Help! On cardboard RC planes

For the last month, I have been collecting cheerio cereal boxes I plan to make a sick plane out of it but all the templates I see are for foam board or ordinary cardboard what I am looking for is a suitable template or design made specifically for cereal box cardboard because it is so light. Since I am a noob and have hardly any experience designing a plane of my own can somebody either refer an already-made one or build one for me?
 

quorneng

Master member
thomas
The problem you have to overcome is that cheerio box material is very thin compared to foam board. Foam board is stiff enough on its own to be used both as the skin and structure of a plane. Thin cereal cardboard will really only work well as a 'covering' for a load carrying structure inside.
Obviously the cereal carboard will easily resist tension forces but it will simply buckle with any compression. However if the cardboard is held in a curve it resists buckling so can take some compression force.
If you considerer a typical wing in normal flight the top surface is predominately in compression and the under side is in tensioner. Now the upper surface of a wing is curved. ;)
So using 5mm sheet foam wing ribs I made cereal packet sized wing pieces.
DepronCard1.JPG

Four panels fixed together made a 40" wing that fitted on my RC pusher trainer
14Mar19.JPG

A bit heavier that the foam and balsa wing it replaced but it flew ok.
Making a fuselage out of just cereal cardboard would be rather more difficult.
I hope this helps.
 

MaxTheFliteFreak

Active member
For the fuse, you could implement the same method of construction of that wing and make ribs of normal corregated cardboard, foamboard or something else and connect them together with a barbeque skewer or a wooden dowel, then skin the whole thing with the cereal box material "Master Series" style.
Here is an example that I found on the internet: https://images.app.goo.gl/AsN7xLtfy7g2PEVx7
 
Another thing is I am twelve years old and to not have or get very mutch money I only have 25 dollars does anyone have extra money or supplies they would donate to me?
 

MaxTheFliteFreak

Active member
thank you that is so helpful on another note witch plane would you recommend for a plane made out of cardboard light wood and foam?
The great thing about building planes out of these materials is that it is cheap, they're durable and you can make pretty much any plane that pops into your mind. I would reccomend you started out with something simple like a cub-style plane or something that resembles the FT Tiny Trainer because of both their great flight characteristics and their comparatively easy builds. You wouldn't want to build a warbird or anythimg on that level of complexity, because although they may look cool on the ground, as soon as one gets in the air, their bad flight characteristics will likely cause it to crash if you do not have enough experience in flying. I'm not saying that warbirds are bad, they will just have to wait for a relatively inexperienced pilot. It really depends on what you want out of a plane. I would reccomend going through the Flite Test Store and look at some planes. Once you find one, look up the build video and look at how it is made and the techniques implemented in it. I'm not saying that you should build that plane, just learn from what other people are doing and then use that on your plane. I know this is a long message and thankyou for reading it, but there is so much for you to learn. Just remember that literally anyone can build these types of planes. You could even just build a chuck glider as a start and then make it RC later on. Goodluck and happy flying!