Balsa Baby

Bill Stuntz said:
Looks great. I'd be tempted to add leading edge sheeting. And maybe cap strips, too. It would look GREAT with transparent covering.
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Remember what I started with, the ribs stopped at the front spars. That's what I used when I had sheeting on the front this time I wanted one of those wings that doesn't have sheeting in the front. Cap stripes, hum.. maybe, they would look nice. But right now I want to finish up the outer part of the wing so I can see what it looks like in RF. Remember, all of this is a rib cage that fits "inside" the outer wing which is painted with the opacity set so you can see inside. (or transparent covering if you want to call it that) None-the-less it's painted on in the color scheme.
 
I finished the wing and updated the schematic then did the first import in RealFlight. The new wing is on the left and to me it looks better than the old wing. Of course I've already removed the front and rear sheeting on the old wing so it looks pretty unfinished. The servos and wing tube needs to be adjusted but I'll get to that later. I'm already thinking about a tweak or two so this is just a first look kind of deal.

Balsa Baby 14.jpg
 
Take a look at this I made a few mods and it looks more like I want it too.

Removed the trailing edge sheeting.
Made the leading edge balsa wider
Made the trailing edge balsa wider
Moved the wing tube back a little (will probably move it back a little more)
Moved the wing tube in to the second rib
Centered the servos in the open area

Balsa Baby 15.jpg
 
I mirrored the left wing to create the right wing and reset all the pivot points. Then I renamed a few of the parts but I still have some to do. But that's enough to show my progress. I might take tomorrow off this project and work on getting the Ultra Stick updated and released again.

Balsa Baby 16.jpg
 
I finished renaming all the parts after mirroring the wing. There's a lot of parts in the servos and I name them all instead of attaching them to the main servo object. I'm not sure why I do it that way. For some reason it seems to be easier mapping them that way. I don't know what's next. I need to do the stabilizers because they'll need some serious changes. But I also need to create a whole new fuselage to match this project so you can see the servos in it. The stabilizer servos will be at the back of the wing like you used to see it a lot. Then I was planning to make the servo rods like they did way back, using wire at the ends but quarter inch dowel rods in between. This is supposed to be an old school blocky looking plane.
 
I did a test of the fuselage internal balsa to see how I wanted to do it. There's only one area cutout but I just wanted to see if I wanted to do it this way. Boy that will be a lot of work to cutout everyone of the areas between the bulkheads. I did that once before but I forgot how much work it was. Here's a picture of the test. Oh. Don't pay any attention to the hstab and vstab in the picture they need a lot of work too and I haven't touched them yet. And in the test I only did one cutout but in the finished version I'll add the bulkhead so you can see it too. And it will be cutout too. SO.. Lot of work.

Balsa Baby 17.jpg
 
After testing the internal balsa structure I needed to release the Ultra Stick so I stopped working on the Balsa Baby. But I started working on it again last night. I went back and did the internal balsa structure again to fix some problems I found in the test, and get it ready to start cutting out the areas between the bulkheads. Of course not all of them. They'll be a cutout in the front of the wing and the three bulkheads in back of the wing will have cutouts. The bulkheads where the wing, hstab, and vstab are will be solid. And I don't think they'll be any cutouts in the top and bottom of the fuselage, just the sides. So right now I'm ready to start on the cutouts but I think I'll stop on the fuselage and rework the hstab and vstab ribcages and get them finished.
 
I started reworking the vstab ribcage this morning. The old ribcages only had the inside of the wing/stabilizer but the new reworked ones have the balsa build-up for the entire wing/stabilizer. I normally only do the inside because I use sheeting for the leading and trailing edge areas. But this time I wanted the full wing/stabilizer to be transparent so you can see all the balsa everywhere. A bit different but sort of cool looking. I have it about half finished so no pictures, just an update on where I'm at.
 
I finished reworking the vstab so here's a picture for you in the RF editor. Actually the plane looks pretty good with all the balsa showing, and the fuselage looks okay with just the balsa with no cutouts. I'm wondering if I should leave the fuselage without cutouts and just go with what you see in the picture. Maybe make the canopy a balsa shaped look too. Any comments?

Balsa Baby 20.jpg
 
Looks good to me. But I have another of my dumb questions: Will the extra mass of the servos so near the wingtips decrease the roll rate or responsiveness? Like a skater with outstretched arms vs arms pulled in?
And I think I might like to see a transparent canopy with a profile pilot. I remember seeing some planes like that back in the dark ages, but not recently. Basically a vacuum formed canopy glued on top of the fuselage w/ no cockpit or pilot details or anything.
 
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Bill Stuntz said:
Looks good to me. But I have another of my dumb questions: Will the extra mass of the servos so near the wingtips decrease the roll rate or responsiveness? Like a skater with outstretched arms vs arms pulled in?
And I think I might like to see a transparent canopy with a profile pilot. I remember seeing some planes like that back in the dark ages, but not recently. Basically a vacuum formed canopy glued on top of the fuselage w/ no cockpit or pilot details or anything.
Click to expand...
Like usual I created this project from another plane, which was a 100 inch wingspan, thus 4 aileron servos. I haven't worked on the servos yet but I plan to remove the outer servos since this is a 78 inch wingspan. In the back it will have two servos, one on each side using a wire between the elevators so it only needs one servo. Of course all of them will be high torque servos. The canopy hasn't been touched for this plane yet. I had two thoughts on it, one is a shaped balsa block so it would be a slightly darker transparent red. The second was a clear canopy with or without a pilot. I have already looked for a profile pilot but at this point I'm in between the two options.. The canopy you see is shaped like a vacuum formed canopy and only needs the transparency to be one. And right now it doesn't touch the fuselage because the fuselage was reworked and is a bit smaller than the original plane. So in the end all will be good.
 
I did a bit more tweaking on all the ribcages today and they're looking good. So I took some time and did a test to see what a bit darker red with a bit of balsa see-through would look like. It's not too bad, not the be-all-and-end all, but not too bad.

Balsa Baby 21.jpg
 
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