I
put this together late one night after I realized that a Coroplast version of
Osbornes platter http://www.aeromaniacs.com would probably be even more unbreakable.
That and although I didn't have any foam board on hand, I did have stacks of Coroplast
for my C class RC Combat airplanes. The White plastic is mearly the corners of
PVC Downspout that we use for the fuse. Osbourne uses aluminum and that would
be even more durable than the PVC, but Hardware stores aren't normally open at
a quarter to eleven around here.
Glue for all coro joints is Medium CA with
the exception of the rudder that I used Goop on. To use CA on Coro you need to
pass a flame over the plastic to burn off the mold release compounds, I use a
butane torch. AFter that, a very small drop of CA every inch or two, then press
and hold. We're talking less is more here. Properly glued and the coro will rip
itself apart rather than come unglued. Too much and it will pop apart eventually.
I was in Topeka this last weekend with a CL buddy and though it was too windy
to safely fly bigger airplanes (I did anyways) we spent about an hour just gigling
and slammin this thing into the ground. Wingovers, Loops, lazy eights, Horizontal
eights and even Vertical eights when the wind isn't up so high, are possible.
It's flying it in a straight line that proved to be a pain. The CG is just a tad
too far back on this one. It has enough engine and rudder offset on it though
that when Kirby got a little disoriented and started doing loops on the upwind
side of the circle, it stayed out on the lines. Pretty impressive in the 15 mph
winds.
And again, we REALLY smacked this sucker into the ground about 3 or 4 times per flight, wind gusts. The landing gear got bent, so we just would bend them back every once in a while.
------------------
From somewhere
near Parkville, Mo.
William R. Crane
aka Mr. Clean
All yellow is 4 milmetter Coroplast. The disk is 16 inches in diameter with the front extended as shown, here are two doubler plates, top and bottom with the flutes running front to back. The white plates are pieces of PVC gutter that I heated with a monokote gun and flattened out, then used Household goop to glue on. Notched it all out with about 5 degrees of outthrust for the engine and then ran a couple pieces of bamboo skewers through the flutes to help keep from crunching the coro. engine is bolted down with 4-40's and nylon lock nuts. The profile cutout is notched into the platter and glued on with goop, gives a good handle to launch with, and the tail section also has about 5 degrees of bend in it.
It flew really stable, to nose heavy, but easy to fly level and do mild up and down controls. With the engine off, it doesn't glide very far, but most of that is due to the CG being too far forward, it didn't land fast, just bled most of it's speed off holding the nose up. That's fine for THIS trainer. Next one I make I'll probably increase to 20 inches and bring the nose back a bit to get the CG about 3/4 inch in front of the bellcrank.
That should
fly like the little one.
Fun design, took me a whole hour and a half to
build, not counting glue time
BUT counting time figuring what size and where
to put things.
1 ounce tank is plenty for intro flights
Here
are the dimensions for the 15 size saucer. I flew it today, then put
my 14
year old son up on it. The CG is far enough forward that it is very stable, which
doesn't mean my son didn't loop it first thing. No damage of
course and he
made it around for a minute or two before getting dizzy and
dumping it again.
Myself, I noticed my cell phone had fallen out of my
holder and dumped it
looking at the phone, then I flew it through a hole
tank. I'll need to work
on the tank, it has a hard pickup and needs a
clunk, otherwise its fine and
flys fairly nice and slow on .012 x 52'
strandeds. The engine isn't turning
quite up enough, but then I was tuning
this engine for 35% fuel and was flying
Superfuel in it today. Still plenty
of power for the 5-10 mph winds we had
keeping line tension the whole way.
Flew really easy attested to my son who
almost was soloed 2 years ago and
hasn't touched a handle since.
I'd
probably build another one with an even bigger disk, move the motor back
a
tad for landing gear and a silencer, works fine as is though and the only
damage of course was the broken prop. I'll switch from APC to a Tornado 7x4
and that will take care of that.
plast Platter with me. I have a smaller
1/2A size ship, but that sucker gets around the circle to quick for basic training.
So I built one with a TT 15 for power. With a one ounce tank and 52' .012 lines,
it gets around the circle in close to 5 second laps which is managable.
I
put my RC combat buddy up on it, who hasn't flown CL since Junior high back in
the 70's. Then we put his 8 year old son up on it, I held his hand for 3 flights,
then would reach in and correct from the 4th flight on. He hasn't made a complete
flight yet. Here is a picture of Zack and one of him and I flying, you can see
the plane in the upper left corner.
First Zack, my combat buddies handle
is Sheepdip, so we call his son Lambchops
From somewhere near
Parkville, Mo.
William Crane
aka Mr Clean
AMA 6733