It never stops, does it? Foam Canadair

[Fluburtur]

Flying wings are fun for a while but I wanted to "conventional" planes that peoples can somewhat recognize and a seaplane so at like 3am while I was half asleep I decided to make a Canadair or at least something that looks like one.
I quickly opened Fusion360 to make a quick mockup and made the templates to cut my insulation foam with and starter building it today.







I spare you the picture of my floor right now, I have plenty of confetti for christmas!

This one is a much more "advanced" build than all of my wings since I have to do a lot of shaping with cutter blades and sandpaper but it's not really difficult (I have a prop making diploma, half was doing plaster moldings and the other carving foam with some dirt battles sometimes)

I will keep you informed on how it goes

 

[ElectriSean]

Nice start

And no, it never stops

 

[i noob]

cool

 

[Fluburtur]

So yesterday I put the plane halves to glue and today I just had to cut the hatch, I also put fiber tape on the bottom so it's a bit more watertight, strong and glide on water well.




I used magnets from a broken brushless motor to secure the hatch.
Then I cut the wings.



Cutting straight wings is so easy, it's a whole different things than flying wings. I also put fiber tape on both the leading and trailing edges since the trailing is very thin however I ran out of tape so I will have to go get more tomorrow.

Next I will have cut a pocket into the body to fit the wings, not decided wether to glue them on or just secure them with screws. I will also have to make the engine nacelles and the tail.

 

[Fluburtur]

Progress report from the last two days, got the wings mostly done!
Gluing the spar, square wooden rod with 1.5cm sides so this will be strong.


I hand drawn the engine nacelles for once, wasn't happy with the CAD stuff

Those look very basic and not the least like the ones of the real canadair, be it the CL215 or CL415


Beauty shot

Gluing the nacelles


After putting the servos in place I tested them and one of them is broken (salvaged from an old plane) so I decided to take care of that tomorrow.

 

[Liam B]

This is gonna be siiiccckkk! I always wanted to build a Canadair but never had the skills or the time!

 

[Fluburtur]

If you are somewhat good it should be fairly easy, I only built 5 wire cut flying wings before making this one. If you can work a cutter blade and a piece of sandpaper it shouldn't be too hard, you just have to pick a design you like and think a bit about how you will do it for more than 5 seconds.

Anyways, I got a lot of progress done!
I decided to build the tail with cardboard, I decided to make it a bit airfoiled this way it is stronger.

Because cardboard and water don't mix too well I had to cover it entirely with fiber tape, I already built a boat out of cardboard like that so I know it will hold well


I then installed the servos and glued the tail to the plane.


I had already installed all the electronics in the wings so I just had to make the Y power wire and glue the wings down to the body.


It is a bit tail heavy so I will probably have to put some weight in the nose but it should be ready to fly tomorrow, exept that I don't have the props yet. Anyone know tribalde 7x4 props that run in opposite directions?

 

[Fluburtur]

I am back from vacations and I got the props I ordered, it's 6x4" kingkong props.
If I trust the calculator I used they should give about 370 grams of static thrust on the 1000kv motor, doesn't sound very high and since it got a fairly high wing loading (40.2g/dm², wing cube loading of 6.8) it will fly fairly scale.

If it doesn't work I will probably get some triblade props or go to 7" but I think I might be able to make this work, however it needs full power to start sliding on wet concrete so it might need some help for ground takeoff.

 

[Fluburtur]

I did some taxi test on the grass, it is a rather short "runway" so not much time to accelerate but I hope it will be able to get enough speed to take off.

I could try hand launching it but im afraid it won't have enough power to get to flying speed before hitting the ground

 

[Fluburtur]

So this plane finally got to meet its element!



It was pretty fun to drive it on the water, at one point I was driving it into the wind and I got quite light and I probably could have taken off but I want to fly it over solid ground first, also I don't trust the receiver in it.
After that we went to a field to fly it but one motor refused to start, I guess that water got inside.

It doesn't have the sort of water stopper plates most seaplanes have so water is deflected up by the hull and goes right into the prop so obviously that's an issue, I will probably put some thin aluminium plates to deal with that. I also got water inside while putting it in the water at one point to the cardboard battery tray melted so I will replace it with 2mm plywood.

Overall im happy, it will fly soon!

 

[Fluburtur]

So I did the changes that I planned (plywood battery tray and water deflectors) and it worked very well! The plane was able to slide on water very fast and even accidentally took off
It got about 20cm above the water during like 4 meters, I cut the throttle and it got back into the water rather hard but with no damage, also I didn't touch the controls at all, only throttle

I also met a familly of swans that were cool with me but didn't quite like the plane, two of them started to chase the plane but they decided it wasn't worth it and went hanging out with a bunch of gooses

 

[Fluburtur]

I decided to glue my runcam hd on the tail of the canadair for some more water taxi test.

It worked well enough, I need to move the left deflector to the front a bit.

But for some reason the camera stops recording all the time for no reason

 

[Fluburtur]

So I did more fast water taxi test today and even got it off the water (which was not planned again)


At least this time I had my grandma to take pictures!

Overall im pleased, the control surfaces move a bit too much so I will need to dial them down a bit but I should be able to get it flying soon.

 

[Jetcrafter_2000]

Im really looking forward to the maiden flight!

 

[Fluburtur]

The old tail wasn't waterproofed enough and got totally soaked with water so I have to replace it. The new one is also cardboard but should be more waterproof, I also made it larger.

However it is also heavier so I will have to put more weight in the nose, if the plane is too heavy to fly with 1000kv motor I will replace them with 2200kv motors from a dead quad (or get larger props but I already have motors)

 

[Fluburtur]

I finally got it flying!

Plenty of power, it's unusually quiet too. However the pitch control was a bit touchy so I will move to control rod closer to the pivot point on the servo in order to have less throw and more torque, might add some more nose weight too.
It also glides much better than I thought, as you can see I couldn't get it down on the big puddle.
One motor was also running slower because of some friction in the mount so I will have to get to that, you can expect more flying probably next week.

 

[ElectriSean]

Looking good

 

[Fluburtur]

I had some issues with the right motor going slower and randomly stalling so I replaced it, I should get it flying this week and hopefully with no issues.

 

[Fluburtur]

I flew it with the new motor and it worked just fine.
It was in about 20kph of wind however so I spent half the flight hovering, also I had to max the down trim so I will more the servo arm a bit.

Well, video this weekend I guess!

 

[Fluburtur]

As promised I flew the canadair again, I will post the video later because I need to stabilise it (cameraman was really shaky)

But have a picture while you wait



I had a motor problem, plane was flying weird so I cut throttle and landed softly in that field. No damage at all and it was one of my best landings with it so far!