Misc Balsa Projects

[Joker 53150]

A question to the group: is there any interest in seeing various small projects that aren't necessarily worthy of a full thread? I'm doing some work for a friend - two planes are getting new gas engines and a couple more planes need some misc work to get them airworthy. The projects should be fairly quick and could be useful to others. This would be open to anybody to post their small projects on as well. I post a ton of stuff and create a lot of build threads and don't want to clutter the board more than I already do!

 

[rockyboy]

Sure! Always interested in ways that people fix up stuff - gives me ideas!

 

[nhk750]

Definitely, I always learn from stuff like that. The world of balsa building and projects is a never ending learning journey...

 

[Joker 53150]

Here's the first "Misc" project I'm working on for my friend Mike. We are fairly sure this wasn't a kit or ARF, as the fuselage is made from light ply and painted. The tail surfaces are built-up, so this may simply be a Frankenstein plane built to use spare parts. Since it is built from ply and painted it's also fairly heavy. The engine that came mounted to it was a 26cc Ryobi weed-wacker engine converted to be used for RC. The original plan was to use it as-is, but after spending plenty of time trying to get it going we eventually gave up. It may just be worn out. The Ryobi engines were decent, but much heavier than purpose-built RC engines. They also tended to have less power for the size and didn't have a fast response time.




Here's the plane with it's new powerplant, a DLE 30cc. This new engine should provide a TON of power for the plane, with plenty to spare. I was able to re-use a few of the old engine mounting holes, which I find a better option than trying to fill old ones and re-drilling. Doing that puts the engine a few degrees off from vertical, but nothing to be concerned with. Inside the fuselage I added a new piece of ply to the firewall to strengthen it, just in case.






As you can see, the tail is all built-up from balsa and includes a pull-pull rudder servo with pushrods and dual elevator servos.




This last pic is a plane that'll probably get a full re-build thread. A few weeks ago I was at a swap meet and was bidding on an auction for this Hostetler Design Cessna. It was down to me and one other guy and I bailed, letting him have it. After the auction I talked to him and found he only wanted the plane for the 60-ish cc twin gas engine, and didn't want the airframe! I gave him my contact info and asked him to let me know if he wants to sell the airframe, and today he reached out. We'll meet up next weekend at another swap meet and I'll bring the beast home. The cowl and landing gear parts cost more than I paid for the plane, so I'm happy with the deal. It needs some tweaking and is a little rough in spots, but is still solid.

 

[nhk750]

That lady has one heck of a hairdo!

 

[roversgonemad]

The first plane looks like a Road Runner. Remember the Road Runner episode, when they were still filming at Chad Kapper’s house? There’s a guy in our club that built one. They are all very similar. The one in our club has the fuselage assembled from veneer like the stuff used on hollow core doors. It’s covered, rather than painted, but it easily could have been painted.

 

[Joker 53150]

It does remind me of that plane as well! That episode of FT is what helped jumpstart my love of big gassers, by the way.

No pics as they don't show much, but as of last night the new engine is installed, throttle linkages have been moved to accommodate the new engine, fuel lines run, and the electronics are hooked up and working properly. As with the other gas engines with electronic ignition I've done this one is getting an optical kill switch. The opti-kill is a fantastic little device that gives you the ability to kill the ignition from your transmitter. It'll also work with your fail-safe programming on the receiver to kill the ignition if you lose signal with the plane. An LED is also used to let you visually see that your ignition is turned on.

If the weather is decent this weekend I should be able to fire it up and see how it runs. I'll need to drill a prop for the bolt pattern, but that shouldn't be hard.

 

[Joker 53150]

That lady has one heck of a hairdo!

A real-life Marge Simpson.

 

[Joker 53150]

View attachment 100846

View attachment 100847

I'll add a little video and updated pictures, but the DLE 30 on this stick plane runs like a monster! Once I remembered to tighten the spark plug it fired right up and runs perfectly. Now the plane only needs to have the CoG checked with the wing on and it's ready for flight. The 30cc gasser should pull this through the sky without breaking a sweat. I added a new spinner to the prop as well, anodized blue aluminum, which really looks nice and makes it easy to use an electric starter to turn the engine over.

