Aeronutz News letter No 16 March 2003
You are invited to the next Aeronutz Fun Fly on Saturday 22Nd March 2003. 5pm until 11pm. Parklands Centre, Wigston Rd. Oadby. £8 per flier, Bring a warm jumper as the heating will be off, tables and chairs are provided. All fliers with models over 10g must be insured. Remote control machines must have semi scale appearance - on sticky looking things please! If your are unsure please check before travelling. Max. Weight for any model will be 80g. This would have been lower but we are pleased to see the super scale Falcon kit's balsa machines from Chris at RCS Technik.Latest News ........
Wow!
What a super photo of Bill's thumb!
I think old Bill's getting the hang of this stick and tissue don't you?
Note the tiny tail wheel. I assume Peter Frostick took this picy. Peter writes " Flying-flea is 6" span, stick and tissue by our old mate Bill: It's powered by a one cubic mm. capacity Gasparin Co2 motor, which I can hardly see without specs!! It flies too! --- the motor runs in near total silence!!"
Bill is about 80 years old now, do you think you could make that when you are 80?
Or tomorrow for that matter?Delta Delights
Coventry's finest aeronautical engineer stole the show with two new Z Tron infrared electric powered deltas. Graham based them on his previous delta, this time he used 2mm Depron and one 145mA poly. Cell. One is powered by two Didel pagers geared 7:1 with carbon fibre prop. shafts driving Gordon's carbon fibre props. Control used the Z Tron twin motor differential control system which is ideal for this plane as it can fly at half throttle which makes the steering more pronounced. The flying weight is of the twin steer delta is a very svelte 13.5g !! - how could that fail to fly !! The other is powered by one geared KP00 driving one of Gordon's carbon props. This one weighed 16g and used a 200 Ohm coil/magnet actuator.
The first delta took several attempts to get it flying well so it was a tremendous thrill to have two new ones flying off the board. Note that the twin steer version has the two pager motors right up at the leading edge to be able to balance the CG correctly.
Simon brought his olde Northrop style flying wing now fitted with one 145mA poly. Cell and two direct drive 5.8 Ohm motors. The revised design saves so much weight he could not get the plane to balance correctly!
Delta developments. So Graham has a successful delta design at about 12” span. How about adding a rolled 2mm foam fuselage and making it into a nice looking jet like a Euro Fighter or F16?
Ray was inspired by Graham's deltas and has now made two new one of his own, also using 2mm Depron sheet. We look forwards to seeing those on Saturday
New ! Janne test flew his first Muscle Wire plane in a new stick plane which weighs just 6 grams - a pound coin weighs 9.5grams! He and his mate Mattila have developed an IR system that can control either two three channel planes to be flown at once or we can have a single 6 channel IR Rx.
He has successfully used the new system using a Sopwith Camel and a Junglet (Jigglet variation) but he is very close to finishing his mini Fokker Dr1 tripelane so he can grapple with the Camel. The little Fokker will have his Muscle Wire actuators - maybe not the best plane try try a new "control" system on! Anyway here is a nice little video clip of his MW actuated Fokker rudder waggling about for all to see .... click. The Camel is about 8" span and weighs 15g with 145mA polymer cell and KP00.
The new Duel Mode I.R. control system uses a buddy lead for the Tx of one plane and a R/C Rx for the other Tx. These two signals are fed into the control systems brain and pop out as a coded signal suitable for one standard IR Rx and a second non standard Rx.
Janne is now selling his IR system, see his ad. here
Little vid clip of his MW actuator here, I think it has secondard mechanical amplification as it is a "pull, pull" control systemThe Hand of God ...... another plane - another thumb
Janne's new Camel
Nice Pup eh?
Motor by KPOO, Prop by Gordon, , wheels by Barney Rubble!
We are told it flies good - and it should do at 15g weight with a geared KPOO and a 145mA poly cell. Uses olde fashioned coil actuators and is made from good old 2mm wall foam.Last month - Gordon was teaching his new Bear cat to fly. It weighs in at 26g and is made from dense foam. There was little response from the rudder and elevator? A pitty as some up elevator would be ideal as it was going fast. I am sure it will all be sorted out on Saturday. One the other hand his zippy little, 16g, low wing sports plane was flying very well as was his Bristol Bullet vintage mono plane
Has anyone else noticed the ASDA delivery trucks now have "Wallmart" on the back?
I dont remember ASDA buying Wallmart?This picture of Melton John's Gladdy suits the camouflage finish, its just the hall lights buggering up the camera. Rubber power, f/f, very nice
We have had a couple of nice weekends, high pressure me thinks. A chap's mind starts to dwel on
spring time activites and summer is not so far off. Maybe use some of the obsolete indoor systems to make some garden fliers? Here are some park fliers that might be insparational ....Jonghun Lee from South Korea sends some picies of his park fliers. Mossie and Storch.
