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My first 3D 'plane build - Eclipson Fox


Ron Gray
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Great news, thank you. 👍

 

I'm a fan of Eclipsons designs and have found them so far of a high quality and well thought out. I've borrowed a lot of their design ideas for my own design.

 

Looking forward to following this Ron as I am sure there will be plenty to be learnt.

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The motor was delivered today so it was time to look at the weight. Ready to fly with a 3s 1800mAh Li-Po it weighs 850g which isn't too bad and gives it a wing loading of just under 27.5 g/dm2. As I had a couple of the wing panels 'spare' because I reprinted them with a bottom layer I checked out how much weight would be added if I spray painted them. I primed, rubbed down then gloss acrylic topcoat rubbed back then coated again and this added about 1/6 to the weight. If I extrapolate that to the whole airframe I would add about 80g so I might not bother.

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Well I too the Fox out for its maiden flight yesterday but had far too much movement on all control surfaces so it was a bit of an over controlled flight. It didn't help having a dodgy ESC as well! Unfortunately but as anticipated, the structure didn't take too kindly to the landing and the fuselage split just behind one of the section joints, it's not a big problem and it's now stuck back together but I've taken the precaution of laminating some glass cloth bandage around all of the fuselage joints (vid to follow). I do think that it would benefit from a bit more lateral strengthening maybe including some carbon rod stringers.

 

image.thumb.png.7ee091687690a8258a1668ed6fbbd6f6.png

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I do remember your post now! I did a ‘bend test’ on the wings after I had printed them and was surprised at how strong they were due to the full span carbon tube spars. If they had incorporated similar, albeit smaller, carbon tubes in the fuselage as stringers or as an internal spine it would be a lot better. I’ll give them my feedback plus have a look to see if I can redesign the fuselage parts.

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It seems I never got around to including any photos of my strengthening mod using CF strips in my earlier ‘Structural Failure Warning’ post. So here’s one now (below the 3D CAD drawing proposal from the original thread):


The red slice shows the approximate area of the previous structural failure.

Grey shows the additional 5mm x 1mm CF strips.
IMG_2389.png.37dd53f074f2912da1bfa00d4a66bc12.png

 

The real thing:

IMG_7942.thumb.jpeg.87b9cbc96640ecf73e68b61869db26bd.jpeg

 

I guess incorporating CF strips or any other internal reinforcement isn’t so easy to do in the rear part of a fuselage though, where you have no internal access once it’s assembled 🤔.

Edited by EvilC57
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44 minutes ago, Ron Gray said:

If they had incorporated similar, albeit smaller, carbon tubes in the fuselage as stringers or as an internal spine it would be a lot better.

The ones I've built do have this feature, it seems strange this one doesn't. Not only does it provide strength, it also makes for ease of location of the parts for gluing.

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My Fox was built for slope soaring only so weight gain wasn't a concern. The fuselage and wings are covered with 25g/m2 glass cloth applied with Deluxe Eze-Kote hopefully to increase it's damage resistance. I have been unable to fly it yet so can't comment if it has increased the damage resistance but in certainly feels more rigid.. 

1000001869.jpg

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Repairs all done and I’ve glass clothed part of the undersides of the wings as I found another split. Have also added some paint so the AUW is now 890g. If I get another split I may well do what GBG has done and glass the whole model.

 

IMG_9422.thumb.jpeg.1d4af845d847f0f483667dd441aaf1c6.jpeg

 

IMG_9421.thumb.jpeg.d14322d8ef9b656f60c709b35753e3bb.jpeg

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