My FT Tiny Trainer Scratch Build (was: Old Plans...New Plans....????)

bigdano711

Active member
Not really peanut gallery here as this is supposed to be a fully family friendly site.
If I can refrain everyone can.
Interesting lesson here. We have collectively, as a society, taken the letter "F" and assigned a word to it. Using that logic, it is not prudent to shorten any word beginning with the letter "F" down to just the letter. Consider FliteTest calls their planes "FT" Whatever. I might read it as "F" That Tutor.

Lot's of words start with the letter "F". Using just the letter IS refraining.
 

bigdano711

Active member
Social nuance and censorship aside, I have completed the building of the "F"T Tiny Trainer wing!

20220205_095048.jpg
 

SP0NZ

FT CAD Gremlin
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Interesting lesson here. We have collectively, as a society, taken the letter "F" and assigned a word to it. Using that logic, it is not prudent to shorten any word beginning with the letter "F" down to just the letter. Consider FliteTest calls their planes "FT" Whatever. I might read it as "F" That Tutor.

Lot's of words start with the letter "F". Using just the letter IS refraining.

Everything has context. So just the letter F with no other context to it really is just the letter F. They way you have used it implies something else entirely, and most people can infer what you meant in your earlier (now edited) posts. This is a family friendly site. That type of language (literal, inferred, implied, etc.) will not be tolerated. Using just the letter F to imply the meaning isn't "refraining" enough. Please keep in PG.
 

SP0NZ

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Now I have the new plans, and they are sweet....but the bottom is getting cut off and I followed the article on how to print. Now I'm learning Adobe Acrobat Pro that I signed up for....$14.99 a month. When is FliteTest gonna start their subscription service?

No, no, no, silly man. You can't just edit the margin from 1" to .5", NOOOOO!!!!! You have to do some stupid crop action.....CAPITAL F!!!!
I'm sorry you are having problems with the tiled plans. Can you double check to make sure that you are printing at full, or 100% scale? There shouldn't be a need to have to edit the PDF to adjust the margins. The actual print area for the tiled A-size plans is 7.5 x 10.5 on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of standard US Letter size paper. Most modern consumer printers can print with less than .25 inch margins. What printer are you using?

I know you said you read the printing instructions, I assume that you mean the article I wrote in 2016?
https://www.flitetest.com/articles/printing-flite-test-plans

Is there an option to center the print on the page? If so, try it with and without that setting.

In the end, it does come down to the specific printer you are using. I've gone through a couple printers over the years, and I have yet to come across one that couldn't print the plans decently.
 

SSgt Duramax

Junior Member
I'm sorry you are having problems with the tiled plans. Can you double check to make sure that you are printing at full, or 100% scale? There shouldn't be a need to have to edit the PDF to adjust the margins. The actual print area for the tiled A-size plans is 7.5 x 10.5 on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of standard US Letter size paper. Most modern consumer printers can print with less than .25 inch margins. What printer are you using?

I know you said you read the printing instructions, I assume that you mean the article I wrote in 2016?
https://www.flitetest.com/articles/printing-flite-test-plans

Is there an option to center the print on the page? If so, try it with and without that setting.

In the end, it does come down to the specific printer you are using. I've gone through a couple printers over the years, and I have yet to come across one that couldn't print the plans decently.
Since we have you, I have always had an issue printing tiled plans, be it yours or others. They never quite line up perfect, like one page is scaled slightly different than the others. Like two lines will line up, but the third won't. Am I doing something wrong with the settings? My printers automatically default to the settings detailed in your article, thanks.

Obviously, it isn't that big of a deal since I can compensate and my planes usually end up fine, just curious.
 

SP0NZ

FT CAD Gremlin
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Since we have you, I have always had an issue printing tiled plans, be it yours or others. They never quite line up perfect, like one page is scaled slightly different than the others. Like two lines will line up, but the third won't. Am I doing something wrong with the settings? My printers automatically default to the settings detailed in your article, thanks.

Obviously, it isn't that big of a deal since I can compensate and my planes usually end up fine, just curious.

Sadly, that is just the nature of the beast with cheap consumer/home office printers these days. If I find a page that is really off, I usually end up reprinting it and that usually helps. Minor misalignments are something I have notice on multiple different makes and models of printers. The good thing for these foam board models is, it's not that critical and you can just line them up as best you can and the planes will still fly just fine.
 

