Cessna 180 Swappable with plans. 50" inch wing span.

[Timmy P]

Looks grate I am thinking about making one looks like it would be cool to put scale lights in it and fly at night

Actually I've been wanting to do exactly that. With a left wing headlight and all. Maybe even some up lighting on the vertical stab. I know I had zero orientation issues with the Flite Fest plane loaded with LEDs. Even after a few brews

If you do it you gotta post some pictures. Thanks Timmy P

 

[iCrash]

Hey Timmy, It was great to meet you at FF15! I really loved seeing the Army plane. If I hadn't bought the CNC machine, I would probably purchased that beautiful plane from you. I plan to do the Cessna 180 on the foam CNC once I get it running. Good luck to you! and thanks for a wonderful design. I'll fix the black 180 soon. It's too cool not to. I still love the landing gear design. rock solid.

 

[chetw77cruiser]

I just finished (mostly) my Cessna. I painted it to resemble that plane I had the most time in chasing after spot lighters and poachers. Even though that was a 185, This design works for me. The only areas where I strayed from the plans were the wing, tail servo mounting, and landing gear arrangement. I did not use the score cut and crease method for the win, rather I peeled the paper from the inside of the curved wing section. I did this as an experiment and for aesthetic reasons. I mounted the tail servos under the turtle deck purely for aesthetic reasons. The landing gear/tail wheel were what I had around so I decided to use them. All I need to do to finish this is to close the front of the engine area.Hopefully the weather will hold for the day so I may be able to take it for its maiden flight.

 

[Foam Addict]

I just finished my first cessna build (probably of 3) but I can't seem to figure out where the battery goes.

Also, how did y'all get the top deck on without any wrinkles? On my build it wrinkled a lot, especially on the right side.

 

[T-Richard]

I must build one. Someone at the local field made one and It looked like lots of fun. I have a powerpod with a big motor that needs a home and I wanted to make an over the top night flyer and I think this is the perfect platform.

I did have a question about battery location as foam addict above. How do you put in the battery and where

 

[Timmy P]

Hey Timmy, It was great to meet you at FF15! I really loved seeing the Army plane. If I hadn't bought the CNC machine, I would probably purchased that beautiful plane from you. I plan to do the Cessna 180 on the foam CNC once I get it running. Good luck to you! and thanks for a wonderful design. I'll fix the black 180 soon. It's too cool not to. I still love the landing gear design. rock solid.

Yea for sure, It was neat to see your build.. Have it ready for next year so we can fly together.. Well with as many people jumping on board it looks like we may have a school of 180s flying around lol.. and thats freaking cool stuff.. Have fun with that CNC machine..

 

[Timmy P]

I just finished (mostly) my Cessna. I painted it to resemble that plane I had the most time in chasing after spot lighters and poachers. Even though that was a 185, This design works for me. The only areas where I strayed from the plans were the wing, tail servo mounting, and landing gear arrangement. I did not use the score cut and crease method for the win, rather I peeled the paper from the inside of the curved wing section. I did this as an experiment and for aesthetic reasons. I mounted the tail servos under the turtle deck purely for aesthetic reasons. The landing gear/tail wheel were what I had around so I decided to use them. All I need to do to finish this is to close the front of the engine area.Hopefully the weather will hold for the day so I may be able to take it for its maiden flight.
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Thats a solid build.. With the rear gear and real airfoil wing I squinting at the pictures like "thats not a balsa build" Seriously you made it look good man.. Is the rear wheel steer-able? Can you get a better pictures of how you mounted and steer it? I only fly in park fields with thick grass, so no rear wheels for me but its worth knowing.. The grass is the reason why the the tail hinges don't have the little fingers on them.. They were just catching too much grass, so I opted to keep them straight. It adds to the durability a bit also.. Make sure your CG is slightly nose heavy at the wing spar.. Good luck with the maiden flight..

 

[chetw77cruiser]

The maiden went surprisingly well even with a slightly twisted wing. Time to get a new "FLAT" work table. The rear wheel is steerable and I will get more pictures of the setup I used. Luckily I am able to fly at the local airport so grass is not a problem but sometimes sagebrush is when going off the pavement. I still need to finish the fine details like the door and window lines, but otherwise this a sweet flying plane. The flaps slow it down nicely for that picture perfect landing. I forgot to mention, the leading edge where the lower and upper halves meet at the outer half, I glued some de-papered (SP?)
foam board and then sanded it to shape. I then placed tape over the surface to give a smooth surface and to reinforce the area. I will get some photos of this as well. Too bad I did not get any photos from the build.

I placed the battery in the power pod and located the esc on the lower side of the pod. This keeps the esc in the flow of cooling air as well as there was no room in the bottom of the fuselage for the battery. Changing batteries does require me to slide the power pod forward, but does not take much time or effort. As far as battery placement for CG, I have a Zippy compact 2200 3S as far forward in the pod, no thanks to the "slightly" oversize tail wheel.

To remove the bulge and subsequent wrinkle in the turtle deck, I slit the poster board along the sides of the #4 bulkhead former (the doubled plates at the rear of the wing) and then overlapped the seam. I hope that this helps. If you want, I will be near the Denver area this coming weekend and I plan to bring this plane with me. We can meet up somewhere and I will let you see and probably try it.

