their typical 40g or so weights.

Is anyone else ready to take the "smaller" CF plane plunge?

Gordon, What a great first try! I got a slightly bigger system from Ermolin and have an interesting ship that i'll report on as soon as we can get back into our school gym so we can fly!

I've flown this plane twice at our indoor nights here in Boston. And, our third one is this Friday. I never got around to building a proper transport box. I've been using two large cardboard boxes overlapped and taped together. A pretty poor setup. I finally got some pink foam at Home Depot and started on it last Saturday. It's not as fancy or as nice as some I've seen on this forum, but when done it should do the job.

This may be my inspiration to get back into this.

Thanks

Great job!

Bill

Go for it. A local friend just finished his and flew it a week ago. Very satisfying when you fly one of these.

This thread was for my first molded CF plane.

I started a thread in the Scratch Built Micro Forum for my second molded CF plane. Details are here. I just finished the plane this week.
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...-with-Video%29

This second plane is very different. It is a simple rudder/elevator controlled stick fuselage plane. It is kind of a micro version of a Das Ugly Stik. Wing Span is 12 inches, and final weight came in at 6.75 grams. Wing loading is 0.62 oz/sq.ft.

First flights were in my family room. Here is one my daughter took last night.

Micro Stik - high definition (0 min 52 sec)

Looks great Gordon.

-A

I've been flying this plane since last September, when it flew for the first time at NEAT. At this year's NEAT indoor about half a dozen friends got a chance to fly it. It's still a fun plane to fly. Since then I've made two molded carbon fiber Stick rudder-elevator parasol planes. I got better at molding CF rod, and also at airbrushing clear mylar with those planes.

So, it's time for the next plane. I've been calling this one the Carbon Bender. My next one will be the Nano Bender. I'm not sure yet if I'll start a thread on it in this forum or the Scratch Built Micro forum. If I start it over there I'll put a link to it from here.

At the same time that Joe Malinchak got a 1.8g Coax drive with about 6 props from Ruslan Ermolin I got one too. However, I was deep in learning to mold CF rod, and building this 20-inch span plane. So, for over a year my 1.8g drive has sat on a shelf. Joe made his 13-inch Anubis using his 1.8g drive. It's now time for me to build a plane using my 1.8g drive. Mine will be a 13-inch span adaptation of my Carbon Bender (based very much on one of Ruslan's planes). Right now I'm deep into molding CF rods in smaller sizes, making test pieces to see how they work in smaller size airframe components, etc. I'm splitting 1k tow into smaller count tows and combining with 1k tow to get various sizes of rod. So far I've molded 2k, 1k, and 1.5k tow rods, and am about to go below 1k.

So, stay tuned, I'm getting close to jumping off and molding the actual pieces I'll use for this next plane.