1905 Wright Flyer Enters Scale Competition

If anybody had a photo from that event they could let me add to this article, please forward. Thanks Keith for a fun story!

Hi Dave,
I just got back from the big judged scale meet (Central Ohio Scale) in Westerville. They had a great turnout, something like 47 pilots in 6 judged classes. I entered my Yak UT-1 in Designer Scale and got a third place. The first and second place were last year’s NATS winner and the Runner-Up, so not too bad for my first scale meet in about 15 years…
They had a “Fun Scale” class for beginners and experts, minimal static judging, but regular flight judging. I entered the Wright in Fun Scale Expert just for fun. The concept of doing “precision maneuvers” with the Wright in quite a bit of turbulence gave everyone a good dose of Comic Relief. It was like herding a cat around the sky. Surprisingly, I didn’t place last, as I got great marks for Flight Realism and the multi-motor option.
Early Sunday morning it was dead calm and ***very*** foggy. I flew a flight low and slow to the enjoyment of the spectators and contestants while waiting for the ceiling to lift so that the contest flights could resume. I recharged and waited my turn for the first sunday round. When it came time to fly, it was still very calm, and I had high hopes for a really good flight score. However, when I took off the plane pulled REALLY hard to the right, and full left trim on aileron and rudder and half left stick on aileron and rudder were required to barely fly straight. I struggled mightily to do the required maneuvers, and garnished about the same scores as saturday due to the awkward appearance to the flight and turns. Oh well.
I looked it over after a scary, but safe landing. The high humidity and wet grass had made all the joints on the parallelograms lock up solid. Even with the stain on the wood and the candle wax I rubbed on all the mating surfaces. Once it fully dried out in the sun, everything worked great later in the afternoon. Controls were back to normal, but of course, the winds had come up and the flight scores stayed the same as saturday. Can’t win… 🙂
But it got a LOT of attention, and many favorable comments. At the end of the first flight on saturday, it got a large round of applause and cheering from everyone. I think more photos were taken of it than any other plane at the meet. Hope one of them ends up in the contest write-up for the mags.

Take care,

Keith

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Excellent Joe Nall 2013 Video

Check out this fantastic workmanship. In this video you’ll find every reason why you need to get yourself to Triple Tree at least once. Don’t miss out.

Notes from the author of the video:
The Joe Nall Fly-In, which is hosted by the very generous Pat Hartness at his estate in Woodruff South Carolina is possibly the largest radio controlled model aircraft event found anywhere on the planet. And as a model aviation enthusiast I am captivated by the thousands of beautiful aircraft and have great admiration for the piloting skill of those who travel to the event from all over the world.

But for me it is the event itself which keeps drawing me back and each time I drive through the magnificent front gates at Triple Tree Aerodrome I soon forget about the twelve hour journey it took to get there. You see, for seven days in May each year, the Joe Nall Fly-In is our little slice of heaven on earth that we call home. A magical place where people of vastly different ages, religions, occupations, and wealth come together for a common cause and to forget about the stresses of life.

I could have easily filled my slideshow with pretty photos of model airplanes but in doing so I would have done a great disservice to those who have never experienced Joe Nall. Hopefully you will be inspired by my video and perhaps you could join our family next year.

Stan
Buy “You Raise Me Up” on

Comments from Dave:
OK, you all know me, I can’t help myself. I have to put up resistance to the Objectors to Liberty wherever they reside. The fact that you or I couldn’t offer to pay this film maker even $1 to get those aerial shots for us is an Objection to Liberty. What’s wrong with Liberty I ask you? As a society, we need to identify these people who want to control and hamstring us as what they are. There are forces at this very moment attempting to prevent the very video you just enjoyed along with other activities in our hobby. Let us reject their ideology of control and force wherever we see it. Let us reject the Objectors to Liberty. If successful, at the very least, we’ll have more great video’s of our country’s best events!!!!

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James May, A Toys Story, Touches on Power Systems

My favorite BBC presenter is James May of Top Gear fame. He has several series if you wish to look them up. In this episode they race the Germans over a 10 mile course between two cities that at one time were connected with rail service. Lots of interesting contraptions, RC, Glow Engines, Lipo’s, the logic of how they powered the rails and etc… An interesting show touching on many topics any modeler would appreciate.

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Keith Shaw’s Radical RC 1905 Wright Flyer Part 5

Pilot Front Detail
Pilot Front Detail

At the field. Note the “cross-country fuel tanks”. Each tank contains two A123 cells inline, housing made of 1/64 ply and card stock. The 4 cells and holders weigh about the same as a 4 amp-hr 3s LiPo pack, but produce a little higher voltage. I pull 32 amp at full throttle, but the two flights so have been a half throttle. 6-7 minutes consumes about 1 amp-hr out of the 2.2 amp-hr available.