 

[Timmy P]

I just finished my first cessna build (probably of 3) but I can't seem to figure out where the battery goes.

Also, how did y'all get the top deck on without any wrinkles? On my build it wrinkled a lot, especially on the right side.

The battery goes inside the power pod.. Thats what I do with all my FT planes so I just kept it that way...

And with curving posterboard there is a grain to it.. It bends easier one way than the other.. Then you pre form it by creasing and bending so its almost the correct shape before you glue anything..

Thanks for building from my plans...Welcome to Team Cessnah

 

[psemme]

Making progress. Never enough time. But the plans are great Timmy.

 

[Foam Addict]

Well, I unintentionally removed the built in down trim on my first cessna, and it ended up at the top of a tree...


However, 48 hours later:



This one has both a training wing with 7 degrees of dihedral (no ailerons) and a standard wing with ailerons. It flies excellently with either, though it definitely looks a little nicer with the standard wing. I also removed most of the positive wing incidence before I discovered the built in down angle on the elevator, so that changed the characteristics a little bit.

I'm using a rewound 2836 1000v motor and a 9x4.7 slo fly prop, and a 2200 3s lipo, so it can get in the air in about 20 ft on gravel or asphalt, and maybe 30 on rough weeds.

I'll post a photo of the first one when I can get it out of the tree.

 

[Timmy P]

Well, I unintentionally removed the built in down trim on my first cessna, and it ended up at the top of a tree...


I also removed most of the positive wing incidence before I discovered the built in down angle on the elevator, so that changed the characteristics a little bit.

The positive wing what?!? I dont know much about planes man hahaha.. and by saying you removed the "built in down trim" do you mean you left the horizontal stabilizer flat to the center deck? I tweaked these plans for months before I released them to the public.. If you were trying to make it fly better, I can promise you that you can't lol.. If you build it directly to the plans that I provided you shouldn't even need to trim more than a few clicks on your first flight. She is locked in. I hope you get your first one back..

 

[Foam Addict]

It flew about the same actually. I did get it down, thanks! I had to climb a 40 foot tree, but I got it down.

I didn't understand what the shims were for. I'm rarely suspicious when I find spare parts, usually my builds fly fine without all the optimization.

She was also extremely tail heavy, I found a rock that I was using for nose weight in the tail when I got it down...

 

[Timmy P]

Heads up.... The plans to this are under the knife.. Or should I say Pen Tool lol.... I'm making changes to a few things.. First I'm changing it to a box wing spar. If you fly this to the full capabilities it will flex a wing eventually. And adding CG location to the plans. Also changing the tail setup.. Instead of "tail shims" I'm opting to lower the tail surfaces into the top deck instead of being on top.. I'll have to build it and test but I doubt that 4mm change will do anything.. Struts! I'm going to add some non functional wing struts.. Its looks awesome with struts. I think thats it... I cant think of anything else right now....

 

[Spastickitten]

Keep us updated!

 

[mesadad]

The plans don't seem to be available. The link seems to be broke. Are the plans still available? I hope so. I live in Texas and the winds are crazy rough. I've built about 10 different planes and none of them seem to handle the wind very well. Hopefully a top wing is what I need.

 

[dgrigor02]

I just checked, I can get to the plans from the link in the article: http://flitetest.com/articles/cessna-180-swappable-with-plans

 

[D17E]

Very very nice plane Timmy...
btw, i want to try build this plane, but i cannot find thr tiled plants. anyone can help me to share it..

thanks so much for the greate plane timmy.

 

[dgrigor02]

There is no need for tiled plans. Use Adobe acrobat choose file > Print. Choose Poster, and check the cut marks box and the label box.

 

[dmaximob]

After many months, I've finally finished this plane. Kids, family and work have sucked up a lot of my building time. When I first saw the article on this build, I knew I had to do a CHP(California Highway Patrol) plane. I have a close relative who is an officer and I have seen a few CHP planes up close so it was always on my list to do. Although the real plane they use is a Cessna 182, I figured it still look good.
Everything went together smoothly, the plans were great.

A few notes:
-I forget how, but I ended up not putting as much dihedral as the build log showed. I was a little worried about how that would affect things. It turns out it flies fine. I didn't notice anything bad about it.
-I added a basic tail wheel that I picked up at my local shop. It works great.
-I spent way too long painting this thing. I did it all with blue masking tape and spray paint. I printed out and sticky sprayed the CHP stars on.
-I misunderstood the description of the skewer locations. Mine are through the formers instead of the former supports. This makes my rubber bands super tight and the wing to sit forward more than it should. I added two pieces of plastic sliding bar(from report covers like these) to the trailing edge of the wing to take the brunt of the rubber band force.

I really enjoyed flying this thing over the weekend. It's smooth, slow, and looks great in the air. I love the beefy-ness of the design. I feel like it gives the FT swappable type plane a third dimension. I've taken that concept to my own Mooney design, now I just need to find the time to cut that out and put it together.

Thanks for the awesome plans and build TimmyP!