Weekend Flying 30th/31st January

Hi all

Well another weekend is almost upon us and of course I have been looking at the weather forecast.

Saturday is looking the better day as showers/rain is forecast for Sunday, and I have another engagement booked for Sunday anyway, so no flying for me then.

But depending on which forecast you look at, it looks like it could be an epic day wind wise with speeds exceeding 25 mph, west or west north west at Cardiff Airport, which probably means 35 mph plus at the Bwlch, which equates to mental lift on Mickey's. Woooohoooooo!

So I hope to see a few people up there. I should be up there 11 - 11:30 ish.

Steve
Happy flying.

ME - 109 Build cont.

ME - 109 Build cont.

I need to add some strength back to the fuselage that I'll lose with the thinner correx, so I decided to add some stringers running down the model.

Bearing in mind that I am a cheap-skate   :-) and want to keep the build cost to a minimum instead of buying carbon rod I looked around my sheds and found some strong, light weight plant support sticks which will do nicely.

I rebated the top and bottom of the formers with my Dremel type tool and hot glued the stringers in place ensuring that they were straight.

De-fluteing.        

Correx sheet needs to be more flexible to allow it to bend around curves, to achieve this we 'de-flute' it.
To do this you use a hooked Stanley knife type blade and slit open the flutes on the inside surface  of the correx by drawing the blade down the length of the sheet, ensuring you only cut through one side of the flute or you end up cutting the sheet in half.

Normally the plan will show you what sections you need to de-flute, but as this build plan is not intended for a correx model I have to decide as I go along where the curves are needed.

                                                                                                                                                                        

       
Before and after shot of a piece of de-fluted sheet, note how more flexible it is.

Fitting the fuselage sheeting

Normally you would have an 'un-wrapped' fuselage piece of sheet that you would wrap around the formers, glueing as you go.

But with this build I am finding that I have to use smaller pieces of sheet to build up the shape as I go along.

A problem with this method is that I will have a lot of joins that will need making good.

And this is as far as I've got at the moment...not looking like a 109 yet.

Stay tuned for the next instalment....

Build Blog of my 1350mm span Correx sheet ME - 109.

By Phil May

This build is going to hold a few more challenges than my previous correx builds, mainly because the plan I'm using is not the usual 'unwrapped ' fuselage and wing type but a conventional one.

Also I am going to build the fuselage out of 2mm sheet instead of my usual 4mm. The reason for this is to try to reduce weight of the finished model. First off I glued the plans of the formers onto 4mm correx and carefully cut these out using a sharp craft knife, ensuring the blade was kept vertical at all times. I then used coarse sandpaper where necessary to get the correct shape. A 10mm hole was then drilled at the pre-marked centre spot. All the formers were then slide onto a length of 10mm diameter wooden dowel and lined up as per plan....This ensures that the fuselage is going to be build straight and true.

This is the plan I'm working off.

Former plans glued onto 4mm Correx sheet

  Formers are pushed on to wooden dowel

Maiden flight of the Moth

So here it is, the maiden flight of the Moth.

This took place on the Back of Wrecker at the Bwlch. On arrival, the cloud was very low, and sometimes low enough to engulf us in what the locals call, "clag".

A few of my flying buddies would be a bit hesitant about performing a maiden flight on Back of Wrecker. Out of all the slopes at the Bwlch, it is our least favourite, suffering from turbulence caused by the forest below, the patchy lift it sometimes produces, and the fact that if it all goes wrong, it can be difficult to retrieve your model as the cliff is almost vertical with a road at the bottom.

But we had about 17 mph of southerly wind, and I'd already sent up the Wildthing to test the air, so on I went.

I headed up to the brow behind the slope and gave the Moth a few test throws and found I had to add a few clicks of up elevator trim.

Mark did the honours for me and threw the Moth, but it nose dived straight into the ground. A few more clicks of elevator trim and Mark tried again. It probably helped that this time he was also standing closer to the edge of the slope as this time it went away without a hitch.

Due to the low cloud I had to keep the Moth low and cruise back and forth only. So now happy that she was trimmed, I decided to bring her in as the clag was beginning to come in and soon I wouldn't be able to see it.

Mark, Mike and myself hung around for a while, and eventually the skies cleared and I was able to launch her again, and she flew beautifully.

