Diagramatic section of the Stuntress Plan
Construction - Day One
(back to construction index)
Planning
I think one of the most important things one can do
is plan and plan well. In 1984, i read a caption in a model magazine that said "Planning
is two thirds of the job done". To start off with, i reviewd
that plans and made sure that i understood everything that was required. It might be that
something on the plans needs more information or a little bit of investigation.
Construction of a model aircraft is a step-by-step approach, you can find yourself in a
lot of trouble because something on the plans wasn't understood or one wasn't sure what
step can were. The seconf thing that i do is to secuance out what i going to do when. in a
worst case, one glues that top, bottom and sides on the aircraft and forgets to put the
fuel tank in, or even worse, one forgets to put the lead-outs in after the whole wing is
planked..... Nasty stuff !
The Stuntress Plans
One thing you realise quite soon in
reviewing the plans is that the size of the balsa for the side panels of the Stuntress are
not marked on the plans. I looked over and over again and couldn't find a size referance
anywhere. In keeping with aircraft of her size and stature (stunt aircraft) i gauged the
sides to be 3mm balsa... 3mm you say, yes here in South Africa we buy our wood marked in
metric units, not imperial, so one of the additional tasks that we have is to convert all
of the imperial measurments to metric measurements.
The Pipe Channel
The Stuntress was designed for a piped
engine. Well thats all good and well for those fortunate people who poses them, i on the
other habd will be running a muffled ST46. So what has to be done is that the pipe channel
that runs the most of the lenth of the aircraft has to be removed so to say. Iin the image
below, you can see me working out the primary principles involved in removing said
channel. So how is it done... well its actually very simple. I have a set of Cardinal
plans, and if you place the Cardinal plan on top of the Stuntress plans, its a 99.9%
match. So the channel was removed using the designed as per the Cardinal.
| As can be
seen in the diagram below, the red outline shows the pipe channel and the blue is the
channel itself.
|
In essance the conversion was done by extending the F1 to F4 formers.
From Built up to Foam Core
The plans call for the construction of
built up wings. As previously mentioned, i will be replacing the built-up wing eith a foam
core wing. I measured the length of the wings cut the foam to shape and then made the
templtes for the root rib and the tip rib. This took about 3 hours to make the templates.
I know it sounds like a long time just for templates, but they must be 100% correct, one
little error here and the aircraft could fly like a brick.. well usually you get to now
how good a build it is if you do a triangle or a square inside loop. if you find the
aircraft has a mind of it's own, you have two places to lookm, either the wings are wrong
and worped, or the tail is warping.When Joe desinged the Stuntress, he put some special
cross members near the back of the tail... great idea.
| If you look
carefully at the top end of this totally out of focus picture, you will see the foam cores
of the wings already cut. when i deal with them in detail, then you will se them more clearly...i promse!  |
Before i go further, just a thought on the installation of the bellcrank within the aircraft, before i built my first foam core wing, i didn't have a clue how to install the bellcrank, well with a couple of emails to some guys in that states and questioning some of my engineering buddies, i found out... So if you by chance don't know, here is the info. Ignore the sizes on the diagram, they are ralative to one of my own aircraft that i designed, namely the Prometheus. The diagram should give you a good idea of the installation. Later on in this section, i will describe the installation as well as showing images of the installed bellcrank. (Sorry about the grid in the background, i just did a print screen from my CAD application)
|
In Summary
Well i think thats quite alot done iin
one day... actually it's a bit longer... three days, but i didn't want to write on my
pages for day one and two that i was studying my plans.. they would be very short pages.
OK, lets summerise what has been done so far.
1. The plans were scrutinised and reviewed;
2. The Imperial sizes were converted to metric sizes;
3. The sequance or step-by-step process was defined;
4. The Pipe channel was redesinged (removed) so as to fit my engine
installation;
5. The wing rib templates were made;
6. The foam-core wings were cut out.
The next part is "Day Two", this should be interesting because there are some nasty stuff that rears its head in regards fitting a ST46 in a area that a .51 to a .61 has to go..... Sounds like a nice chalange.
By the way, if you think that i'm doing something wrong or just want to drop me a line to clarify something, just email me, i'll be glad to respond.
See you Later and keep it safe !!!
Page Last Editied on: 09 April 2003
Copyright © 2003 Gary Rademeyer
