Building two Nano DLGs - Smashy and Traffic cone.

I know I have introduced this before, but here's the link to the plans.

http://www.pcm.at/english/index2.htm

I've ended up building two of them. They take me roughly three evenings each to build.

Here's the highlights:

I hacked in a power plug so I could power the radio off a 120mah LiPo cell. That reciever is 2.6 grams without the case!

All wired up and ready to go. Looks impressive. Sadly it's got a weight problem. Which leads to it's name. "Smashy"

What a porker. It is supposed to weigh 50g. I didn't pay to much attention to the airfoil shape, or the thickness of paint. I also found out, much to my dismay, that my "4g" servos actually weighed something like 9 grams each!

That's the beauty shot. It's the last time it looked that good. On it's first flight at the park I found I didn't have enough elevator control. The plane made a bee line for the ground and turned itself into a few more peices than it took off in.

You'll notice the lack of carbon reinforcements. There was no carbon tow available anywhere local. I placed an order, but still decided to fly the plane.

Well, lesson learned. Time to make the followup plane. We'll call it traffic cone.

This is a trick I learned long ago. if you want to make accurate parts, glue your plan to the wood.

The bits come out better than die cut. And without laser burn marks. For a plane with all of thirteen parts, this isn't a big deal. I'll go laser on any plane that has lots of parts. :-)

I did the fuselage parts the same way.

It's not perfect, but it's really close. And the trailing edges match when it's stood up. That's good enough for me.

Not bad looking? Almost looks kit like. This is before I sanded the wings.

That's bordering on svelte. The wings, before sanding, weigh 22 grams!

Carbon fiber is so sexy. Especially the unidirectional tow. This stuff is seriously overkill for the project. It was $15 for 50 yards.

I think it looks good. As you'll see, I'm probally going a bit heavy with it. But in my half a dozen flights with Crashy I broke the rudder off four times.

Here the wings are marked for the back half of the airfoil. But I need something to sand them on that's going to provide me with a decent grip on the wing.

My solution was to glue some stops onto a piece of cardboard. This I taped to the counter top so the wing wouldn't move on me while I was sanding it.

Sanding the leading edge took a different technique. The plans come with angle blocks, so I glued the angle block to my sanding block.. and went to town on the wings.

It really went pretty quick. I was using 100 grit paper.

And then I stopped taking pictures.

The rest wasn't very interesting. This is before I cut out the ailerons. The carbon makes the plane really really stiff.

Watson insisted on helping. He sat there and played foreman for fifteen minutes.

I ordered lighter radio gear. I hope to get it in the mail soon, so I can fly this thing at the proper weight.

Speaking of weight. As it stands the plane weighs 43 grams. The battery is 3 grams, and the radio is 3.6 grams.

The next update will be after the plane has flown.

New parts from china: lets build a Nano DLG

 The new project is a Nano DLG. Here's what I have for radio gear.  A spectrum reciever, and some 4gram servos.  I need to decide if I am going to use that 420mah cell, and have it a powered glider as well, or stick with some 100mah cell. 

Here's the assembly video.. yes, the music is annoyingly christ heavy.  Nano DLG, build video

And here's a flight video:  Nano DLG flight video

I hope to have this built next week.

Two months on with a Parkzone Ultra Micro T-28

Flying is fun. Lots of fun. Enough fun that I'm willing to risk my airframe just to fly some more. My little T-28 isn't a very fast plane. And is much less fast when dragging landing gear around with itself.

I usually chose to fly without landing gear, but due to one late evening exercise in stupidity, I no longer have that option. I decided I'd try to fly under the parking lot lights at a local business park. It was quite a bit of fun, but one landing ended up contacting a curb, which ripped off the starboard landing gear. While gluing it back on, I managed to glue the landing gear into the mount.

I've managed to not get any pictures of my plane, really, at all. So while playing with the laser cutter at the pumpingstation I took a shot or two of it.

So this is after "well I've got nothing left to lose" repairs. The plane had started flying like it was carrying 30lbs extra in the air. And i figured it was all my glue and tape repairs. Buying a new airframe seemed sensable, so i did that.

I now have two T-28's. the one that didn't fly right, I decided I was going to dissect and put into a new airframe. Something custom, something more aerobatic. But while looking to take the plane apart, I found that the control horns weren't actually controlling the rudder or elevator.

It's amazing what a little foam safe CA and cardboard will do for control authority.

I still wanted to make a new airframe. .... And because it has a picture of my latest little model aircraft tool, I'm going to give you a preview of what I'm building.

Yes, that was cut on the laser cutter. It's a clone of the Ace Littlest Stick.

Left center you'll see a bunch of E-flite batteries. I have put Velcro on the back of a laminated business card so I can keep track of my cells easily. I hate losing $5 batteries at the turn of my head.

I think we're getting near time to review the T-28. I've put 20-30 batteries through it, so I think we're deep enough that we can say I know the plane well.

Drinking the ParkZone Kool-Aid

It's been a bad weekend for my wallet. But a good weekend for hobbico. A buddy of mine picked up a MCX Helicopter last week. He bought it because his syma S-107 bit the dust.

$80 later he's flying his 4 channel heli around the office. Lucky guy.

I hear his review, and decide I should do the same thing. I bought one on sunday. .... I'm an idiot for not buying one sooner. I'll post a full review later.

Monday rolls around, and while riding my bike after lunch, I stop by my local hobbytown. I'm wandering around, and I noticed that the transmitters for the Ultra Micro series planes, and my MCX are the same.

So later that evening, I'm flying my brand spanking new T-28 around the local park. 17mph winds and all. Turns out I can fly a 4ch airplane.