TN Concorde

[aerts michel]

I am using the retracts set sold by Tony.

[Martin McIntosh]

Hi, I am not at your stage yet but have the elevon servo mounts installed including the inner ones. The nose leg is being done but i found the opening to be too narrow so have modified it a bit. The steering is being done with fishing line and some piano wire to centre it I hope. Pics. to follow when I get the servo installed. Fingers crossed that it will work.

[Martin McIntosh]

Here is my effort at the nose leg which seems to work quite well. When the wheels eventually arrive I shall probably make it a twin and can get on with the mains.

[Alan Jarvis]

Sorry Martin for the delay but here is a photo of the other side of the leg.

[aerts michel]

Here is a view on my setup wich can help you. I ended with 9 mm wood parts instead of 10 mm because opening was too narrow.

[aerts michel]

[Martin McIntosh]

Thanks Alan, but it was the other side of the mains I was interested in. I think I now know how I shall make mine.

I avoided those MCR series units because the latest ones I bought would not work with certain Rx`s which only output a 3V pulse instead of the required 5V; older ones are fine. Also, I have found that because the geometry is hopelessly wrong, the nose legs twist on retraction causing them to foul.

[Alan Jarvis]

Decals. Anybody any thoughts on making or someone who may supply them?

[Chris Walby]

Try Callie Graphics **LINK**

Helpful, fast, does bespoke graphics (Gruffalo for me) and local.

Okay well not local as they are in Magdalena, USA, but don't let that put you off, 7 to 10 day postage normally!

Highly recommended...by me

[Martin McIntosh]

Just sheeting the wing underside, but on the build pics there seems to be a larger than required cut out around F11, surrounded by what appears to be balsa strip. Any ideas as to why?

Yesterday I made up the wiring looms using 10awg from the battery then splitting it four ways with 14awg to the esc`s. I then programmed the YEP esc`s and checked the fans, the last of which out of the packaging turned out to be 64mm, not 50. Great. I may just keep it and do an enlarged Gnat rather than send it back.

[aerts michel]

Hi Martin, I don't remember something special about F11. The thing is when you will glue the formers against the 2 wing parts it is better to use white glue than cyano. I made the mistake to first glue all the formers against one wing side with cyano, and when I tried to join with the second wing some of the formers where not well aligned and I had to remove the glue on these formers (I broke some parts in the operation). So if you use white glue it will allow you to take your time to aligne everything well because the glue will dry slowly.

 

Bad news for your fan 64mm.. I have bought from bangood 4 fms fans (the ones used on Tony's Concorde).

Edited By aerts michel on 24/11/2019 18:59:25

Edited By aerts michel on 24/11/2019 18:59:55

[Martin McIntosh]

Thanks, the photos are not always very clear. I somehow glued my sides to the wings at the same time with ca. Other than F9 which is not quite vertical - does not matter, it has gone together OK. I am unused to skinning a wing underside sheet by sheet but soon learned to use aliphatic and some tape over the joins. I am also adding small strips of balsa on the inside in an attempt to keep the sheets level, around the wiring exits as well.

I wish that TN had said not to add the bottom stringer before sheeting but some `Uncure` got mine off. Got nearly as far forward as the u/c so far.

[Martin McIntosh]

Now getting on quite well-ish. By performing a lot of butchery and reversing the wheel positions I have got the mains well and truly sunk in. The problem now is with the Power Fun fans which are proving to be real `fun` to install since the bell mouths must be a little larger than the FMS units and are requiring some material to be removed from the nacelles. I have been forced to remove them and will need to re fit once the fans are in position. Despite heating them, the 250 micron acetate thrust tubes are taking forever to glue together with RCM glue.

Regarding the fus., other than the nose I decided on 1/16th balsa sheeting instead of 3/32nd and glad that I did when it came to the tail cone.

[Martin McIntosh]

Here are my sunk in wheels as I shall probably fit them.

When I put in the ESC power wiring I included some draw strings for the ESC cables but being a complete twerp left some tape on holding them together and the only way to remove it was to cut a hole in the bottom of the fus!

In order to keep some wiring clutter out of the intake airflow I am reducing the length of the ESC to fans and the ESC to Rx cable connectors since these will not pull through the rib holes. This is the first one.

[Martin McIntosh]

I have now cut down all of the ESC wiring and got it through to the battery/Rx hatch. Time to smoke test using a servo tester and a Watt meter. It all works but by Jove does everything get hot quickly. At full power the 4500 3s pack soon ran down quite a bit but on reducing power it picked up. Not a true in flight test but I wanted to know the limits of it. Lots of thrust it would appear. Before I publish my Watt meter findings has anyone else got to this stage yet and are you using 3 or 4s fans?

By cutting the red +ve wire to the multi connector on three of the ESC`s I am hoping that the one left will power the seven digital servos OK but if not I shall have to fit a UBEC.

[Martin McIntosh]

Now a lot more advanced. I ran into a problem with the elevon ribs which when cut as per plan make them 1/4" to long to fit the plan view so I cut them shorter to allow the 1/4" LE to be fitted, but on looking at the cross section view of RB2 they were correct in the first place. A question to TN has produced no response so have made the chord half way between the two.

