O.D. 'scratch built'.It started with the chance purchase of a 1:48 scale plastic kit, I already had a C160 Transal flying and so knew the sort of size I wanted, plus it had to have retracts and drop bombs. Oh, and one other thing, it had to fit in my car along with the C160 and other planes. Now at that time I had a Fiat Punto, not exactly a large car.
Structure is about 95% percent balsa, with a foam nose and foam front rings to the engine nacelles. Weight is the biggest problem of an electric powered model, so every thing was kept to a minimum. My concept is to build to withstand flight, not to withstand crashing, it sure makes you fly with more consideration for the plane.
Transport?, to keep most of the heavy bits together, I split the wings just outside the nacelles, (3/8 diameter hardwood dowels in paper tubes, 2 each wing), the fuz was split straight behind the trailing edge, leaving the tail attached to the back end of the fuz.. The 2 fuz halves are joined by 1/8 ply tongues into 1/16 ply boxes, with nylon screw lock.
The wing is built up using 1/16 balsa ribs, full depth 1/4 spar, and 1/16 balsa sheeting top and bottom, the section?, Eppler 214, again same as the C160, it works.
The fuz is 3/32 former's, made up from strips, the whole lot sheeted in 1/16 balsa. The main strong points are the links between the retracts and the battery tray, well 28 cells have to land on something, the rest is just there to support the covering. The motors and gearboxes are mounted on 'engine bearers', actually 2 pieces of 1/2 square balsa with the motor taped to them, with electricians tape, like to see you do that with a pair of 40s.(update - currently, new belt drives are screwed to the bearers)
The covering, that's where thing first went wrong, I thought silver would be nice, and used Litespan, it looked great until on sunny days,the heat wrinkled it badly, my fault according to the manufacturer.
So the following winter, off came the Litespan and tissue and dope went on, (so did some weight), but the new paint job did make it look impressive.
To the scale purists out there, I am not a scale modeller, I like to build and fly models. I colour and detail them how I want.
Span - 93"
Motors - Hurricane 650, (was Speed 600 12v Turbo)
Gears - Belt drives 3.6:1 (was 3:1 gearboxes)
Props - 12x8 Punctilio, pusher and tractor (one motor
reverse timed)
Cells - 28 2400mA nicad, 4x 7 cell packs
Weight - approx 12lb flying, not weighed after repairs.
Elev-Ail-Rud-Mot-Retract-Bombs
Yes the bomb doors open and she drops two bombs.