Gee Bee Dreamer Bipe

[rockyboy]

The Power up 32 motor arrived and fits but it does seem a little large. If I come in at 5 pounds it will have a one to one thrust to weight ratio for unlimited vertical so we'll see how it goes.

Link to the motor here:
https://www.headsuphobby.com/Power-Up-32-Sport-800kv-Outrunner-Brushless-Motor_p_1602.html

It's advertised as a good fit for sport and scale planes weighing between 3 and 6 pounds, and the EFlite Rhapsody Bipe pictured with the motor comes in at 4.6 pounds, so I'm in the right neighborhood as long as I stay on target for the weight. All together the motor pod w/ battery and ESC should weigh in just a little over a pound once I put on a canopy and prop.

The fun thing about modifying plans with no good instructions is sometimes after I put something together I realize I did something out of order and now there is a tricky problem to overcome.

When I put the motor tray rails on the fuselage sides it was before I built the longerons and tail bracing. So I wasn't able to lay the left side down flat on the plans anymore. Instead I slide the plans off the end of the building board so the rails were overhanging and put the right side on top of them to make sure I got everything aligned.

Starting to assemble the rest of the fuselage with my new magnetic hold downs made with oversized popsicle sticks and nylon wing bolts to provide the pressure. They work really well for something hacked together in a few minutes.

 

[TooJung2Die]

This is a very cool looking Bipe! Maybe it's because of the vibration expected from a IC powerplant but it seems older RC airplanes were heavily over engineered and there's a lot of weight saving potential when building them.

 

[PsyBorg]

Oh rusy! You got some splainin to doo!

Hey. How is it we have all heard the night mares of guys building balsa planes taking many months to years to build but our own triple threat team here knocks em out in a week or two to maybe 3 months tops.

Are the kits that much better or did the old timers hand shape every part or grow their own trees or somethin goofy like that.

 

[rockyboy]

This is a very cool looking Bipe! Maybe it's because of the vibration expected from a IC powerplant but it seems older RC airplanes were heavily over engineered and there's a lot of weight saving potential when building them.

I think that's exactly it - no reason for a full fuselage height 1/4" plywood firewall for electric

Oh rusy! You got some splainin to doo!

Hey. How is it we have all heard the night mares of guys building balsa planes taking many months to years to build but our own triple threat team here knocks em out in a week or two to maybe 3 months tops.

Are the kits that much better or did the old timers hand shape every part or grow their own trees or somethin goofy like that.

This is an old kit - late 1970s - so I don't know what was going on back in the times when mountains were young. Maybe they did have to gnaw the balsa before sandpaper was cheap?

Next step was connecting the fuselage sides keeping everything square to the table....

And once that cured it was time to epoxy the tail together and get all those cross pieces in that keep it curved....

And while that is curing I made the notches in the turtle deck formers. Rather than cutting them with a knife it's much easier to glue sandpaper to a piece of the right width stringer material and then sanding the notches into place. The balsa is so soft it goes really quickly.

 

[rockyboy]

Gluing on the cockpit floor and formers...

And then putting in the stringers. Leaving them a little long out the back at first.

 

[rockyboy]

As I sit here at work, wanting to be home working on the plane, I realized I missed something in my conversion to a "power pod" - a mating ring on the nose of the fuselage to create a solid stable end to the fuselage. I tried to do without one of these on the wing joining surfaces of my Monster FW-42 and found out the hard way that it looks like without one.

So let's put that next on the list. And to use up the rest of my break time, let's type up the rest of the list too.

• Mating ring on fuselage nose
• Create foam cowl plug
• Make fiberglass cowl
• Add cowl screw brackets to motor pod
• Decide on vent holes in firewall or chin scoop for ESC cooling
• Cockpit sides
• Cabane mounts (the tie-downs should arrive from Sig on Tuesday)
• Drill cabane mounting plywood piece
• Top wing mount wire bending
• Solder cabanes to the top wing mount wire
• Solder up cabane bracing wires
• Glue cabane mounting plywood piece into fuselage once the wing is test fit
• Nose sheeting
• Rough fitting of empanage
• Hinge slot in fuselage tail for the bottom rudder hinge
• Tail wheel mounting brackets
• Drill landing gear aluminum bracket
• Drill and install landing gear plywood plate (installing with nylon bolts to let it shear off in a rough landing)
• Rough balance before installing servo mounting plates (in case I want to move them forward or back from stock location)
• Install control rod tubes for elevator and rudder
• Sanding day!!
• Install aileron servo extension wires
• Covering
• Design, cut, and install any vinyl graphics
• Final assembly of parts
• Connect all the electronics
• Install and program receiver
• Balancing
• Go fly!

So I'm guessing about 2 or 3 weeks till she's done from here - about 3 or 4 weeks total time from dumping out the box to ready to fly I think.

Target is to be ready to show her off at the April 18th club meeting

I also need to start thinking about a covering scheme, cause that can take days or weeks on it's own for me...

