Cooley
Father/Son Team
Its a little unfair to say its our first plane ever but this is our first plane in a very very long time. My father flew big Glo-engine planes several decades ago, but since then we have only owned one small wallmart-brand plane that lasted about four flights. and that was eight years ago.
Since finding FT we have decided to get back into the hobby. If any of you read my "Hi"-thread post you know we are very cautious in the way we approach things (took us two weeks just to post on the forums) so I have done extensive research on the different scratch-build plans avaiable. We were searching for the right plane to start flying on.
I wanted it to have enough power that I could swap the power-pod directly into a larger plane when I decide to move up, I also wanted a radio that could grow with me a little (but nothing fancy, because if we really take to the hobby we will obviously want a second radio anyway), I wanted it to be easy to fly, and I wanted all of this at an affordable price.
It seemed like alot to expect from a hobby that five years ago was almost to expensive and consuming to approach, but with the recent evolutions in brushless outboard motors and foam construction materials, I think I made it happen.
The airframe we have decided on is the FT Flyer design, but we anticipate graduating to a Bloody Wonder fairly quickly. Pops has placed his favor on the quickbuild kits so we will likely build a Delta and Nutball as well.
As far as electronics, I have spent about 20 hours over the past five days researching parts, what all the stats for all of said parts mean, how they work together, and what size parts scale to what size airframes. The rest of this post will be dedicated to a parts list, im putting this here to that more experienced eyes can look it over and warn me of anything I may be mis-calculating, or to turn me away from shoddy parts. (the HobbyKing brand parts are so inexpensive I feel a little guilty and apprehensive even buying them)
1 Motor: Turnigy L2210-1400 Bell-style Outrunner
1 ESC: HoobyKing SS Series 25-30a ESC
Rx/Tx: HobbyKing 4ch Tx/RX 2.4gHz V2 (I would have prefered the 6ch, but it is on backorder in the US and this will do the trick just fine)
2 Batteries: Turnigy 1300mAh 3s 20c LiPo
CHarger: HobbyKing ECO6-10 200W 10Amp charger (we sprung a little extra here because we dont want to have to upgrade charger as soon as we upgrade planes, also we would like to be able to charge multiple batteries at once)
6 HK 10g Analog servos
And a Volatge/Amperage Meter that we will likely build onto a test-bed for testing Prop/Motor/ESC combos.
Speaking of props, we plan to begin testing with some older plastic props that my father has from his previous days in RC Airplanes. (starting with a 8x4) There is also a small hobby store in the next town over that we can get props inexpensive from. Not as cheap as HK, but they are privately owned and we want to give them our business.
As far as the things we are ordering from HK, I have already double checked that all of it is instock and avaliable from the US warehouse to avoid outrageous shipping charges. This Shopping list comes to a grand total of about $110 USD. Not including Airframes.
Thanks for reading and tell me what you think!
UPDATE! 6/9/13
Alright, with 20 minutes left in the weekend, I deliver on my promise for a build log. We ended up making our purchase from HobbyPartz.com and expect components to come in sometime this week. You might see another string of pics this week when/if we stylize the plane, a bit of paint and a nice FliteTest decal maybe. One more when assembling electronics.
The maiden flight is tentatively scheduled for next Saturday. We planned early so some of my buddies can take off work and be there. Lastly before the pictures, we added a Simulator to our order so I'll dust off FRAPS and see if I cant give you something to laugh at before the maiden flight.
So here are my plotted full-size plans. Doing it this way turned out to be a huge help. And it looks pretty cool.
View attachment 10599
We fabricated our own Firewall and control horns. The control horn for the elevator ended up needing to be extra long so we salvaged a plastic one off a twenty-year-old balsa trainer from a pile of scrap parts from dad's old flying days.
View attachment 10600
The build went pretty smooth, we reinforced everywhere we could. Our engine is a little more powerful than necessary so we figured the few extra grams wouldn't be a problem.
