Mike Bell

Hi all, just a couple of weeks or so to the British Fun Fly Association coaching / practice event at Buckminster. If you are at all Fun Fly curious, why not come along with a model and give it a try. You don't need a full-on fun fly model, we'll still get you involved. The only limitation for this weekend is that we can only allow electric models due to Bank Holiday planning restrictions. Foamy planes running 3s set ups are ideal taster aircraft so your Foamy Wot4, Acro Wot, Riot etc will be perfect. Over the weekend there will be informal competitions where newbies will be offered guidance and coaching, while the more experienced participants will be getting in some valuable practice. If you would like to join us it would be very helpful if you could register your interest with James Gordon [email protected]. By registering, James will be able to inform you of any last minute updates. You are also advised to keep an eye on Facebook, look for BFFA Fun Fly Group. Camping on site can be booked via [email protected] Mike

Hi Steve, some basic info: Fuz, tail and rotors all in Depron. No the blades don't flap, there is no need with the contra rotating set up. The blades are mounted on 3d printed hubs which have the blade angles incorporated. The hubs spin on a carbon rod mast. Propulsion is via a brushed, geared motor powered via the 2A esc built into the receiver. These things are draggy so the set up does benefit from using a high voltage 1s battery, 300mah. Rudder response is lively so throws need to be small. The elevator acts as a bit of an aid for tight turns and landing flare but I have experimented with removing the tailplane assembly completely and it still flies pretty well on rudder / throttle. Bob has been debating about submitting plans to RCM&E but I'm not sure if he will or not. I'll let him know about this thread and maybe he'll add more info. Cheers Mike

Thought you might be interested in this contra rotating autogyro designed by my mate Bob Waugh. The green one is my version and Bob's is in the video clip. It flies very nicely and the contra rotors eliminate the rolling tendency. This isn't a new concears ago I had a free flight autogyro built from plans originally presented in Aeromodeller in the 1950's AG7.mp4

Had this Taurus for 3 years or so now. Great flyer. There is a build blog on it on the forum somewhere. Mike

Thanks for the title edit John 🙂

Please note that the above event listed in the Going Places calendar is CANCELLED as a formal event. James Gordon will be on site that day and will facilitate Fun Fly practice if anyone is interested. If you want to come along please let James know, his contact details are on the BFFA web site.

Sorry for any inconvenience. Andy, thanks for posting the working link.

Hi all, not long to the Fun Fly Nationals to be held at Buckminster. Entry forms are available at http://www.funfly.bmfa.org If the link doesn't work, just type directly into your browser. This is the first year for the new rules and Class changes so check these out via the same link. For anyone who has previously been put off by the B Cert requirement, please be aware that this is now waived, no Achievement Scheme awards are now necessary (ignore the requirement in the poster below). Hope to see you there .

Since my last post I have gone a step further and built a nearly wood free wing to go with the fuz. This uses the foamboard for ribs with 3mm depron for all the sheeting. The only wood used was for the spars, leading edge and the core of the trailing edge. The finished wing doesn't feel in any way delicate and flight testing so far has revealed no weaknesses. Interestingly the weight of this new wing was within half an ounce of the balsa version. While there is little or no advantage in terms of weight saving for the new wing, the cost saving compared to balsa would be considerable. I'm just finishing a new foamboard fuz, this time with more local strengthening included building on experience from the first one. The foam version is the one on the right.

Please note that due to low levels of entries together with challenging conditions at the Buckminster camp site it has been decided to CANCEL this event. Fingers crossed for the next scheduled event in June.

