T-34 Mentor Lima Lima Flight Team Inspiration

[Bambua]

I grew up in Naperville, IL which is the home of the 6 plane T-34 Mentor Lima Lima Flight. They do aerobatic and formation flying demonstrations at airshows around the country and world. I used to love seeing them practice their formation flying up over head.



I ran across a picture of them doing a demonstration on memorial day yesterday and was inspired to take a 3 view and setup a swappable for it. It's not perfect scale (I didn't do a curved turtledeck or canopy yet for V1, but maybe in V2)

Stats:

Length: 29 5/8"
Wingspan: 39 3/8"

Targeting a similar all up weight to the FT Mustang

Once I get it built, I'll be doing a yellow paint job on it to match the paint scheme to match the flight team, and i'm even thinking about doing some vinyl graphics for it. Once I see how it flies and if any adjustments are needed I'll post the plans, until them I'll keep up this thread as I build it.

 

[ClearSkiesCalmWinds]

Following. Subscribed. Cheers!

 

[Bambua]

Forgot to mention, the 2 vertical spars on the right side of the parts picture, are the 2 wing spars, the shorter one is just for alignment (similar to the Popsicle stick on the FT 3D), the other one is a 3/16" x 9/16" x 15" main sing spar to attach the 2 wing halves. I'm thinking about going either with balsa for both, or balsa for the small and carbon fiber for the main spar. I'm sure this part will be a big portion of my trial and error with fitting that portion.

The piece on the bottom right is the one piece of poster board for the top of the canopy.

The rest of it is just creases and B folds