Mosquito. Wingspan : 680mm Propulsion : 2-GWS EDP-20 Propeller : 2-GWS 2.5x1.0
Battery : Li-Poly 250mAh 2cell Receiver : GWS Pico Servo : GWS Pico Total Weight : 80gOwner’s Manual - Having read his camera’s user manual, Mark selected a filter to take out the orange tint caused by the lights are Parklands. But this did not work so some of the attached picies are pinkies. If you have any good (or better than this rubbish !) photos please send them in.
Summer time - summer time - Matt has converted one of the new foamie free flight kits to R/C for a zippy little park flier, that pencil looks familiar
"This is the Funcraft rubber FF Spitfire, it is nicely made. I didn't do any finishing, painting or adding of detail. It uses 2 of my custom servos running on a highly modified DU receiver. DC5.24 motor from Wes Technic, cut U80 prop direct drive, 2 li poly 140 cells in series! Aileron and elevator and throttle control. Aileron and elevator are scale positions. Ailerons use stainless steel torque tubes and hinges for a pretty clean installation. 44 grams all up, 14.5" span. 00-90 nylon screws hold wing on. Flies nicely outdoors so far" -MattPeter Frostick has been carving foam again ....." I've found a three view of that nice little Grob 109 motor glider via a German modeller on the web ---- My 'Pistachio scale' scale' version will be 6" long, and 13.5" span!!!"
Nice to see the three wise men from Durham again (He didn't say how many came down ! Ed)
Pink foam free flight rubber power Bronco flew very nicely as did the big KP00 powered foamie F/F with timer, little Piper Vagabond and very nicely finish RCS Technics SE5. The only good photo is this one of the Bronco ....... and that not too good!
This just has to be one of Barry's 2mm Depron F/F rubber power jobs .....
It flew very nicely tooSome glitches from the IR systems this weekend. At least one of the hall's lights was not working properly so maybe it goes off IR in its death throws? Most of us now have at least one sensor facing up at the ceiling which would exaggerate any interference from a faulty light. Maybe go back to having the sensors pointing out at the walls again to pick up reflected IR signals.
New free flight Pitts Special from Team Jeff/Paul. It is made entirely from 2mm wall foam and VERY light. This one uses Chris 3D’s patterns but scaled up 50 percent The wings are made in two halves with a 1 x 2mm carbon spar running along the span at the CG point
Mark’s new variable voltage power supply is helpful for designing voltage sensitive switches. If you put a 300 Ohm resistor on the switches voltage inlet it makes the devise activate at 0.5v higher. Similarly you could put a power diode on the switches inlet and drops the voltage. When you can select the voltage you want the switch to operate at you can have one of more to operate independently as the flight go on. For example, without using any R/C channels you could activate Nav. Lights and landing gear.
Ray’s Z Tron IR controlled Vampire with DIY electric ducted fan flew very well all night. Uses one 145 Poly cell and KP00. New slightly larger Depron wings made a big difference me thinks.
Brain had a new R/C micro plane using the controls from one of the 27 MHz mini cars. It flew really nice, right up in the roof steels. It weighs in at 14g, 14” span, foam and stick and tissue construction.
Barry’s mate mentioned last month is a Gordon, so now we have two of Gordon's. If we have another John he will have to call him Yet another John?
Another John’s first electric power foam F/F plane flew OK, so he is off to a good start having successfully made and flown and rubber power Jigglet too.
Ray had a new Z Tron infra red controlled biplane. A yellow and blue American bipe, is this a Stearman? I think so, Pres. Joe learned to fly in one of these.
Aeronutz world tour could be stopping off at New York's NEAT fair later in the year …..
Andrew H is having some good success with his new electric motor timer for F/F planes. It is designed to be ultra light and simple. It currently consists of just three parts, so cant be that heavey or complicated then! I am sure we will see it in action on Saturday and hopefully he too will be in action as he is recovering from a hernia operation following a struggle with an Aligator while workign as a body double for Sean Connery on the 1960's action film "The meaning of Gullible".
Here are some Pics of Geoff's new balsa bipe using the 27 Mhz control systems out of the little cars. They flew very well, in fact much better than his £3,000, 35 Mhz planes !!
They are about 18" span
The Jung mister is stick and tissue, flew very well
John Mack had some super high altitude flights with his Japanese flapper. I also saw a couple of promissing flights from his low aspect ratio Butterfly style flapper which has a little furry body! I am sure the club mascote woudl enjoy playing with that.
Stamp collecting. Andrew H had some nice flights from Barry's orange electric twin. Other than that our veteran indoor flier couldn’t get anything flying. That happens soemtimes, if they all flew all of the time we woudl get bored and take up an interesting hobby (like Aligator wrestling Ed)
Mark’s R/C flying skills are getting better. His docile 8g APPA plane was flown in left AND right hand turns! - although not in the same flight of course! He crashed during one flight because he close the throttle instead of opening it, no point having elevator yet me thinks.
Domestic sewing needles, seem to be Nickel plated so we can solder to them but if you want to glue to them it is best to rough up the surface with emery cloth and use super glue rather than Bison.
