FTFC22 Build-ruary by Scotto

[Scotto]

1 Cormorant II by @Pieliker96

2 Simple L-1 Stinson Vigilant. (Just a modified FT Storch)

3 Nieuport 31 by @leaded50

4 Libelle ish thing inspired by @Dr. Looping Looie

These will all be night flyers with little to no paint just lit up from inside.

 

[Scotto]

Cormorant II
Ive always thought this looked awesome but more than a little above my skill level. But you dont know until you try I guess. Im writing this 2-28 so in hindsight, ya I bit off more than I can chew this month, but I still got a good bit done and hopefully still get it finished soon and fly it a few times without destroying it.

I cut it all out quicker than I expected. Its alot of little parts, but it is labeled really well and is condusive to my method of gluesticking the whole plan to the fb and cutting on the lines. And it printed easy and minimal waste of fb.


All I got done was the wing, and it still needs the flaps and control surfaces finished. It was a little intimidating, but @Pieliker96 has made a great build video and the parts are all fitting together so if I just take it one step at a time its pretty easy so far.

 

[Scotto]

Stinson Vigilant

I saw this plane while looking on wikipedia and thought it would make a good replacement for my FT Storch with an American shape. After reading a little bit I saw it was exactly an American replacement for nazi Germany's Storch. So I was kinda hooked on it then. I found a 3 view and got it and the FT Storch plans in inkscape and scaled it and just redrew the parts on top of the Stinson 3 view.

This is it tiled on 4 dtfbs.

Started with fuse. If I did it again Id make the power pod mounting plate wider and have slots for it to sit in on the inside. It would have been too high the way it was for the storch so I traced and cut out a new one so the motor would sit in the center pointing down a bit.


I forgot how the spar was supposed to work so I had to look up the ft build video. But I remembered my glue gun jamming up halfway so I had a backup warmed up this time. They both jammed .

I should have kept it simple but I couldnt resist making the flaps a little fancy.


I should have got a picture of the led strips before folding over the wing but I guess its nothing fancy. I put a white strip in the wing for a landing light. It is on a rc switch relay from pololu.com . It was easy to wire up once I found it with help from the forum. Landing gear was pretty simple too.


Maiden flight was great. She was a little nose heavy and elevator throw was low (and slow because it was cold out.) The power pod mounting plate was hanging on by the paper by the end so I will have to skewer that. Otherwise very storch-like. I think this will be one of my new favorites.

 

[Scotto]

I started on this a few months ago and got distracted, but Id like to finish it. I scaled it up just a bit to 40 inch wingspan. Heres what Im starting with.

This looked like the simplest plane @leaded50 made. I think it looks pretty and I like the simple cone empenage. I still havent built an actual master series plane so this looked like good curving practice. I thought about making this bigger for the dawn patrol challenge, but then I read this was post war prototype with only 2 made.

With the tail cone I learned if you heat up the foam after you curve it, it will not spring back out. I used a soft tape measure to find the quarters around it in 2 places and drew lines and cut ~2.5 mm on either side as far as I needed to. Then the tail feathers slid in together.

I cut out a cockpit and made a servo mount. 9g for elevator and 5g for rudder. The rods will cross and go to opposite sides trying to stay straighter.


Then I tried to do the cowl up front the way leaded50 had it and it wasnt working for me. I found an online cone calculator https://letsfab.in/cone-calculator/ and after a couple fails I figured it out. Its not very scale looking but it works. I about got ahead of myself and closed it up without anywhere to put the motor and battery. I made a few circles with a rectangle inside and a matching box. With some trial and trimming I had a cowl power pod.

 

[Scotto]

This one was started a while ago too. Im kinda excited to get back to it, but Ill wait till Feb 1to restart. Heres what it looks like now.

