Personal computing discussed
Moderators: askfranklin, renee, emkubed, Captain Ned
Hance wrote:The thing I like about electrics is the ease of use. With my electric stuff I can grab the plane, radio, and batteries for the plane. With my nitro powered plane I need the plane, radio, battery for the plane, glow starter, battery for the glow starter, fuel, fuel pump, battery for the fuel pump and a spare parts box. Besides having to haul all the extra stuff around just to fly you have to take a roll of paper towels and half a gallon of 409 with you to degrease the plane once you are done flying.
Being able to grab a couple or three things and fly with no clean up after you get done flying is worth A LOT to me.
Hance wrote:I have a couple of electric projects going right now. Some jerk went in our shop and broke the fuselage on my Slo-V on purpose. I am taking the remains and putting them on one of those little kid 5 dollar foam gliders. It should make for an interesting project.
The other project I have going is picking out something like a Slow Stick to replace the broken plane. I want extra long flight times though. I am going to try and get in the half hour flight time range with whatever I build so I need to do some research and figure out exactly what I need.
Hance wrote:I actually got the idea from one of them I got to watch fly. My build isn't going to be all that radical but should be a good flier.
The one I watched fly had a good 250 dollars worth of stuff on that 5 dollar plane but WOW did it fly. Standard takeoff was aim the plane straight up punch the throttle wide open and let go When I first seen the plane it was sitting under the guys hood charging. I looked at it and thought what a hunk of junk. When I got to see it fly it was more like OMFG I have to have one of these.
SpotTheCat wrote:Hance wrote:I actually got the idea from one of them I got to watch fly. My build isn't going to be all that radical but should be a good flier.
The one I watched fly had a good 250 dollars worth of stuff on that 5 dollar plane but WOW did it fly. Standard takeoff was aim the plane straight up punch the throttle wide open and let go When I first seen the plane it was sitting under the guys hood charging. I looked at it and thought what a hunk of junk. When I got to see it fly it was more like OMFG I have to have one of these.
They fly a lot better than a lot of kits I've seen, that's for sure. The modification doesn't take that long and the bodies are so cheap that it's not the end of the world WHEN you crash.
SecretSquirrel wrote:I am very curious how much they weigh. Four and a half feet is a lot of foam.
I was thinking the Ultra Flyer would look spiffy with a couple of EDF nacelles either slung under the wings or molded in at the fuselage, but then I got to looking at EDF thrust to power ratio. Man does it suck. Based on reading you need at most a 2/1 weight to thrust ratio and preferably higher. Looking at a pair of basic EDF units, 350W gets you about 28 oz of thrust, exactly what I get out of my 160W prop setup. Perhaps pusher nacelle or a standard tractor setup then.
--SS
Hance wrote:The one I am going to build will more than likely be a V tail because that is what the setup is currently on and I don't know if I can unmix the channels or not.
SpotTheCat wrote:SecretSquirrel wrote:I am very curious how much they weigh. Four and a half feet is a lot of foam.
I was thinking the Ultra Flyer would look spiffy with a couple of EDF nacelles either slung under the wings or molded in at the fuselage, but then I got to looking at EDF thrust to power ratio. Man does it suck. Based on reading you need at most a 2/1 weight to thrust ratio and preferably higher. Looking at a pair of basic EDF units, 350W gets you about 28 oz of thrust, exactly what I get out of my 160W prop setup. Perhaps pusher nacelle or a standard tractor setup then.
--SS
A T/W of .5 is kind of "standard", although many airplanes (including RC) fly with less.
The problem with these foam conversions is balance and alignment.
What kind of control scheme are you thinking? The one I saw was simple 2 channel left/right control. I would not suggest a super high T/W without elevator control
Hance wrote:Yeah the plane I am stealing parts off of is a V tail set up. I know none of the foamy gliders are a v tail but thats part of my project or it might be. It just depends on if I can reprogram the radio or not. I am guessing its going to be a not its a simple cheap radio setup. I am going to look at it tomorrow and see what I can do with it.
Hance wrote:For anybody else that might want to try my project I forgot to mention something. The one I seen had a 1/4 carbon rod to reinforce the leading edge of the wings. Guy told me he folded up a couple of sets of wings until he added that mod.