Willy Nillies Q-Tee Build

rampage

Member
Looks great! But what's that big silver B-25 lookin thing in the background? :unsure:

Another project. :LOL:

Royal B-25 scratch-built from the plans. Builder lightened it up specifically for electric by using cap strips instead of full sheeting, hollowing out the nacelles, etc. He never flew it but he designed the power system around a pair of Scorpion 60-size motors for 6S. Massive overpowering. I'm going to repower it with a pair of Power 32s on 4S. One day. When I get to it.

FNQ48q2.jpg


I've got 3 of these things. One of them I've already converted to electric and flown a few times and another that's waiting awaiting the conversion from nitro.

I'm a huge B-25 junkie.
 
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speedbirdted

Legendary member
I had a hunch it was one of those. A guy in my club has one, he powered it with two Laser 70s which means it will go vertical when you give it the beans but otherwise it will put around at about 4000 rpm sounding super scale.
 

rampage

Member
I have another one (my first one) that I converted from nitro and flew on the power system I mentioned above and it flew great, so this one being significantly lighter (the first one I converted was 14 pounds...) should fly even better, and hopefully a little slower. These things are tanks. No flaps or retracts, just bare-basic 4-channel.

Here's a short video of the maiden hop with the first one I converted.


It flies nicely, just fast. Big, heavy balsa warbirds, y'know?
 

rampage

Member
Fuselage is mostly covered, except for the bottom. I'll cover the bottom of the fuselage once the tail is on and the radio's hooked up since, once it's covered, there will be no way to access the pushrods to guide them through the bulkheads.

On another note, I'm not a fan of the "Willycote" covering. At least the red. The adhesive layer on the bottom is white and when you heat it up the 'red' layer seems to pull back a little bit, exposing the 'white' adhesive layer ever so slightly. It's not a huge deal but it bothered me and I've never experienced that with other covering brands.

Landing gear is just dry-fit and not 'mounted' yet. But I'm really liking the way it's coming out! I may have a maiden this weekend at this rate.
 

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rampage

Member
Covering looks like it's going on great from here - nice touch with the pin stripes too! :)

Thanks! I just find something appealing about black pin stripes on a red/white covering job. My Steven's Aero C-180 has a similar scheme.
 

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OliverW

Legendary member
Fuselage is mostly covered, except for the bottom. I'll cover the bottom of the fuselage once the tail is on and the radio's hooked up since, once it's covered, there will be no way to access the pushrods to guide them through the bulkheads.

On another note, I'm not a fan of the "Willycote" covering. At least the red. The adhesive layer on the bottom is white and when you heat it up the 'red' layer seems to pull back a little bit, exposing the 'white' adhesive layer ever so slightly. It's not a huge deal but it bothered me and I've never experienced that with other covering brands.

Landing gear is just dry-fit and not 'mounted' yet. But I'm really liking the way it's coming out! I may have a maiden this weekend at this rate.
I had that happen with the red as well, but the blue went down on it flawlessly. The only issue with the blue was that it was thicker and thinner in spots
 

rampage

Member
Building's done, covering's done and she's ready for radio gear!

Aside from the red covering's issue with it pulling back to reveal the white layer beneath (which was a real pain in a lot of places!) I'm very very happy with the way this covering job came out! This little plane looks great.

Put everything on the scale and with a 2S 500 and a de-cased Orange R615 I'm looking at 195 grams. Not bad considering I used a lot of Ultracote. I only used the white Willycote on the wing. All the white on the fuselage is Ultracote.

I also did a small hatch on the bottom for RX access. I wasn't fond of the idea of having to tear the covering apart to get to the RX.

I'm looking forward to seeing how she flies!
 

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TooJung2Die

Master member
She's flippin' gorgeous man! Good luck with the maiden. She's nice and light. I'm less nervous with Willy Nillies airplane maidens than all other balsa builds because they're such good fliers. I see how you did the landing gear. Is the wedge removable so the wire can come out? The windscreen was a nice touch.
 

rampage

Member
Thanks for the replies!

I didn't make the gear removable, but it's really just that wedge and a few drops of thin holding it in so with enough coaxing you could probably get the gear out without too much effort.

CG is right on the spar. I had to lengthen my battery door a bit because the CNHL 2s 500 30C didn't fit. All's good now though. I didn't know it took up nearly the entire battery bay. I may look into some slightly smaller batteries. It'd save a little weight too.

Because somehow, despite my estimate of 195 grams, she came out at 203.. Oh well! We'll see how she flies this weekend!
How many rubber bands are you using to hold the wing on? I've always used 8 on bigger planes (6 fore/aft, 2 criss-crossed) but I'm not so sure here. I also have to stop by the office supply store and get more #32 rubber bands. I've got tons of #64 but those aren't gonna' work here.
 

