text: I'm Back! | FliteTest Forum
  Thread starter Figure9
  You can tell something's about to transpire when a Noob like me is lurking around a cleaned up bench. It's build #3 & it's going to be a Simple Sailor. I'll call it 'Slow Ride' & pray that no lawsuit comes forth from Foghat. Not exactly a scratch build, but I'm doing it from tiled plans out of DTFB with a modified wing & hopefully a better finish than build #2 (The Bloody Mess). I painted build #1 (A Bloody Baron kit) & promised never to grab a spray can again. Then @BATTLEAXE convinced me to break that promise to myself & go for a better finish with oil based MinWax polyurethane precoat instead of the waterbase MinWax. I'll abide by the plans for the fuselage, tail & swappable power pack 'B'. With the swappable power pack 'B' I can cross pollinate using the power components I already built for the Bloody Mess. I ordered four 13 gr metal geared servos so it might get ailerons on a tapered true airfoil wing (Thank you Experimental Airlines Noob Channel). I'm slowly working my way toward doing for real scratch builds & now building a model I might even be able to fly without a buddy box flight instructor. There's some distant possibility that this design might last more than one flight, maybe, sorta. Figure9
  Likes: Vimana89, bracesport, buzzbomb and 4 others
  I'm watching!
  Likes: Figure9
  Figure9 said:
  You can tell something's about to transpire when a Noob like me is lurking around a cleaned up bench. It's build #3 & it's going to be a Simple Sailor. I'll call it 'Slow Ride' & pray that no lawsuit comes forth from Foghat. Not exactly a scratch build, but I'm doing it from tiled plans out of DTFB with a modified wing & hopefully a better finish than build #2 (The Bloody Mess). I painted build #1 (A Bloody Baron kit) & promised never to grab a spray can again. Then @BATTLEAXE convinced me to break that promise to myself & go for a better finish with oil based MinWax polyurethane precoat instead of the waterbase MinWax. I'll abide by the plans for the fuselage, tail & swappable power pack 'B'. With the swappable power pack 'B' I can cross pollinate using the power components I already built for the Bloody Mess. I ordered four 13 gr metal geared servos so it might get ailerons on a tapered true airfoil wing (Thank you Experimental Airlines Noob Channel). I'm slowly working my way toward doing for real scratch builds & now building a model I might even be able to fly without a buddy box flight instructor. There's some distant possibility that this design might last more than one flight, maybe, sorta. Figure9 View attachment 158474 View attachment 158475
  Uh, you just got the riff stuck in my head. I hope you take it easy on your maiden
  Likes: Figure9 and The Hangar
  "Keep on moving folks, nothing to see here".
  Just the modifications I intend to do on the Slow Ride wing that will differ it from the Simple Soarer, (Not 'Simple Sailor' that I called it above. 'Simple Sailor' sounds like some Seaman Recruit having difficulty lining up his uniform buttons.)
  I chopped a bunch of the trailing edge off, tapering toward the tip & added ailerons to it provides a decent roll rate with, hopefully, forgiving flight characteristics. I'll bend the leading edge like Ed shows us on his Experimental Airlines Noob Channel & hopefully get a smooth camber. Base chord is still 8" & about 5'' at the tip. Aileron is simply 1"X12" outline of my ruler. I have no idea why I modified the wing, just practicing so maybe I can scratch build something cool in the future. Hope it flys.
  OK, OK, I know, only a near sighted eagle can see the lines in the wing plan photograph I posted below. It's just that, "I'm just so proud to be here, Sir!" (That's what I've heard the Blue Angels are required to say when questioned about any mistake they make in flight.)
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  Likes: buzzbomb, The Hangar and Grifflyer
  I can vaguely see what is going on, the wing looks a little bit like a p-51 wing.
