Willy Nillies Eaglet 250 build. It's here!

Turbojoe

Elite member
You're welcome. He did a great job laying out the mods he did for his conversion in that thread. The final product looks great especially with the wheel pants!

Joe
 

speedbirdted

Legendary member
Made a purchase. I look forward to trying his suggestions. I probably not going to try the flaps though.
The flaps do help a lot to slow the thing down but they aren't at all a necessity. Mine is able to do all kinds of slow flight even without any flaps. I think someone else on here tried flaperons which pretty much worked the same but I prefer separate flaps and ailerons because flaperons can cause roll authority issues.

If you do the wheel pants, do a better job than I did on them, especially with the mounting :ROFLMAO:
 

TooJung2Die

Master member
I think someone else on here tried flaperons which pretty much worked the same but I prefer separate flaps and ailerons because flaperons can cause roll authority issues.
Probably thinking of me. I mixed flaps in with the ailerons. I added only 25% to the flaps setting but that's enough to noticeably slow it down. If I added more it might affect the roll authority as you mentioned. You can see the difference in the landing roll out in the video I made. The Eaglet rolled much less when landing with flaperons.

I love the wheel pants on your Eaglet but I have never done them because I can't figure out a way to secure them to wire landing gear either.
 

Michael9865

Elite member
The flaps do help a lot to slow the thing down but they aren't at all a necessity. Mine is able to do all kinds of slow flight even without any flaps. I think someone else on here tried flaperons which pretty much worked the same but I prefer separate flaps and ailerons because flaperons can cause roll authority issues.
If you do the wheel pants, do a better job than I did on them, especially with the mounting :ROFLMAO:

I have tried wheel pants a couple times and I don’t feel that they are worth the aggravation. Nice for pictures, but a headache in real life. LOL They have a way of coming loose and becoming braking mechanisms. Also had them fill up with mud and the mud became a braking mechanism also. You get the idea.
Thank you for paving the way. I will be using your thread as a reference.
 

speedbirdted

Legendary member
I love the wheel pants on your Eaglet but I have never done them because I can't figure out a way to secure them to wire landing gear either.

I'm going to be trying it again when I start my Skylark build but I have a different technique in mind. I think I'm going to make them out of plastic since now I have a (semi)functional vacuum table, and secure them to the landing gear legs with brass tabs soldered on. It's a technique I've used on other planes to secure things to wires, and I don't see why it couldn't be applied to wheel pants. I'm also going to use much smaller wheels and correspondingly smaller wheel pants, just so they look less strange. I've flown little parkflier foamies with 1/2 in diameter wheels off of the geomat runway at my field with no issues, so I can definitely use much smaller ones than the 1.25" ones sold on the willy nillies site.
 

Turbojoe

Elite member
Wheel pants for smaller birds are something really missing in the hobby. Looking forward to what you come up with. I'd like to 3D print some but I haven't progressed past TinkerCad design of flat items for print. Anything rounded is way beyond my abilities. :unsure:

Joe
 

speedbirdted

Legendary member
I've tried making wheel pants by modelling them in Blender and then printing them out in ABS so I can use acetone to smooth them out. Unfortunately trying to print domed objects in vase mode generally sucks so I had the print fail a whole bunch of times until I just tried to make it do like 2 perimeters with 100% infill and then it kinda worked... until I tried to clear the support material out from the inside of it. Only now am I realizing it would probably work a million times better if I just printed them in halves and CAd them together. But vacuum forming some plastic sounds much easier so I'll just do that instead...
 

TooJung2Die

Master member
Could you print them real simple with flat sides and tear drop shaped from the side view? The pants would be a little boxy looking but on small airplanes like this with a box fuselage I think they'd look just fine. The flat side might make securely mounting them easier too. Just a swag since I don't have a 3D printer.
 

Turbojoe

Elite member
If I ever get good enough with 3D printing I'd love to be able to print out "plugs" for cowls, wheel pants and wing tips so I can spend a ton of time and money trying to get usable pulls using the vacuum forming setup I built many years back. I have SO much to learn......... :confused:

Joe