Neve's FT Explorer build and experimentation thread

[nevenelestate]

After seeing the video for the FT Explorer and Peter's VTOL version I decided to return to my Sea Duck wing design and explore some more ideas.

My first plan is to use the FT Explorer core, but reduced to 70%, and a twin boom tail with A-tail for rudder/elevator. I am working on making the booms already, to the same design as the Sea Duck's Link to that post

Original Sea Duck build of the booms.

I will also use the FT Mini Guinea wing to start, this is what the over wing booms were designed for.

Original Sea Duck booms on FT Mini Guinea wing

I should have some pictures of the new wing with booms tonight (10/28/2015) and hopefully the A-tail shortly there after.

 

[Ron DuBray]

looking good

 

[nevenelestate]

A-tail V1.0

Tonight I finished up the wing, and installed the aileron and flap servos. I got the booms attached and the A-tail also. Next step is the tail servos and then motor pods.

Here is the wing with booms and A-tail.

Here are the aileron and flap servos. I made the aileron slightly smaller than the original mini guinea plans to try to !make it a little less twitchy.

Here is the tail, from the bottom.

And here it is sitting on top of a 70%scale Explorer core.

 

[nevenelestate]

Wing design for the over-winged booms

I forgot to post this picture earlier. To use the mini guinea wing with the booms on top I had to put a hole to run the servo wires and ESC power/control wires. This picture shows half the wing, cut foam board for the over wing boom design on the top of the picture and the printed out mini guinea wing plans.

On the Sea Duck I had set the servos down inside the wing, similar to the MG design. However that requires a gap in the spar and on some more acrobatic flights I had noticed issues in that area, including a complete wing failure on one flight. On this version I ran a spar the full length, made from a yard stick from Home Depot cut narrower and a, cut to the same size, piece of foam board. with the spar running the full length of the inside of the wing there was no room for the servos embedded, so I set them on top but inside the boom.

Sea Duck inset servo design:

Note the servos are now on top of the wing, cut into the side of the boom(I will get a better picture of this uploaded soon):

 

[dantheman]

This is looking sharp!

 

[nevenelestate]

Got all of the servos installed, 6x HK 5g servos, and mounted the motors and ESCs. I still need to get the power wires for the ESC routed through the wing and then she'll be ready to fly!

Fortunately my Spektrum DX6 has built in controls for V-tail, so using their "V-tail A" setting my setup worked with no changes needed.

Here is the wing with the servos all rigged up.

This is a short clip of the servos all working properly.

 

[nevenelestate]

Bronco 1.0 DOA

After many hours building up the wing I took this out for a glide test, minimum throttle test to check it out. Well it was a no go

A few things were wrong:
1: Not enough elevator throw (Using the DX6 V-tail setup and had servos set to full throw, no dual rates)
2: In building the wing the booms appear to have taken a negative thrust angle, so any amount of throttle pushed her nose over. I attempted to do a quick on-the-spot thrust angle adjustment but that didn't do anything to help.
3: One of the booms may have been slightly off on yaw angle, so the plane had a left yaw motion under power.

I decided that for now I am going to go a different direction so I completely "disassembled" this wing. I do plan to revisit the Explorer in Bronco form, but likely will use a horizontal tail instead of A-tail. I had far more success with that configuration on my Sea Duck.

Next up "Midi Guinea" build, that will have it's pwn thread.

 

[nevenelestate]

Friend built a 70% scale Explorer

My friend Mark built a 70% Explorer using an Emax 1806 motor and we finally got out to fly it yesterday. I didn't get any pictures or video of him flying it, I was too busy flying my Mini Versa wing, but here are some pictures of the finalized build.

In the end he lost the nut on the motor, fortunately it is a CW thread so we stopped at the hardware store on the way home and grabbed some spare nuts.

**Note: if you run a CW mini motor with thread on none cone nut, in a pusher configuration, use a reverse prop (example: 6x4.5R) so that your motor is spinning against the threads.