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Seff 2018 was a blast! I remember talking with you a bit and enjoyed it, I had the fms pc 21 and stupid fast mini rarebear. Look forward to seeing this gorgeous bird there, I have a. 60 size Hughes H1 that will be at Seff next year if all goes right |
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Was out of town for the long weekend and didn't get much done. Hoping to knock out a the rest of the sheeting and get the leading edges installed tonight and tomorrow. Our club president asked me to chat about the project at our club meeting Thursday night so that will be fun. Maybe I can get started on the wing core boxes this weekend. With the holidays coming up we'll be doing a lot of traveling so I need to make progress when I can |
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So I haven't had a chance to shoot any video in the last week, and we're traveling for Thanksgiving, so its looking like there wont be any YouTube updates for a week or two, but progress is being made. Today I got some work done on the first elevator half. This is being built with traditional balsa techniques and will be covered in Solartex. The full scale trim tabs were all metal and will be built from balsa/ply and glassed and will NOT be functional.
I cut some lightening holes in the solid balsa sheet and rounded the leading edge. I attempted to use a fostner bit to cut the holes but the balsa is too soft and I was worried about it chewing up the surface. I'll come back and sand them lightly to make it look better, but TBH you'll never see them. I still need to prep and install hinges, and install the control horn(s). My thought is to have a pair of horns straddling a ball link connection. This will ensure there is no slop in the linkage and will distribute the loads better. I'll also need to get the ply gap covers installed and shape the tips. More shaping is needed on the leading edge too. I'm pretty happy with how it looks so far, and when its covered I think it will look convincing. Last thing I did was tape on the blocks for the tips and grabbed a picture to capture the size. |
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You're making the trim tabs but NOT making them work for you?
Sorry, but that makes no sense at all to me. Having gone to the trouble of making them it is easy to fit them as balance tabs (see my blog) and take some (probably at least half) the load off the servos. At the very least it saves current to the servos. They were essential in the full size, allowing the pilot to fly for hours on end. Without them control in flight would have been impossible. Balance tabs could save your model from disaster... WHY NOT? (an incredulous) Robin |
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Really liking the videos!
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My thoughts here... I want the scale appearance but don't (IMHO) have a need for any functionality. If I WAS to make them functional the mechanism would need to be completely internal as there were no external linkages for the trim tabs. I'm basing my view that I don't need functional balance tabs around the forces I expect to see and the servos I selected. Using the calculator at http://www.mnbigbirds.com/Servo%20To...0Caculator.htm I calculated an approximate MAX force that the servos could possibly see. If she was traveling 65mph and had a full deflection of 45* the surface would see 146oz/in of torque. I'll be running my Hitec HS5645MGs at 6v and they should put out 164oz/in. Enough overhead that I'm comfortable. Under normal, and even abnormal conditions, I don't anticipate forces on these surfaces being anywhere near the limits of the servos, and of course each elevator gets its own servo, so there is some redundancy there too. Thats just my thoughts on it to this point. I'm not saying I couldn't be convinced otherwise, but at this point I don't see the need. |
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Last edited by wilmracer; Nov 19, 2018 at 10:19 AM.
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At that scale you can easily get the simple mechanical linkage within the airfoil section.
Running servos at 6V to me is just throwing muscle at the problem - I was caught out on the only occasion I used a 6V supply. I didn't realise how much more current the servos were going to draw - even at rest doing nothing. Cost me a new uBEC. But I far prefer to use everything efficiently - always have. No sense wasting money if a job can be done as well with a cheaper solution. Finesse over power every time. The first time I used working balance tabs they drew quite a bit of attention, which I found gratifying. Wherever the full-size had them my models now have them and the benefit runs through the entire design. Less power needed to move control surfaces means smaller (or fewer) servos, drawing less current in use, which means more flight time and a lighter model requiring less motor power, saving weight and expense again. Higher pitch scale size propellers will run slower so saving a LOT of power being wasted to drag too and this can mean smaller higher revving motors again, weighing less on fewer power cells. And the lighter a model the closer to scale speed it flies. Robin |
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Sorry to butt in on the conversation, but I've only just caught up with this thread and I wanted to say that it is supremely interesting on so many levels - the size, the subject matter, the techniques, and of course the family connection! Very humbling to be making a model of your grandfather's aircraft. Thanks for making the videos as well - it's always good to see something being done and the results (yes, and any cock-ups if they happen!) right in front of you. I'll be hanging around if that's OK.
To give a bit of the view from 'the other side'; my mother was 16 in 1945 and lived in Norfolk (UK) where a lot of the US air bases were; I have spoken to her quite a lot in recent years about the war (its up to us to keep the experiences and anecdotes alive). She said she can remember seeing 'the American bombers' flying out in the morning, working very hard as they clawed for height under full bomb loads, heading south east out over the North Sea towards Germany. Then late in the afternoon or evening, they would start returning. She regularly saw them trailing smoke, one or more props feathered; sometimes she would see bits falling off them. Often as they approached their (or any) base, she said they would drop a red flare indicating wounded aboard. They would descend, and disappear behind distant trees. Sometimes there would then be an enormous explosion; which even as she told me I could see that 70 years later it still upset her. Young men who had fought their way across Germany and back, struggling to get home, dying on their own doorstep....... Then after dark, it would be the RAF bombers going out for their turn in the inferno. To cheer herself up, she then told me another story about the US fliers - and I recount this as a tale of any young men and women; I mean no insult whatsoever. Whenever there was a local dance, the US fliers would of course be chatting up the local girls (remember this was at a time when most people were married at 19 or 20, and a lot of the fliers were still teenagers, so Mother was a prime target ) and as soon as an American implied that he was over here 'to win the war for us' or made a pass involving bribes of nylons or candy, she would grab the shortest, runtiest, ugliest British serviceman she could and spend the rest of the evening dancing pressed up as close to him as she could!! She's quite a lass, me Mum - even at 89 years old! Sorry for the intrusion.... |
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Last edited by Colonel Blink; Nov 20, 2018 at 08:41 AM.