 

[OliverW]

As I sit here at work, wanting to be home working on the plane, I realized I missed something in my conversion to a "power pod" - a mating ring on the nose of the fuselage to create a solid stable end to the fuselage. I tried to do without one of these on the wing joining surfaces of my Monster FW-42 and found out the hard way that it looks like without one.

So let's put that next on the list. And to use up the rest of my break time, let's type up the rest of the list too.

• Mating ring on fuselage nose
• Create foam cowl plug
• Make fiberglass cowl
• Add cowl screw brackets to motor pod
• Decide on vent holes in firewall or chin scoop for ESC cooling
• Cockpit sides
• Cabane mounts (the tie-downs should arrive from Sig on Tuesday)
• Drill cabane mounting plywood piece
• Top wing mount wire bending
• Solder cabanes to the top wing mount wire
• Solder up cabane bracing wires
• Glue cabane mounting plywood piece into fuselage once the wing is test fit
• Nose sheeting
• Rough fitting of empanage
• Hinge slot in fuselage tail for the bottom rudder hinge
• Tail wheel mounting brackets
• Drill landing gear aluminum bracket
• Drill and install landing gear plywood plate (installing with nylon bolts to let it shear off in a rough landing)
• Rough balance before installing servo mounting plates (in case I want to move them forward or back from stock location)
• Install control rod tubes for elevator and rudder
• Sanding day!!
• Install aileron servo extension wires
• Covering
• Design, cut, and install any vinyl graphics
• Final assembly of parts
• Connect all the electronics
• Install and program receiver
• Balancing
• Go fly!

So I'm guessing about 2 or 3 weeks till she's done from here - about 3 or 4 weeks total time from dumping out the box to ready to fly I think.

Target is to be ready to show her off at the April 18th club meeting

I also need to start thinking about a covering scheme, cause that can take days or weeks on it's own for me...

I need to find a kit for this plane.

 

[rockyboy]

I need to find a kit for this plane.

I don't think there has been a single thing in the kit that wasn't covered on the plans. If you want those when I'm done I'm happy to send them along.

 

[Michael9865]

I also need to start thinking about a covering scheme, cause that can take days or weeks on it's own for me...

I have far too many, is that even possible, pictures and drawings of “paint schemes” that I pull inspiration from to “finish” my planes. Starburst and checkerboard patterns are my go to ones. Many times I start to layout one thing in my head then my fingers start going there own way. LOL My brain can get stuck in the “what if” stage a lot, so I have to force myself to start the layout on the plane before I short circuit processing through the possibilities. Many “happy accidents” or “ooh that looks good, now can I symmetrically recreate it on the other side” moments happen. A lot of tape and newspaper have been sacrificed during these processes.

All that being said, I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

 

[rockyboy]

I have far too many, is that even possible, pictures and drawings of “paint schemes” that I pull inspiration from to “finish” my planes. Starburst and checkerboard patterns are my go to ones. Many times I start to layout one thing in my head then my fingers start going there own way. LOL My brain can get stuck in the “what if” stage a lot, so I have to force myself to start the layout on the plane before I short circuit processing through the possibilities. Many “happy accidents” or “ooh that looks good, now can I symmetrically recreate it on the other side” moments happen. A lot of tape and newspaper have been sacrificed during these processes.

All that being said, I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

I often try to find inspiration in images of other models, and then do some sketches with my sucky drawing skills. Then lay it out on the plane based on what I think I can accomplish with my current skills, and hope for those Happy Accidents too In almost every case, what comes out at the end is sort of similar to the sketch, but pretty different from the inspiration image.

 

[rockyboy]

Tail wheel mount glued in

And it took more carving than I expected but now the horizontal and vertical stabilizers fit.

 

[rockyboy]

I need to find a kit for this plane.

There's a guy over on RC Groups who cuts short kits for this design - the only thing missing compared to the kit I got was the pre-bent cabane struts and landing gear.

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?2996014-Gee-Bee-Dreamer-short-kits

 

[rockyboy]

Last night's progress.

Drilled and tapped the landing gear bracket and mounting plate. Also glued up several blocks of foam with gorilla glue and letting it cure.

Epoxied the mounting gear plate on the fuselage.

Mounted the foam block to the firewall with double sided carpet tape to temporarily hold it while carving.

Cutting away the parts of the foam that don't look right...

And rough carving done. I drilled a hole from the firewall side through the foam to locate the center of the motor so I know where the propeller hole needs to go. Want to mock up a chin scoop for ESC cooling to see how it all looks before I glue on the bottom of the fuselage piece (held by a rubber band for now). Once that's set I'll trim the bottom lip of the firewall and tweak the bottom of the cowl shape a little more.

And here's a problem with the printed parts vs. the plans. The fuselage formers are narrower than the fuselage sides by enough that the stringers don't form a nice smooth angle at the fuselage transition. If I tried to cover it like this, the covering would go from the fuselage to the top of the former without touching the stringers.

So to fix this I'm adding some extra material to the stringers so I have something to sand down into a smooth arc.

Good progress on the list last night. Got an email from Sig that my order is out for delivery, so I should have the pieces for the cabane mounting and can focus on that next.

