150% Sea Duck

pX_

New member
I got this crazy idea of building a larger FT Sea Duck. The 150% scale was set arbitrarily and as I was modifying the plans, I started to wonder whether I bit more than I could chew. But I still take it as a (huge) challenge. Some of my friends offered to help me with cutting the material, so we might finish it as a group effort :)

The plan is to use double-rudder, two part elevator, ailerons and maybe flaps between motor pods and main fuselage. Also, wings must be somewhat detachable, otherwise I couldn't move it anywhere. I'm thinking of cutting them past motor mounts.

So far, I have scaled the plans up and modified all the folds so that I could use the same 5mm thick material. Also, some parts needed some adjustment, for example pontoon spacers are now 3 layers thick instead of 2. But the pontoon pylons are still 2 layers thick, so the pontoon got a bit narrower. After this, I did a preview layout (http://imgur.com/RPOK6V2) to find out how much material would I need and which parts won't fit. It seems that the project will eat up 16 sheets! (That's 4 Explorers!) That corresponds with the scale ( 150% width x 150% length = 225% area ), but I somehow hoped I would be able to fit the parts closer together.

Now I need to rescale aileron servo holes, pontoon pylon holes, modify wings and wing spars and determine how I wish to cut parts that won't fit on a single piece of foamboard. Also I plan to build a thin slice of wing to test my thought-up wing detach mechanism before I start building the whole thing.

I have never attempted to build such a large plane, so I welcome any comments. :)

( PS: Of course I'm modifying the planes in vector editor, but I would like to check everything few times before I publish initial version of the plans. )
 

SteelWeaver

New member
Hey pX, did you ever finish the beast?? I too thought of doing a 150% and may try it if I ever get the time. Hopefully you succeeded and are able to pass on your wisdom. lol
 

w1lp33

Active member
Wait till the monster foam gets released then scale the plans up 180% and it’ll build easily without any other modifications :)


Hey pX, did you ever finish the beast?? I too thought of doing a 150% and may try it if I ever get the time. Hopefully you succeeded and are able to pass on your wisdom. lol
 

SteelWeaver

New member
Wait till the monster foam gets released then scale the plans up 180% and it’ll build easily without any other modifications :)

Ohhhhh I like what I hear. I'm new to the FT forums and am only half way through their speed kit for my 100%. any word on when this new foam is comming out? I'm assuming that they are keeping the water resistant qualities
 

w1lp33

Active member
They’ve been teasing the monster foam for a while now, don’t know when it’s coming out officially. It’s almost twice as thick but only like 40% heAvier, and you can take any of their plans and scale it up 180% and it will build exactly the same.

They’ve also got monster motors that are gonna come out eventually too, thst will be enough to power the monster builds.

I’d check flite test YouTube for some of the videos they’ve done with the monster foam... they made a sea duck that pulled josh in a kayak.

And yeah, it’s still gonna be water resistant :)