telnar1236
Elite member
I've been flying rc for more than 10 years now, but over the last couple of months, I have been experimenting with techniques typically used with balsa wood free-flight models, but substituting the balsa wood with foam. It's actually cheaper than building with pure foam board since you can buy packs of gift tissue at the dollar store, and all but the largest airplanes require at most two sheets of foam. It also only takes about twice as much time as building with foam board since you can hot glue the parts together. The techniques used with balsa do have to be significantly altered since foam board is a lot weaker, but the results are definitely worth the additional time. The results are lighter than pure foam, although still heavier than pure balsa, and take a hit pretty well. I figured it would be worth posting about it on this forum since I haven't really seen anyone else using this technique and I'm curious to see how far it can go.
I didn't document my first few builds with this technique very well, but more recently I built an F-8 Crusader and an F-104 Starfighter, both flying off the same 64mm EDF and 1600 mAh 3s batteries. I also have a few pictures of an earlier build of an F-106 with a 50mm EDF. Between the F-104 and F-8, the build process is decently well documented, so you can see the techniques I used, with a foam thrust-tube (and rear fuselage in the F-104) and inlets, a stick and tissue front fuselage and tail, and hybrid wings. On the F-104 and F-8 I used barbeque skewers and nylon rods to reinforce the wings, both of which can also be bought at the dollar store (nylon rods can be found in the kites sold there during the summer). Unfortunately the flaperon setup I used in the F-104 caused roll instability at high angles of attack, so you can also see how the F-104 handled a crash.
I didn't document my first few builds with this technique very well, but more recently I built an F-8 Crusader and an F-104 Starfighter, both flying off the same 64mm EDF and 1600 mAh 3s batteries. I also have a few pictures of an earlier build of an F-106 with a 50mm EDF. Between the F-104 and F-8, the build process is decently well documented, so you can see the techniques I used, with a foam thrust-tube (and rear fuselage in the F-104) and inlets, a stick and tissue front fuselage and tail, and hybrid wings. On the F-104 and F-8 I used barbeque skewers and nylon rods to reinforce the wings, both of which can also be bought at the dollar store (nylon rods can be found in the kites sold there during the summer). Unfortunately the flaperon setup I used in the F-104 caused roll instability at high angles of attack, so you can also see how the F-104 handled a crash.