 

[Joker 53150]

So here are the final bits of work done on the Stick (other than balancing it). I replaced the old simple On/Off switches with bigger switches that also include power LEDs and charge ports for the NiMh batteries. One for the receiver and one for the ignition. The red LED is for the optical kill switch, and RED means the ignition is live. Turning the transmitter off, losing signal, or flipping a specific switch on the transmitter also kills the ignition as a safety measure. The old switch holes were then patched to clean this side up a bit.




And the money shot, new blue anodized aluminum spinner on the new DLE 30 gasser. This engine requires drilling 4 holes in the prop for extra prop bolts, so I picked up a special jig that lets me place the holes properly. The spinner was $25 shipped from China and I'm very impressed with it so far.

 

[Joker 53150]

It's been a warbird weekend around here! Yesterday saw decent weather so my buddy Mike and I spent more time getting planes tuned & ready for Spring. A couple are done so a few more rotated in for work. First, the P-47 in the back is mine, getting a bunch of weight added to the nose. It's designed to handle a bigger engine than the OS .61 I'm running so it's currently very tail heavy

Next, the P-51 in the middle is a gasser that needs some work on the elevator. The guy who originally built it (not me) got a little over-zealous with the CA glue when assembling it so the elevator is essentially stuck. I'll have to cut it free, add new hinges, and possibly do some reconstructive surgery depending on how the re-hinging goes.

Up front is the main work for the day, a Hangar 9 P-51 ARF / PTS. Flite Test did a video on this model a few years ago and it looks like a fun plane. Removable "slats" are attached to the leading edge of the wing making the plane much more docile. When removed and with a 2-blade prop it's back to flying like a warbird. This one had a little wingtip damage, needed programming, and Mike wanted the flaps operable.




The wingtip damage was super easy to fix. The tips were fiberglass and hollow, so all I did was cut a small piece of balsa that could fit inside the wing and CA'd it. A little sanding had it ready for covering - the total job took maybe 20 minutes which included waiting for the covering iron to heat up. The yellow film I had wasn't a great match, but it was better than the ripped up 'glass.




Next was adding operational flaps. The PTS system includes flaps that were pre-hinged and attached at the top of the wing to one of 3 spots (flaps up, mid, or down). In this pic they were at mid. There is a cutout in the wing for the servo so the covering is simply cut, the servo installed, and the original pushrods re-bent and re-used.




With the servo in you can see the angles don't line up for both flaps. A little bending is required which is pretty easy. This project was maybe 30 minutes total including programming the flaps in the transmitter.

 

[Joker 53150]

With the first Mustang done and ready for flight I finished up my P-47 from the previous post. It needed a bit of lead in the nose and it now balances a bit more nose-heavy than what it'll eventually be finalized at, but I want to be safe with the balance for the maiden. I'm not sure how the previous owner flew it (if he even did) as tail heavy as it was...?

The next quick project is Mike's other Mustang with the stuck elevators. I tried scraping away the excess glue for a while and got nowhere, so I broke out the solvent and dripped some on the hinges to soften the glue enough so I could just cut the elevators loose from the stabilizers. The original plan was to simply re-hinge the surfaces with CA hinges and move back to working on the Cessna, but life can't be that simple! The old CA hinge remains are very securely held in place so on to Plan B.

Enough time just looking at it and wasting time, I may as well get working! New hinges are ordered and I'm going to cut new elevators along with re-covering the horizontal surfaces. There was a lot of CA residue on the old covering that looked bad - that problem is now gone.




An original elevator was used as a template so both new pieces would be identical size. There is a LOT of sanding in my future to slim these pieces down.

 

[Joker 53150]

Projects, projects, and more projects. The friend I’m doing much of this work for is picking up more planes, a .90 size Tiger Moth, a Great Planes Cherokee to be converted to glow, plus I hear he has a third plane coming! I guess that means more work for me as well.

