FT Tiny Trainer - Softening tail stability with crashes...

[JasonK]

I used to fly balsa wood airplanes, and they were either whole or broken.

emphasis added. There are plenty of crashes that you can do with a foamy that you can stick some hot glue/tape/BBQ stick on and throw it back in the air, where the same crash with other materials ends up being a re-build. Just remember, there is still a limit to how much rebuilding/repairing the foam can take. This construction method just has a middle ground of 'damaged yet still sort of flyable'.

 

[Monte.C]

if you like em heavy and fast, nothing wrong with that, better in the wind too.
i like slow and floaty, so it's a different issue.

maybe you can find a better medium to build with. epp is supposed to be pretty resilient

That's fine, suggesting EPP, but slow down there cowboy. 100,000 very successful foamboard planes have flown so far. Let's find our success with foamboard first, since we're here anyway.

 

[Monte.C]

It's not about the flying. You've got a perfectly good fuselage design there. It's about the hard landings.

 

[bisco]

That's fine, suggesting EPP, but slow down there cowboy. 100,000 very successful foamboard planes have flown so far. Let's find our success with foamboard first, since we're here anyway.

agree, but not sure dowels and strapping tape, etc. are the answer. besides, he's already using elmers board

 

[Piotrsko]

This is how i look at it. Weight means speed and speed will make landings more difficult and crashes more severe.

I used to go to great lengths to beef things up but I've since found that trying to make things lighter, especially for trainer style aircraft, works much better. Elmers can do just fine, especially if that's all you can get, but I'd recommend the adams board first because its much lighter and tends to break in a much more repairable way. (Although I'd go with the white board as the black doesnt seem to work as well, or just use the FT stuff)

If you start as light as possible the plane will inevitably gain weight as repairs are made. If you start at max weight the repairs will quickly make the plane less stable and harder to fly and will necessitate even more repairs.

I like to start off using as little glue as possible. (gorilla glue if you really want to keep weight down) I like to remove inner paper in key areas like inside the upper wing half and inside the tail of the fuselage. The reinforced packing tape is an excellent choice but use sparingly as it is heavy. I like to use one strip on the bottom of the wing as a sort of external spar, and two half strips down the fuselage.

I have best luck making repairs with gorilla glue instead of hot glue as the hot glue tends to melt the foam when making repairs in cracks. Just put a light smear in the crack then a piece of tape over it. The tape secures the compromised paper and the glue foams up to bind nicely to the board. Very light and strong.

Good luck on your continued flying!

Oooooh really good answer.
Btw heavy only works so far only on gliders in 60mph winds
I do like the sniff test: it needs to look like a flyable plane not a foam pretzel

 

[Monte.C]

agree, but not sure dowels and strapping tape, etc. are the answer. besides, he's already using elmers board

I don't know anything about Elmer's FB, just Flitetest brown and DTFB. The answer is simple: Rebuild the beat up plane when it gets beat up. Improve your skills until you can fairly consistently land softly.

Sorted.

 

[bisco]

or build a new one!

 

[Monte.C]

or build a new one!

Yeah I've never built two of the same plane either!

 

[bisco]

my first was a duster. too fast for my thumbs, nosed it in and snapped the fuse in half. reglued and ready to go, is it straight? i will find out.

just finished a tiny tiny trainer, waiting to maiden, and started cutting out a cub. there's just so much more building enjoyment with something new.

if i find one i really like flying, like my umx turbo timber, i would probably build another when the time came

 

[Monte.C]

my first was a duster. too fast for my thumbs, nosed it in and snapped the fuse in half. reglued and ready to go, is it straight? i will find out.

just finished a tiny tiny trainer, waiting to maiden, and started cutting out a cub. there's just so much more building enjoyment with something new.

if i find one i really like flying, like my umx turbo timber, i would probably build another when the time came

I think you would have a pretty hard time trying to find an off-the-shelf plane that can't be roughly duplicated in FB and get as much enjoyment out of. There would be some specialized planes like 3D competition things, but generally I think if you get into drawing your own it opens up infinite possibilities. Nothing against store bought planes! But if you love that one, keep the general idea in mind for a scratchbuild maybe some day.