The elevons themselves were a devil to make to follow the curvature of the wing but I got there in the end.

I hate ABS mouldings so in a rash moment decided to try taking GF moulds from them. So far have a good set of females so fingers crossed. The originals are still available undamaged. I can see this being stood on its nose at some time and the ABS being crushed.

Next is the rear wing fillets and tail cone followed by the front section when I get the droop nose finished and fitted.

[Alan Jarvis]

I have not had much time on this build but this is where I am with it. I have put a snake in for the rudder and the servo near the battery hatch. I didn't like the idea for fixing it to the tail as appears on the plan.

[Alan Thorpe]

Amazing work Martin, well done, some skills getting it to this stage already!

Great to see it coming together and nearing completion, class stuff.

Watching with interest.......and not a small amount of skills envy!

Alan

[Martin McIntosh]

Got my grp version of the nose now and it turned out great but has nearly driven me mad getting everything fitted together. Just about to pop back into the shed and attempt to fit the hinge.

The wing edges gave been sanded to shape and the elevons made, also some covers for the servos and the rear wing fillets done.

I was getting worried that this thread had died.

[Martin McIntosh]

The nose hinge so far.

One question.

The plan shows the aileron deflection but not the elevator unless I have missed something. I would have thought somewhat more than the 8mm aileron movement if my experience of deltas is correct.

[Martin McIntosh]

Now got the nose `fettled` as he says, painted and working well.

 

I normally find covering a model to be fairly easy, but not so in this case. Getting that first nacelle done was no simple job, and I still need to figure out how to get the iron I have into the space between them and the centre. 20 odd years ago I bought a detailing iron but it hardly got hot enough to do ordinary Solarfilm. I hit on the idea of heating this further with my normal iron turned right up. This works on those tight joins, much better than a heated ruler.

I read that Cover Grip was the stuff to use on those awkward bits, and having tried PVA once before I gave it a go.

Never again. My lovely smooth finish looked like tree bark in places and refused to sand back down. Will just have to live with it as is.

Edited By Martin McIntosh on 22/12/2019 20:49:10

[Denis Watkins]

Posted by Martin McIntosh on 16/12/2019 21:31:39:

One question.

The plan shows the aileron deflection but not the elevator unless I have missed something. I would have thought somewhat more than the 8mm aileron movement if my experience of deltas is correct.

Great progress Martin, with 100s watching

Having read through again and saw the above, and in my opinion there could be nothing worse than Concorde

Flick Rolling ! !

8mm sounds good to me. Tractor Deltas have " Squish " from the prop over the control surfaces which aid aerobatics for certain delta types, but

This " Lady " is effectively a Pusher configuration

And I would think 8 mm would fly her here scale like

Have a strict plan on the Maiden to circuit gently until you get to know the model

And Stick to the Plan !

Edited By Denis Watkins on 23/12/2019 07:40:44

[Martin McIntosh]

Thanks for the compliments and comments, but unless I hear otherwise from TN I shall increase it a bit. Deltas are almost impossible to stall and tend to come in at a large angle of attack. Found out much about this with my 362 and ran out of up. Anyway, I always test fly with rates set up and a large amount of expo.

I have already found some errors on the plan, and omissions are not uncommon when they are re drawn.

Came down with the dreaded lurgy in the middle of the night so may as well bury myself in the shed for the week since I expect not to want to do much else.

Wish me luck with the rest of that covering; I think I shall need it.

[Martin McIntosh]

A bit more.

I seem to have hijacked this thread a little but hope to hear soon how others are tackling the various problems.

Bit the bullet today and bought a Prolux LCD sealing iron in an effort to get to the parts other beers cannot reach. Not very impressed and the shoe is too wide to do the bits between the nacelle inner and the fus centre. It seems to take forever to reach and change temperature compared with my trusty Argos travel iron which can do this in seconds. I tried a similar one back in the seventies and found it to be very unwieldy so gave up with that. I found that if my Protech detailing iron is left on for long enough it will actually seal the HK covering.

Watch out when covering close to the acetate thrust tubes or you could melt them!

Still undecided as to whether a single BEC will power 10 servos including the retracts so shall rig up something to check the peak servo current using a Wattmeter. Don`t really understand why you can only use one of these from the four available.

[Chris Walby]

Hi, I had a TN Ta154 that I thought I would try out some digital servos and a HK UBEC and was doing some bench testing so the servos were unloaded.

I was messing around with mixing rudder to throttle and had the 3S2200, UBEC, RX and aileron (2) and elevator servos attached when I noticed something odd with the RX.

Everything worked ok until I buried the sticks in the corners of the TX (like I might if recovering from something quite unpleasant!) and the RX would flash indicating it had lost signal. With multimeter in hand I discovered that the UBEC voltage would collapse due to the servos inrush current. Never had the issue with analogue servos especially unloaded

Might be worth ensuring your BEC is up to the job of full demand before flight.