Hi all, The British Fun Fly Association is holding a coaching and competition weekend on 29th and 30th April at the National Centre at Buckminster. This is a great opportunity for anyone who is interested in fun fly or even a bit curious to come and have a go in a no pressure friendly environment. Newbies will be most welcome and will be looked after with coaching and advice as required. Don't worry if you don't have a fun fly plane, you can bring any suitable sports model. The only restriction for this weekend is that the site operating rules can only allow ELECTRIC POWERED MODELS ONLY on a bank holiday weekend. You don't need to be a member of the BFFA, in fact you become a member of the BFFA by taking part in our events, no fee other than the flying fee is charged. Also, you don't need to hold any achievement scheme qualifications except for entries to the Nationals. There are full details of the event in the flyer below. If you are interested in coming along it would help us greatly if you would send a mail to the organizer James Gordon [email protected] or give him a ring on 07966 439835. Use the same contact to confirm the event is still on before travelling. Camping will be available at the site if required, contact [email protected] for pre-booking. If you want to know more about fun fly or the BFFA, take a look at www.funfly.bmfa.org or check out the Fun Fly Group facebook page, or ask questions via this thread. Fun Fly April Coaching and Competition advert (002).pdf Hope to see you there Mike Bell

I finally got to fly it this afternoon. General flight characteristics were as expected, it's the same shape as the balsa version after all. Did some fairly gently circuit type touch and goes and everything went well. As expected the strength is adequate for normal flying. Then on to some looping touch and goes to put a bit more stress into the fuz and when a wheel caught in a bit of a divot i found the limit of the structure in it's current configuration. To be honest, if it was going to break anywhere, this was one of two probable locations. I deliberately only put minimal ply reinforcement in this area, but now it is plain that it needs more for this type of treatment. At least this stuff breaks nice and clean so it should be an easy repair. No problem, that's what prototypes are for. For now I'll mend it and install some thin ply and in the meantime I'll build another fuz with some strategic reinforcement. I'm still aiming to campaign a foam board fuselage plane in this years fun fly events.

Just done a quick weigh in with a 4s 2200 battery and get 1263g or 2.8lb. I usually fly with 3s and most of my fun flys seem to come in at 2.5lb. So it does seem to be a bit heavier, though not by that much. If I put a lighter battery in it I'll have to put a spacer behind the motor to maintain balance. Next time I'll make the nose longer.

While fitting out the radio gear I couldn't resist making some bits and pieces on the 3D printer. Not too much left to do now.

Hi Bill, I normally use 3S but I want to try 4S for the revised Class 2 formula. 3S will fit via the front hatch but 4S won't so I have cut a bottom access. I don't really like the idea from a structural point of view and it limits useful space for the radio installation but I've done it anyway. I messed up a bit by forgetting about the reduction in internal volume from doubling up on foam thickness at the front. I'll make the fuz a bit deeper next time. Lipo Man, that looks funky and fun. Good to hear about the durability, I'm quite confident that mine will be Ok too.

The fuz is assembled and installation well on the way, hopefully not too long before I can try it out. The wing in the bottom picture is from the previous balsa version.

Got some covering on the parts today and found no problem at all ironing the film onto the paper covering. I thought that the exposed foam on the chamfered corners of the fuz would be a bit ugly but actually turned out OK, for a utilitarian plane like this anyway. The only disappointing bit was where the balsa framing of the tail and fin didn't quite sit exactly centrally on the edge of the board leaving a bit of a step. Not a problem where the balsa is proud, you can just sand it away, but on the other side you can't do much about it. I should probably have used 1/4" rather than 3/16" and shimmed the board up to have a bit of balsa proud on both sides. Lesson learned. I'm really encouraged by the weight, the parts shown below weigh 197 grammes which feels fairly comparable to a typical balsa version. It feels very rigid and I am perfectly confident it will be strong enough for in-flight loads, just remains to be seen how it stands up to fun fly rough and tumble. I'll kit it out with a motor and radio and find out in the next couple of weeks hopefully.

