Ok, so, I've wanted to build this subject for quite some time. I've had parts to do it but just never found the motivation. I love building. I love it more than flying. Since David is so fantastic in this area as well I figured I would do one... "For Him" per se but really its inspired by him. I also wanted to capture many details about building a scale plane from scratch for many who are new to the hobby but also new to building with foam. Many techniques I have picked up from others and a lot are improvised.
I will not reveal the subject but As it gets built I am sure it will be guessed. Info about it is... It is VERY RARELY built. Thats all you get for now. So first I got my 3-views from Google. Most will do fine but this one was actually for an RC plane and already had fuselage templates. So, I figured what size I wanted. We are looking at a 45" wingspan. The goal is to have very scale features for its size without going overboard. I will be scratch building it all so lets get into it
I started off with the center wing section. Wing will also have two outer wing sections with dihedral. The scale airfoil was selected for the root and tips of this section. See my tutorial on how to do this.Very simple cut but I messed up the first core I made. Foam is cheap so I made another in about 10 minutes.
Based on the plans I measured for the Landing gear placement. I centered up the servoless retract and pressed firmly to get a nice outline. I bored out the foam using a dremel with a slight incline using the TLAR (That Looks About Right) method. Once done I bonded hard points with hard balsa using gorilla glue. This will be the rails the retracts screw into. I drilled small holes through the rails and inserted carbon fiber rods with gorilla glue for strength. I also lined the insides of the bay with balsa for additional strength.
Back for more later.
I will not reveal the subject but As it gets built I am sure it will be guessed. Info about it is... It is VERY RARELY built. Thats all you get for now. So first I got my 3-views from Google. Most will do fine but this one was actually for an RC plane and already had fuselage templates. So, I figured what size I wanted. We are looking at a 45" wingspan. The goal is to have very scale features for its size without going overboard. I will be scratch building it all so lets get into it
I started off with the center wing section. Wing will also have two outer wing sections with dihedral. The scale airfoil was selected for the root and tips of this section. See my tutorial on how to do this.Very simple cut but I messed up the first core I made. Foam is cheap so I made another in about 10 minutes.
Based on the plans I measured for the Landing gear placement. I centered up the servoless retract and pressed firmly to get a nice outline. I bored out the foam using a dremel with a slight incline using the TLAR (That Looks About Right) method. Once done I bonded hard points with hard balsa using gorilla glue. This will be the rails the retracts screw into. I drilled small holes through the rails and inserted carbon fiber rods with gorilla glue for strength. I also lined the insides of the bay with balsa for additional strength.
Back for more later.