FTFC20 Howard DGA-6 (Racing) designed by Mayan

OliverW

Legendary member
Sorry it took me so long to get started. I got a little bit of the plans titled. Got some homework to do now
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mayan

Legendary member
Sorry it took me so long to get started. I got a little bit of the plans titled. Got some homework to do now View attachment 156014
Happy to see you working on it even though you have a new toy to play with at the moment. One thing I recommend you do is increase the height of the wing spar by half a centimeter it will give the plane more stability. I’ll update the plans too when I get a chance to get back to my work room.
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OliverW

Legendary member
Happy to see you working on it even though you have a new toy to play with at the moment. One thing I recommend you do is increase the height of the wing spar by half a centimeter it will give the plane more stability. I’ll update the plans too when I get a chance to get back to my work room.
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I'll try to remember to increase it lol. Friday should be a build day since I have no school. I may have to put some big landing gear on it as it will be flying off of a really rough field with 4" grass.
 

mayan

Legendary member
I'll try to remember to increase it lol. Friday should be a build day since I have no school. I may have to put some big landing gear on it as it will be flying off of a really rough field with 4" grass.
Just make sure to post as much pictures as possible and feedback about the building experience so that I and others can all benefit. I’d really like to make this prefect, so don’t feel bad about chopping my head off :).
 

OliverW

Legendary member
Just make sure to post as much pictures as possible and feedback about the building experience so that I and others can all benefit. I’d really like to make this prefect, so don’t feel bad about chopping my head off :).
Noted!! Lol. I think I can figure everything BUT former placement out..
 

OliverW

Legendary member
Ask me about it if you get stuck but trust me once you’ll have the fuselage main fold done things will look obvious :).
I plan on cutting every thing out for the fuse then going straight to building it so I stay motivated as it is the most complicated foamboard plane I will have built.
 

mayan

Legendary member
@SquirrelTail You can also always refer to this.
Last time I posted about my progress I was stuck working on the front cowl section of the plane, when things weren't working out. This is what I have done so far on the cowl and some addition to the front section to make it look more like the real thing.

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Since I felt stuck and a little discouraged I decided to move on to other parts of the build maybe gain some wins and improve my overall confidence, thus I started working on the elevator and rudder. Which both connect to one another with a slot/tab setup and then both slide into slots on the fuselage. This makes them stay in place pretty good also without hot glue, hot glue added for re-enforcements just in case the worse thing happens.

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After adding the elevator and rudder and making sure that they are leveled. I started placing and gluing in the bottom formers for the cover pieces. Pretty easy to do just have to make sure you glue them down in a certain order otherwise you will have issues making sure things are straight. The way to do it is start from the nose section and work your way to the tail section.

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Now it was time to design the cover for the bottom section of the plane. I was sure I'd have less of a problem designing these over the cowl and I was right. There was still back and forth between AI and paper/foam but much less than expected.
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After a few times of going back and forth I finally felt like I was in the right place and wrote down my almost last comments about what changes needed to be done and went to fix and print the last version for now.

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I had fixed the pieces and re-printed the plans before I went to work that way I could take everything with me to work and if the shift would be quite could keep working on it there. Luckily the shift was prefect not a lot of people called so I managed to achieve this, which I am pretty happy with.

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That's all for now! Tomorrow I'll try working on finishing the cowl or will maybe start the landing gear. Not sure if I don't want to maiden it without landing gear first and then add it. Hmmm will see, mean time I am going to think it over :).
 

mayan

Legendary member
BTW I want to do a build video but rather wait with that now until I get at least your feedback unless @The Hangar is going to get started :). Although I hear he is on a burn out now from building so not sure how much of a competitor he’ll be on the FTFC20 Build Ruary Challenge :).
 

The Hangar

Fly harder!
Mentor
BTW I want to do a build video but rather wait with that now until I get at least your feedback unless @The Hangar is going to get started :). Although I hear he is on a burn out now from building so not sure how much of a competitor he’ll be on the FTFC20 Build Ruary Challenge :).
Lol, yeah, just don’t feel like starting anything new... I’m finishing up some old stuff like the long EZ and some other I’ve been wanting to do. Something about tiling some plans and cutting them out... I guess maybe some sbk’s are going to be on order when I get all the current cut out projects done...