Latest "WoodWorking" project - Updated - It Flew!

Brent Dowell

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Here's my latest 'woodworking' project, if you consider balsa wood and super glue to be woodworking.

I bought the plans and a stack of wood for this project probably 10 years ago.

Finally got around to building it. It was all scratch built, so no kit, just the sheets and sticks.

I just can't get into the whole 'ARF' or 'RTF' thing. To me, if you are going to throw something up the sky, you need to be able to fix it, and the only way to do that is if you build it!

Now I just have to get the nerve up to go out and fly the darn thing.

I do have a really nice kit on the way to build a motor glider, and then my little radio controlled fleet will be complete.

This is called the 'SkyCrawler' and is supposed to be a park flyer, but I'm thinking its a little heavy and over engineered and will probably fly just a little too fast to fit that description, but we shall see.

If the weather calms down this week, I just may have a go at getting it up in the air.


skycrawler.jpg
 
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Some years gone by, I have a dozen or so of 0.49 engines (air guys know what they are) and they were quite useful when my son and his neighborhood buddies were "Board" one summer (around 14 or 15) They made models in my basement and flew them and consumed all of the summer and kept them out of trouble, we spent some quality time as I showed them how to do the making and such.... I still have the engines and some fragments of their planes. When my Grandsone was 15 he showed no interest, seems computers are more the rage now... My next grandson is 8 and soon I will introduce him to the flyers. It is a good thing, those flying machines...
 
Wow. Beatiful model. Sorry to have seen it crash.

But.

My opinion is you don't throw something in the air you aren't willing to see crash. I started flying planes in the early 80's and have crashed quite a few. Some on the first flight. Some were old friends. To me it's just part of the hobby and I treat every flight of a plane as if it might be it's last!.

http://www.vimeo.com/705262

Here's a little video of me flying my Zagi flying wing around my house....
 
Funny, I also have an aircraft project sitting around waiting to get built. When I just had 3 young kids we built a small glider from a balsa kit that got lots of air time. This glider would fly for 100's of yards with the right breeze. I have many a fond memory of my youngsters chasing this plane all over a large field near our home. So I went and scaled up the design for a glider with a 3 ft. wingspan. I've had the thing sitting in a box ever since and one of my kids mentioned it the other day. Looks like it may get built over the holiday. ............Maybe.
 
Cool video(s) Brent. You obviously know how to fly the little guys. Great audio and video editing on the Catapult Launch Test. :thumb: BTW, looking at your house, I'm guessing you don't have to worry about waking up the neighbor's kids with your tablesaw, huh? :p

Man, watching the various RC plane videos is making me want to charge up the batteries and play with my E-Maxx monster truck.
 
We used to live right across the street from a very close friend who was an airplane RC fanatic. He is also a highly skilled maker/builder for almost anything he tries. It was an amusing, but slightly sad, weekly event to look out each week just before trash pick-up to see which plane he had crashed and destroyed at his weekly RC club meeting. He built some really nice, and very large, planes. About one a week went el-smasho into the ground. He had packages going out and returning regularly with engines he sent back to the factory for rebuilding. Methinks it was a very expensive hobby.
 
BTW, looking at your house, I'm guessing you don't have to worry about waking up the neighbor's kids with your tablesaw, huh? :p

Noise and Neighbors aren't really much of a problem out here! :D

Methinks it was a very expensive hobby.

It can be, depending on which parts you decide to break! It used to be more expensive if you had multiple planes because you probably had to have multiple radios etc... I finally got a spread spectrum computerized radio. I can probably have a dozen different planes operating off of this same transmitter, and recievers are about 50$ a piece. With balsa planes, if you've got the plans, you can rebuild them several times.

I've gotten to the point where I enjoy the slow and easy to fly planes. The gliders are really fun. Out here in the summer there are thermals all over the place. Catch the right one and you can be sitting in a chair flying around for hours.

So I went and scaled up the design for a glider with a 3 ft. wingspan. I've had the thing sitting in a box ever since and one of my kids mentioned it the other day. Looks like it may get built over the holiday. ............Maybe.

I'll be starting on a 2 meter wingspan glider this weekend, if I can convince my wife to go to the post office and pick it up for me today:rofl:
 
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Crashed it!

Well, That didn't last long.

Need to check the wings, I think they are a little unevenly warped as the plane just sort of rolled over and crashed on take off.

Snapped the motor mount off and broke a wing tip. Nothing a little glue and balsa can't fix though! :thumb:
 
RC planes are cool, closest I ever got was the old plastic stuff you flew on strings. Good thing they where held together with rubber bands :D

My thing in school was the model rocket club. Even had one that had a nose cone with windows so the captured field mice could see where they where going :D
 
I had some model rockets as a kid. Still have the launcher!

One of these days I'm going to head up to the Black Rock Desert when they have one of the rocketry club get togethers. There are some boys with some very big, loud, expensive, fast, high flying rockets that go up there...
 
Yeah thats out of my league, Brent.

I did have a 3 stage D engine rocket, You wouldn't think the 3 engines with a total burn time of 3.2 seconds would go far. :rolleyes: Never did find the top stage
 
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