Stefan Hafner

Despite no new updates recently I've still been building, just many of the jobs recently haven't made noticeable differences. So firstly, the mould for the cowl is progressing, one half is now made. The positive will be left in the mould, then i'll wax the surfaces of the mould and make the other side of it. Then once both side are done I can wax everything and make the cowl. The fuselage is also progressing, and having realised a bit late that the distance from the fire wall to the engine is a bit bigger than planned, I decided to add a built up box to support the mount. The bolts for the engine mount will go through this and into the captive nuts in the fire wall. The other handy thing about this arrangement is that I can put the flight pack at the front if need be for balance. The stringers for the last bit of sheeting on the fuselage are also on. Once this is sheeted then i can get on with covering, and fitting the gear. Just have to make the canopy and the spats then and its all done

The build has slowed down a bit recently, but been back at it and making progress. The tailplane is by and large finished and fitted, had a bit of trouble making the mounting tube to match the carbon tube for the tailplane so that cost me a bit of time. This is where i've got to now In terms of actual building its almost there, only really minor jobs to do then it'll be on to covering. The tailplanes are built as one piece, then i'll add the leading and trailing edges once i've cut the elevator free. I find this way every thing matches up nicely. The tailplanes are removeable to make transport easier if need be, so i'm going to fit an MPX connector on each side, that way the servos will automatically be connected when I assemble the plane. I've been working on the moulded parts too, and the positive for the cowl is nearly done. To make getting the shape right easier I modelled it on the computer first, then printed outlines for 10mm thick sections and cut them out from foam and stacked them up. Sanding was them pretty quick and easy as I just had to blend the edges and there wasn't much material to be removed. Then it was covered in 200 g/sqM cloth and sanded. A combination of spray gun problems and not paying attention when i thinned the primer meant it ran a bit, but as these are the first coats i'm not too bothered as i'll be sanding a lot of it off anyway before I put another layer over it. Once I'm happy with the finish i'll wax it and make a mould from Yeso (a common building product in Spain similar to plaster of paris), i'm planning on making a 3 part mould to make getting the part out easier.

Looks interesting, will be watching

Cheers Rich, I'd have to agree with you, around about the 2m size is great, they start to get more stable and nicer to fly at that size, but still usually fit in the car easily

Been a while since an update, but its only been lots of small jobs so I didn't take many pics. The wings are now as good as done, just a bit of sanding to do here and there. The tip blocks ended up a bit heavier than planned, as i didn't have and soft balsa left, so I attacked them with the dremmel, and hollowed them out, makes a surprising saving in weight. The aileron hinging was the standard technique, cut a slot and pin the hinges, I don't usually glue the hinges in as they usually gum up on me, and I've never had one pull out on me yet with just pins holding them. Just need to sand them flush once the glue is dry. I always use hinges with removable pins, that way i can do all the covering without needing to ruin the finish afterwards by drilling holes through it. Servo mounts are in too. I've test fitted the wing to the fuselage, and fit was pretty good, but annoyingly the fuselage wasn't sitting square, so out came the dremmel for some minor reshaping of the wing seats. To make sure I know ho much to take off I wedge a piece of balsa in the opposite side till its square, then I can see how much needs removed from the offending side. The I mark the side to be reduced by using a strip of balsa that I can trace along for a line that give a prefect fit to the profile. With the fuselage all squared up I could start on the tail end, so the blocks that fit either side of the fin have been glued in, making sure its all nice and square. On to the tailplane soon, and the most of the major building work is done, and it'll be on with the moulding. As long as I can find a supplier of epoxy in Spain with reasonable prices .....

Cheers guys, Welcome aboard

Another progress update, the D box on the wings has now been sheeted, and the wing joiner tubes glued in. In the pic I've made a start on the webbing, just the awkward bit around the joiner tube so far. Couldn't resist putting them together for an impression of size. I've since added the rest of the webbing and the leading edge, so once those are dry i can sand them down, then i can separate the Ailerons from the wings and add the false trailing edge and the leading edge for the ailerons.

After spending a while on the saw the ribs are all cut. All that was needed was a little bit of sanding on the holes for the wing joiner tube, but a small bit of sand paper wrapped round the wing joiner soon had them sorted. So with the ribs all sorted it was on with the build so a bit of plaster board was dug out to use as a building board and on we go. I'm building the ailerons attached to the wing, then once all the sheeting and strip wood has been added I'll cut them free. I prefer to do it this way, so there are no differences in the shape of the ailerons from building them separately. Next job will be to add the top sheeting, then free it from the board and sheet the bottom.

Thanks Glenn, I'm trying to get it build fairly quickly as out here in Spain flying is more pleasant over winter, it just too warm in summer

Bit more progress, got the fuselage sides glued up properly and the top edge added and sanded down. The blocks on the lower edge have also been added ready for sanding. The undecarriage is just trial fitted. I've also made the fin and sanded and shaped the rudder so thats finished now, need to take a photo though. I'm going to wait with glueing the fin on and make the wing first, that way if there are slight errors in the angles I can correct them before anything is permanently fixed, so its back to cutting out bits on the saw next.

This is a similar to a concept we developed at uni for my final year project, where we developed a UAV for deploying an ROV for underwater SAR tasks. This had a lifting capability of 7kg and endurance of about an hour with a glow engine, so something like that may be better for you, especially if you used a petrol engine to reduce fuel consumption. If you combined it with a GPS auto pilot it would allow you to program search grids of large areas, and if you then used some sort of FPV system it would allow you to concentrate more on the video display rather than the flying of the plane. On ours we had all the hardware for GPS control but none of use had the programming experience to set it up and time restrictions meant that we flew it only as an RC model for performance testing. If we'd has sufficient budget we would have used something like the MicroPilot gear, might be worth checking out for you as they do some gear that would be ideal for what you're trying to do. If you want any more info on this one PM me and I can send you the reports from this project.