Inspiration for this plane is coming from here-

These are the first drawings that are way more flying boat than STOL. But it looks good and basic:
View attachment 116655
This one is just a rough sketch of some features: I hope you can see something on it.
View attachment 116656
I really put lots of thinking into the retractable landing gear design. It retracts into the short wing you can find on almost any Dornier plane. I want to use Lego Technic "pneumatik" to make it work. And it has shocks.
The next thing is using thrust to generate lift. There was an STOL plane called Dornier Do29, which had its engines mounted to the flaps so they tilt down:
View attachment 116658
View attachment 116660
They could tilt down up to 90 degrees. But the problem would be that its almost Impossible to mount them directly under the CG so that it goes up vertical.
The simplest way to use thrust as an advantage would be a very high thrust angle.
The View to the bottom is also very Importamt in a bushplane, so I tried some helicopter-style canopys. And maybe a bigger rudder to steer in the water.
It still needs a Lot of thinking.

But also multiple Dornier planes including the Do 24 att, Seastar, S Ray, Do 29, and Dr. Looping Louies Libelle.


The wing is like the Windpuff by Dr. Looping louie. But its scaled down to about 7 in. chord and I made it a smooth curve. The wingtips I wanted to kinda look like the S Ray, so that was a little time consuming.

Since its a parasol I think I can get away with one big flap. Its awkward to say flap singular . Anyway, its a big fat foldover for the Coanda effect in theory and the motors are on it. Killed most of a night just soldering. Stupid cheap stuff. The thrust angle is just a guess based off of what was working with my DO 29 project.

I cut popsickle sticks in half and drilled holes in the end for the hinge. In hindsight they could be a little shorter. Kept them all lined up with a landing gear wire and glued one pair at a time. There is a slight polyhedral up at the wingtips that I wanted to keep and Ive been wanting to try split ailerons on something anyway, so this was a perfect opportunity. I would have liked to make the ailerons like the flap only hinged higher but it would take too long.

The wing is ready so now the fuse/hull. I made a little triangle second step thing pointing at the water rudder like the s ray. Then poked a hole thru for a coffee straw and bent up a wire for my waterruddertailwheel.

The waterwings are roughly the shape of the ones on the do 24. I took measurements of a 3 view in inkscape to make a trapezoid long side 6 in. and just mirrored it over the foldline. A paint stick was the perfect length to go all the way across for my 9g servo retracts to mount on. They will probly break the first time I try them but I figured for the price of real retracts that wouldnt servive either, I will try it anyway. I glued an extension for them in with the paint stick before the waterwings so they will be easy to replace. The tail was just a freehand quick and easy thing.

Now ready to join the two. After eyeballing what looked right for the angle of the hull, I glued it down level on the table. I made some temporary stands for the wing and decided 7 inches tall looked good and glued it down where I guesstimate the center of lift at about an inch ahead of the step. Then I just had to decide what looked right for the skewers to hold them together.

So with 8 servos and 7 channels and lights, there is a lot of wires. Aetr, flap, throttle2, retract, and my ubec plugs in to ch8. The mixing was crazy and it took days for me to figure out for the do29. It was also about the first thing Id done with a computer radio. This is on a radiomaster its got the flap on the left slider and Ive got a pot to adjust how much differential thrust mixed with rudder there is for when the flaps are up, and as the flaps go down it fades to aileron and theres a pot for how much of that. Theres also a pot for how much elevator with the flap.

I dont think the escs could handle the load of the servos so I put the ubec in and cut the red wires from the escs. I have a 3s balance extension and the outide wires are cut and all the lights and the bec are wire nutted all together. That makes it easy to get ~12V and I can still use the alarm.


With the open wing theres no where to hide all the wires except camera angle. I hadnt planned on it but I made a little pillar or pylon? for all the wing wires to go thru and a roof to hold it. Turned out nice. I might make it structural and cut out the 2 skewers in front because I think they are ugly.



I doubted this idea from the second it entered my brain but I just had to try it anyway. If the throws of the servos were more I could have had shorter legs and that would help alot. It would also help if the thing didnt weigh 900 grams. But they hold it up!


