Mark Wood 2

Smooth wide turns required or she'll roll in. Ive added another servo/limkage for rudder control which has taken weight +3.7g taking total flying weight to 176.7g. Thinking I may need to mix rudder to elevator to get some tighter turns. No flights or vids yet with rudder...

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4 years ago I saw an FMS alpha jet chuck glider in my local model shop and bought it for my lad to play with when he got older. A friend bought one of those hobbyking/sky angel f16 micro edf... he couldnt fly it and broke it, I'd glue it, test fly it, laugh my wotsits off at how much fun it was to fly before he would have a go and break it again. Eventually the foam to glue ratio was heading in the wrong direction, t.hats when I noticed the alpha jet looked ideal for the 35mm edf.... Strengthened the wing and horizontal stabilser with carbon fibre rods. Got lively with the soldering iron to melt foam to shape to house servos etc. used a toothpick to hold the edf unit in ? servos 2 x 2g 25a esc 35mm edf 1100kv Flying weight with 2s 500mah 20-30c lipo is 173g Only this week did I get to fly it and I thought Id post up some pics (not got any flying vids - yet) Im simply amazed that it flew based on the fact I have no idea what i am doing and made it up as I went, guessed where the CoG would be and a bunch of other stuff that if I had thought about it would not have bothered with the conversion. I will be putting another one together that looks better and with some modifications to the controls, on the skyangel there is a servo per side and the aileron is linked to the elevator on each side whereas on this model I have gone with a servo for Ailerons and another for elevator. Pitch control seems ok but banking seems slow so I will probably change it to the skyangel style of control to see if that makes it quicker at turning. Other than a fairly large turning circle I was impressed. Hopefully I can inspire others to be made.

Thanks John I've got 230-240 watt motor in there.... I reckon I'll have a play with increasing the packing on the TE more than 2mm and see where it gets me. cheers Mark

Thanks KC, I should have said I verified CG was as per location on the plan and the bands definately aren't letting any movement in the wing on the fues. Being a dummy here do you mean by wing an tail incidence as being level with respect to each other? Would you be able to give me some guidance on how to check this? Possibly too much power, I did get a less powerful motor than SteveH and I also tried to limit how much throttle I gave and even when slowly chugging along going into a turn makes her go vertical. Re the wood I put aside the lengths for the wings before I started on the fues and that only left me zero lengths to do the fues, the fin and tail plane. I think I purchased 6 more lengths and that was ontop of the 3 or 4" wide 1/16" sheet for the wing panels I also had to get. Many thanks Mark

So... Ive had quite a few flights now and I think I might need some help (plane-wise I know about the mental thing).... The old girl wants to be a space shuttle in the sense that as she gets airbourne anything over half throttle gets her poking her nose straight up and I do mean vertical. As soon as I cut the motor she'll level off and while I have her gliding back in she flies straight and nice, maybe a little twitchy but a lot better. Dont get me wrong I can fly it around for 2 or 3 battery packs at very slow speed and she is fine but corners just feel horrible, maybe this is the nature of elevator/rudder but the full size versions i built just handled so much nicer. As I give some rudder she starts start to dip a wing and then off the nose goes and its like i then have to use full throttle to pull her round and stop her falling out of the sky. Its almost like she wants to prop hang all the time... great for 3d but im after some relaxing flying Ive tried increasing the motor down thrust started at 1 washer then added another this maybe helped a bit. Also incase the angle of the wings were out I also added a wing band under the back of the wing to lift the back of the wing and lower the front. I even reversed this without much joy. Can anyone else suggest what I am doing wrong or have ideas as to do next? Many thanks Mark

I found a mini mitre box very useful too. You might find you are about 6 lengths of 3/16sq and a sheet of 1/16 shy from the kit. The thing i learnt from my build was that i had to think ahead of what to do next as the plan and instructions had a few mistakes so i did plenty of dry fitting of parts before gluing. Let us know how you get on

I went with the large and slow train of thought. There will be no action other than slow action on this one :D I've had my share of wing claps and wing departures! I just plugged the wattmeter in again and you are spot on Steve its 230watts, no idea where the 300 came from? But I do intend to play with props to see what other figures I get.

Hi Steve thanks for the comments, The go faster stripes make it more aerodynamic and capable of 3D flying Seriously tho I totally understand what you say about the front dowel, there was quite a bit of subtle strengthening I had to do here and there on the kit , doubling up in some areas especially from the bottom of the cabin windows upwards (I built a few super 60s where on one the wing departed fues mid air!!) I added gussets and extra wood in this area so I am more than happy this will be ok - kinda glad it looks " almost standard" from the outside, well apart from it looking like its a bit more fwd and hanging on by a thread :D I have a 12x7e apc style prop on it and it was pulling 22a and if memory serves around 300 odd watts. I have a few props ranging from 10" to play with so I can get an idea of the best prop to use. weight came in at around 1050g all up ready to go so pleased with that. Oh also forgot to mention that I converted to taildragger and made the rudder larger too. cheers Mark

Hi I finished building, its not perfect but this is the first plane I have built from plan/kit since I was 14 thats ahem nearly 22years ago now. Anyways I added hatches to allow the lipo to be slid in under the prop at the front end also 2 upper hatches to allow access to ESC and battery if needed. All hatches are held on by type 52 neodymium magnets.   Here are the hatches   Note the air scoop on the lower hatch to aid cooling of the motor and ESC.   Just waiting for some dry and less windy days for the maiden flight now Edited By Mark Wood 2 on 01/03/2013 10:01:52