Post by felix on May 13, 2008 22:19:55 GMT 10
seeing as my passion seems to be cutting up perfectly servicable chunks of foam and producing pigs that fly i thought i would put up a MOD post.i'm constantly intrigued by what people do to there wings,planks etc.
thought people posting all there small mods done and seen with a description on why,overall results,electronics and materials and what was learnt could offer some food for thought and conversation....
i have been flying slope with my bee for 6months now (love the bee!) and have been through 2 cores,recovered 6 times with different mods along the way and am constantly on the search for the next.here's my list:
*built my first wing as the instructions -can't argue with a sparless stock bee,great design and flying characteristics!
also found that when the tape gets wrinkled a quick iron has it like new again.
*next i cut a series of 4 inch holes along it and used light radio gear.what i got out of this was something that flies in the lightess lift and was very aerobatic
*i decided to see if it could be made faster.i cut the centre section out to decrease the sweep.also added square spruce spars here.broke one of my elevons shortly after so made some wider balsa ones.also tried and failed with a centre fin (not mounted strong enough).went on to cover this with sign writers vinyl too (thanks to mike for this pointer).love this stuff,it's quicker than tape to do,slippery but is prone to tearing.this was my most aerobatic wing (rolled very quick and axial) and something i may do again with some of the later mods included.this wing met it's end after a run in with a barbed wire fence but will soon fly again (maybe as a mig15 pss ;D)
*one thing i played with here was a "duck" tail (filling in the space between the ailerons).this is a bad idea that killed my first bee and caused me a few probs.first of all if it's not at the correct angle it acts like a crow brake when you have to adjust your pitch to compensate.worse part though is it adds a bad stress riser that causes a tear to form at the corners.this tore straight upto the lightening holes i cut and pretty much stuffed this wing.inspired by mark's bat also tried to use it as a hinged elevator but was far to ineffective! got a bit silly and tried inverted with a very loud thud as a reply lol.
*next wing i went all out.added some 6mms CF spars(used a glue that mike gave me called E6000 and this stuff is unreal! thanks mate),reduced the sweep alot more than previous,moved the ailerons into the wing.bi taped the whole wing and covered in blue vinyl (bad idea!should of renamed this wing the houdini lol).also i covered the first 1/3rd of the wing with watered pva and swear by it's ability to really help the leading tearing resistance.once i had done this the speed had definately increased (1st DS experience showed potential) and the roll rate was awesome.only problem was it got heavier and needed more wind to fly (wieghed 700g and needed over 10kts to fly SC).bad thing about reducing sweep is it needs a ton of lead to compensate for the CG too.bi taping the whole wing is something i thoroughly recommend.i watched how well marks bee flew and how it never seems to "wear out" like most.it has taken some major hits,flown probably more hours than all the wings combined and still flies like the day it maidened.
*2 weeks ago i decided to finally put all my silly ideas into the bee that i had floating around to finally put an end to the madness.i retaped it,spackled it,made some internal control rods,centre balsa fin glassed to a CF boom,sealed the reciever bay & servos and sealed the aileron gaps with two strips of plastic.
what i now have has is a a heavy wing (must be over 750g) that is very efficient.first trips to the slope were in less than 10kts but with the reduced drag it still got along just fine.the roll rate is great.it's quite fast as i found out in 12-14knots (bring on a 20knt breeze!!) and ds'ing the trees at DC is so easy & rock solid.the downsides are that it takes a long time to recover from a combat hit and it's very prone to tipstalling in tight slow turns.also a centre fin with it's better moment arm can flick it into a spin very quickly,if the wing is flown slow and it starts to slip in the turn it really bites you! i built this wing with anhedral which probably doesn't help either.
so i think i have run out of ideas for my poor bee but i'm not happy with the spackle -it's heavy and looks cr*p real quick so a recover (again
)will be on the cards and may set it up with dihedral again....right after i finish the zero and finish the superlight modded electra i started 2months ago lol.
so at the end of a long post i would have to say a standard bee is by far the best thing for SC combat but it's amazing how something so simple can be made to do alot of diffferent things well.
thought people posting all there small mods done and seen with a description on why,overall results,electronics and materials and what was learnt could offer some food for thought and conversation....
i have been flying slope with my bee for 6months now (love the bee!) and have been through 2 cores,recovered 6 times with different mods along the way and am constantly on the search for the next.here's my list:
*built my first wing as the instructions -can't argue with a sparless stock bee,great design and flying characteristics!
also found that when the tape gets wrinkled a quick iron has it like new again.