Maiden flight was half success half fail. She taxied on the road great, took off and flew better than I expected, but was pretty tailheavy. So I crashed but not too bad. Also when I tried the flap down it made it turn hard, so something must be crooked.

Ill get the video here later. I will patch her up in March and try again. I made sure to mark where the cg was so I move it up.

Ok heres the video. Its on Odysee and I cant imbed. After watching it myself I think alot of my problem is just flying too slow. I never touched the trim so the beeps are 50% throttle or flaps.

https://odysee.com/@Scotto:7/stolboatmaiden:0

 

[Scotto]

I just had a thought and should spell it so I dont forget. With the propsonflaps it will stall the control surfaces long before the center wing. So with flaps down I should have to hold elevator back to keep pitch up quite a bit so that the elevator stalls out before the wingtips or else she'll death spiral. If the elevator stalls she should pitch down and recover. So I need to find the balance of thrust angle and elevator to get the most out of it without tipstalling to death.

 

[L Edge]

I just had a thought and should spell it so I dont forget. With the propsonflaps it will stall the control surfaces long before the center wing. So with flaps down I should have to hold elevator back to keep pitch up quite a bit so that the elevator stalls out before the wingtips or else she'll death spiral. If the elevator stalls she should pitch down and recover. So I need to find the balance of thrust angle and elevator to get the most out of it without tipstalling to death.

It would be interesting to me if you could show the whole video especially when you lowered the flaps . Remember the forward thrust from the props component is reduced quite a bit so speed falls off and the upward thrust component increases and I bet that a wing stalled out on you. Add to that the the reduction of flow pattern across your elevator.

 

[Scotto]

It would be interesting to me if you could show the whole video especially when you lowered the flaps . Remember the forward thrust from the props component is reduced quite a bit so speed falls off and the upward thrust component increases and I bet that a wing stalled out on you. Add to that the the reduction of flow pattern across your elevator.

The video wasnt very good. Id like to get a better one when shes not tail heavy and far away. But Ill try to get it uploaded anyway. I kinda think I had something wrong in the Tx mix that was making her turn with flaps down.

 

[Scotto]

It would be interesting to me if you could show the whole video especially when you lowered the flaps . Remember the forward thrust from the props component is reduced quite a bit so speed falls off and the upward thrust component increases and I bet that a wing stalled out on you. Add to that the the reduction of flow pattern across your elevator.

Video is uploaded. Big post edited.

 

[L Edge]

Interesting flight, looking at your radio mixes, did not understand when you said when the flaps go down, it fades to aileron? How come the use of all the pots? Could one of them be in the wrong position?

Only thing I thought of that might cause the roll is when the flaps are down,(same on both sides) if the motors are not of the same angle, the upward thrust component not being the same, may cause the roll.

I have a YC-14 with 2 EDF's above the wing using the coanda effect, I got roll when the flaps were down due to not having them deployed at the same angle. Found out the ailerons need to be larger due to having flaps down and also needed to keep the airspeed up or it will tend to roll over.

 

[Scotto]

Interesting flight, looking at your radio mixes, did not understand when you said when the flaps go down, it fades to aileron? How come the use of all the pots? Could one of them be in the wrong position?

Only thing I thought of that might cause the roll is when the flaps are down,(same on both sides) if the motors are not of the same angle, the upward thrust component not being the same, may cause the roll.

I have a YC-14 with 2 EDF's above the wing using the coanda effect, I got roll when the flaps were down due to not having them deployed at the same angle. Found out the ailerons need to be larger due to having flaps down and also needed to keep the airspeed up or it will tend to roll over.

When most people set up differential thrust they probly just pick a number like 8 or 10%, Im guessing. I had never done differntial thrust when I was programming the radio so I wanted to make it so I could adjust it mid flight. It goes from 0 to 20% on the rudder with the flap up. When the flap and motors are down the differential thrust has more effect on roll than yaw, so thats why I made it fade basically from one stick to the other. The flap is on a slider instead of a 3 position switch. With the Do 29 project the flaps were seperate (which was problematic) and the max was like 50 degrees. It seemed like about 35 was the sweet spot so I think thats where the max is on this one.