View attachment 10601
And here she is, final product, with some push-rods from the box of salvage we are now just waiting for the post-man. Talk about nail-biting.
View attachment 10602
Since finding FT we have decided to get back into the hobby. If any of you read my "Hi"-thread post you know we are very cautious in the way we approach things (took us two weeks just to post on the forums) so I have done extensive research on the different scratch-build plans avaiable. We were searching for the right plane to start flying on.
I wanted it to have enough power that I could swap the power-pod directly into a larger plane when I decide to move up, I also wanted a radio that could grow with me a little (but nothing fancy, because if we really take to the hobby we will obviously want a second radio anyway), I wanted it to be easy to fly, and I wanted all of this at an affordable price.
It seemed like alot to expect from a hobby that five years ago was almost to expensive and consuming to approach, but with the recent evolutions in brushless outboard motors and foam construction materials, I think I made it happen.
The airframe we have decided on is the FT Flyer design, but we anticipate graduating to a Bloody Wonder fairly quickly. Pops has placed his favor on the quickbuild kits so we will likely build a Delta and Nutball as well.
As far as electronics, I have spent about 20 hours over the past five days researching parts, what all the stats for all of said parts mean, how they work together, and what size parts scale to what size airframes. The rest of this post will be dedicated to a parts list, im putting this here to that more experienced eyes can look it over and warn me of anything I may be mis-calculating, or to turn me away from shoddy parts. (the HobbyKing brand parts are so inexpensive I feel a little guilty and apprehensive even buying them)
1 Motor: Turnigy L2210-1400 Bell-style Outrunner
1 ESC: HoobyKing SS Series 25-30a ESC
Rx/Tx: HobbyKing 4ch Tx/RX 2.4gHz V2 (I would have prefered the 6ch, but it is on backorder in the US and this will do the trick just fine)
2 Batteries: Turnigy 1300mAh 3s 20c LiPo
CHarger: HobbyKing ECO6-10 200W 10Amp charger (we sprung a little extra here because we dont want to have to upgrade charger as soon as we upgrade planes, also we would like to be able to charge multiple batteries at once)
6 HK 10g Analog servos
And a Volatge/Amperage Meter that we will likely build onto a test-bed for testing Prop/Motor/ESC combos.
Speaking of props, we plan to begin testing with some older plastic props that my father has from his previous days in RC Airplanes. (starting with a 8x4) There is also a small hobby store in the next town over that we can get props inexpensive from. Not as cheap as HK, but they are privately owned and we want to give them our business.
As far as the things we are ordering from HK, I have already double checked that all of it is instock and avaliable from the US warehouse to avoid outrageous shipping charges. This Shopping list comes to a grand total of about $110 USD. Not including Airframes.
Thanks for reading and tell me what you think!
UPDATE! 6/9/13
Alright, with 20 minutes left in the weekend, I deliver on my promise for a build log. We ended up making our purchase from HobbyPartz.com and expect components to come in sometime this week. You might see another string of pics this week when/if we stylize the plane, a bit of paint and a nice FliteTest decal maybe. One more when assembling electronics.
The maiden flight is tentatively scheduled for next Saturday. We planned early so some of my buddies can take off work and be there. Lastly before the pictures, we added a Simulator to our order so I'll dust off FRAPS and see if I cant give you something to laugh at before the maiden flight.
So here are my plotted full-size plans. Doing it this way turned out to be a huge help. And it looks pretty cool.
View attachment 10599
We fabricated our own Firewall and control horns. The control horn for the elevator ended up needing to be extra long so we salvaged a plastic one off a twenty-year-old balsa trainer from a pile of scrap parts from dad's old flying days.
View attachment 10600
The build went pretty smooth, we reinforced everywhere we could. Our engine is a little more powerful than necessary so we figured the few extra grams wouldn't be a problem.
View attachment 10601
And here she is, final product, with some push-rods from the box of salvage we are now just waiting for the post-man. Talk about nail-biting.
View attachment 10602
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