Willy Nillies Q-Tee Build

[speedbirdted]

Fuselage covering is done with the exception of the underside (because I need some way to put the gear on...) Unfortunately I couldn't get the curvature exactly right on the stripe on both sides. This is the better side Now that it's done I'm going to stick the tail feathers on soon after I hinge all the control surfaces. I'm thinking of using fishing like on this instead of CA hinges but we'll see what's easier to do...

Now it's time to build some wheels. I wanted some WWI style wheels since that's what most Pietenpols have but sadly Williams Bros smallest wheels are 1 7/8" which is kind of useless. So I guess I have to do this the hard way...

These are the four halves, to make two wheels. I cut them from the lightest 3/16 balsa sheet I had.

Then mounted them to some dowels to put them in the poor man's wood lathe known as a drill press to turn them true and sand to shape. This creates craploads of sawdust, so keep a shop vac close by. At this stage I only round the edges and add the rough conical shape with 100 grit.

At this point I removed the dowel with acetone, added the aluminum tube axle and secured it with epoxy thinned with alcohol. Then I can mount it to my Dremel and use 600 to 1000 grit paper to really get it smooth and symmetrical. This is test fitting the O-ring tire. I'll secure it probably with canopy glue one I get some since CA would leave it all ugly and white. After this stage I further increased the angle of the cone shape to thin the outer edge of the wheel more so it doesn't stick out as much from the tire.

And here is a completed wheel, sans tire glued, next to a wheel in between being shaped with the drill press and finished with the Dremel. I just covered it with the same monokote I used on the fuselage, though I did consider painting it instead.

Tomorrow comes the fun part. Building some landing gear. Then it's maiden time!

 

[Turbojoe]

That looks awesome. The colors really complement each other. Super job on the wheels too!

Joe

 

[Willy Nillies]

Fuselage covering is done with the exception of the underside (because I need some way to put the gear on...) Unfortunately I couldn't get the curvature exactly right on the stripe on both sides. This is the better side Now that it's done I'm going to stick the tail feathers on soon after I hinge all the control surfaces. I'm thinking of using fishing like on this instead of CA hinges but we'll see what's easier to do...

View attachment 172763

Now it's time to build some wheels. I wanted some WWI style wheels since that's what most Pietenpols have but sadly Williams Bros smallest wheels are 1 7/8" which is kind of useless. So I guess I have to do this the hard way...

These are the four halves, to make two wheels. I cut them from the lightest 3/16 balsa sheet I had.

View attachment 172762

Then mounted them to some dowels to put them in the poor man's wood lathe known as a drill press to turn them true and sand to shape. This creates craploads of sawdust, so keep a shop vac close by. At this stage I only round the edges and add the rough conical shape with 100 grit.

View attachment 172766

At this point I removed the dowel with acetone, added the aluminum tube axle and secured it with epoxy thinned with alcohol. Then I can mount it to my Dremel and use 600 to 1000 grit paper to really get it smooth and symmetrical. This is test fitting the O-ring tire. I'll secure it probably with canopy glue one I get some since CA would leave it all ugly and white. After this stage I further increased the angle of the cone shape to thin the outer edge of the wheel more so it doesn't stick out as much from the tire.

View attachment 172769

And here is a completed wheel, sans tire glued, next to a wheel in between being shaped with the drill press and finished with the Dremel. I just covered it with the same monokote I used on the fuselage, though I did consider painting it instead.

View attachment 172771

Tomorrow comes the fun part. Building some landing gear. Then it's maiden time!

Very cool stuff Ted!

 

[TooJung2Die]

I make balsa wheels almost the same way but I never thought of covering them the way you did. What an excellent idea! I glue the dowel through the wheel and trim it off on each side. What is your trick for marking the exact center?

 

[speedbirdted]

What is your trick for marking the exact center?

Compass. As soon as you turn it true on the drill press and add the desired wheel finish you can then use the compass to determine the exact center by pushing the pointy bit into where you think the exact center is; then rotate the compass around and find where the space between the wheel edge and compass increases and decreases then adjust the position of the pointy thingy accordingly. If you use soft balsa you don't even need to remove it and the resulting hole is very small so its easy to move around in the balsa. Then you can use the drill press to cut the hole for an axle. It won't be exactly centered at this stage but that's okay; my technique was to cut the axle length a little long then stick it in the Dremel then use really fine grit paper to make it exactly true. I find it works pretty darn good and doesn't bend the axle at all like I feared would happen.