Anyway, ya I am suspicious something is backwards or on the wrong channel in the radio. This is just a fun mental exercise for me I guess.

Do you have pictures of your yc-14?

 

[L Edge]

When most people set up differential thrust they probly just pick a number like 8 or 10%, Im guessing. I had never done differntial thrust when I was programming the radio so I wanted to make it so I could adjust it mid flight. It goes from 0 to 20% on the rudder with the flap up. When the flap and motors are down the differential thrust has more effect on roll than yaw, so thats why I made it fade basically from one stick to the other. The flap is on a slider instead of a 3 position switch. With the Do 29 project the flaps were seperate (which was problematic) and the max was like 50 degrees. It seemed like about 35 was the sweet spot so I think thats where the max is on this one.

Anyway, ya I am suspicious something is backwards or on the wrong channel in the radio. This is just a fun mental exercise for me I guess.

Do you have pictures of your yc-14?

The YC-14 body was destroyed due to the fully movable elevator that didn't work very well. Left with wing which I adapted to my regular transport and sat in the cellar for years. Just pulled it out and extended flaps and now examining the Coanda part since it improved the STOL ability. Will take picture to show you.

Did a review on coanda and extended flaps, found that change in throttle or use of throttle differential causes a change of AOA and sets up adverse yaw conditions which causes it to roll over and dive. Was able to recover with elevator and differential thrust. High alpha and Stol is my area of interest. It is good to see others explore things to see if it is applicable. Like your idea of fading in and out.

One quick thought, with motors and flap down, do you have good control of the ailerons?

 

[Scotto]

The YC-14 body was destroyed due to the fully movable elevator that didn't work very well. Left with wing which I adapted to my regular transport and sat in the cellar for years. Just pulled it out and extended flaps and now examining the Coanda part since it improved the STOL ability. Will take picture to show you.

Did a review on coanda and extended flaps, found that change in throttle or use of throttle differential causes a change of AOA and sets up adverse yaw conditions which causes it to roll over and dive. Was able to recover with elevator and differential thrust. High alpha and Stol is my area of interest. It is good to see others explore things to see if it is applicable. Like your idea of fading in and out.

One quick thought, with motors and flap down, do you have good control of the ailerons?

Aw man, sorry its crashed. I just made a plane with a stabilator and had way too much throw on it among other problems. It flew about 200 feet.
On the full size yc14 it looks like all of the thrust is just in that small area unless there are channels inside the wing. It looks like it should be distributed more. Most of my problems have been tip stalls because while I might have a bunch of lift in the center, once one tip stalls I lose the whole thing quick. Im thinking fences would help on that. The other thing I considered on this plane was having the ailerons set up like flaperons but actually having them go up and sacrifice lift just to delay the tip stall. But I was out of channels.
On the Do 29, I was almost to the point of just turning off the diff thrust on the rudder because it was annoying. But I loved it on the roll stick when the flaps were down. It could go pretty slow with good control, but if the wind slowed for a second or changed direction it was toast.
I found this while reading about the other plane I made this month. http://www.aerofiles.com/humpback-L1.html Its terrible the test pilot died in that. Id like to try something like that with an edf though.

 

[L Edge]

Hey, it's nice to share concepts and ideas with you.
As for my transport, know the coanda is working where the exhaust goes down the wing and turns down further onto the flap improving the lift. Takeoffs with full flaps(not partial) lifts within 10 to 15 ft. I am stable until I need to turn and have to use 3/4 differential throttle to get it to turn and it snaps around on me. Using high elevator I am keeping it from stalling out.
Landings are controlled if I line up with ailerons earlier and then flaps down and end up having a nice steep descent and it is slow.
So, need a bunch of flights to tame it.

You got some good thoughts about the fences, and suggest you always have a lot of rudder and height to counteract those tip stalls.