  Vaguely... I mostly wanted to try learn scratch building techniques. The tapered fuselage, another modified wing & maybe bigger tail feathers. If it turns out looking like something cool I can take take design credit I don't really deserve when I'm flying with the old guys at the field. "Yep, I planned it that way, all custom designed, you see. Expert stuff, ya'll probably wouldn't understand". Figure9
  Likes: Grifflyer and The Hangar
  The modified Simple Soarer wing, below, laid out flat with a straight edge along the leading edge so viewers can more easily see the method to my madness. That LE is intended (Assuming my build skillset & lazy eye allow it.) to be perpendicular to the fuselage with the same dihedral that the Simple Soarer plan calls for from the wing root, but with no polyhedral. It's about 5" shorter than the Simple Soarer wing plan with a wingspan of 'approximately' 1308.1mm, or, 51.5" if you insist on 'Merican measurement like I do. (So I'll have some inkling of what size we're talking about.) The most amazing thing is ~ when the two wing cutouts were laid on top of each other, all the corners matched! That'll probably never happen again.
  So, now I'm waiting for servos & wizardry stuff to arrive so's to complete the fuselage & I'll be too busy playing with Harleys to fold up this wing till Monday.
  "I'll be back!" Figure9
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  Likes: The Fopster and Wildthing
  Can't wait to get home from my trip & work on my 'Slow Ride' project. USPS says the parts I ordered have been delivered.
  Here it is, almost 0030hrs on the West Coast & I finally completed the fold on one side of my own design wing on the 'Slow Ride' modified Simple Soarer. I ironed the edges like @BATTLEAXE taught me on his YouTube video, I think it's titled, "Ironing, You'll Never Wear A Wrinkled Shirt Again" but I'm not sure about that. I installed the servo & was working on the control rod installation, wondering at what stage I should stop to paint it. But wait, something doesn't look quite right. Hmmm... Wait for it ! Oh no ! Folding the wing over, like I learned from Ed on the Noob Tube Channel, I can now see that I stripped the paper off the wrong portion of the wing before I did the fold. "Houston, we have a problem!"
  I was supposed to strip the paper from the interior of the top surface before I made the fold, but what I did was strip the paper off of the interior bottom surface. So, the camber is on the wrong surface! The top surface is perfectly flat & the bottom surface of the wing has, or had, a perfect camber. Perfect...! "I don't care who your are, now that's funny". Even funnier was, even though the glue was set, I tried to massage the foam into the proper camber! (Waiting for the laughter to die down.) Eventually I gave it up, while my cat ran to the back bedroom & hid under the bed & I carefully disassembled the wing. (Rip, cut, tear, mumbling & gnashing of expensive teeth.)
  But hey, I'm an optimist. I know that because I only bought exactly the number of DTFB panels that I needed for cutting my parts out. Only a Noob would do that. Has anybody else ever crashed one before getting it off of the build table? Figure9
  Likes: bracesport, Grifflyer, BATTLEAXE and 1 other person
  @Figure9 ...you are not alone !!!i have built 2 of the same wing ,folded the wrong way and sanded the wrong sides ...(more times than i like to admit to )...nice thing is ,its just foamboard go buy another sheet and try again !!! lol.
  Likes: Figure9 and BATTLEAXE
  If you want to be a 3D champ at your local club field, build your wing upside down! Inverted flight, no problem, outside loops, yes, inverted 360 turns, how many do you want? Now I wish I wouldn't have cut it up.
  Likes: leaded50
  Well, it's not a thing of beauty. The wing for my Slow Ride kinda looks like a stretched out Cessna 150 wing. Aspect ratio got a little out of hand. No dihedral, but I did droop the leading edges at the wing tips. I'll work on the fuselage tomorrow.
  Likes: bracesport, The Hangar and Grifflyer
  Rats...! The misery of being a Noob never seems to end. The parts I ordered before I took off last week included control rods for the 'Slow Ride'. Had to stop anyway because the fuselage needs the rods & servos installed prior to gluing it up. I ordered a set of 16.5" rods, but the fuselage is so long they won't reach, I need 23" rods. 😡 So I guess I'll work on the tail feathers instead of the fuselage. A set of control rods (23") are on order. So anyway, I wanna enlarge & redesign tail feathers that compliment the wing design. That'll keep me busy till the 23" rods arrive. Figure9
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  Well, here's a basic, no glue, mockup of my 'Slow Ride'. Now I can decide if I like it or what I should start over on. My 12" steel rule is balancing the wing to provide some relativity for the size. I like the wing, the tail feathers I sliced up are just OK, that's not a big deal, easy to cut out different shapes. The fuselage needs help. I might finish it & then try recutting another fuselage. Maybe I'll get cleaner slices & better tapering 'B' folds with no damage to the paper. A 'B' fold square fuselage that trails off into a taper to the empennage is a logical step in improving my DTFB skillset & set me up for trying moulding techniques. This design is one I probably should have started with a kit to help me figure out the long tapered glue joints. Long glue joints are still somewhat of a challenge for me at this 3rd build stage of experience. Figure9
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  Likes: The Hangar and Grifflyer
  This thread probably should have been in 'Anybody Scratch Building Tonight'. I've already gone there for help with the Slow Ride design & now I've muddied up the forum with 1 build in 2 different strings. I'll put this Slow Ride build progress here & should failure & confusion continue to reside on my build table, I'll post 'Help Needed' problems for my build experience in the 'ASBT' string.
