Giant... Um... Thing

ItMightFly

Active member
Edit: Looking for a name for this plane and thread, any ideas?

Hello FliteTest community! I’m starting a project with my dad here soon. I’ve been building smaller planes without plans and seeing if they fly. I’m on a 7 planes that fly streak right now, and thought I would try it again with my dad. This plane is going to be quite a bit larger than the others, as it will have a 10 ft wingspan.

The goal is just to make something that flies relatively well. Just a decent plane. The smaller ones we will base it off of are these:
9B07C3FA-C50B-4ECE-8FF4-8364C3561927.jpeg

They are basic designs with some flaws that will be fixed with the large one.

The larger one you see in the picture has one large, basic flaw. The mouth of a thing it’s got there.
The goal with that plane was to make something funny looking and still get I to fly, my goal was achieved. It flies, but it definitely has some kind of negative efficiency.

The smaller plane in the picture came next. It is 1/4 the scale (60” wing vs 15”). I fixed the large mouth problem by leaving the bottom unsealed, and shortening the height some. I also fixed torque with the twin motor.

Plans for the 10’ plane will be as follows:
Must fly
Two piece wing (for storage and transportation)
Twin engine
Easy flyer
Others can build it too

Day one: Plans
The original goal was to make a plane without plans. Something this size needs plans for more efficient flying, and so that others can build one for themselves.
Here are some basic plans I drew, not the best, but they will do fine.

A6570FF9-5A6B-41EF-BB40-C36039C4A02C.jpeg

457B30C2-7A1B-44B3-B154-F9281F6BBEE4.jpeg

I will try and redraw plans soon for you guys.

Day two:
Due to the size of the plane, we need some kind of spar made of wood running through the wing. I had asked about wing joining earlier in the form, and I was directed to the FliteTest video on large scale builds. They used sheer joints without pivots for their wings. Those might look like this:
C4864626-93BE-45FF-9180-2212CB2766DB.jpeg


Please ignore the poor drawing here, I will try and make these better later on. For now they will do just for me and my dad.

I will add on to the story later as the build continues! Thanks guys!
 
Last edited:

ItMightFly

Active member
Day 4: Supply, and build prep

Finally! We are starting to get somewhere. We begin by tracing all of the plans onto foam board. It took not but 20 minutes as the plans I made are super simple. We went into town and got some wood for the spars as well.
A3B18C12-BFB9-481B-9AAF-34ED0C6BF3C7.jpeg

We have got five 1/2 x 1/2 x 36 square dowels, and to support them we got four 1/4” x 2” x 4’. Just for extra support we decided to do two spars. One in front, the other in the rear. The rear will consist of five 1/4”x1/4”x36” square dowels, to bind them we will use foam board as the rear will have less pressure from the wing.

Looking forward to some cutting!

Also, any tips and tricks would be awesome.
 

ItMightFly

Active member
Extra bit: Electronics
The other day electronics came in the mail. The motors were a LOT bigger than we thought they would be. They sure will do the job though.
image.jpg

We will be using full size servos for this build. We have a couple from our old electronics drawer. Some of these servos are an easy 15 years old, hopefully they do the job!
image.jpg

Pardon the mess, this is really just like a junk drawer for electronics for us.

Good day to you all!

Tips and tricks would be appreciated!
 

Hondo76251

Legendary member
Looks awesome!

Might consider doing twin rudder (think b25) as that might be easier to brace (than a single rudder 2+ feet tall) and then you could have the elevator built to be removable like the main wing of smaller craft (as it could easily end up being 3 feet itself) for easier storage and transport...
 

ItMightFly

Active member
Looks awesome!

Might consider doing twin rudder (think b25) as that might be easier to brace (than a single rudder 2+ feet tall) and then you could have the elevator built to be removable like the main wing of smaller craft (as it could easily end up being 3 feet itself) for easier storage and transport...
Those are good ideas! I’ll see what I can do!
 

ItMightFly

Active member
Okay, I’ve been posting multiple days in one day, today we are caught up in our days. I was posting old material.

Day 5: Cutting some stuff
It was pretty simple, just cutting stuff that we had marked up on day four. Here are some pictures of our progress!
EE82963B-FE06-48E2-8F9C-74E059DACBE5.jpeg

7ED307EF-CBEB-4D4D-A477-86E40FD2D279.jpeg

Everything took maybe 20 minutes to cut up between the two of us with knifes.

