SMALLnet post407

...Gang, I'm back from the hospital at last, and recuperating at home from a savage leg infection that almost cost me my left leg -- and DID cost me 6 days of lying flat on my back with a constant antibiotic IV drip running.

I appreciate all the kind messages you SMALLsters sent in, and the snailmail get-well cards -- way too many of both for me to answer personally!

Quite a lot of input has come in since Posting # 406, but I don't have either the time or the stamina to put them all in this Posting. I'll do what I can now, and let the rest wait 'til next time. [JW]

Ron Stanfield announced in the latest Flying Models that this year's big annual SMALL meet will be held May 31 through June 2. The field is alongside Burns Park in North Little Rock, Arkansas. It's tabletop flat and has a grass runway. More data later......

About 6 years ago I began building a sailplane that is still half-built and in my basement. As I begin to consider once again wanting to learn how to fly R/C, I find myself intrigued by Slow/Indoor flyers. This seems like the best way for me to get my feet wet. (I think trying to build a 2-Meter Sailplane may have been a larger "bite" than I could chew).

With a slow flyer, building wouldn't take as long, (but I would still be building, which I want to do), and the nature of slow flying seems to lend itself to me, an absolute novice. Am I right in this logic?

If this seems like the best place to start, then do you have any suggestions on which models and accessories would be appropriate for me? I was looking today at a beginner stick fuselage by Great Planes called a BLT (Basic Light Trainer), which seemed appropriate.

I realize these are very open-ended questions, and you may not have time to give a complete answer, but any information you are willing to give me would be greatly appreciated.

Tim Goldstein < > replies to the earlier news here on Joe Deppe's death -- Joe being the only source of precision-cut basswood in the USA that we knew of:

You mentioned the R/C capabilities of that little jewel, the Baby Buccaneer. Well, yes, I'm sure it would be a winner with modern gear. I built one free-flight with a DC Dart (not the pokier Allbon) and it simply flew away!

The plan was from the UK Ben Buckle Plans Catalogue, and I'm sure they will still have it. A real pleasure to build, the model is full of character and just seems "right" at this size.

The "Sharkface" is just perfect for me with a Black Widow .049 and 250 mAh nicads. Eric Clutton should have a statue dedicated to him somewhere. I'm trying to get together a "Kwod" of his, but all of my plans etc. were stolen from my attic -- hence my new hobby of polishing Samurai swords!

The Kwod was a four-decker, cute and apparently stable. Those venetian-blind wings should give good slow climb-out, even for electrics. I'll let you know how this works out.

Was reading the last Posting, and was interested in Dr. Mike Hawkins' small WW2 retract setup. I am going to put retracts in the Kobra, and his use of a full-size retract servo reminded me of something I had read on the webring: conversion of an S-148 servo to proportional 180' rotation. Took me an hour to find the page, but here it is! < http://mypage.yhti.net/~dmcdnld/s148retract.htm >

The guy uses a couple of added resistors. I will try it out; I think it will have enough torque for .20-size retracts, and I can adjust the travel with my transmitter's ATV function.

Gus Morfis < > tells us about Guillow's helpful response to his earlier e-mail request to them, that they had apparently ignored:

As you might guess, I just got an e-mail response from Guillow telling me that they would gladly sell me their SBD canopy! So, they really DO respond to their e-mail. Thanks........Gus

A recent Posting referred to "Blue Foam" being used in model construction. I have also found this reference in numerous other articles with no explanation of the difference between "Blue" and "Pink" foam. Locally only the pink variety is available at builders' supply outlets; and when I inquire about "Blue Foam" I get a blank stare.

In doing research on foam used in modelbuilding on the web I find numerous references to the "Blue", BUT, then I find notations that all builders' foam is "Blue Foam" except the white extruded or expanded foams. Can anyone clarify this issue? I am sure others are as confused as I. One advantage of the "Blue" I would hope for would be that it would not have the scoring to facilitate breaking without cutting every 16 inches (approx.) on both sides. Any helpful input will be appreciated.

...Glenn, I recently had to investigate this subject myself, for a non-modeling project. Briefly, what I was told is this. "White Foam" is about one pound per cubic foot density, and is what I've often heard called "bead foam". "Pink Foam" is about twice the density of "White Foam"; and "Blue Foam" is twice as dense as Pink.

The Lowe's Home Center closes to me (in Dothan, Alabama) carries Blue Foam in several thicknesses up to 2 inches, in 48" X 96" sheets. [JW]

Hey, I'm with Mike Hawkins. I love the small scale stuff, but I'm not opposed to the sport stuff either. I do more "Sport Scale" than "True Scale", but I like a plane that is a model of a real aircraft.