Detail Rear View
Detail Rear View
Cross Country Tank Detail

Keith, an astounding amount of detail. I love the fantasy tanks. You mention flying it. I’m going through the emails one at a time as I’m posting them in the schedule.

I have noticed that although this model should be very energy hungry, when cruising around at slow speeds, it seems almost magical how little energy is used. Think about all that weight, you have to be around 60 ounces, all those struts, two props, two motors and two no-load currents (something worth a whole blog post to explore), both those wings and your only using about 150mah a minute.

I’ve never seen a mah per minute chart based on weight or style or anything else for that mater. However it seems if there were such a guideline out there, something is wrong. This model in my mind should not fly as long as it does on so little energy and so little battery mass relative to machine weight.

A little quick math shows cruise current should be about 9 amps (150ma per minute x 60 minutes). However, when you deduct the no load current (not sure what it is for those motors) we’re talking maybe only 7 amps at cruise for the pair of motors. Figuring a at load depressed voltage of 3.3v x 7 amps _ only 23.1 watts. Further, it would imply that two 14 watt brushed IPS gearbox’s would be able to keep this machine aloft and still have an excess 4.9 watts for climb. It seems impossible, yet, I know it is true.

Dave

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Keith Shaw’s Radical RC 1905 Wright Flyer Project Part 2

You’ll notice a detail here. Keith modified the kit so he could remove the front frame and canard assembly for easier transport. Also notice the rib detail on the foam. Keith told me he purchased a marker intended for furniture finish repair. The marker was just a slight shade darker than the paint recommended to paint the wings. He carefully traced onto the foam all the rib locations and a spar. The idea being that when the wing was painted the marks would show through the pain enhancing the illusion of fabric over ribs. Great Idea! If I build another one, I’ll certainly copy this great idea. Dave

Chain drive, engine and pilot detail
Chain drive, engine and pilot detail

Photos of pilot and dummy engine mounted, along with vertical radiator. Note how easy it is to work on the plane with the “head” removed.

Canard Control Yoke
Canard Control Yoke

The dummy radiator is 3/32 ply with 1/8th balsa on both sides to make it look like a strut with rear-mounted radiator. Cooling tubes are cheap 16 gauge insulated wire. Additional benefit is that it helps stabilize the center ribs by keeping them from tilting sideways. Note also the 0.1″ carbon rod going between the top three center ribs. It serves several purposes, as it helps stabilize the center rib, gives a convenient CG locator (located 1/2″ behind the leading edge), and serves as a hard point for hanging that is not dependent on rubber bands or foam. I’ll later include a photo of the hanger in my living room, where the Wright now lives.
The removable head took some brainstorming, as I needed to come up with a way to do it so that I could take at least another big plane in my minivan to air shows. Once the head is off, the plane sits front down and occupies only as much space as a normal large plane fuselage. It is still tight, but I can fit my big Bearcat or Stomo or Bugatti or Goon or UT-1 in with the Wright. I’m sure another round of photos will be needed to show everything that had to be modified, but perhaps a Mark II of this kit will include this feature. There are total of eight 4-40 allen cap head bolts that are removed, but are screwed into blind T-nuts instead of the nylon inset capture nuts. I didn’t want to fiddle with a nut driver and the chance of dropping the nuts in the grass. The bottom four connect the sled frame members with a kind of a knuckle joint with the blind nut on the inside. The top four allow the various support struts for the front canard to be disconnected, again with blind nuts on the inside of the inner most strut. The two center vertical struts are kept in place with a short length of aluminum tube to act as a kind of bushing. The mounting holes for those struts and ribs need to be slightly drilled out to accommodate the 1/4 long pieces of tube. I lightly tacked the tubes and struts together with a dot of Loctite Stick N’ Seal, a flexible water-based product similar to RTV silicone rubber. Even though this all may sound complicated, I can remove or reinstall the head in less than 5 minutes. It does have the added bonus of making the plane MUCH easier to work on in my very small shop. All of my big giant scale electric planes that everyone has seen over the years have been built in my tiny 9′ x 9′ shop.

Keith

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Mikael Carlson’s Fokker D.VII

This is an astonishing 15 minute video. However, took me longer than that to watch because I had to hear and see a few things over. It’s beautiful. It’s a real lesson on what a WWI could do, size of maneuvers and everything. Take heart next time you get to fly a model of one of these beauty’s. Enjoy!