As for updates today, screw it, we're skipping straight to the good stuff

So, basically, I came to the conclusion that the wheels I built would probably have zero shock absorption abilities whatsoever. Sure, the gear wire does a lot of it, but that's not cool enough So I had to build something better...

This is how it started off. I actually used the music wire included in the kit for the landing gear and pushrods (which i didn't actually need because I bought the ones with dubro instead) All this is secured together with some brass tubing that was large enough to fit both sections of music wire. I usually use copper wire for this because it fits a larger range of materials but the brass tube holds it in place much better so no jig is required. Where the masking tape is is actually where the two pieces overlap (there are two pieces, one for each side) so they can fit in the hinges, which I'll explain in a bit...

So, my soldering skills may leave a bit to be desired But, this is the gear mounted on the fuselage for the first time with the ride height propped up to about how I want it. Really astute folks would have noticed in my last update the hinge for the gear support - all it is is a bit of the plastic Dubro pushrod cut down to fit in between the underside longerons, and goes through the plywood cabane for extra strength. I'll secure it by hitting it with some heatshrink and CA in the middle to hold the two pieces together and secure it in the fuselage.

So, how do I spring this? Well, I tried the hardware store (I had to go anyway for some other stuff) and they do have an okay selection of springs but everything I tried was either too large or too weak to work. Literally as I was signing something at the store I noticed "hey, this pen has a fairly decent amount of stiffness in its sprinWAIT IT'S ALSO THE RIGHT DIAMETER HOLY CRAP" So, I went raiding my house to find some pens to sacrifice to build some suspension. Household objects to the rescue once again!

The diameter of spring is perfect to fit over a piece of 3/32 brass tubing which I have a boatload of because it's a very common size used in fuel tanks. However, the 3/32 tubing was too large to fit over the .052 music wire snugly to prevent slop. Luckily though - 1/16 brass tubing is the almost perfect outer diameter to fit in the inner diameter of 3/32 tubing! So, this is the parts made to assemble one of the shock absorbers, next to an assembled but unsoldered shock. More specifically, the short piece on the right is soldered to the .052 music wire, and the spring. This makes it a solid unit, and the longer piece on the right is soldered to the spring only, after the music wire is cut down so that it can then fit into the inner 1/16 tubing and allow the shock to function. The piece on the left purposefully extends a little higher so it will bottom out against the right piece instead of the music wire contained in the tube bottoming out at the top of the tube where it gets clamped potentially causing it to get damaged or stuck.

Here are the mostly completed shocks, before I bent the music wire to fit flushly against the axle. I also clamped the tops and soldered some very thin and flexible but strong wire (I think it's music wire? But I honestly have no idea because of the generally garbage organization around my workshop) so that the wire could be epoxied into where the landing gear wire is supposed to go while still retaining a decent range of motion. Don't look at my soldering too long! It'll burn your eyes...

A couple of other things; you may notice there is no triangulation in the landing gear legs and this is actually intentional. Even with the shocks temporarily installed with zipties there is actually not a lot of side slipping in the gear; and the slip that is there is slip that I wanted, because I would much rather have the gear be able to walk sideways slightly in a bad landing instead of it getting potentially bent out of shape or breaking other components.

Surprised to tell you I still haven't glued the damn tail on?

 

[bracesport]

great stuff - reminds me of when I used to modify my RC cars to make suspension back in the day!

 

[Willy Nillies]

Very Very Cool Ted!

 

[Turbojoe]

Awesome work! I love seeing over the top innovation like this. It helps spark all of us to think outside the box a bit during a build.

Joe

 

[speedbirdted]

Little update. No pictures today since all I did was hinge the control surfaces with Tyvek envelopes. It's great stuff for lightweight planes like this. I also finally glued the tail on She's shaping up for a maiden sometime this week probably!

 

[speedbirdted]

I'm done already?!?

Well, I've run out of further tasks to complete on it, so I'm gonna call it that. I put the bottom piece of covering on, and programmed all the servos and stuff in the radio to make the control surfaces do their thing. I like it! Came out at 210 grams which I guess is a little heavy for this kit but I'm sure it'll float along just fine. It's already able to pull itself out of my hand on 2S so it's already got more power than it's ever going to need. With the supplied 2S in the battery tray it balances out perfectly on the spar - it feels about right, but we'll see once I take it out, hopefully tomorrow I'll take more pictures of it then too. It's 1:30 AM so no good pictures for now.

