Balsa Baby

technoid

technoid

Well-known member
I wanted something to work on so I thought I'd start another balsa built-up plane. It will be a mid-wing fun fly with a 78 inch wingspan. Of course if I decide I want to start on a real plane I'll shelve it, but for now it's something to do that I like to fly. The plan is for it to have a very square built-up fuselage that you can see into with servos connected to the rudder and elevator with 1/4" dowel rods like the old days. Maybe retracts with cutouts like some of the vintage planes had. Just something fun to work on. Here's the beginning of the wing. The ribs will have cutouts, but I haven't added them yet, this is just the beginning.

Balsa Baby 01.jpg
 
technoid said:
I wanted something to work on so I thought I'd start another balsa built-up plane. It will be a mid-wing fun fly with a 78 inch wingspan. Of course if I decide I want to start on a real plane I'll shelve it, but for now it's something to do that I like to fly. The plan is for it to have a very square built-up fuselage that you can see into with servos connected to the rudder and elevator with 1/4" dowel rods like the old days. Maybe retracts with cutouts like some of the vintage planes had. Just something fun to work on. Here's the beginning of the wing. The ribs will have cutouts, but I haven't added them yet, this is just the beginning.

View attachment 136518
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always nice to have the older RC plane look technoid,this will be bringing back the early style RC flying
 
I normally use one of my older planes for a template and then modify it for the new plane. If you look at the first picture you can see the balsa build-up is just the ribcage you can see from the internal wing with the sheeting in the front and back covering up that part. I decided this time to create the whole wing in balsa so here's a picture where I added the front of the ribs too.

Balsa Baby 02.jpg
 
Looking good as always, but I have another of my dumb questions: Isn't the grain wrong on the TE? Those look like shear webs, not a one-piece rigid TE. I've seen a sheeted TE w/ shear webs, but that's usually in a wing without ailerons. Or with flat sheet ailerons, not built-up ones. I can see the top & bottom spars with vertical grain shear webs between them, but the TE looks "floppy."
 
Bill Stuntz said:
Looking good as always, but I have another of my dumb questions: Isn't the grain wrong on the TE? Those look like shear webs, not a one-piece rigid TE. I've seen a sheeted TE w/ shear webs, but that's usually in a wing without ailerons. Or with flat sheet ailerons, not built-up ones. I can see the top & bottom spars with vertical grain shear webs between them, but the TE looks "floppy."
Click to expand...
That's because I haven't done the back of the wing yet. What you see now is shear webs from the model I got the wing from. Check it out later when I do the back.
 
I started working on the back of the wing. The wing isn't finished yet so more changes to come. Like the sheeting on the back of the wing and finish the aileron ribcage. Then finish fitting everything together. These are internal ribcages that fit inside the wing and aileron.

Balsa Baby 09.jpg
 
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esempi di tuttala
 
A bit more work on the wing. I moved the spars back a little and added the sheeting at the fuselage. I also reduced the width of the ailerons. Not much a quarter of an inch, this is fun fly not 3D. They're still plenty wide.

Balsa Baby 10.jpg
 
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