I'm currently working on setting up my personal web page, and I have some small plans in DXF format. The most recent thing I've done is a built-up "Ace wing". My dad bought an Ace Messerschmitt for $12.00 at Lone Star Balsa in Dallas. (We love the place: good wood, good prices -- sorry for the ad. I don't know anyone there; I found it by accident one day and love to go in there and look at racks of balsa and dream of all the things I can build!)

We got the kit at such a low price because it had a damaged box. After building it, my dad built me one from scratch, minus the wing. So I digitized the airfoil and came up with a simple wing. I built it in about 3 hours and I am a very slow builder.

Anyway, someone a while back questioned availability of the Ace foam wings. This might be an alternative. If anyone is interested, please contact me. Once I figure out how to put this on the SMALLnet web site I'll post it.

On the same lines, if anyone has a set of plans for the Ace Simple Corsair and or the Ace T-6 Texan and might let me borrow or buy them at a reasonable price, I'd like to digitize them. I prefer building from scratch and I can never find the Corsair kit anyway. (The T-6 kit is pretty common.)

A long time ago I found a web site that had all of the Ace kits at that time scanned, but these two kits were not out yet. I have the P-51 and the Messerschmitt already done. I like these Designs by Fred Reese for their simplicity -- and they are darned cute. When I build the P-51 I'll probably do a cowl for it.

And lastly, I'm currently building the Corsair from RCM plans. Has anyone built or flown one of these? The construction leaves a lot to be desired. It's not extremely difficult to build, but there are a couple of things not clear on the plans. I've worked through those, doing some things my way as opposed to the plans -- but the overall plane will not be changed, just some construction. I'm going to power it with a Norvel Big Mig Startup .061.

I ran a few Fly-Quiet muffler trials on the test stand. The units I have are 120mm long and 16mm in diameter, and weigh 16 grams. They were ordered to be used with PAW .19 engines.

I set up a sound meter about waist high and three meters from the engine test stand. A PAW .19 equipped with an APC 10x4 prop and run wide open registered 91 dB without the Fly-Quiet muffler, and 86 dB with it. Without the muffler, the speed was 9,100 rpm. With the muffler this dropped to 8,700 rpm (measured with a TNC tach).

At somewhat lower throttle settings the speed drop was much less, and below about 7,500 rpm the engine picked up speed when the muffler was attached.

When I first tried the muffler, the sound level didn't seem to drop. At that point I was wearing hearing protection muffs, and the frequency range the muffler worked on was already attenuated. When I took the muffs off, it was obvious that the high-frequency bark was much reduced.

< http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/ss16/FurtherInformation/ Spinners.htm >

Dave Larkin's comment about Eric Clutton's Sharkface single- channel model reminded me of the joy of flying single channel. It's interesting to note that much of the younger generation doesn't know it is possible to fly single channel successfully and to stunt with single channel. I found that out this past week while visiting a hobby shop in Amarillo, Texas.

Best looper I owned was a Sterling Mini-Mambo. The Mini had a very short tail moment arm. Q-Tee made a decent R/O airplane; it had a larger wing area than Mini or Falcon. Nice thing about the Falcon was its ability to handle wind with its semi-symmetrical airfoil and longer tail moment. Also flew .020 stuff like Top Flite's Schoolboy, and "Roaring 20's", a 20" span Top Dawg look-alike, both by the late Ken Willard, a "SMALLnet-type" designer and advocate.

The plane was trimmed to be constantly climbing flying straight. Plane was also trimmed to glide with power off. Without throttle, one used shims under the leading or trailing edge, to trim the plane for flying in various wind conditions. Reduce wing decalage by installing shims under the wing trailing edge. Get the engine trimmed to give the proper powered flight characteristics through shimming with washers.

Gain altitude by giving gentle turns. The tighter the turn, the more the model would tend to drop its nose, lose altitude and gain speed. A moderate turn would hold altitude. Once some speed was built up, the plane would start to climb and zoom. Hitting the rudder at the right time, plane would turn into the wind and speed would be back to normal.

Because of torque, the plane would spiral dive in one direction better than the other. Once some altitude was gained, hitting the rudder full to one side would cause a spiral dive. About 3 to 5 corkscrews down, neutralize rudder. The plane would then loop. A properly-trimmed plane could loop twice (although 2nd loop was usually smaller). When the airplane was starting to point up, hitting rudder again would cause the plane to do a barrel roll.

