Thoughts from the workbench of Radical RC. The online retailer of electronics and kits for radio control aircraft. Dave Thacker shares his thoughts and knowledge of electronics, batteries, kit design and overall enjoyment of the hobby.
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I’m looking for an original Carl Goldberg Jr. Falcon kit. The second model I ever flew was given to me and it was one of these without landing gear or canopy. If you have an unbilt kit or even a good set of plans, please contact me.
Darryl Iott at RC Plane Wear has taken a real interest in our hobby over the last few years. He’a a real professional and a joy to work with. Steve is seriously proud of his 10 color press and I must say the quality of those event T’s is amazing. He’s become a friend over the years and I feel confident in reccomending him to you. If you want to be the hero that found the best shirts with the best printing and artwork ever, give Steve a try. You can find him at Toledo as well as many of the larger events. Or, just surf up his site here: RC Plane Wear
Check out “Tabasco’s glider lifter made from a slow stick. The E-Zone thread is HERE. Tabasco tells about his setup and the parts he employed to make his conversion.
I’ve seen a few of these built over the last couple years and the owners love them. One even lifts 3 meter ships! There are not to many ideas that cannot be executed with a Slow Stick.
Dave
Dave
Hi Dave, I just assembled for the first time a plane I’m just finishing up and discovered I somehow ended up with the tail assembly sitting with one side lower than the opposite side by 3/4″ from side to side on an 18″ wide tail. At 3/8″ each side it didn’t even show until I pit the wings on and could see the difference. That said, it’s cocked so, is there any kind of epoxy solvent (softener) I might be able to use so I can remove the tail and square it up ?
I can’t access it either front of back to saw it apart. I don’t know how something like this could even happen with a SIG kit plane EP-20 Four Star when it’s all laser cut. I blocked both sides up even (I thought) with blocks each side until the epoxy set hard when I placed the tail on the fuselage.
Best always,
Ted
Ted, I’m not aware of a chemical for that. Get your heat gun out and warm it up stearnly. Perhaps you can get it to soften enough to pull apart. Then when it cools and hardends, you can machine it off.
To get it off a flat surface, take a T sanding bar and cover all but center 1/3 with masking tape, Now you can slide it back and forth on the surface and only the glue above the surface will be cut off.
I usually will glue a stab on like this by proping it up with two block exactly the same height, then I square the fuse to the bench. Us your flat bench as the jig in this way. (I did not know it was covered when I sent my suggestions)
Hi Dave, Thank you so much for suggesting use of the heat gun. That worked and I was able to just raise the low side without removing the whole tail assembly, then let the epoxy cool and the tail is even both side perfectly now.. I had to replace some Monokote in the area that melted but you can’t tell now unless one looks for seams on the covering.
Lucky I melted the covering as I found I had broken one of the tails internal wood cross members and was able to replace it. I must have done that trying to raise the tail in my earlier efforts.
Thanks so much. I attached a shot of it on my work bench so you can see where I build my toys 🙂 .
Best to you always,
Ted
Tapping and Clearance Hole Chart. Useful information when picking a drill bit sizes for threading or clearance fit of a fastener. Drill it right the first time. Make better & stronger threads. Courtesy of Standford University.
I enjoy the time spent with family on Thanskgiving and Christmas day. It’s a gathering of my direct family, uncles, aunts, cousins, spouses and so forth. It’s a blessing in life to have family to enjoy. I’ve never required anybody to work on these days in any position of responsibility I’ve had. Certainly there are jobs that must be carried out for a safe society to survive. Fire, police, emergency services, utilities and such. However, the local carry outs, neigborhood fuel stops, department stores and all the ohter mere convieniences in life are just filled with people that would for the most part rather be doing what I’m doing – spending time with family. 99% of you don’t work for anything so important that it needs to be running on those two days. Really, is your business that important?
I do my best not to be the reason someone has to work and not to reward those that ask them to work. I buy fuel, food, whatever is needed the day before. If I can live without it, I get it the next day. If my host asks me to fetch ice or soda or whatever, of course I go get it. I encourage you to consider respecting others family time also. It’s just two days, nothing a little reasonable planning can’t take care of.
Dave
Humans are built to want answers. We seek to eliminate all uncertainties. Giant institutions are constructed and survive on our desire to know. To comfort ourselves, when diagnosing a problem we often look at one or two points of evidence and decide the “cause”. Once we’ve reached a conclusion, there is a tendancy to interprit all future evidence in a way that confirms our conclusion. Such is an example of confirmation bias.
To effectively diagnose any problem, we must first desire above all to know the answer. One must not be married to any particular conclusion in order to observe the facts objectively. We look at the facts and begin to focus in on everything that could be responsible for something not working. As we check each thing out fully, we slowly eliminate possible causes. We begin to zero in on a theory of why something is not working. We then look for other things to measure and observe what would be true if our developing theory is correct. If we then aquire evidence not consistant with the theory, we back up and reconsider all prior evidence and seek a new conclusion in harmony with all the facts. It is only by repeating this process without bias to any particular conclusion that we can finally arrive at the truth.
Just the facts ma’am,
Dave
Springfield Ohio’s SelectTech in September of 2011 reports sucessful test flight of the worlds first privately funded 3D printed aircraft. Designed by Frank Beafore and Beth Galang, flown by Jade Lowrey at Springfields Beckley Municipal Airport. Aircraft is powered and guided by electronics from Radical RC. Powered by Himax brushless motor, Castle Creations ESC, and Kypom Lipo battery. The aircraft was manufactured on a Dimension 22 1200 ES Printer which works by fusing together strands of ABS plastic. The printer can make parts up to about 10″ long. The aircraft is an assembly of many sections. The wing panels are made with ribs, skin with a light cross hatch structure under the skin (a Radical RC suggestion) to allow the skin to be made thin and light weight. In each rib with each panel are premade holes to accept the carbon rod spars. Total printing time was about 5 days.
Generally the 3D printing process is used to make prototype parts to verify designs before making a hard tooling investment. However, SelectTech demonstrates that projects with complex mechanical requirements can be manufactured and put directly into service very quickly.
A story was published in the Dayton Daily News Business section on Nov. 13, 2011.
One aspect of our hobby I really enjoy is the interesting people I get to meet and converse with. There are tons of professionals, engineers and skilled craftsmen of varous sorts that touch into the RC hobby at one time or another. Many are not aware, but we supply goods into other disaplines. One of those is the custom bike building world.
Joe Cooper ording a new A123 4S2P writes: “These batteries have worked out so well for me, I have one on every bike I’ve built, here’s the latest in need of some power: www.coopersmithingco.com/pgunbaby.html
In 2010 Cooper Smithing took 2nd in Modified Harley Davidson in the AMD World Championships of Custom Bike Building. They don’t mess around at Cooper Smithing Co.