Visit Mikael Carlson’s website.

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Keith Shaw’s Radical RC 1905 Wright Flyer Project Part 1

This series of posts created from email correspondence between Keith and I. He’s really done a lot of neat things to this kit. Expect a new report every Thursday for at least 5 weeks. Keith is in the AMA Hall of Fame. He is one of the fathers of modern day electric flight, a superb scale builder and solid modeler in many ways. Read more on the AMA website: Autobiography of KEITH SHAW

You can meet Keith every year at the Mid-America Flies electric fly in where he and Ken Myers of the EFO club host the longest running electric power meet in the country if not the world. Both are AMA Hall Of Fame members. Lots of scale modelers attend this event. Your sure to see many very nice hand built models here. The event is usually held in June and is always announced in the Ampeer Newsletter.

On to the first installment of Keith’s 1905 Wright Flyer Project:

Scale 1905 Wright Engine/Coil

First up is the dummy engine and magneto. Engine is made from foamboard, card stock, bits of lite-ply, dowel, and the chain is a section from a cheap necklace. Magneto is carved from pink foam.

Scale 1905 Wright Engine/Coil
Scale 1905 Wright Engine/Coil
Pilot
Toy Fireman taylor’d into 1905 gentleman.

Pilot is from Toys R Us, a “True Heros Fire Rescue, Robert Portman”. Very close to 1/7th scale. Had to use heat gun and some carving to pose him onto the necessary prone pilot position. Figure comes with boots and a bright yellow suit with day-go emergency strips. Fortunately the strips were sewed on, so easily removed. The uniform required some tailoring to make it look more like a 1900’s suit. The collar, tie and cuffs are all thin painted card stock. Toughest thing was trying to dye the bright yellow cloth to look right. The fabric is polyester and not easy to color. Tried RIT, then some aniline dyes without luck. Finally took a black magic marker apart, diluted the liquid, ad soaked the fabric overnight. It came out a black-green, and looks acceptable. I still have to make a cap for Orville, looking for better photos of that type of “Duster” cap he always wore.

Keith

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Chance To Fly At Huffman Prairie Aero Carnival


Please Tweet, Post or do whatever you can to help me the the news out to pilots that might want to fly their early aviation models at the Wright Aero Carnival at Huffman Prarie.

I am working with the National Parks to bring demonstration flying of early aircraft to the Wright Aero Carnival at Huffman Prairie. The Carnival is a celabration of the Wright Brothers and early aviation. Models may be brought for demonstration flying of any aircraft through 1916. All models are welcome, not only Wright machines. You may bring any aircraft, Curtiss, Langley, Bleriot, many WWI aircraft qualify, even controversal or failed aircraft are welcome. Essentially anything the Wrights might have read news accounts of, hear rumors of, anything that might have been part of the what was going on in the development of flight up to 1916. All of these aircraft help to tell the story of early aviation and that is the point of participating in the event. Flying will be from 10am to Noon and 1pm to 3pm on Saturday August 18, 2012. The public will be in attendance. It’s is a very special and rare opportunity to get a photo of you and your aircraft flying at the worlds first airport, Huffman Prairie.

Aero Carnival Flyer 2012
Aero Carnival Flyer 2012

Aircraft need not be museum scale. Stand off scale, is welcome also. Models of any size are welcome. We will be flying over the same grass as the Wrights flew over. A paved road ajoining the field is available for a runway. I plan to be there with my 1905 kit which is stand off scale. Won’t you bring your model an help fill in the story of early flight?

Flying is not allowed at Huffman Prairie at any other time.

Please contact me if you can come. davthacker77@aol.com (remove the 77, it’s there to foil spam email spiders) There is a limit of 10 pilot slots for this event.

This rare opportunity to fly at Huffman Prairie is also a great way to set a positive example for modeling with the US Airforce and the National Parks Service. Decision makers within the National Parks Service across the country will be reading accounts of this event. What you do here in Dayton on August 18 could have a big impact on modelers elsewhere in the country.


View Larger MapMap showing overall area including I-75, I-70 & I-675 highways.


View Larger Map
On the day of the event, you’ll enter at the Golf Course and follow the signs in. (zoom the map 1 level + to see the road names) On the map above, the west end of Pylon Road will be closed. You’ll drive around the field by following Hebble Creek to right on Marl to right on Symmes to right on Pylon. Our pit area will be between the replica launch derrick and Pylon road at the turn circle.

1905 Wright Shed & Derrick Photo
1905 Wright Shed & Derrick Photo

The view from the flying area of our pit area.

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