No you cant heat treat them, yes they are brittle, no we don't know if the gold colour on the eye is gold or brass. But you do seem to get a good electric connection for use with MW actuators.Mini Jigglet
Mark's new plane this month (this week!) is a scaled down Jigglet for three channels proportional control. Based on his previous “flying box” the flying weight should be a little over 8g, so how does a 1/3 Oz plane sound? 29 grams per ounce divided by 3 = 8.7g. A nice slow flying speed of should be achieved with a loading of 2.5 Oz per Sq. foot. So the wing span can be calculated as, 0.333 divided by 2.5 Oz / Ft foot = 0.1332 Ft Sq. x 144” per Ft Square = 19.18 Sq. inches. So a span of 10” would make the parallel cord 1.91”
Rounding the tips of a bit will slightly reduce the wing area so make the cord two inches - what the hell, foam don't cost much! So take a standard Jigglet and shrink it on a copier by 15 percent (12” span to 10” span) Mark's original 2mm wall foam plane used a carbon fibre LE to stiffen the wing and produce a nice aerodynamic LE. The LE seemed strong than was really required and it weighed a whooping 0.5g so maybe try stiffening the wing with just two wing struts this time. The original was a little tail heavy too so keep the weight up the nose and use 1mm Depron fuselage doublers to stiffen the nose. The APPA Muscle Wire actuators for the rudder and elevator can be built into the rudder / elevator assembly before fitting to the plane - better still, build the plane round the rudder / tail ! The rudder and tail can be 0.5mm Depron (the rudder is about the size of a butterfly’s wing !) The 2.2 gram 40mA poly. Cell is quiet big but should fit into the plane under the wing. The Dia 4mm pager will once again be double geared and should fit in the tiny nose, if not we can just make it a bit wider. No chance of ROG with that huge 100mm prop though ! This plane would greatly benefit from a carbon fibre prop, lighter and more efficient than the 100mm Ikara rudder power prop used on the original 8g plane. Two sensors can be used, the extra weight is worth it. This time they will be located under the wing facing put horizontally at the walls so they receive less light from the hall lights. Tail and rudder sizes can be scaled up a bit - for a quit glue free life!
Ooops - Editors note, one third of an once is 9.44g not 8.7g ! so the wing loading will be about 8 per cent lowerAnother John's planes are going very well. He has also made an Aeronutz electric winder/counter for wubber motors and a very posh looking “Bernard” NiCd cell charger. His indoor career has gotten off to a good start and its time to progress so some “more interesting” models, how about a ducted fan 12” F18 five channels?
Graham's successful Depron -/ IR / Polymer / Deltas have inspired Ray, who has made two new deltas of his own. I am sure we will be seeing a EDF version soon
Billion Dollar
Drain Brain
The mighty Aeronutz computer has been refitted with a new hard drive - due to odd, non-functional email behaviour. This was easy enough but caused several other problems, which meant that Mark could not accept email for a couple of weeks at the beginning of March. A little report / reminder of the problems is here.
If you have your own PC you are advised to find and save the driver for the modem and create a boot up disc on a 3.5” floppy disc. Another alternative is to copy Bernard’s policy with regards to computers - let a clever young person sort all that out while you put your feet up with a cuppa and some Rich Tea biscuits.It’s nearly the end of the indoor season. Looking around there has been very little development at the home of foam this year. The standard of artwork has not improved and the techno’s have failed to produce a one-inch gas turbine. The only shining light in this black hole of inept engineering is - Mark, whose developments have allowed us to fly 8g remote control semi scale planes. His weight savings have allowed us to go back to using 2mm wall foam. Mark has done excellent work developing designs and manufacturing techniques for Muscle wire actuators and structural uses of carbon fibre. Indeed, it would be fair to say that Mark's outstanding genius can easily be compared to such fine British geniuses as I.K. Brunel, (I think we have heard enough of this rubbish. Ed)
New folks - hello to them, I am never too sure where they look impressed, confused or looking for the toilet and got lost?
Andy had some nice flights with his 35 MHz Depron Mig three. Looked nice in the air when he go to the nose up, direct drive too so it was silent flying. The photos of it are no good so you will just have to imagine what it looks like. One one flight he crashed into the wall just above Bernard's head which raised and ironic cheer !
We are near the end of our last spring news letter (summer is much nearer than it was at the start of the news letter Ed) and we woudl just like wish Ed the Dog good luck in this summer's races - Go Ed Go !.
A-plane-a-day-Ray has a new ducted fan plane, Z Tron infra red controlled foamie - a 14" span D.H. Vampire. He says it is already off the ground and flying so it will be nice to see it on Saturday. It uses one of his own design one inch diameter ducted fans and polymer cells. He also has some new 0.6" Dia. ducted fans! These use a pager motor and one of Graham Stabler's voltage boosters. The mini whizzers use just 170mA and produce a fair amount of breeze - maybe good for a mini flying wing with proportional Z Tron infra red control and memory metal pop-up wing tip dragalons?
Graham Stabler has a new micro milling machine - so he can build a one inch gas turbine, about time someone did too!