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Love the story from your mother Colonel Blink! My Grandfather was flying out of Molesworth, only about 70 or so miles from Norfolk so he would likely have been one of the guys passing overhead. I agree that it is up to us to keep their stories alive. Your mother has a fascinating perspective having lived through it at such a young age.
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There is still another "other side" to this story. From your grandfathers map it's obvious he flew four bombing raids over my home town Cologne and one over Mainz where I'm living today. Even though these attacks happened for a good reason, you still have to be aware of the terror they caused for civilians in these cities.
My grandfather passed away two weeks ago at the age of 89, my grandmother 2 months earlier. In his last years he wrote down all what he and my grandmother experienced in these years of world war 2. Since Cologne has been bombed a lot of times, he and a lot of other children were sent to safer places. He ended up in East Prussia in a small town called Sensutten where he went to school with other refugees and also local children. That was where he first got to know my grandmother. When the Russians finally got there, my grandparents had to flee independently of each other (still 13 and 16 years old then). My grandmother could only visit her hometown again some 50 years later, since East Prussia became Polish and could only be visited after the "iron curtain" had fallen. She actually never spoke again about what she went through during her flight. But she got very, very quiet whenever my grandfather talked about it. They married in 1952 I think, after they had been able to find each other again in a Germany with many displaced persons and huge destruction The last story my grandfather told me before his passing away was like that: After the war, when Cologne was occupied by the British, there used to be soccer matches between german and english teams. He remembered, that even though one time the german team defeated the english, the english orchestra still played the national anthem of Great Britain. You have to be aware, that at that time Germany didn't even have a national anthem, but Cologne is known for it's carnival. The german crowd was upset by that and the next time after they had a match, they immediatly started singing very loudly a carnival song that was very popular by then, called "Wir sind die Eingeborenen von Trizonesien" which translated means "We are the natives of Trizonesia", where Trizonesia refers to the three occupation zones in Germany at that time (British, American, French) in contrast to the russian occupied zone. What to take away from that? I'm grateful for the allied forces fighting and defeating Nazi Germany. But the normal people had to suffer a lot in the bombing of civil targets. And there are positive aspects to be found, like my grandparents meeting each other, or how people find fun even in hard times. Best regards Ronald |
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A very balanced view. Of course civilians suffered much from bombing campaigns from both sides (thinking largely of Coventry and London here) but it is said that conflict brings out both the best and the worst in people. Plenty of instances of both can be found.
Robin |
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However, just for context Wikipedia says that Coventry received 818 tons of bombs in two raids with a death toll of 554 ; Dresden received 3900 tons of bombs with a death toll of 25,000 upwards. Although every death is an individual tragedy, the German people as a whole suffered far more than most. My father was an RAF bomb aimer in the latter stages of the war, and I know that he was glad to be posted to the Middle East as he felt there was a far greater chance of being given genuine military targets with little or no civilian areas nearby. As it was, VE day occurred and he was in transit to Burma when VJ day happened. However, this is a thread about an astounding model being made in honour (yes, it is spelt like that) of a brave young man risking his life to do his duty. As such, I see him as no different to the brave and terrified young men on all sides of the conflict. I believe that 95% of combatants did their duty and had little or no political convictions, and I wear my poppy every year in memory of them all. |
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Ronald,
I'm glad your grandparents survived and I wish they and their families had not suffered the way they did. Wars are certainly terrible, especially for the innocent. I'm certain the vast majority of Germans were good people who simply wanted a good life for their families and were powerless to stop Hitler's war machine. Reading the logs of the missions my Grandfather flew I know they listed military and industrial targets, but I'm also aware that the civilian tolls were high. My wife worked for about 6 months in Frankfurt a few years ago and I got to spend quite a bit of time visiting Germany (and a few other nations in Europe). I did not personally visit the cathedral at Cologne (My wife had already visited Cologne and we only visited cities new to BOTH of us when I would visit) but I remember being very impressed with it as we rode by in the train. I found that the Germans I spoke with about the war shared your sentiment of being thankful that fascism and the Nazis were defeated, but also that they personally felt the heavy cost that it took to do so. In terms of the build, nothing has been done in over a week. We visited the inlaws in sothern Florida for Thanksgiving and then spent some much needed time relaxing while they watched our 2 year old daughter. It was tough getting on the plane when its 80 and sunny and getting off to below-freezing temps and 30mph winds When we got home another package had arrived from my Uncle. I'm still floored by how generous he has been with my Grandfather's memorabilia. Today it was a framed set of medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. Work will be crazy the next week but I'm hoping to get a few hours here and there to button up the elevators and stab. |
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