Let me begin by appeasing the balsa brigade by mentioning that I am currently building two balsa models. I have not migrated completely to the dark side of model airplane construction.
This is a build summary rather than an ongoing thread but may be of interest to anyone with the electrics from a 4Site, PZ micro Mustang, Champ... who wants to put those parts to use.
I started by searching for a slow flying real aircraft with a flat sided fuse and a radial engine. Slow flying models are great indoor subjects, flat sides are easy in depron and you can buy cowlings from Park Flyer Plastics.
I settled on the DHC2 Beaver.
Googled plans and found a set in RC Groups. Local copy shop printed the plans, sized to fit the 2.25" cowling I'd ordered.
Model ended up at 51g (1.8 oz.)with a 27"WS using the electrics from a departed 4Site, including ailerons which I'm finding are pretty much useless on a model which flys this slowly...could have been lighter! The motor is mounted to the cowling which attaches to the fuse with magnets. Pictures below show the build which took about two weeks.
Maiden Flight below Scratch built Micro Beaver indoor maiden, March 3, 2013 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4do4gKHNlU#ws)
Nice job Bill. Please post a couple of pictures as it looks great in the video.
very cool Bill!
Yes! Very nice. I want to build something like that sometime soon, for flying outdoors on calm evenings. I'll follow your thread closely.
It's nice that you had plenty of room in the gym for your flight. It's no fun when flying a scratch built plane through a swarm of angry Embers :o
Thanks guys. Ben made some changes to the website and posted my photos for me. Thanks Ben!
Rob,
We finally got the indoor group we fly with to set aside times strictly for homebuilt models...no out of the box stuff. Even so, I managed to crash into Ken Coleman's model last session bringing down my Storch and his Mr. Mulligan. It gets really chaotic at RTF and 3D times with as many as 15-20 models sharing the same space. I'm grateful for the homebuilt times!
Photo #7.
Picture perfect!
I love seeing the build come together.
Awesome job, Bill.