Spent the entire day making rubber braided motors for many of the planes I will fly Sunday at the Grassy Knoll.

George made me up some 3/32 rubber for his Volare Model Products Peanut Corsair kit. I think I added a gram of led to the nose and the CG is a bit aft of the recommended location but it flies great there for some reason.

The motor is one strand, one loop braided. I’m starting to get the hang of motor making after a year of the craft learning from the masters.

I Made up motors for the Breda 88. Trying at best to get them both the same. Very important with a twin as you need to have both motors putting out the same thrust. In addition to that they both need to wind down at the same time.If one keeps running loner that the other and you can have a wing over death spiral.

I managed it.

Mystery tailless has a new braided motor also made from Georges 3/32 rubber. I thought the recommended 1/8 rubber was a bit much for the fragile airframe.

The test flight I had at sunset in front of our building was just amazing she just flies perfect every time landing on her wheel.

BF-109 got a new motor. 1/8th , two loop braided.

Most of these motors are all low starters for the maiden and trim flights. Later on I will slowly increase. I have learned a lot from all this especially when first testing with an unbraided single loop to a braided 2 loop or even a single.

It takes more winds to get the same torgue off the bat as you do with a single loop unbraided. I had to wind the braided motors a great deal more to get that punch on launch but got longer flight times and less CG shift. I’m still not there yet but as I kept yelling out to Mary yesterday, “I’m getting better at this!”. 😉

As always keep a log book with a listing of what you did to each plane.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

This kit is fabulous! 5 days to fame up 2 hours a day. The wing fits the wing saddle like a glove.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The entire fuselage is built up and framed. Next up the wing and tail feathers. You can buy the kit and read more bout it here: https://volareproducts.com/blog/?page_id=4029/#!

A always these are some of the best kits I have ever bought and built.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I was lucky to get the very first kit from George Bedehoft of the Volare Products Caudron C.460 1930’d racing plane. It has a 24 inch span.

I managed today to get the fuselage started. The basic box with longerons and wing saddle laser cut parts are all installed.

I did all this without gigs just using a level table, a square, and a good eye I lined up all the parts very well. With lots of experience building over the years this becomes a second nature skill or I just get plain lucky.
The cross braces atop the fuselage are temporary until I replace them one by one with the formers F1T-F11T that gives the fuse the roundness and shape. This also gets done to the bottom of the fuselage.
The reason the top formers have the V cut between them is they sit at the centerline of the motor shaft and the rubber motor extending from the motor to the rare of the fuse need clearance for the rubber motor.

It’s a little different build from other kits I have built.
Having a ball!
More on this Monday.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I got the Easy Built Mystery Tailless plane framed up. Adding the wings and the struts was pretty easy. The CG with the supplied prop and rubber was dead on.

Although the plane needs some painting, markings and details it was done enough at 6pm at the studio to take outside in the front of our building where there is a lot of lawn, lights, and no wind except a light breeze from the east.

So I put in about 100 turns by hand and let her go. To my utter amazement she flew perfectly straight and level for about a 100 feet while turn a bit to the left. She landed on the side walk like someone was at the controls. I repeated this 3 more times.

I have never had this happen to me before with a free flight plane. Although the plane can be difficult to build it certainly isn’t difficult to fly. Next test I’ll get Mary to shoot some video.

• 

• 

•