• Mating ring on fuselage nose
• Create foam cowl plug
• Rough fitting of empanage
• Tail wheel mounting brackets
• Drill landing gear aluminum bracket
• Drill and install landing gear plywood plate (installing with nylon bolts to let it shear off in a rough landing)
• Decide on vent holes in firewall or chin scoop for ESC cooling
• Make fiberglass cowl
• Add cowl screw brackets to motor pod
• Get cabane mounts (the tie-downs should arrive from Sig on Tuesday)
• Drill cabane mounting plywood piece
• Top wing mount wire bending
• Solder cabanes to the top wing mount wire
• Solder up cabane bracing wires
• Glue cabane mounting plywood piece into fuselage once the wing is test fit
• Cockpit sides
• Nose sheeting
• Install control rod tubes for elevator and rudder
• Hinge slot in fuselage tail for the bottom rudder hinge
• Rough balance before installing servo mounting plates (in case I want to move them forward or back from stock location)
• Install servo mounting plates
• Sanding day!!
• Install aileron servo extension wires
• Covering
• Design, cut, and install any vinyl graphics
• Final assembly of parts
• Connect all the electronics
• Install and program receiver
• Balancing
• Go fly!

 

[OliverW]

There's a guy over on RC Groups who cuts short kits for this design - the only thing missing compared to the kit I got was the pre-bent cabane struts and landing gear.

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?2996014-Gee-Bee-Dreamer-short-kits

Thank you! Now to force people to cut out the gear lol

 

[rockyboy]

Thank you! Now to force people to cut out the gear lol

I did see a note somewhere of someone suggesting the stock landing gear design was overkill / too heavy but I didn't see any pictures of their revised design. I'm planning to try the plate style gear first and see if I need to go on a diet.

 

[OliverW]

I did see a note somewhere of someone suggesting the stock landing gear design was overkill / too heavy but I didn't see any pictures of their revised design. I'm planning to try the plate style gear first and see if I need to go on a diet.

I would go with too heavy over the original. On my Great Planes RV-4 we had to cut out the landing gear plate for the exhaust to go through. Somehow it was strong enough.

 

[Piotrsko]

Fyi: back in the 70's you didn't have fast glue, you has Ambroid, testors, or elmers white. it generally took overnight before you could pull pins/ holddowns. So sheeting a wing took up to 4 nights in a row. I swiped some Eastman kodak 910 from work and had something done in a weekend, but the first crash turned into a balsa bag because all the joints failed. Up side was just reglue and re-cover.

 

[rockyboy]

Fyi: back in the 70's you didn't have fast glue, you has Ambroid, testors, or elmers white. it generally took overnight before you could pull pins/ holddowns. So sheeting a wing took up to 4 nights in a row. I swiped some Eastman kodak 910 from work and had something done in a weekend, but the first crash turned into a balsa bag because all the joints failed. Up side was just reglue and re-cover.

Ouch! Getting the right glue is definitely important!

My preferred choice for balsa building is either Superphatic or thinned out Titebond 2 - sanding CA glued balsa joints sucks. The balsa gets sanded away but the CA stays as a new high spot!

I think I've used CA glues in two spots on this one for sealing up a splitting plywood edge and adding strength to the threads in the landing gear block.

And even more importantly, taking a little bit of time to think though the next step while the glue dries really helps minimize mistakes

 

[Piotrsko]

My preferred choice for balsa building is either Superphatic or thinned out Titebond 2 -

For us, sanding white glue or titebond (basic) sucked. Clogged the paper, left glue lumps like CA and you generally ended up always oversanding. BUT, that was the only thing for gluing plywood since epoxy was rare and only came as 3 hour set.

From what I see, you do pretty work. Keep it up.

 

[rockyboy]

For us, sanding white glue or titebond (basic) sucked. Clogged the paper, left glue lumps like CA and you generally ended up always oversanding. BUT, that was the only thing for gluing plywood since epoxy was rare and only came as 3 hour set.

From what I see, you do pretty work. Keep it up.

Thanks!

My package from Sig arrived with the landing gear clamps - which I'm using for the cabanes here. I haven't glued the plywood they are mounted to the fuselage yet - will wait till I get through aligning and soldering the cabanes first.

The cabanes came pre-bent, which is helpful, and bending the two wing cradle pieces was pretty simple. There is some extra wire at the back I need to cut off still.

And here's trying to get the wing incidence correct at -1/2% which is a pretty darn small measurement. Need to find my incidence gauge. This is going to take a while longer to get things bent just right so the wing sits correctly and the cabanes and wing saddle joints are aligned nicely.

And back on the glue subject, Superphatic is much better at sanding than Titebond. Superphatic powders nicely when sanded. As soon as I started sanding the leading where I used thinned Titebond, I started wishing I waited a couple days for my new bottle of Superphatic to arrive. I had to use a combination of scraping with a razor blade and sanding to get the little Titebond glue bumps out, and I'm only at the rough shape stage. Still more sanding ahead to make for a smooth covering job.