Thanks Graham, that Skystreak looks really nice. Looks like most of the material the covering is attached to is Depron, or similar, rather than foam board but I guess the board could be a bit easier if anything. Anyway, I'm about to find out since I have some parts ready for covering now. I'll probably start with the tail group then on to the fuz. The bits you see here weigh 175g which seems quite promising. The corners of the fuselage box have been cut and sanded to a chamfer rather than a radius since the material seems to be rather resistant due to the characteristics of the card facing. No problem for an application like this so I'll crack on. By the way, the "lightening" holes were cut quite easily with a compass cutter, although the weight of all the circles was only a gramme or so, so not worth the effort really.

You are right, John, that is a favourite place for the fuz to break and I intend to incorporate some local strengthening together with a hard point for the rear wing dowel. Should have done that before putting the top sheet on D'oh. Simon, thanks for the feedback, I have anticipated that the structural design may not be optimum for this material. I hope to get some learning from this prototype to inform future structural design decisions should this first try shows any promise. I suspect that design optimisation is likely to be about where to place local reinforcement but such additions will have to be tempered by needs to keep the weight acceptable. On a different note, do you have any advice on applying film covering directly on to this type of product? I have tried a small test piece and it seems to work if the heat iron doesn't linger too long.

I have seen some of the excellent foam board creations in the specialist section of this forum but I was curious to investigate whether this stuff could be a viable balsa replacement in the relatively high stress environment of a Fun Flyer. I usually end up building a new model every year or so since they tend to get a bit of a pasting in practice and competition. I thought that a foam board fuselage would provide a simple prototype to test out what this material is like to use and how resistant it is to being slapped onto the deck in touch and goes etc. Since I am looking to potentially use this in a competition airframe it will also be important to assess any weight penalty. or advantage. My intention for now is to just build a fuselage and tail group and use the wooden wing of my current model to try it out. There will be the option of trying a mostly foam board wing structure later if the fuselage performs well. The design is home brew, although it is to the typical fun fly layout and dimensions, so the experiment should be representative. Some wood will still need to be used in strategic places but I hope to keep this to a minimum. The pics below show progress so far. I have used a double thickness at the front end of the fuz sides and bottom to help absorb stresses coming through from the undercarriage. Board to board and board to balsa joints are all medium cyano or Por while the high stressed areas around the firewall and undercarriage mounts used Gorilla glue (foaming PU). I think it may have been better to use something other than cyano but we'll see. The balsa framing around the tail plane and elevator was 3/16" which was a good thickness match for the 5mm board. Need to be careful when sanding as the card facings can tear and lift. I have to say that so far the pros for this material are cheapness and there is scope to speed the build process, but on the downside it isn't so nice to handle and I suspect that the exposed foam edges won't look pretty when covered, although this is going to be a workhorse application rather than concours but I do have some pride. As for weight, early impressions are that it is unlikely to be lighter than the balsa version, but hopefully any penalty won't be too high. I'll update as the build progresses.

Sorry I'm a bit late spotting this David but just wanted to say what a great job you've done on it. I hope you enjoy flying it as much I have with mine.

Hi all, I am using RF 9.5 with a decent spec desktop and a HD monitor. I find the graphics really good so maybe this sim is a bit demanding on the graphics card power. I used to use a flat screen TV as a monitor but i didn't realise how bad it was until I changed to a proper monitor. The only gripe I have over this sim is that it is a bit too easy to fly eg tail draggers track straight on take off and prop hang / torque rolls are not the challenge you might expect. Mike

I had this problem too, Geoff. You might find that after any software update, McAffee will quarantine your launcher and exe files again. I got over it by temporarily disabling real time scanning in McAffee before launching Real Flight. The real time scan is only disabled for a few mins then it kicks in again. All the other virus protection remains in place so it's pretty low risk as far as I can tell. I no longer use McAffee since I moved to Virgin broadband and everything works OK without any jiggery pokery. Mike

Made some progress with the Jungmeister fuselage rebuild. A front end module was put together then grafted onto the rear fuz assembly. I was worried about getting alignments right but it was easier than I anticipated.