Scale Build Off - Ryan Navion from 1960's Control Line Plans

[Joker 53150]

The weather has potential for tomorrow morning, so the last few details were taken care of. She's ready for a maiden!

I was planning to use vinyl graphics to create the canopy windows, but decided instead to simply mask off the area to remain white, and the "glass" would be lightly sprayed with light blue. Overall, I like how it turned out. Assuming the maiden goes well tomorrow I will add some additional detail, such as the line between the two parts of the canopy, additional small vinyl graphics, etc. But it's good for now.

 

[willsonman]

Hey man, that is pretty slick. I love the window work. Best of luck on maiden... Remember into the wind and get airspeed before pulling back. You are in tricycle gear so ground handling should be a snap.

 

[Joker 53150]

Crap..........

The maiden didn't go quite as successfully as hoped for. The plane had plenty of power and ground-handling was fine, but once airborne it was very hard to control. My guess is that it was still tail heavy, even with 3/4 oz of extra ballast I stuck in the nose. The plans were of little help on CoG so I had to rely on online estimators and some guessing.

The NTSB report isn't in yet, but the preliminary damage: one cracked wing spar (easy to fix) and some damage to the nose which probably won't buff out easily. The battery box and nose gear support came out completely undamaged, but the balsa structure all around it shattered pretty well.

On the bright side, it DID fly (briefly), the wing received only minor damage, and the fuselage is still in great shape from the wing saddle back. Repairs on the nose may be possible, I'll have to lay out all the parts to know for sure.

So that concludes my attempt at finishing and flying in time for this contest to end, thanks for following along!

 

[Ron B]

did you try to use the pivot of the bellcrank on the plans as the cog?

 

[jhitesma]

Probably still better than I'll do maidening the RV when I finally finish it

 

[Joker 53150]

Looking at the damage again I don't think the repairs will be too difficult. The removable "chin" is split in half, an easy fix. The rest of the nose is in about 4-5 easily identifiable pieces. The thought right now is to strip the electronics out of the nose, piece it together, and decide it's fate from there, but it certainly looks do-able.

 

[willsonman]

SOrry about the crash but I agree, not to many splinters there so piece her back together!

 

[Joker 53150]

For a change of pace I decided to put the Navion on the back-burner for a few weeks, to make room on the bench for something different (for me, at least). Hobby King sells a DLG balsa kit that has been sitting on my shelf for months, so after I'm done with it I'll get back to the Nav. So far, the wings and fuselage are coming along nicely. It's much better quality laser cutting than the rest of the HK kits I've done so far.

 

[MrClean]

Ouch, pretty abrupt arrival. Looked good in the pictures though. This is why all of my planes are UGLY. cuts down on the investment.