*next i cut a series of 4 inch holes along it and used light radio gear.what i got out of this was something that flies in the lightess lift and was very aerobatic
*i decided to see if it could be made faster.i cut the centre section out to decrease the sweep.also added square spruce spars here.broke one of my elevons shortly after so made some wider balsa ones.also tried and failed with a centre fin (not mounted strong enough).went on to cover this with sign writers vinyl too (thanks to mike for this pointer).love this stuff,it's quicker than tape to do,slippery but is prone to tearing.this was my most aerobatic wing (rolled very quick and axial) and something i may do again with some of the later mods included.this wing met it's end after a run in with a barbed wire fence but will soon fly again (maybe as a mig15 pss ;D)
*one thing i played with here was a "duck" tail (filling in the space between the ailerons).this is a bad idea that killed my first bee and caused me a few probs.first of all if it's not at the correct angle it acts like a crow brake when you have to adjust your pitch to compensate.worse part though is it adds a bad stress riser that causes a tear to form at the corners.this tore straight upto the lightening holes i cut and pretty much stuffed this wing.inspired by mark's bat also tried to use it as a hinged elevator but was far to ineffective! got a bit silly and tried inverted with a very loud thud as a reply lol.
*next wing i went all out.added some 6mms CF spars(used a glue that mike gave me called E6000 and this stuff is unreal! thanks mate),reduced the sweep alot more than previous,moved the ailerons into the wing.bi taped the whole wing and covered in blue vinyl (bad idea!should of renamed this wing the houdini lol).also i covered the first 1/3rd of the wing with watered pva and swear by it's ability to really help the leading tearing resistance.once i had done this the speed had definately increased (1st DS experience showed potential) and the roll rate was awesome.only problem was it got heavier and needed more wind to fly (wieghed 700g and needed over 10kts to fly SC).bad thing about reducing sweep is it needs a ton of lead to compensate for the CG too.bi taping the whole wing is something i thoroughly recommend.i watched how well marks bee flew and how it never seems to "wear out" like most.it has taken some major hits,flown probably more hours than all the wings combined and still flies like the day it maidened.
*2 weeks ago i decided to finally put all my silly ideas into the bee that i had floating around to finally put an end to the madness.i retaped it,spackled it,made some internal control rods,centre balsa fin glassed to a CF boom,sealed the reciever bay & servos and sealed the aileron gaps with two strips of plastic.
what i now have has is a a heavy wing (must be over 750g) that is very efficient.first trips to the slope were in less than 10kts but with the reduced drag it still got along just fine.the roll rate is great.it's quite fast as i found out in 12-14knots (bring on a 20knt breeze!!) and ds'ing the trees at DC is so easy & rock solid.the downsides are that it takes a long time to recover from a combat hit and it's very prone to tipstalling in tight slow turns.also a centre fin with it's better moment arm can flick it into a spin very quickly,if the wing is flown slow and it starts to slip in the turn it really bites you! i built this wing with anhedral which probably doesn't help either.
so i think i have run out of ideas for my poor bee but i'm not happy with the spackle -it's heavy and looks cr*p real quick so a recover (again
)will be on the cards and may set it up with dihedral again....right after i finish the zero and finish the superlight modded electra i started 2months ago lol.so at the end of a long post i would have to say a standard bee is by far the best thing for SC combat but it's amazing how something so simple can be made to do alot of diffferent things well.
,how silly loud it was and most of all how little ground clearance it has when i got fairly stuck on a speed bump lol.