That is a tough area you are looking into with the other plane. Weight is your number one enemy.

 

[L Edge]

Here is where I learned a lot about EDF's, thrust vectoring and my use of thrusters. It is too bad that there was not enough external flow to counteract the torque when trying to hover. If you slow the video down, you can see it hover(spinning) twice quite nicely. Need much more powerful EDF to improve necessary force to stop it from rotating.

https://forum.flitetest.com/index.php?threads/edf-thrustvectoring-and-thrusters.66015/

 

[L Edge]

This is the wing used. I started out with a long flap,(Pitch was out of control). Cut it to workable condition. After I tame it, will produce a video showing STOL takeoffs and landing.

Took about 2" off in length. Surprised the coanda effect did that well.

 

[Scotto]

This is the wing used. I started out with a long flap,(Pitch was out of control). Cut it to workable condition. After I tame it, will produce a video showing STOL takeoffs and landing.

View attachment 220417

Took about 2" off in length. Surprised the coanda effect did that well.

View attachment 220418

That looks cool. Do you think it would be worth it to have a nozzle like a leaf blower on it?

 

[FoamyDM]

This one was started a while ago too. Im kinda excited to get back to it, but Ill wait till Feb 1to restart. Heres what it looks like now.
View attachment 217229 View attachment 217230
Inspiration for this plane is coming from here-


But also multiple Dornier planes including the Do 24 att, Seastar, S Ray, Do 29, and Dr. Looping Louies Libelle.
View attachment 218416 View attachment 218417 View attachment 218414 View attachment 218415
View attachment 218455
The wing is like the Windpuff by Dr. Looping louie. But its scaled down to about 7 in. chord and I made it a smooth curve. The wingtips I wanted to kinda look like the S Ray, so that was a little time consuming.
View attachment 217709 View attachment 217710 View attachment 217711 View attachment 217712
Since its a parasol I think I can get away with one big flap. Its awkward to say flap singular . Anyway, its a big fat foldover for the Coanda effect in theory and the motors are on it. Killed most of a night just soldering. Stupid cheap stuff. The thrust angle is just a guess based off of what was working with my DO 29 project.
View attachment 217963 View attachment 217964 View attachment 217965
I cut popsickle sticks in half and drilled holes in the end for the hinge. In hindsight they could be a little shorter. Kept them all lined up with a landing gear wire and glued one pair at a time. There is a slight polyhedral up at the wingtips that I wanted to keep and Ive been wanting to try split ailerons on something anyway, so this was a perfect opportunity. I would have liked to make the ailerons like the flap only hinged higher but it would take too long.
View attachment 218002 View attachment 218001
The wing is ready so now the fuse/hull. I made a little triangle second step thing pointing at the water rudder like the s ray. Then poked a hole thru for a coffee straw and bent up a wire for my waterruddertailwheel.
View attachment 218422 View attachment 218423
The waterwings are roughly the shape of the ones on the do 24. I took measurements of a 3 view in inkscape to make a trapezoid long side 6 in. and just mirrored it over the foldline. A paint stick was the perfect length to go all the way across for my 9g servo retracts to mount on. They will probly break the first time I try them but I figured for the price of real retracts that wouldnt servive either, I will try it anyway. I glued an extension for them in with the paint stick before the waterwings so they will be easy to replace. The tail was just a freehand quick and easy thing.
View attachment 218418 View attachment 218419 View attachment 218420 View attachment 218421
Now ready to join the two. After eyeballing what looked right for the angle of the hull, I glued it down level on the table. I made some temporary stands for the wing and decided 7 inches tall looked good and glued it down where I guesstimate the center of lift at about an inch ahead of the step. Then I just had to decide what looked right for the skewers to hold them together.
View attachment 218424 View attachment 218425
So with 8 servos and 7 channels and lights, there is a lot of wires. Aetr, flap, throttle2, retract, and my ubec plugs in to ch8. The mixing was crazy and it took days for me to figure out for the do29. It was also about the first thing Id done with a computer radio. This is on a radiomaster its got the flap on the left slider and Ive got a pot to adjust how much differential thrust mixed with rudder there is for when the flaps are up, and as the flaps go down it fades to aileron and theres a pot for how much of that. Theres also a pot for how much elevator with the flap.