Another one for SLEC an Balsa Cabin, I've used both in the past and been happy with both of them. Posted by Jamie sawyer on 24/10/2013 14:33:38: I fully intend to scale up the model to around the 90 inch size with a 50cc petrol up front or something similar. Personally I would say you're going to find them both under powered with a 50cc, I would think the Yak would still be ok but will lack power for some manouvers, but a 90 inch Pitts will be a bit marginal. I think i'd be going for about 80cc for the Yak and 100cc for the Pitts at 90" span. Depends on what sort of flying you're wanting to do with them, but thats why we have a throttle stick Just my thoughts of course.

Here are the 2 undercarriage legs after cleaning them up a bit with a file. Overall I'm very pleased with them, they ended up at 85g each, so definitely nice and light, and super strong. Progress on the fuselage has been good too, as the legs were done i could line up the holes fro the UC captive nuts. Then it was on with the assembly. Couldn't resist a shot down the middle Next on the fuselage will be to finish fitting the formers in the tail section. Also made up the rudder, once its properly dry it can be sanded to taper the back half down slightly.

Good job, I always think the Buccaneer is undermodeled

Bit of progress to report today. The original had a swept back undercarriage, which I like the look of , but in typical fashion I can't get the right shape so I'm making the new one myself. Its all from carbon, so it should be nice and light, I decided to make it 4mm thick as carbon is nice and strong so will be sufficient. To start with I made a mould for each each side that I can lay the cloth into, soaking resin into it as I go. With the cloth i have to hand each leg will be made from 16 layers of cloth. Here are a few pics of progress so far. This is one of the moulds, there's a mirror of this for the other side. I made them from balsa and covered it in aluminium tape to get an easy to work with surface. If I intended to make more than on set of leg i'd have made the mould from something stronger but for a one off it will be sufficient. The tape was waxed and polished multiple times to stop the carbon sticking. This is the first leg in the mould, I'd planned on making both at the same time but i ran out of clamps. Originally i'd planned on making the legs later in the build but decided to do them first so i can line them up with the fuselage and check for fit before i glue anything major, and its much easier to fit the captive nuts just now Will leave it to set overnight and will see how it turned out tomorrow.

Few more photo of progress from today. Got the reinforcement for the fuselage sides glued on. You can see the rudder servo mount here too. Only the rudder servo will be in the fuselage, the elevator servos will be built in to the tailplane as i'm making the tailplane removable, its certainly easier than getting a new car

So here are the first few build pics, after a lot of time on the saw all the ply parts for the fuselage are finally cut out. And a quick dry assembly to check for fit The fuselage sides are 3mm balsa with some 5mmx9mm stringers for strength. All the sheets are glued together, its at this point i start to see just how big this is going to be

After writing off my beloved Seduction Freestyle last year I thought why not build a bigger version to replace it, so after a bit of time spent on the scaling up on the CAD program I'm ready to make a start. This is the old one, the bigger version will be 2m span and a smidgen over 2 m long with power from an OS 1.20 AX. Aiming for about 5 - 5.5 kg flying weight

Thought I'd share a few photos of some of the flying i've been doing out here in Spain. I only discovered the slope i've been using recently but i'm absolutely loving it. First 4 pics are from a lighter wind day, hence the motor glider. The next 4 photos are from a windier day, I don't have any way of measureing the windspeed but i'm guessing in the 20 to 30 mph range. The plane is an own design that I came up with years ago when I was about 14 and couldn't fly yet, good job I didn't build back then. This was the first proper flight with it and turned out to fly perfectly. Edited By Stefan Hafner on 30/07/2013 08:56:28 Edited By Stefan Hafner on 30/07/2013 08:56:54 Edited By Stefan Hafner on 30/07/2013 08:57:44

I think a major difference that needs to be considered too is the type of engines being used by airliners. The turbines that we have for models at the moment are just that, turbines, whereas the the engines on airliners are high byppass ratio turbofans. For example the Trent 900 on the A380 has a bypass ratio of around 8.5, and these engines are much more efficient than a pure turbojet. Also with small engines I doubt the temperatures that can be achieved are anywhere near as high as in a large engine, so that will reduce the efficiency more, and then theres also the engine design, model engines still use centrifugal compressors while large turbines use axial compressors, and usually multiple turbine and compressor stages. It all adds up to make them a good bit more efficient, but no doubt with time the model turbines will become more efficient too

Should be a good one, will keep an eye on this build

Usually the first size range is for 2 stroke engine and the second is for 4 strokes. So if your wating to use a 4 stroke you should be looking in the .90 to 1.20 range. Just looked it up on thier wesite, looks a nice plane, I think personally I'd go for a 1.20 but thats me , and a lot depends on if you build it light or heavy and what sort of flying you want to do, Looking at the structure I would guess it'll float around quite nicely on a .90 if thats more your sort of thing. Hope this helps Stefan

Would certainly make an interesting model, plenty of sheeting and sanding to keep any builders busy

To me it looked underpowered, i think if i had been flying I would only have felt it had enough power in the slight dives. It may be important to achieve a scale appearance in the air an all, but we do have throttles , and while i don't have anything that big I prefer to have enough extra power available to get out of trouble if i need it, even if it not scale flying Change of props perhaps? but even that is expensive at that size

Can't you just carefull use a sharp knife to slice the covering off on the inner edge of the windows and paint the balsa before you put the windows in, or maybe even use a small file to take the offending covering off, seems the easiest solution to me