  Promise to be more thoughtful in the future.
  So, in the photo, I'm balancing Slow Ride on a .250" square balsa stick with nothing glued up in an effort to find out where to locate the wing fore & aft on the fuselage. Here's how it looks balanced slightly nose heavy with a FT Swappable Power Pod & 2200 3S battery + receiver installed. (All because I decided to modify the original Simple Soarer design to accept an internal swappable power pod adapted fuselage & I also wanted to learn to draw & design the taper to the tail to fit my own daydream designs.) After building the fuselage I realized that I failed to give it enough fuselage interior headroom to shim in 3 or 4 degrees of down force using the FT Swappable Power Pod.
  Hmmm. Should I start over & cut out a new improved fuselage design from scratch or modify the swappable power pod? Modifying the power pod would make the whole exercise in trying to design a Power Pod fuselage a dead horse because then a true FT Power Pod wouldn't fit in it. Maybe a smaller battery, spending more money is an easy fix. Or, should I just try flying my own design wing, tail & fuselage using the FT Power Pod without the recommended down force? Don't know for sure but I think I'm going to find out.
  A wiser builder than I am once told me, "Learning to scratch build, you must experiment. The path to greater knowledge & skill is littered with discarded DTFB & hot glue joints."
  However, I say:
  "If you just can't wait to get out to the field & fly your build, just follow the FT build plans."
  Noobies, you can't leave 'em alone with a sharp object, you can't stop 'em from digging divots in the lawn with DTFB.
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  Likes: Vimana89, Grifflyer and The Fopster
  I got a little bit more done on the Slow Ride tonight. Now I feel like I'm trying to gather enough courage to start the glue flowing on the fuselage. I cut some ramped notches in the ceiling of the fuselage behind where the trailing edge of the wing will cross over the top of the fuselage. That allowed me to lift the aft end of the FT Power Pod with a shim for a bit of down thrust. I hope it works. To install the Power Pod I intend to slide it into the four sided closed fuselage from the front & secure it in place with the skewers that hold the wing on with rubber bands & typical alignment skewers through the engine mount. I may also utilize hook & loop tape to stabilize the wing in place. I cut a big opening on the top surface of the fuselage under the wing, a la the Simple Soarer design, for hooking up the servos & motor connector, etc. I did get the fuselage servos mounted & ready to seal into the glued up fuselage. This is my third foam board build & the second DTFB build from plans. I've put so much time into it that I'm beginning to hope it'll fly.
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  Glad you got the thrust angle issue figured out, but for future reference a simple way to adjust your thrust angle would be to put washers between the motor and the firewall in certain corners to angle the motor as you wish
  Thanks @Grifflyer An invisible solution in my mind, the tiny little washers were the reason I didn't even think of that. I'm still not convinced I have 3 or 4 degrees total down thrust as was recommended for the Simple Soarer so I'll be heading to Fastenal or a specialized hardware supplier to get the washers I'll need to do just that. It's also not unusual for foam flyers to add some right thrust angle. Is that right angle thrust intended to counteract 'P' factor on tail wheel takeoff roll Or is it a matter of light weight aerodynamics in flight?
  You can also cut up some gift cards to use as washers. If you notice that the plane isn't tracking straight or needs right rudder trim, then you need some right thrust angle.
  Thanks @Grifflyer Gift card motor shims make good sense to me. Lotta businesses send me plastic cards for free & include my name & address on them. For years I hated to toss them in the trash or recycle & would save them to cut up later, which never happened. I have tons of 'em. I now use them to strengthen DTFB corners & butted glue joints. Never look a gift card in the mouth.