SSgt Duramax

Junior Member
Sadly, that is just the nature of the beast with cheap consumer/home office printers these days. If I find a page that is really off, I usually end up reprinting it and that usually helps. Minor misalignments are something I have notice on multiple different makes and models of printers. The good thing for these foam board models is, it's not that critical and you can just line them up as best you can and the planes will still fly just fine.
I was noticing it on my office printer too, which is the finest that the Department of Defense can buy. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing anything wrong. It is nothing that a little common sense cant and some realigning how the parts are tiled can't fix. The planes do still fly fine as you noted.
 

bigdano711

Active member
Everything has context. So just the letter F with no other context to it really is just the letter F. They way you have used it implies something else entirely, and most people can infer what you meant in your earlier (now edited) posts. This is a family friendly site. That type of language (literal, inferred, implied, etc.) will not be tolerated. Using just the letter F to imply the meaning isn't "refraining" enough. Please keep in PG.
I hear you, and I can certainly comply with the forum rules. I apologize if I offended or disrupted, I was mostly trying to convey my frustration. I appreciate you taking the time to chime in.

I'm sorry you are having problems with the tiled plans. Can you double check to make sure that you are printing at full, or 100% scale? There shouldn't be a need to have to edit the PDF to adjust the margins. The actual print area for the tiled A-size plans is 7.5 x 10.5 on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of standard US Letter size paper. Most modern consumer printers can print with less than .25 inch margins. What printer are you using?

I know you said you read the printing instructions, I assume that you mean the article I wrote in 2016?
https://www.flitetest.com/articles/printing-flite-test-plans

Is there an option to center the print on the page? If so, try it with and without that setting.

In the end, it does come down to the specific printer you are using. I've gone through a couple printers over the years, and I have yet to come across one that couldn't print the plans decently.
I didn't notice an option to center and I went thru it a few times.

I am absolutely certain that the setting was Custom: 100%

Here's the strange thing: it happened consistently on the 4 top pages, so basically pages TILE A1 thru TILE A4 and TILE A9 thru TILE A12

The bottom pages printed fine as did the last 3.

Printer is a Canon PIXMA MG2522
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
I usually find that people who don't smoke weed before attempting technical things tend to have a much higher success rate there Dime Bag Danno. I had to laugh when I saw this thread. For being a tough guy trying to egg on fights and drama in other peoples threads you sure got that whiny 12 year old gurl routine down pat mate.

Is this part of the fun of scratch building? I'm about to hang it up...

Anyways congratz on finishing the build and getting a maiden in.
 

SSgt Duramax

Junior Member
I hear you, and I can certainly comply with the forum rules. I apologize if I offended or disrupted, I was mostly trying to convey my frustration. I appreciate you taking the time to chime in.


I didn't notice an option to center and I went thru it a few times.

I am absolutely certain that the setting was Custom: 100%

Here's the strange thing: it happened consistently on the 4 top pages, so basically pages TILE A1 thru TILE A4 and TILE A9 thru TILE A12

The bottom pages printed fine as did the last 3.

Printer is a Canon PIXMA MG2522
I cant post most of my unedited thoughts here. I need to find a good bleeping software for my videos. But when in Rome....
 

bigdano711

Active member
I usually find that people who don't smoke weed before attempting technical things tend to have a much higher success rate there Dime Bag Danno.
I have a history with Adobe that goes way back. If I didn't smoke weed, the body count would be HIGH. See what I did there?

I had to laugh when I saw this thread. For being a tough guy trying to egg on fights and drama in other peoples threads you sure got that whiny 12 year old gurl routine down pat mate.
Thanks, I didn't know I came off as tough. Grammatically correct, sure, but tough? You're King Tough around here, aren't you? You accuse me of egging on fights as you egg on one with me? Lame. That's like the 6th grade girl who sticks her tongue out at you and screams she hates you while secretly crushing on you. Get off my jock.


Anyways congratz on finishing the build and getting a maiden in.
Thanks.
 

Tench745

Master member
I was noticing it on my office printer too, which is the finest that the Department of Defense can buy. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing anything wrong. It is nothing that a little common sense cant and some realigning how the parts are tiled can't fix. The planes do still fly fine as you noted.
I have found that any printer with a rear-feed tray will distort slightly when printing. As the rollers grab the paper they will usually catch one corner just before the other and feed the paper slightly askew, but as more paper feeds in it will straighten, making an otherwise straight line skew across the paper. I had one really cheap printer in college that would distort a straight line as much as 1/2" over the length of a page. Needless to say I never used that one for printing plans. I have found that my new printer, which has a cassette style paper tray and rollers closer to center, has much less distortion over the length of a page.

Like Sp0nz said, you can always try reprinting that page if it's really bad. I try to lay out a couple pages at once before taping them together so I can find and adjust for any distortion. In my experience, most of these errors are pretty small. Your knife will likely wander about as much as the lines do, and any little errors like that will just get filled with glue anyway.