Using my light weight wheels in attempted ROG's from the rough artificial turf at our indoor site resulted in nose overs.

Springer made me the skis shown below. In tending that I use them on snow as he does. I just had to give them a try on the artificial turf.
Well they worked! I had to hold full up elevator until I gained some forward speed. The first three attempts resulted in a nose over. But with full up elevator to get her going, then release and gain more speed and lift off, I got a nice take off. And I did grease the landing. The .039 wire gear legs were as expected a bit wobbly, but they worked! With stiffer gear wire it would be easier, but even now they worked pretty well once I got the technique figured out.
Don

Originally Posted by bz1mcr

...I assume at over 2000' it was pretty much specked out.

Not quite. I think I could have gone higher if it weren't for the C130 scare.

I'm on the verge of building myself another one. This BBAP is about 18 months old and has about 60 hours on it. She hasn't felt quite right since hanging from the rafters in the basement for 8 months while I was away. Once I get the wireless video thing worked out I think I'm going to do a bit of redesign to accomodate the transmitter and extra wiring. And I'm probably going to have to break down and give it a power upgrade.

kendall

for those who are interested (it's supposed to snow tonite!) here's the drawing of the plywood flange that the skis are built around. Overall, they start with a 1"x6" piece of blucor that I curl up the front tip to about 3/4 height. Make the flanges and glue them to a center strip of blucor about 3/4 by 3". Glue that assembly to the ski proper so that the axle is at 3.5" from the aft end of ski. (this helps keep the tips up) glue a skewer down the middle of the bottom for strength and to act as a skid (it may provide some directional stability, but is mostly for strength and abrasion resistance). I use hot glue on everything. The most important dimension is the fore/aft dim between the top hole and the axle hole as it sets the angle of the skis in flight attitude, the proportions shown works well for BB's and other tail draggers - i've used this size on my 24" BB and the Beaver (nominal 33" BB) and they work fine. My 42" BB skis are 2" x 10", so you will want to scale them to fit your plane. I consider them disposable, but they can take a lot of punishment and are easily hotglued back in shape if broken. Last pic is last years ski repaired and still flying, note the scraped up foam from ice.

Kendall: major cool on beating the 2k barrier. Congrats to the honorary SE MI flyer!

bump

Thanks for posting the BB ski sketch,I'm gonna make a set for mine this week.

Joe: I have to tell ya, I may have made them a little short at 6", I tried the bbBeaver today on some really fluffy snow, and they just dug in as I powered up to fly. They worked fine on the snow last week that had compacted a little though. Give them a try, if you tend to have fluffy, make them an inch or so longer, can always cut them off (or even add an inch for that matter!)

I'm going to build a set of skis for my 48" sorta-Beaver, but instead of using FFF, which gets brittle when it's cold, I'll use Coroplast. A nice thing about Coroplast is that you can also jam bamboo into the corrugations to stiffen it up a bit.

Going to NY for christmas and am building a new BB with skis myself. with luck ill have some video around the 1st

I built my Coroplast skis in about 15 minutes last night and they work terrific! 9 inches long and 2 inches wide with the tip 1.5" above grade. I flew through 3 batteries last night before the ply firewall came loose from the foam and I had to glide the plane in for a landing. I was doing touch-and-goes, one after another, while several dogs chased the plane around the park. If you have a KFM wing, I recommend adding LED lights inside the step... the wing was easily visible at heights up to 300ft.

I'll take some pics and post them tonight.

I put 2 lights on the leading edge of my Slow Stick that look like landing lights, and I plan putting them on my BB33, too. It's not enough for night flight, but I can see them very well in the bright sun and they are great for determining if the plane is coming at me or going away from me. In early morning and late evening they really show up, and they help when the plane is below the tree line and would almost disappear without them. People have come to watch me fly saying they were attracted to the plane because of the lights.

Bill

I too managed the ski feat with the help of others on this thread. I over engineered mine by laminating two pieces of 1/32" plywood for the base. They look nice and should be durable. The next set will probably be of a more simple design as these took way too long to build. Flying with them was interesting as they had very little effect on the flight performance. The big thing was the landing was extremely easy with them on the loose powder snow. It is nice to know you can fly in the snow now.

Nice jobs with the skis!... I'm just a beginner with a HobbyZone Firebird Commander2 that I've been training with over the Summer and a Parkzone Trojan that I haven't flown yet. I apologize for my ignorance, but, how did you curl up the blucor? I might want to build skis for my trainer plane and that's the only thing that puzzles me, after looking at the plans that you posted.

Also, is blucor the only material suitable for this kind of project? I read other threads were guys used another material, can't remember what it was. Is blucor only available at hobby shops or can I buy it from stores like Home-Depot?

I assume that I need a third ski for the tail section, since my trainer is a tail dragger: how big should it be? One-third to half the size of the the others?

Have you ever seen skis on a tricycle landing gear such as the Trojan's? The front end is quite heavy, so I would think that the front ski should be almost the same size as the rear skis, especially in fluffy snow. I'm debating about flying my Trojan for the first time on snow is a good idea anyway. There might be less damage if I crash it on snow, compared to grass or asphalt!

Have fun "skiing"!... Thanks for your help.

I would argue that Blucor is NOT suitable for skis... it becomes brittle in the cold, and crunches easily on the snow. Coroplast, on the other hand, is really ideal: rugged, slick, cheap, lightweight... and it can be glued with epoxy or hot glue. Also, particularly big skis can be easily reinforced by jamming bamboo skewers into the corrugations. (For those who don't know, Coroplast is the stuff that many political yard-signs are made of ... like corrugated cardboard, but made from plastic.)

Alternatively, I've seen someone cut up a 2-liter bottle longitudinally and glue the plastic strips to the bottom of the BluCor... much more rugged and slick this way, though slightly convex instead of flat bottoms.

Here is a pattern for the skis I built in about 15 minutes. I used Coroplast for the "ski" and thin plywood for the brace. I also happen to have a mixed-bag of ply circles that I picked up at the craft store (about $1 for a bag of circles ranging from 3/8" to 1.5" diameters) I use them for reinforcing mount-points such as landing gear or rubberband-mount dowels... keeps the foam from ripping out. The brace is embedded into the Coroplast by slitting one side of the corrugation and pushing the brace into it with epoxy or hot glue applied along the joint.

I may have to give the coroplast a try. I have 3mm white on hand.

The bottle idea looks good too.

Thanks for sharing WH71.

Ken