An S-turn would kill speed, and you'd be starting the climbing act again. Instead of a barrel roll, hitting the rudder again when the plane was inverted would flip it over again. A recognizable Cuban-8 could be done on Rudder-Only.

Landing was always deadstick. Good thing about R/O is that after a while one could get to where he could judge sink rates controlled by turns and how far out to make the downwind leg. I could put the airplane within several feet of me.

A quick blip of the rudder to line things up to flare on landing, if decalage was set for windy days or if the landing was hot (fast). That decreased decalage allowed for flying up to 15 MPH winds, but did make the sink rate quicker in dead stick.

Many of the trainer types today that figure on using .15 R/C size or smaller engines could be easily converted to R/O. Key is a plane with inherent stability. Throttle, although not necessary, makes the plane more controllable. You could shorten the flight if needed, especially if trim was way out like on a new plane.

A while back, I amazed some flyers, demonstrating how one could maintain complete control on a plane with only rudder and throttle. Also it helps to fly where there is tall grass, until one gets the knack of it.

Just today in the mail came the Goldberg Junior Skylark plan from Steve Polles. It really is a low wing Falcon! Poring over the ancient hieroglyphics, this design seems to be reasonably easy to build, with some modifications to take into account today's radios and engines. An F-16 show team or OEM demo plane paint scheme would be easy to do; in some ways this design loosely resembles the Sig Kobra.

An electric twin instead of two .020's would be an interesting project, although I have not yet experimented with electrics.

If policies have not changed, I may opt to contact John Pond Old Time Plans and have the plan immortalized (master made) as a part of their inventory, so others can enjoy. When I last checked (a few years ago), JPOTP did not have this plan, and had a policy of providing a free similar-sized plan for access to an original, plus return of the original. George

I have a few throttle sleeves and would be willing to part with one if you have no luck. I bought them from ACE many moons ago and have no idea what they are worth. The cylinder and sleeve came together as a unit and work great.

I took the SMALL oath over thirty years ago and can tell you from experience that the best-throttling small engine is a PAW 55. I flew a Flyline Luton Minor with one and you could throttle back, land, pull off the fuel line, refuel -- and take off without the engine stopping.

Presently I am building a Park Flyer for this little jewel. The plane is a very light version of the JOY STICK, published in RCM back in April 1975. I have built many variations of this model, but the most fun is as designed without ailerons.

This model truly flies as if it had them and is capable of rolling circles. For outstanding performance in power and throttling ability, try an MP Jets .061 diesel.

I tried JW's PAW exhaust collector ring fix on my PAW .15 R/C. Five flights later, this engine and the whole front of my Lazy Bee is as DRY as it was after I cleaned it up with acetone. My press-fit was rather tight, but it did not crush the ring; and I sanded flat and flush with a sanding board (Formica counter top with some kind of industrial sanding material fused to it absolutely flat) -- (best hobby money I ever spent).

I used a piece of sharpened brass tubing to make a clean-cut holes in the new gaskets. While I was at it I added a pressure tap to the muffler part. I used JB Weld for reinforcement as the metal is rather thin. Now not only is my Lazy Bee clean thanks to JW's fix and 22" of 5/16" diameter K&S aluminum tubing to the rear -- but, it WILL IDLE at 2500 RPM til the cows come home or I get bored of waiting. Wack open the throttle; one small burp, and we are off. Thank You JW!

Who has used a MP Jet Diesel? I am early in the process of breaking one in. It was very tight to start with. Have to mix my own break-in fuel as no one sells fuel with the recommended 40% castor. Even the "After Break-In" fuel that is recommended by the MP Jet factory instructions is 35%!

Carlson Imports says that the PAW TBR (20% castor) fuel is OK too. What fuels are you other MP Jet .061 owners using? However, this engine looks like it will be a hot rod when fully broken in.

...Glad to have been of help, Francis! As a guide to adding oil to today's skimpily-lubricated model fuel (glow and diesel): when you add 4 fluid ounces of castor oil to a quart of fuel, you end up with 36 total ounces, and 11% higher oil content. Other values are easy to figure on an electronic calculator. Just divide the quantity of added oil (in fluid ounces, NOT avoirdupois) by the total resulting volume. That tells you how much percentage you've increased the oil content.

That's about all I have the ambition to edit & assemble tonight, gang. Maybe I can pick up the remainder tomorrow sometime. Thanks again for your patience -- and especially for your concern and good wishes for my recovery. [JW]

SMALLnet Posting post407