BATTLEAXE
Legendary member
I have a craving for a Hot Rod in the fleet and it is going to be way of the FT-22. I am in need of a pusher and this might fit the bill. Plus there has been some decent talk up about this plane and it has my curiosity peaked. It will be the second airframe I build running on elevons, the first being the Mini Arrow, which didn't last long but that was back in the day when I had no clue how to fly. Now that the skills are honed in some I want to step up the caliber of this little monster in the making. The FT-22 is based of an A or F pack and I want to take it up a notch, or a few. This is C pack bound and, as per usual, heavily modified to accommodate.
I know what some will say, "You should build it stock and fly that first and then modify gradually". That's not how I roll, any of you who know my builds knows that I don't do stock anymore. Plus I like to have fun fiddling with the design, and as far as flying the stock bird I have a partner in crime who has plenty of experience with the stock model and is willing to do his V4 on this thread so we will see where this ends up. This friend is none other then @The Hangar himself, has built 3 of these and has convinced me to give it a shot... WHY NOT!
Starting out as always it is advisable to print out the plans and give yourself a base to start from. I usually go with the tiled plans on any build and tape them together to get my lay out, this was no different. However the tiled specific plans came without alignment cut marks in the corners to get the sheets straight, no problem, seen this before. In dealing with it, trying to line up the black cut lines to puzzle this together. it took forever to get 5 sheets to come together then trying to get the rest to coincide was like herding cats. Scratch that. They must be old plans that have been swept to the side. All kudos to Sponz who usually works his CAD magic but I wasn't gonna waste all night trying to figure this out when I could go at this from another direction. I downloaded the full size plans and tiled them in Adobe Acrobat... life hack #273. everything fit like a charm, used more paper, (30 instead of 17), but so worth the effort.
Plans assembled and ready for the designing pencil. Here are some of the mods I am planning:
1. C Pack as mentioned before, will require a stronger fuse, which will extend all the way back to the motor mount top and bottom
2. the battery hatch on top will be extended back as well to make room for lots of fore and aft movement of the battery for CG
3. removable nose much like the Explorer or Bronco to take hits without destroying the airframe and is easily replacable
4. a plywood spar on edge will run completely through the wings
5. moving the servos back to shorten the push rods, and the kicker which may warrant some attention and advice from others...
6. a KFM wing design, this will be up for discussion among others to see if I can get this to fly on an airfoil design instead of just using the Bernoulli principle to maintain altitude. @The Hangar tells me he likes to fly his tail heavy which has me thinking the high AOA makes this plane easier to fly. Straight and level is what i am looking for so I am going to experiment with this idea.
Anyone else wants to join in whether you want a stock FT-22 or a modified version of your own design, or even copy either of ours is totally welcome to jump on this thread and post their progress as well. This should be a decently quick build and I really look forward to what the results end up being, if it doesn't work... it's just foam board.
Thanks for reading
I know what some will say, "You should build it stock and fly that first and then modify gradually". That's not how I roll, any of you who know my builds knows that I don't do stock anymore. Plus I like to have fun fiddling with the design, and as far as flying the stock bird I have a partner in crime who has plenty of experience with the stock model and is willing to do his V4 on this thread so we will see where this ends up. This friend is none other then @The Hangar himself, has built 3 of these and has convinced me to give it a shot... WHY NOT!
Starting out as always it is advisable to print out the plans and give yourself a base to start from. I usually go with the tiled plans on any build and tape them together to get my lay out, this was no different. However the tiled specific plans came without alignment cut marks in the corners to get the sheets straight, no problem, seen this before. In dealing with it, trying to line up the black cut lines to puzzle this together. it took forever to get 5 sheets to come together then trying to get the rest to coincide was like herding cats. Scratch that. They must be old plans that have been swept to the side. All kudos to Sponz who usually works his CAD magic but I wasn't gonna waste all night trying to figure this out when I could go at this from another direction. I downloaded the full size plans and tiled them in Adobe Acrobat... life hack #273. everything fit like a charm, used more paper, (30 instead of 17), but so worth the effort.
![FT-22 plans.jpg FT-22 plans.jpg](https://ftforumx2.s3.amazonaws.com/2019/09/252210_6583c2594876e197953952491067f411.jpg)
Plans assembled and ready for the designing pencil. Here are some of the mods I am planning:
1. C Pack as mentioned before, will require a stronger fuse, which will extend all the way back to the motor mount top and bottom
2. the battery hatch on top will be extended back as well to make room for lots of fore and aft movement of the battery for CG
3. removable nose much like the Explorer or Bronco to take hits without destroying the airframe and is easily replacable
4. a plywood spar on edge will run completely through the wings
5. moving the servos back to shorten the push rods, and the kicker which may warrant some attention and advice from others...
6. a KFM wing design, this will be up for discussion among others to see if I can get this to fly on an airfoil design instead of just using the Bernoulli principle to maintain altitude. @The Hangar tells me he likes to fly his tail heavy which has me thinking the high AOA makes this plane easier to fly. Straight and level is what i am looking for so I am going to experiment with this idea.
Anyone else wants to join in whether you want a stock FT-22 or a modified version of your own design, or even copy either of ours is totally welcome to jump on this thread and post their progress as well. This should be a decently quick build and I really look forward to what the results end up being, if it doesn't work... it's just foam board.
Thanks for reading