Small-Field Flying — 2010/12
Paul Bradley | [email protected]
Full-contact combat on small fields
SMALL-FIELD COMBAT—Full-Contact Style: In the June 2010 column I had the pleasure of presenting Jack Pignolo’s Origami E2: a rendition of a paper airplane made from sheet foam. After reading that issue of MA, Jerry Hagood of Gadsden, Alabama, sent me a nice note regarding a fun activity he and his friends have been enjoying for several years.
They have developed several designs, also similar to paper gliders that are made from sheet foam. However, their intent is to fly the models into each other; they enjoy full-contact combat.
The aircraft that Jerry and his friends fly are set up for small-field operation. They are lightweight and have wingspans and lengths of less than 24 inches. The cost for one of those airplanes is minimal, as is the time required to build one.
Jerry reports that the models built for this engaging activity last quite awhile. That is a result of their ability to take a beating and keep flying and the fact that actually hitting another airplane is difficult.
He provided a photo of his aircraft. You can see the design features that allow it to be effective for combat. The motor is mounted where the propeller is protected, the battery pack is protected, and the general layout promotes good pitch and roll response.
If you and your flying buddies want to get in on the action of small-field full-contact combat, Jerry gave me permission to provide free plans for his design on my website. See the source listing at the end of the column for that address. Go to the downloadable plans section when you arrive.
Recycling crashed models is a good thing. Jack Pignolo, whom I mentioned at the beginning of the column, likes to keep undamaged or easily repaired parts from his wrecked airplanes. His Playstick is a good example of why doing that makes good sense.
Jack sent a photo of his aircraft. It is made from the stick-fuselage assembly of a Great Planes Fundango and the flying surfaces from a Baby Playboy.
He used a low-cost brushless motor and a two-cell Li-Poly battery pack to motivate his Playstick. Jack reports that flight times are in the 30- to 40-minute range, and the model can do loops and touch-and-gos.
Great work, Jack; recycling is good. Jack is from the greater Houston, Texas, area and spends his summers in Maine, hanging out with the DownEast Soaring Club.
CL Without Lines
I have occasionally written about experiments with adding RC to a CL model. CL designs are true small-field flyers. The experiments I mentioned retained at least one line of the CL arrangement, so that the aircraft would fly in a constrained circle.
Charles Lambour of Largo, Florida, claims that adding a radio to a CL airplane is fine but to lose the lines altogether! Talk about coming full circle. (That was a bad pun.) I know this is not a new concept, but it is rarely seen in practice.
Charles used a CL Guillow’s Barnstormer, which he built in the early 1950s. He still had the plans from that long-ago project and used them to develop a plan for the RC conversion.
Charles kept the outlines faithful to the original. He made a few structural changes for lightness and aerodynamic changes for three-dimensional flight, such as equal wing-panel lengths.
I have included a photo of the nicely finished design. Weighing 33 ounces and having a wingspan of 45 inches, it is probably best suited for the larger end of the small-field spectrum.
To keep the look and feel of the original Barnstormer, Charles built a dummy glow engine to hide the E-flite brushless outrunner motor that he extracted from an Apprentice. Controls are handled by a Spektrum AR6100e receiver and four 9-gram servos.
According to Charles, the model flies great.
Storing Small-Field Models
In Bob Aberle’s November 2010 "Frequently Asked Questions" column he presented a good solution to the problem of storing airplanes. William Bonner developed the idea.
Please review the accompanying photo, which William submitted, of his fleet of small-field aircraft that are safely tucked away in his garage. He wrote:
"I know this has probably been done hundreds of times before, I just wanted to share the plane racks I made. They are made of 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe. I used pressure fittings instead of DWV fittings because they are stronger. The racks are 18 inches wide, 12 inches center to center between planes, and the arms that come out to support the planes are 12 inches long.
"There are two racks side by side. I staggered the racks by 6 inches to allow the wings to slide in between planes on the rack next to it to conserve space. The planes are well supported and very easy to get to. It is now a breeze to load or unload the planes."
