America Eaglet

[piker]

Hey guys,

I wanted to start a little build thread about a plane I've been dabbling with for the past couple of years.  It's called American Eaglet, from a Spirit of Yesteryear kit.

The American Eaglet is a scale model of a home built aircraft from the early 1930's.  It's very basic, and pretty ugly, but the model is significant to me.

It all started back in 1992 when I was on my honeymoon in Cape Cod.  I had been flying RC for about 13 years, but mostly with gliders... lifted with either a high start, an evil .049 engine, or slope soaring.  I started flying Electric powered models in 1989 with an Electra, then an Electro Streak, then after a few less successful attempts, the American Eaglet.

It was while I was in Cape Cod that I stopped into a hobby shop and found the kit.  I built it over the following year, and then flew it for many years until it eventually became more and more warped and beat-up and I ditched it.  The Eaglet was also my first seaplane, with my own design floats.  It flew beautifully from water and offered a model that was light and quiet and perfect for those calm evenings at the lake.  It was even on City News one evening while flying at Cherry Beach in downtown Toronto.  These were the days of flight times of about 5 minutes with most planes, but I could cruise the Eaglet around over the water for 15 minutes on a brushed motor and 7x1700mah NiCad cells (equivalent to 2 cell Lipo but about 10 times the weight ), with plenty of touch and goes tossed in for fun.

So, now I live on the lake, and there are MANY calm and quiet mornings and evenings just calling for a peaceful seaplane flight.  I've been wanting to have a plane similar to my old Eaglet to take advantage of these perfect times without creating too much noise or wake to disrupt the atmosphere.  I found the kit was still offered by Brodak, so I ordered one in.

At this point I'm finishing off some details before I can start covering.  I need to build the landing gear, the dummy engine, and the floats.  I'll post some more pictures as I move along.

By the way, I'm on a bit of a transparent covering kick these days as I build some "not so scale" models from sticks.  I like the look of a lightweight structure under the covering, so I'm using these simple models to show that off.  I have plenty of "more serious" scale models in the queue that will have more scale covering schemes.   

The last picture is of the full size American Eaglet.  Mine will have clear covering on the fuselage and fin/rudder, and transparent blue on the wings and stab, similar to my original model.  I'll add a couple pictures of my original Eaglet after I dig up the photos and scan them.

Robert 

[Michael]

Nice! Super clean work.

[davidk]

Not ugly... pretty.  Looking forward to see it flying off floats.

[piker]

Thanks guys.

I dug up a couple of pictures of my original Eaglet from 1994 at Cherry Beach.  I designed and built those float to be as light and with as minimal a frontal area as possible, based on my best guesses.  The struts were very minimal and quite flexible, but worked very well.  I set the floats up with a generous stance and height to play it safe, as I had never done this float flying thing before.

I think my new version of the floats will be a little more stylish and closer to a normal stance.

Note the 1/8" ply spacer under the front gear struts.  That was added after my original trials to offer a better angle of attack on the wing for lift-off.  Without the spacer the plane would not lift-off.  This little shim made it SO reliable that I could leave my hand off the right stick and just advance the throttle.  The Eaglet would climb on step and perform and perfect lift-off on it's own.

[octagon]

Very cool looking Rob. Can't wait to see it fly.

[Wingnutz]

I've yet to see a Piker model that's ugly...anything built as well as Rob builds is a joy to behold! In your opening post, you talk about "being on a transparent covering kick these days"...looks like these days started in 1992!
I'm curious...what's the significance of the RMS 2530 markings?

[piker]

I have been quietly plugging away at the Eaglet, although I was inactive on it for a couple of months.  The basic covering is finished (I'll post a picture in a bit), but I felt the need to start preparing the floats for it.

I drew a plan for these floats in '93 when I built my own design floats for my first version of the plane.  I've adjusted the proportions a bit this time, so we'll see how they work out.  The goal then, as it is now, was to keep them very light and simple to build.

Robert