Dylan Reynolds LaserCraft Services

If it is F/G fuz then definately not a BT one

Could possibly be the Bryan Taylor one, possibly plan built

Scan it and send a pdf via email, with a dimension to scale to, simplz

I voted other, started with balsa kits, moved onto plan builds, designing my own and hand cutting to CAD drawn and laser cut kits, with more than several ARTFs along the way.

Yes, don't get me wrong, "liteply" does have it's place and uses, but I certainly wouldn't even consider it for anything remotely load bearing, I will try and get some pics up on here of each kind and do a sample piece for each and show weight difference for an identical part. As far as the plan goes, I have stuck to the materials suggested with the exception of a few formers where I have replaced 3mm Birch ply with 3mm Poplar Ply.

Thanks Chris

Anyone have a postcode for the fly-in?

There are other so called light ply woods about, when we got our hands on the Airsail stock, there was some very strange materials in the packed parts, one was very dark but very red outers with white coloured inner plies, not seen it available for sale as sheets anywhere, but to be honest I'm not sure I'd want to use it anyway.

Liteply as per sold by SLEC and others, isn't a proper ply as far as I am aware, has very little crush resistance, warps easily in all directions (because of no opposite ply layer directions), and turns to charcoal when laser cut, Poplar ply is a proper ply made up in opposing layers, exactly the same as birch but using poplar wood. It does bow when in larger sheets as does birch, mainly due to the stresses of manufacture and moisture content, but this also applies to birch, poplar is lighter than birch but not as strong, it does have crush resistance but not as much as birch and it lasers very well. I personally have no problems with replacing birch whenever possible, which is I would say 80% of the time, I have done it on several models. The main time I would is for bulkheads, engine mount plates, u/c mounts etc where you do need the strength of birch.

One thing I have been looking at whilst sorting this one out is the use of Poplar play instead of Birch ply on some of the main formers, it is stronger than liteplay, but only slightly less than Birch, it is lighter than birch but heavier than lite, it is also a proper play, less prone to warping and burning than lite.

I'm not sure blowing into this bottle proves I'm safe to fly

When I said boot it, I didn't mean literally

Not sure about this return to home button!

It's a speed thing, I just found TurboCAd time consuming and I could produce the drawings quicker in Corel, plus I use Corel for the laser cutting files, so it's easier all in one program, rather than produce a dxf, export it, import into corel and convert. I do still use CAD software to produce anything I design though.

Just as a side note for those guys looking at tracing the plans to create CAD files, I actually ditched TurboCAD and other CAD software a while ago to do this, I personally find it much easier to trace using CorelDraw. To produce ribs I simply trace around the overall outside shape and to add the notches etc I draw a box to the size I want, create a centre line over the original plan for position then "attach" the notch to the centre line at the appropriate depth. Formers I do pretty much the same, but I draw a centre line down the former first, only trace half of the former, place the notches, then mirror it so I know both sides are EXACTLY the same as I have yet to find a copy of a copy of copy of a plan to have not distorted slightly over time and multiple copies, of course this doesn't work for formers that are not meant to be even both sides.