I dont think the escs could handle the load of the servos so I put the ubec in and cut the red wires from the escs. I have a 3s balance extension and the outide wires are cut and all the lights and the bec are wire nutted all together. That makes it easy to get ~12V and I can still use the alarm.

View attachment 218601 View attachment 218600 View attachment 218602
With the open wing theres no where to hide all the wires except camera angle. I hadnt planned on it but I made a little pillar or pylon? for all the wing wires to go thru and a roof to hold it. Turned out nice. I might make it structural and cut out the 2 skewers in front because I think they are ugly.

View attachment 218599 View attachment 218603 View attachment 218604

I doubted this idea from the second it entered my brain but I just had to try it anyway. If the throws of the servos were more I could have had shorter legs and that would help alot. It would also help if the thing didnt weigh 900 grams. But they hold it up!
View attachment 219071

Maiden flight was half success half fail. She taxied on the road great, took off and flew better than I expected, but was pretty tailheavy. So I crashed but not too bad. Also when I tried the flap down it made it turn hard, so something must be crooked.
View attachment 219072
Ill get the video here later. I will patch her up in March and try again. I made sure to mark where the cg was so I move it up.

Ok heres the video. Its on Odysee and I cant imbed. After watching it myself I think alot of my problem is just flying too slow. I never touched the trim so the beeps are 50% throttle or flaps.

https://odysee.com/@Scotto:7/stolboatmaiden:0

Finally Watched the Video on this. It flew really well! I found tip stalls happen if you aren't going fast enough, obviously scary. the plane is still flying, but becomes erratic, and scary to fly. similar to tail heavy. The solution is more thrust (bigger/steeper prop, or motor increase or just push the stick up some. or if the power system can take it, a 4S instead of 3S)
This great documentation for the build, and it looks like it flew well.

 

[FoamyDM]

I started on this a few months ago and got distracted, but Id like to finish it. I scaled it up just a bit to 40 inch wingspan. Heres what Im starting with.
View attachment 220219
This looked like the simplest plane @leaded50 made. I think it looks pretty and I like the simple cone empenage. I still havent built an actual master series plane so this looked like good curving practice. I thought about making this bigger for the dawn patrol challenge, but then I read this was post war prototype with only 2 made.

With the tail cone I learned if you heat up the foam after you curve it, it will not spring back out. I used a soft tape measure to find the quarters around it in 2 places and drew lines and cut ~2.5 mm on either side as far as I needed to. Then the tail feathers slid in together.
View attachment 220225
I cut out a cockpit and made a servo mount. 9g for elevator and 5g for rudder. The rods will cross and go to opposite sides trying to stay straighter.
View attachment 220223 View attachment 220222

Then I tried to do the cowl up front the way leaded50 had it and it wasnt working for me. I found an online cone calculator https://letsfab.in/cone-calculator/ and after a couple fails I figured it out. Its not very scale looking but it works. I about got ahead of myself and closed it up without anywhere to put the motor and battery. I made a few circles with a rectangle inside and a matching box. With some trial and trimming I had a cowl power pod.
View attachment 220221 View attachment 220220 View attachment 220218

This project looked GREAT! I love the lawn dart look!

 

[L Edge]

That looks cool. Do you think it would be worth it to have a nozzle like a leaf blower on it?

I like your way of thinking. Explored that, no improvement. Here is where I made a stupid mistake and came out ahead.
Beside STOL, high AOA, like doing rudderless and no vertical fins aircraft. Have two of those under my belt.

This here is a X-47B I designed(no Prandtl-D wing) that needs only 2 servos and a TV unit. No gyro is needed. A dumb mistake made this possible. Only downfall, you must launch horizontal.