Something I found neat that FT did was the single double bevel thing for control surfaces. Here is an image to ease my English limitations.
image.jpg

It’s actually really simple. You single bevel two sheets, put em together. Simple, but, it’s effective.
 

kilroy07

Legendary member
Do you plan on putting a nose on it?
If the tail is closed up, that'll add quite a bit of drag...
 

ItMightFly

Active member
Do you plan on putting a nose on it?
If the tail is closed up, that'll add quite a bit of drag...
Yes, we do plan on putting a nose on it. I was thinking about the Guinea Pig nose. Would that work?
The closed tail will not be a problem when we add the nose and then close the bottom up.
Great observations there, I appreciate it! I’ll have to make plans for both of those when I get back home tonight.

Otherwise,
Day 6: Fuselage and horizontal stab assembly
I got a bit excited for the build and went ahead and put the fuselage and horizontal stab together this afternoon. I made an executive decision, we’ll see if it’s a good one or bad one when my dad gets back :p. It was to put a small spar in the horizontal. Something with a 40in wingspan would need a spar, here we have a 40in stab, I think we need a spar. I cut out the foam for a slot for the square dowel, and slid it in. Here are some pictures.
A9A09464-8788-4643-88E5-4D3BA7E18204.jpeg


DD96EFB9-7CCC-4951-9C17-57C8BE87AF67.jpeg

When I get home I’ll add the second layer of foam on top to hide the spar.
36F066E3-0602-475E-93BA-F681344B6F61.jpeg


For the fuselage, I haven’t any pictures. I took a time lapse though! I’ll see if I can add it.
Okay, you can watch it HERE.

Have a great day all! I’ll get more in today I’m sure.
 

ItMightFly

Active member
I was just messing around, the power pods together would be a sick cockpit :LOL: . Maybe if I make a mid, or low wing plane I’ll do this:
image.jpg
 

ItMightFly

Active member
Okay, so coming up on day 7, we are facing some issues. I'm going to write about the finished tail section later on, but for now we've got a wing problem.
If we were to scale the wing properly we would need four inches height on the airfoil. The current spar we have is a height of 2". The plan to fix this is to rip a 2x4 lengthwise and glue/tac the rest of the spar pieces to that.
Opinions? Other Ideas?
I'll get some images of the finished tail section in soon.
 

FoamyDM

Building Fool-Flying Noob
Moderator
Keep up the progress!
What is your plan for servos? Sorry if I missed it
 

Piotrsko

Master member
With that much wing you can go thin so 2" spar should be enough if the spar is strong enough.
Down side is the stall speed will increase. But you are looking at stalling at maybe 10 mph anyways.
I wouldn't use a ripped 2x4. I would use 1/4 exterior sanded plywood from the local lumber supplier. 48x96x 1/4 about $8.00
 

ItMightFly

Active member
With that much wing you can go thin so 2" spar should be enough if the spar is strong enough.
Down side is the stall speed will increase. But you are looking at stalling at maybe 10 mph anyways.
I wouldn't use a ripped 2x4. I would use 1/4 exterior sanded plywood from the local lumber supplier. 48x96x 1/4 about $8.00


It's too bad I missed this comment, I already ripped my 2x4. I got lazy with my posting. Hopefully today I'll update on the build. I had a spare laying around in the garage, ripped it with a saw we had. It only took about 5 minutes for the whole job. I used some wood glue and attached the 3/4th in square dowels to the boards. The spar we got is plenty strong.

The 3 1/2 inch height is perfect for the plane, scaled properly that is the target height, that is provided with the 2x4. The pine is holding up fine i'd say :p

The build is going great!

Keep up the progress!
What is your plan for servos? Sorry if I missed it

The plan is to use some full size spares we have laying around in our junk drawer. Hopefully they do the job!

I did consider doing some 9 grams, but I don't think those will push the large control surfaces.

Otherwise, we could make a large scale free flight aircraft :ROFLMAO:
 
Last edited:

Piotrsko

Master member
Only problem I had with ripping the 2x4 was they warp and get all pretzel bendy really easy. Not good spar material. If it works, use it. Old style big servo USED to do about 50-60 oz-in force on 6 volts. I used them on my 2000 sq inch combat wing.
 

FoamyDM

Building Fool-Flying Noob
Moderator
At least aim for metal gear servos.
I've notice on the giant builds at FF have larger rc car servos, At the least.