"Disposable" planes


I really haven't been too active with flying much of anything lately. I have quite a few planes ready to go, but just haven't gotten around to doing much flying lately. The new house has a great yard for flying electrics, so I've been thinking of getting into that a bit more.

What really got me going was a post on the "madflyers" yahoo group (a bunch of local guys who fly electrics in a golf dome all winter) about the 3D Foamy website. This guy has quite a few really nice planforms for sale, has great info on battery and motor combinations and allows you to download the manuals and even the plans from his site -- for free!

The first thing I'll say about this site is that his kits are inexpensive and from what I can tell, worth every penny you pay. Laser-cut depron -- real nice stuff. If you like what you see, just buy one. Don't do what I did...

I'm more into the screwing around and like the building and crashing experience, so I grabbed a set of plans for a Pitts S2C and went looking for building material.

I went to the local Home Desperate and found some of the Dow fanfold foam. $38 for a massive stack of foam. No idea what this stuff is really for, as it's too thin to insulate *anything* here during a Wisconsin winter.

But a Wisconsin winter does have plenty of time for scratch building, so I started cutting. A pink Pitts S2C materialized on my bench over the course of a couple weeks.

My foam Pitts S2C -- March 2005

I then got together the hardware to power it -- A speed 380 electric motor and a Kokam 3S1P lithium-polymer battery pack. Way more than enough thrust for this plane.

I learned a lot from the first flight. Like with that much thrust, there's no turning right. High-rates on the ailerons roll the plane like a spiraling football and all sorts of stuff breaks when you hit the plane into the ground.

The last flight of the Pitts was on a day that was maybe a bit too windy in March -- way too many glue joints have broken by now, and I've scrapped this airframe, for now.

So, I started on something new -- a bit larger with only one wing, the Raven 3d -- with some modifications. Still pretty close to 3dfoamy's layout.

This thing got crashed a few times in the front yard (and modified and modifed and modified) before a very successful flight the other weekend.

More to come.

This page last modified Wed Mar 30 22:17:08 CST 2005 by timc!