The guy selling him the first two planes is also selling a Tower Hobbies Kaos with a pair of .40-.46 glow engines which might accidentally end up in my hangar. It’s supposed to be almost ready with only minimal work needed. Fingers are crossed!

 

[Joker 53150]

I guess it's no big surprise that the Tower Hobbies Kaos ended up in my hangar... Here she is, with a different engine sitting in the nose just for weight to keep the nose down. When Mike handed me the plane I noticed it was very clean with only a few small dings. No rips, patches, or slime build-up which was a nice surprise.




Here's the engine that came in it, a K&B .40 with a strange flat muffler. From what I hear it's a very loud design, which kind of defeats the purpose of a muffler. The engine doesn't seem to have a lot of compression, but it's a bit grimy and needs a Jacuzzi in hot antifreeze overnight to really clean it up so I can see what I've got to work with. I've heard the piston in this engine has a ring which may just be gummed up. Hopefully.




Here's the bottom of the exhaust where the noise is made. I really hope this thing fires up so I can see what it does!




Inside are 3 of the 4 servos needed to fly - throttle, elevator, and rudder/steering. The aileron servo goes in the wing, but there isn't one there. In fact there has never been an aileron servo installed meaning the extra clean condition of this plane is because it's never been flown! When I removed the engine the entire engine bay was clean and oil-free. The fuel tank has never been filled either. SCORE!




So for now, the engine soaks for a cleaning. The plan (for now?) is to reinstall it and run the plane as I got it. Well, with an aileron servo added...

 

[Joker 53150]

The glow engine is all cleaned up after soaking in hot antifreeze for about 12 hours, followed by washing it out and oiling heavily. The carb was the most difficult part as it is some kind of plastic material and was completely gummed up. Some soaking with WD-40 and Marvel Mystery Oil finally did the trick and it's now operating smoothly. New fuel lines were installed and all it needs now is the throttle cable hooked up and it can be (hopefully) fired up. Tuning the carb will be a real pain unless I can get an extension on the high-side needle.




Back to Mike's P-51, the elevators were carved and sanded to shape and new pin hinges installed. I'd rather have used flat hinges but there was so much old CA glue in the stabilizer it would have been a nightmare to cut the slots.




Covering the surfaces, the heat gun allows me to pull the material about 3/4 of the way around the corner on the piece being covered.




Into the home-stretch, the stabilizers are done other than gluing the hinges and adding the black stripes. Mike has been very anxious to get this plane back so he can fly it if the weather gets decent.

 

[Joker 53150]

Just a reminder when buying used planes that you've never seen flown, to exercise caution and expect things to go wrong. Over this past winter I picked up a P-51 with a Saito 4-stroke 100 size glow engine. I'm told it was flown a number of times and it looks like it's seen some action. However, I noticed as I was programming my transmitter with it that the throttle wouldn't go above about 1/2 throttle. I couldn't figure out why until I noticed it was hitting the motor mount as throttle was increased! I'm not sure how well it flew being limited like that, but some quality time with a Dremel cleared room and it's not got full-throws. That plane was also fairly tail-heavy, so combine that with limited throttle and it's surprising the plane is still in one piece!

I was able to get a maiden flight on it last weekend, and other than having to dial down the throws a bit it flew nicely and sounds great cruising by. Upon landing it nosed over which often just results in a broken or dirty prop. This time the prop was fine, but the entire firewall had come off! No doubt it was from the "landing" and didn't come off in flight, or the flight would have ended much more quickly and spectacularly. Upon closer inspection it looks like the firewall never got a good dose of glue/epoxy to hold it in place, and the glue that was there was somewhat pliable. No idea what kind was used at the factory, but it wasn't adequate. (This is an ARF, not a kit). I removed the engine, cut the remaining old glue away, sanded it, and re-installed with a good dose of epoxy. It was then reassembled and is ready for another shot when time & weather permit.

 

[rockyboy]

Restorations do require their own bundle of detective skills I've only done a couple so far, but it's certainly fun to do.