I kind of regret not painting the motor to be a little shinier. Looks pretty good as it is though. I put some shrouds on my landing gear soldering because I'm not nearly proud enough of it for it to be exposed in public Battery door is pretty much the same as my Eaglet, as in I just cut down a servo horn and screwed it to the bottom to keep the door on.

Putting together this kit has given me another idea though. I wonder how a low-wing Q-tee would be? I ought to try that out...

 

[Turbojoe]

I would never have guessed yellow and blue could look so very good together but this bird really pops! Seriously, start to finish, this is an exceptional build!

Joe

 

[TooJung2Die]

Dang, that looks awesome!
You're going to like the maiden flight. These Willy Nillies kits fly great. I think the Eaglet was the only balsa airplane I ever maidened without getting jitters. I just knew it was gonna fly. Your Q-Tee will be the same.

 

[Turbojoe]

My full size Q-Tee is slated for maiden next weekend. We know the Willy Nillies kits fly great. I hope the bigger Q-Tee flys as good for me.

Joe

 

[speedbirdted]

My full size Q-Tee is slated for maiden next weekend. We know the Willy Nillies kits fly great. I hope the bigger Q-Tee flys as good for me.

Joe

The full-size one I built was pretty anemic with a Golden Bee but that was because in my infinite headassery I used way too much glue and heavy balsa throughout. Still I remember it being pretty docile and stable. Maybe if I like this one I'll do another in full size since I'm actually half decent at building things now

 

[speedbirdted]

Maiden alert!

I noticed a break in the disgusting weather I've been having to deal with lately and took it out for a maiden. And it went well! What a lovely little plane. With the supplied 500ma 2s, after 7 or 8 minutes of flight the battery was still reading 50%. The only real problem I had was not really any fault of the airplane - the cheapo servo had difficulties centering itself and so trimming it to fly straight was really, really hard. No elevator trim whatsoever was required. The gear works really well! It absorbs almost all the imperfections in my landings. I've got footage of it, and it'll be up in a bit.

It's not aerobatic, by any means. But I wouldn't like it nearly as much if it was The only real negative tendency I found with it is it doesn't really turn super well but I found it was easy enough to just make turns really slow with it and then it handles fine. Lining up and making corrections on approach is a little hard, but I found that if you just line it up real well while still in pattern altitude and then just coast it in on engine it usually does fine. I'm not entirely sure how it's able to do this but I can land it in decently tall grass while not nosing over (my Eaglet will invariably nose over no matter how short the grass)

In case you hadn't already figured it out, I like this plane. A lot. Now I want a bigger one! I guess I could build a Pietenpol...

 

[TooJung2Die]

The more photos I see of your Q-Tee the more I like it. The clear blue and solid yellow looks awesome. The Cox .020 motor mount is always the cherry on the sundae. Sitting by itself it looks bigger than it is. Beautiful airplane.

 

[Turbojoe]

Good stuff and congrats on the maiden! If you're looking for the bigger original Q-Tee I got my short kit HERE. Jim is a local guy that cuts a few kits. His two girls and son are his test pilots.

Joe

 

[Willy Nillies]

Maiden alert!

View attachment 173189
View attachment 173190

I noticed a break in the disgusting weather I've been having to deal with lately and took it out for a maiden. And it went well! What a lovely little plane. With the supplied 500ma 2s, after 7 or 8 minutes of flight the battery was still reading 50%. The only real problem I had was not really any fault of the airplane - the cheapo servo had difficulties centering itself and so trimming it to fly straight was really, really hard. No elevator trim whatsoever was required. The gear works really well! It absorbs almost all the imperfections in my landings. I've got footage of it, and it'll be up in a bit.

It's not aerobatic, by any means. But I wouldn't like it nearly as much if it was The only real negative tendency I found with it is it doesn't really turn super well but I found it was easy enough to just make turns really slow with it and then it handles fine. Lining up and making corrections on approach is a little hard, but I found that if you just line it up real well while still in pattern altitude and then just coast it in on engine it usually does fine. I'm not entirely sure how it's able to do this but I can land it in decently tall grass while not nosing over (my Eaglet will invariably nose over no matter how short the grass)

View attachment 173191

In case you hadn't already figured it out, I like this plane. A lot. Now I want a bigger one! I guess I could build a Pietenpol...

Great job Ted! Beautiful plane!

 

[Willy Nillies]

Hey Ted! We are still waiting on video!

Sincerely,
Doug and Becky
WillyNillies.com

 

[speedbirdted]

Wait no more