Howdy, folks!

[JennyC6]

My primary focus is surface stuff, but I've always been fond of aviation, I have a small 6ch indoor helo, a 40 size trainer, and a pocket drone. And I want to fly more often than I can(The trainer, sadly, hangs on the wall because it just isn't practical for me to try to get it airborne having never flown fixed wing before and living somewhere where there just isn't any reasonably close flying fields for me to randomly pop down to). I also love engines of all sizes, leading me to a pretty strict 'ICE Only' policy for fixed wing RC aircraft on account of engines small enough for 15" span planes being a thing.

The drive to fly fixed wing without having to worry about one error turning a beautiful plane into a pile of matchsticks is what brought me over to Flite Test and to the cheap, easily repaired, durable designs on offer. I'll be doing a Spear build powered by a pair of pusher Cox 0.049 throttled engines in the coming weeks/months, which should be great fun! Shouldn't have to worry about the residues melting the foam with this thing and it shouldn't be too hard to fix when it crashes, perfect for me to teach myself to fly on!

I have a soft spot for nitro groundpounders, too. Nothin' quite ups the grin factor like a bunch of blue smoke and the wail of a tiny two stroke screaming along at 30K RPM! Hehe.

 

[Merv]

Welcome to the forums

 

[Headbang]

Sounds awesome. Way back when I was 15 I used to scratch build small 36" planes. Bow cut foam wings, balsa fuselages. Flew them without covering or paint, rudder and elevator only. Cox 049 up front. Just fuel up, flip the spring and throw.

Foam board is not fuel proof! Thin some 30min epoxy with rubbing alcohol and put a thin coat anywhere fuel can end up.

Welcome to the forums.

 

[JennyC6]

Yaeh that's one of my main concerns with using nitro on a foamie. Also part of why I decided on an FT Spear for the project. Running twin pushers I can keep the schmoo to a minimum, most of it's just gonna go right out the back and never reach the foam.

I had entertained thoughts of making some steel deflectors to mount on the cylinders to direct the exhaust only in a rearward direction, also of putting a layer of MonoKote over the whole craft to seal it(Works for balsa-and-ply birds!), which would also make it a bit more appealing to look at and easier to spot in the sky when I'm flying it LoS. Haven't fully settled on something. There's also a product on the FT store that looks interesting, the Deluxe Materials Foam Armor, that I might buy and paint onto the foam after I've put it together.

I absolutely love that Coxengines.ca is a thing! Glow heads, engines, pit gear, the works. They'll be getting quite a lot of money from me in the coming weeks....the power system is going to cost more than the rest of the plane! Hahaha.