Willy Nillies

Elite member
Building's done, covering's done and she's ready for radio gear!

Aside from the red covering's issue with it pulling back to reveal the white layer beneath (which was a real pain in a lot of places!) I'm very very happy with the way this covering job came out! This little plane looks great.

Put everything on the scale and with a 2S 500 and a de-cased Orange R615 I'm looking at 195 grams. Not bad considering I used a lot of Ultracote. I only used the white Willycote on the wing. All the white on the fuselage is Ultracote.

I also did a small hatch on the bottom for RX access. I wasn't fond of the idea of having to tear the covering apart to get to the RX.

I'm looking forward to seeing how she flies!

Beautiful Q-Tee @rampage !

If you get white lines with the red covering at the edges, either the edge was not sealed down quite good enough or your heat was a little to high. It's easy to remove that by dampening a paper towel with acetone or mineral spirits and lightly wipe along the edge. It will then disappear and seal the edge very very well.

Have fun flying her, we know you'll enjoy this little sweetheart!

Sincerely,
Doug and Becky
WillyNillies.com
 

rampage

Member
Beautiful Q-Tee @rampage !

If you get white lines with the red covering at the edges, either the edge was not sealed down quite good enough or your heat was a little to high. It's easy to remove that by dampening a paper towel with acetone or mineral spirits and lightly wipe along the edge. It will then disappear and seal the edge very very well.

Have fun flying her, we know you'll enjoy this little sweetheart!

Sincerely,
Doug and Becky
WillyNillies.com

Thanks, I'll give that a shot with the acetone and see if it works out.

Here's the maiden video. It's a bit hard to see because it's small and the fact that the plane's underside is white and it was a cloudy day doesn't help, but there are some nice passes.


She flew great once she was trimmed! Takeoff looks sketcher than it felt.
 

rockyboy

Skill Collector
Mentor
Looks like she flys great! Nicely done! (Nice flying site too... no plane eating trees to dodge!)
 

rampage

Member
Thanks! I really love the way she presents in the air. She looks like a much, much bigger airplane than she actually is.

6WzCaB2.png


And yeah, as the manual says, it doesn't need much throw on the control surfaces at all. I think I dialed mine back to 50% rudder/75% elevator and as you can see in the takeoff there was still plenty of control authority.

Even at a few hairs over 200 grams she still just floats around at half throttle though. Can't wait to get her back out there next weekend.
 

speedbirdted

Legendary member
Someone had to do it...

PXL_20210128_052715015.jpg


So I woke up to about 4" of snow on the ground which both sucks and doesn't suck because I wanted to go for a bicycle ride but it also gives me an excuse to put skis on something. In my infinite wisdom I decided to do it to a small plane and a quick look at the gear setups of the ones I had, the Q-tee seemed to lend itself to the task the best.

The skis are made entirely of basswood sheet. The bottom sheet is 1/32 and the braces and hinge block thingies are 1/16. The little notches (here pencil marks) are for the rubber bands and string to hold the skis in place. They're 4 inches long and 7/8 inch wide - theoretically enough area to have a low enough ground pressure for snow.

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The paint color isn't an exact match; the closest I had was insignia yellow while the airplane uses cub yellow. I wondered for a bit how to hang it up to dry before realizing I could just use the tubes that mount to the axle...

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Bottoms of the skis were covered in doculam to slide over snow better. I tried using clear ultracote at first, but it doesn't seem to stick to painted wood very well. Strangely I found that slightly rough skis have less sliding friction than a perfectly smooth ski, so I opted not to sand the bottoms of them.

PXL_20210128_041545432.jpg


The only fuselage modifications needed were two little hooks for the rubber bands and strings to go onto. By far the most annoying part of the process was cutting and tying the rubber bands and strings so the skis would both sit at the same angle when not on the ground. I aimed for about 20 degrees of angle which should be more than enough to prevent noseovers; I got the first one right, but doing another at the same angle wasn't so easy :p I had to re-tie it probably ten times before I got it exactly right. I wish there was a better way to do it...

The spring loaded skis also have the added benefit of taking a lot of load off of the tailskid. It's very thin and sinks right into snow, but when moving it provides enough support to keep the rudder dry. I taxied it around in the yard as a test and the skis seem to work perfectly, no sinking in. The ground handling sucks steering wise but it also does with wheels so I'm not too concerned about it.

I didn't really even build these to a plan per se. They kind of just flowed together. I've never designed skis before in my life, so everything was pretty much TLAR based here.

Freddy hates flying in cold weather so he's bundled up a bit. I wanted to see if I had some nicer plaid material to make a scarf with but an old sock had to do.

PXL_20210128_052518600.jpg


Hopefully if I can make it out tomorrow, I'll have some flight footage with the skis up soon enough...
 
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