LundiThembi
Active member
Just finished the Spitfire, I have a 4 cell 2300 battery up front and still needs another 5 oz to balance!
Thoughts? Thanks!
Thoughts? Thanks!
Swappable Spitfire...very tail-heavy...or is it me?
- Thread starter LundiThembi
- Start date
The Fopster
Master member
Thought? Honestly I can’t get past “that is an epic looking spitfire“. Kudos!
LundiThembi
Active member
Thanks for that!!
Great looking plane. I'm not sure I like my advice.
Cut the nose off near the leading edge of the wing and add an extension, then glue everything back together. I have needed to do this to several of my FT planes, they all come out tail heavy. A simple but joint is all you need. To estimate the length of the extension, slide the power pod out until you get the plane to balance. Make the extension the long enough to cover the extended power pod.
LundiThembi
Active member
Ouch!! I will ponder that!
The Bushwacker was another somewhat tail-heavy plane I built.
The Bushwacker was another somewhat tail-heavy plane I built.
Hondo76251
Legendary member
Ive been able to mostly fix that issue by using gorilla glue in the tail instead of hot glue on most builds. Sometimes, as in the case of my bushwacker, I'll even remove the paper from the inside of the tail.
Hondo76251
Legendary member
You've done such a nice looking build i hate to suggest anything other than just run with some nose weight on this one. If you do build it again you can adjust the wings to be a bit farther back.
LundiThembi
Active member
Thanks for all of the input. I'll fly as is, make notes and then adapt for version 2.
speedy7385
Active member
trying moving the esc and receiver toward the front? shifting weights forward.
And on v2, try mounting both rudder and eleron servos forward by the wings
And on v2, try mounting both rudder and eleron servos forward by the wings
Last edited:
Rhaps
Elite member
As @Hondo76251 said just add nose weight, pit should be able to carry it fine.
Personally I have found a spinner to be best nose weight, adds to looks too
Personally I have found a spinner to be best nose weight, adds to looks too
Aslansmonkey
Well-known member
Nice plane, very well done.
Was this a scratch build? If so, not all foam board is created equal. Most of the "Craft" foam board sold at big box stores is denser than the stuff sold at the Dollar Tree. If you build this out of the heavier foam board it will be tail heavy by nature and harder to balance. I built a P-40 in color because I thought it would be neat, and it was. But I discovered it would be near impossible to balance without TONS of nose weight so I never bothered even trying and just built another out of lighter foam. I've also had several other scratch built designs that failed to fly for balance reasons because I made them from denser foam board.
Adams Readi Board (DTFB) is around 115g per sheet. The Elmers brand foam board, sold at Walmart, is closer to 240g per sheet. MUCH heavier.
All that said, if you're going to fly this on a 4s, go ahead and add that 5oz, or whatever you need. You may have to fly faster, but it should still fly.
Was this a scratch build? If so, not all foam board is created equal. Most of the "Craft" foam board sold at big box stores is denser than the stuff sold at the Dollar Tree. If you build this out of the heavier foam board it will be tail heavy by nature and harder to balance. I built a P-40 in color because I thought it would be neat, and it was. But I discovered it would be near impossible to balance without TONS of nose weight so I never bothered even trying and just built another out of lighter foam. I've also had several other scratch built designs that failed to fly for balance reasons because I made them from denser foam board.
Adams Readi Board (DTFB) is around 115g per sheet. The Elmers brand foam board, sold at Walmart, is closer to 240g per sheet. MUCH heavier.
All that said, if you're going to fly this on a 4s, go ahead and add that 5oz, or whatever you need. You may have to fly faster, but it should still fly.
LundiThembi
Active member
Thanks for the contributions. Yes, it was a scratch-built.. I used Adams board on this one, I usually use the board directly from Flite-Test. The Adams board seems slightly thinner than what I bought from FT which seems odd because I thought FT was the same board, just re-branded,
Tench745
Master member
FT foamboard is made by the same company and is based on the regular Adams board, but it has different paper and a higher bar for the quality control.
My first suggestion is to remove as much weight from the tail as you can. On my Spirit of St Louis this meant cutting out most of the bottom panel of the fuselage. Something like this:
This will get rid of weight aft of the CG but leaving a little meat on the edges like this helps keep some support for the fuselage side. Rounded corners on the cutout help reduce stress concentrations which cause breakage in a hard landing.
Gray Harlequin
New member
I've often thought of removing the inside paper on my "box type" builds for weight savings in general. Do you find there is much strength/rigidity loss when doing this?
Hondo76251
Legendary member
None that ive seen, at least not enough to make a difference.
This is one plane thats had many a crash and has lived to tell about it. Most of its inner paper is removed:
Gray Harlequin
New member
@Hondo76251 Ouch! Crashing like that in FPV must be some sort of experience. Thanks for the info about removing the paper. Always wanted to do it to save weight but was afraid of the structure strength. Now if I can just stop my heavy handed glue application, I can stop flying around bricks.
Hondo76251
Legendary member
Haha yeah. Watch out if you catch the fpv bug!
I don't video very much of what i do, but i did have "the rest of the story" on that one.
I was able to fly again that time without any repairs really. One of the tricks i use is a little packing tape in strategic places and that helps a lot. That plane actually had a crumpled spar long before the flight shown.
As far as keeping weight down, thats something that comes with a little practice too. A little extra hot glue in the tail makes for a difficult plane to balance. I like gorilla glue but im also impatient. Ill use a dab of hot glue to hold a part together so that the gorilla glue can cure without a ton of clamps and tape to hold it while it cures. A bit of a compromise.
Ive done full "slow glue" builds and I dont really recomend it. If you want to take that kind of time you could build a real balsa model. I generally go with hot glue in the wings and FWD of CG and use gorilla glue mostly aft of CG with a little hot glue used sparingly.
skymaster
Elite member
i think that the fpv camera is to close to the front . I think it should be moved back to the top of the canopy, for a better view.
Hondo76251
Legendary member
Depends on what you're going for I suppose.
The first short video is the only one that has actual footage from the FPV camera, most of the video is from a little cheap action cam on the tail of the plane. I like my camera to be as far forward as possible and with a pretty good downward tilt. I like just a little bit of the nose of in view (but not too much) for the type of flying I like to do.
Not even sure what you'd call it; "fixed wing proximity" maybe? lol
Similar threads