So now I just have to play about with the CofG until I find the "sweet spot".

Enjoy the video.

Weekends Flying and Meio Common Sold.

Saturday was forecast to be the best day weather wise to fly, with a southerly forecast, so I headed up to the Bwlch and arrived just as Mark and Mike were walking over the brow to Back of Wrecker.

I was only intending staying an hour or two so I only took a couple of foamies, my new Moth being one of them. Well, it had to have it's maiden flight at sometime, and although Back of Wrecker isn't the best of slopes, I decided to give it a chuck.

I won't say anymore about how it went now as I took some video which needs editing before I can put it on here, so I'll write up the whole story later when I include the video. Here's a picture to keep you going though.

Sunday morning and Mark, Wayne and myself headed to Meio Common as the wind was forecast as light south westerly.

When I arrived, Mark was already there but thick clag covered the hill, so we stood around chatting for an hour hoping the clag would clear. Wayne turned up and we must have waited another 30 minutes before it looked like we may be in luck and headed up to the top of the hill.

Once at the top, the clag was thinning but coming and going, so Wayne and I chucked our Wildthings up and began doing a bit of VTPR style flying, just about keeping the models out of the clag.

Shortly afterwards, the clag cleared and I stayed for about an hour having a bit of fun chucking the foamies about.

Whilst we were stood by the cars chatting, the local farmer came along, stopped and chatted to us. He was saying that the Common had been sold to a private buyer for a fee of £40k and the farmer thinks the buyer is going to have wind turbines put on top of the hill, which will bring him an income.

Initially this sounded as if it could have disastrous consequences for our flying, as Meio is probably the slope that we all fly the most. But on reflection, it may not be that bad.

The top of the hill has a vast flat area, so there is plenty of space to put turbines, so I doubt they will be placed that close to the ridge line and affect us flying. And in fact, to get the turbines up there and be able to maintain them, a road would have to be built, so that could be very advantages to us. We shall wait and see.

Later Dudes.

Moth Build - The Final Push

Well guys, this is it. All that was left to do was cover the beast.

So the wings were covered in shrink film from Hobby King, and the fuselage in Solartx. It's the first time I have used Solartex and I was really impressed at how easily it went on.

Once it was covered, I then gave the wing a second covering of 42 micron laminate film. This will protect the shrink film from the course vegetation on the slopes when landing. I'd noticed a few small nicks and tears in the film on the Polecat, so I'll be giving the Polecat the same treatment later.

And the final weight? 21 1/4oz

Hopefully the weather will be kind this weekend so I can get out and maiden her, we'll see.

Moth Build - the final assembly

So the last job to do on the assembly side is to make and fit the fin.

The kit provides two pieces of balsa which have to be glued together. Then the supplied template is laid on top and the balsa cut to shape. The template shows where the balsa join line should be and the direction in which the wood grain should run. Simple!

Except it wasn't simple! I laid the the balsa on top of the template to gauge the position of the grain and join line.

As you can see, there was more template than balsa. So I tried another way.

Nope, that wasn't going to work either. So it appears that NCFM have provided an incorrect size of balsa. And yes, the template did print at the correct size because it also included the wing tip template, and that was perfect.

So my choices were to use the supplied balsa, make the fin smaller and with the grain running vertically instead of at an angle or, make a new fin out of my own stock of balsa sheet. And that was what I decided to do.

And this is how it should have turned out with the supplied balsa.

So with the fin made, the next job was to cut a groove in the top of the fuselage for the fin to sit in. I measured and then used a blade to cut through the X weave tape and foam all the way down to the carbon longeron before widening the cut with a router type tool.

I then mixed up some epoxy and smeared the walls and floor of the groove with the glue. The fin was wrapped in a plastic bag and then inserted into the groove and left it there whilst the glue set.

I removed the fin and plastic bag from the groove and just added a strip of 1" (25mm) X weave tape along the bottom of the fin before inserting it back into the groove.

The fin isn't meant to be fixed in place, in case it has a mid air collision or dodgy landing, in which case the fin can be easily replaced. But the instructions do say you can use some clear tape just to ensure the fin remains in place during normal flying.

So the build/assembly stage is now complete and I'm ready to begin covering.