Simple ACA Citabria Build

[jankman]

I just recently finished tailwheel training at college this summer, and I kind of fell in love with the citabria while flying it. As I was sitting around being bored at the start of this semester I was looking for something to build and I realized the citabria is just boxy enough that I might actually have the skills to make something decent, so I'm going for it.

I originally tried to design it using Fusion360's sheet metal tools, but after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I decided to move to 2d, and I was able to knock up a plan for the fuse, and the wing I'll just do based on some dimensions (The plans are woefully incomplete btw, but it's enough to start for me). I sized the wing to be a similar size to my old funcub because I like that size of plane, and I have the motor and rudder servo I used in that lying around. The wings will be detachable, and I'm going to try to use tent poles from what was left of my dad's tent after FF '25 as spars.

That's all the progress I've made so far, I'll try to update semi-regularly, but I make no guarantees.

I've attached a bunch of the reference I'm using including some pics of my college's citabria I'm basing it on.

 

[Flying Monkey fab]

My first taildragger was a 7GCBC N5065Z that is sadly no longer with us as a student cartwheeled it almost in front of my eyes. She was just shaken up but 65Z was totaled.

I loved that plane, what a performer! My ONLY complaint about the Citabria's and Decathlons is that steel landing gear. Totally unforgiving in that it doesn't absorb any energy on touch down. It will make you good but will make you sweat while getting good!

Needless to say, I'll be watching your progress on this.

 

[jankman]

Yeah it's definitely a handful on pavement with the steel gear. Loved it on grass though, it hides all of your mistakes.

 

[Piotrsko]

50 Pacer 125 hp here. Supposed short coupled pedal dancer. Grass is so much easier because it slips. Dirt is good also but you have to clean the plane after. And if you burn or leak oil cleaning takes forever.

 

[jankman]

I never thought about the slipping of the grass being a factor, I always just focused on the fact it absorbs the rougher landings, especially on wheel landings.

 

[jankman]

In other news I made some great progress today. After getting the plans printed and cut out yesterday I traced and cut out parts for the fuse. I had to split between the main cabin area and the tail section due to the size of the parts, but other than that it worked great. The rudder hinge is attached with packing tape for the hinge, while the elevator is a dual layer paper hinge. Overall I'm happy so far, just don't look too closely at the empennage assembly where I made some rough cuts to make it all fit.

 

[Flying Monkey fab]

I never thought about the slipping of the grass being a factor, I always just focused on the fact it absorbs the rougher landings, especially on wheel landings.

Yeah, I owned a Fly Baby at one time and I'd use the grass any time I could as a tail dragger will alway be a tail dragger, but that little slip buys you a little forgiveness on getting a hair sidways.

 

[Piotrsko]

Hmm I always thought wheel landings were much easier than full stall, plop with no good airspeed any which direction. Cross wind alters everything horribly. Tis why I put the rudder dorsal as high as I could get it when I recovered it. The grass airport I flew from also save my posterior half the time while I was learning. Touch, big cloud of dust........ might be doing something wrong

 

[Flying Monkey fab]

Hmm I always thought wheel landings were much easier than full stall, plop with no good airspeed any which direction. Cross wind alters everything horribly. Tis why I put the rudder dorsal as high as I could get it when I recovered it. The grass airport I flew from also save my posterior half the time while I was learning. Touch, big cloud of dust........ might be doing something wrong

When I was taught (1984) I was taught full stall first and then wheel landings. There very much is a place for both but most of the time I prefer a full stall as a) when you set down, she's all done flying and b) the tail wheel is firmly planted from the get-go.

 

[jankman]

I found that wheels were much easier to do in the crosswind since you've got so much more rudder authority with the higher airspeed. Problem with them on pavement was if you touched down before it was ready it would bounce right back up and then you end up with porpising if you don't manage it right.

 

[jankman]

Last update til I can head home this weekend and pick up the electronics for it:
Wings are made minus aileron servos, they have a full length foam spar and through 80% is a set of two tent pole sections from the tent that got killed at FF. Don't have a ton of the pictures of the build because its late and I felt lazy, but here's the wing mocked up on the fuse

 

[Piotrsko]

Mikey likes. With that aileron deflection it screams: " NEEDS more up than down movement", but then again I favor barn door control surfaces.

 

[jankman]

Alright I managed to get a lot of work done yesterday and today. Servos are installed, the motor is mounted and the landing gear is built. Planning on maidening it tomorrow as long as Duluth's fog monster plays nice. Flying on a 3s 2200 with the ft 2814 motor swinging a 12x6 prop.

 

[FishbonesAir]

Alright I managed to get a lot of work done yesterday and today. Servos are installed, the motor is mounted and the landing gear is built. Planning on maidening it tomorrow as long as Duluth's fog monster plays nice. Flying on a 3s 2200 with the ft 2814 motor swinging a 12x6 prop.

Hey, what happened? How did the maiden go? Don't leave us hanging!

 

[jankman]

Sorry about the wait. I had a lot of things come up all at once and I completely forgot about this thread. The maiden went....ok. It flew, but it was sluggish on the controls and I did it in too tight of an are. Thankfully there was a very kind climber in the area who helped me get it down. Right now I think the main two problems to solve are that the motor mount is super weak and its tail heavy, I think larger control surfaces would help too.

 

[Piotrsko]

Tail heavy generally means it is twitchy to fly. Nose heavy means you have a gob of up elevator trim showing. If you WEREN'T feeding in gobs of trim it's probably really close. Hows does it fly power off? Drop like a rock or......?

 

[jankman]

It kinda wallows around,my main thought for it being tail heavy is it would do everything it could to not fly into the wind, so I figured it was tail heavy from that. I just think my ailerons are small for the wingspan I've got

 

[telnar1236]

Sorry about the wait. I had a lot of things come up all at once and I completely forgot about this thread. The maiden went....ok. It flew, but it was sluggish on the controls and I did it in too tight of an are. Thankfully there was a very kind climber in the area who helped me get it down. Right now I think the main two problems to solve are that the motor mount is super weak and its tail heavy, I think larger control surfaces would help too. View attachment 254682

Control surfaces look fine in the pictures, but it sounds like it might be underpowered. I haven't seen many designs with the foam doubled up on the tail like that either without some rounding of the leading and trailing edge, so that may be contributing some to the weirdness.

For most RC planes, if it's flyable but feels tail heavy, that can also be fixed with smaller control throws - so long as it's stable enough to fly, it isn't aerodynamically tail heavy.

 

[FishbonesAir]

It kinda wallows around,my main thought for it being tail heavy is it would do everything it could to not fly into the wind, so I figured it was tail heavy from that. I just think my ailerons are small for the wingspan I've got

When I saw your motor mount, I had a Feeling you were in for problems.

You might be having an issue similar to my FT Tutor. It has a lot of the hours (and crashes) on it, and has been flying like it was tail heavy - or had a drunk Navy pilot at the controls. 😁 But the CG is very well laid out, and worked before.

What I found was that the power pod was going soft. Apply power, and the motor pivots from down thrust to up thrust! 😳 Then everything gets wonky in the air.

Your mount is so light, your motor might have been able to do something similar. But that's just an educated guess, based on too few data points.