 

[Hondo76251]

if i find one i really like flying, like my umx turbo timber, i would probably build another when the time came

I think you would have a pretty hard time trying to find an off-the-shelf plane that can't be roughly duplicated in FB and get as much enjoyment out of.

Id actually say the UMX timber is a plane ive tried to duplicate several times and ive never quite got it quite right. Keeping a foamboard plane that light at that scale is tricky, at least with standard "FT" build style. Of course i have yet to build a plane that i didnt enjoy so its not like they were failures, just didnt capture that same flight experience. Because of the features like As3x, SAFE and the handy size id recommend them to anyone learning to fly that maybe wasnt into the idea of building one.

 

[Monte.C]

Id actually say the UMX timber is a plane ive tried to duplicate several times and ive never quite got it quite right. Keeping a foamboard plane that light at that scale is tricky, at least with standard "FT" build style. Of course i have yet to build a plane that i didnt enjoy so its not like they were failures, just didnt capture that same flight experience. Because of the features like As3x, SAFE and the handy size id recommend them to anyone learning to fly that maybe wasnt into the idea of building one.

I'm with you. Hey if you (anybody) love the plane, fly it! Or if you want easy off-the-shelf scale, buy it. That's terrific.

For the sake of discussion, lately I'm using 3mm FB and building pretty darn small and incredibly light, and I have two Spektrum AR630 receivers with AS3X & SAFE, and I'm about to start running those receivers. Sure there's a zillion cool planes out there that I sure couldn't even think of trying to duplicate, and there's a big difference between a tiny foam fighter plane from overseas and what I'm building, but I'm a hardcore design/build guy, that's where I get my biggest enjoyment, so...

 

[bisco]

i can hardly cut straight lines off of a template i do get some satisfaction out of a decent build, and experimenting with motors and props

 

[Monte.C]

i can hardly cut straight lines off of a template i do get some satisfaction out of a decent build, and experimenting with motors and props

LOL I'm the weird one! A whole lot of us here build to fly, that's their priority. And then... take a look at @cyclone3350 - He's got us all beat by a mile. He invented crazy.

 

[Hondo76251]

@Monte.C i had some of that thin hard depron back in the day, wish i could still get it! Been looking for an alternative but ive never really found anything suitable i can get.

 

[Hai-Lee]

@Monte.C i had some of that thin hard depron back in the day, wish i could still get it! Been looking for an alternative but ive never really found anything suitable i can get.

Try using either 3mm Fb or the 3mm model builders foam and paint the outside with white wood working glue.

When dry it is very rigid and perhaps a little brittle but it makes for a great high strength model.

Just be careful though as the glue shrinks when it dries and a cupped sheet of foam can be the result if you are not careful.

have fun!

 

[Monte.C]

@Monte.C i had some of that thin hard depron back in the day, wish i could still get it! Been looking for an alternative but ive never really found anything suitable i can get.

Someone here - I wish I could remember who - told me I could find 3mm FB at Dollar General. They're the same company as Dollar Tree, but it's for stuff over $1. This foamboard is branded ArtSkills and has identical characteristics as Readi-Board. At this point I couldn't ask for more. It builds such a light plane, it's plenty strong for small-ish planes and the build techniques are exactly the same as for 5mm FB. Love this stuff.

 

[bisco]

anyone if it is possible to flatten warped dtfb? i guess i shouldn't leave it in the basement humidity

 

[JasonK]

anyone if it is possible to flatten warped dtfb? i guess i shouldn't leave it in the basement humidity

you can try leaving it on a flat surface with even weight holding it down for a few days and see if that flattens it back out.

 

[bisco]

you can try leaving it on a flat surface with even weight holding it down for a few days and see if that flattens it back out.

will do, thanks!