As William noted, PVC-based storage racks are not new, but he hopes his arrangement will be helpful to anyone who is looking for a slick aircraft-storage solution.
Thanks, William, for sharing your approach to the universal quest for the ultimate model-storage arrangement.
The Dime-Store ARF—Well, Close
There are no dime stores these days, and few of the old-style slip-together FF models are still available. Fortunately Guillow's does still sell some of those designs.
If you look around in stores that sell toys, you might see the Guillow's Flying Machine. There is such a store in or near Burlington, New Jersey, where Bradley Faul lives, and he bought one that spans 17 inches.
Then he mixed a ParkZone Micro P-51 power system with a Spektrum brick radio, to result in an excellent small-field flyer. Bradley provided a photo of the completed project next to his Spektrum transmitter for a size reference.
With a flying weight of 1 ounce, Bradley claims that the Flying Machine cruises at half throttle and has proven to be a terrific flier in its electric-powered RC configuration.
I have converted a slip-together rubber-powered FF design and can fully endorse Bradley's positive results. This is a great way to get a small-field flyer up and running fairly quickly.
Thanks for sharing your work, Bradley.
Small and scale can coexist in a great way. Many Guillow's FF kits are ideal for conversion to RC—especially using the current crop of micro RC gear. The Guillow's 900 series comes to mind.
The 900s have wingspans in the 16- to 18-inch range. Their structures are well suited to RC conversion. Glenn Lewis makes this point in spades with his converted 900-series T-28 Trojan.
That particular model has a wing that spans 16 inches. For the conversion he used the ParkZone Micro P-51 power plant and a Spektrum AR6400 brick receiver system that controls rudder, elevator, and throttle.
The photo that Glenn provided of the finished product shows that you don't have to sacrifice a wonderful scale appearance to have a little model. Glenn's effort is excellent by all measures.
The finished T-28 has a flying weight of 40 grams, or approximately 1 1/2 ounces. Glenn reports that the miniature Trojan flies at half throttle and handles surprisingly well.
Outstanding work, Glenn.
Magnets can be a small-field aeromodeler's best friend
Glenn Lewis's T-28 conversion brings to light one aspect of smaller models that I usually find vexing: how to provide access to the installed equipment. I faced that challenge with a project I recently completed.
I was converting the old Comet 25-inch Stinson SR-7 Reliant to an electric-powered RC model. My equipment selection includes the power unit from a Micro P-51 and a Spektrum AR6400 brick receiver system. Controls include rudder, elevator, and throttle.
Because the SR-7 has a round nose, I decided to use a sliding tray to carry all of the equipment. The tray slides in and out through the nose.
That setup makes for great equipment access but does require a means for making and breaking the connection between servos and pushrods. Magnets seemed to be the perfect solution, but how would I connect them to the pushrod ends?
To handle this dilemma I started with short lengths of dowel that were equal in diameter to the magnets being used. A hole was drilled through the dowel axis, and then I adhered the dowel to the pushrod end. I glued the magnet to the dowel face.
To ensure that the joint was secure, I installed a piece of heat-shrink tubing over the magnet and dowel. Then I followed that with a few drops of thin CA. The resulting magnet attachment turned out to be robust.
An accompanying photo shows the finished sliding-tray setup. It works better than I had hoped and makes it easy to get to the equipment. The magnet's make/break connections have more than enough strength to handle the push/pull loads of the flying surfaces.
I have included several references, under "Sources," for the ParkZone Micro P-51 motor and gear drive; one is A Main Hobbies. This column also mentioned the ParkZone/Spektrum brick radio systems. Two sources for those items are A Main Hobbies and BSD Micro RC.
I am out of space once again. I hope everyone has a great holiday experience. I look forward to hearing about your projects for 2011. MA
Sources
- DownEast Soaring Club
- Guillow's
(781) 245-5255 www.guillow.com
- A Main Hobbies
(800) 705-2215 www.amainhobbies.com
- BSD Micro RC
(417) 358-9521 www.bsdmicrorc.com
- Paul Bradley
10201 Scarlet Oak Dr. Independence, KY 41051 www.parmodels.com
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
