electric flight uk - British Electric Flight Association - Jan Bassett's

and the model uses rudder and elevator
control. I was quite surprised when Paul
told me that his model hovers well but this
was confirmed by a photo of him and his
model and I’ve since proved it very
convincingly for myself.
The arrival of our indoor season coincided
with a gap in my ‘model reviewing’ schedule
so I decided to build a Smart Dart ‘XS’
myself. Anticipating that I would build
this model I had already purchased one of
Paul’s ‘Aircraft-World’ type CD-ROM
conversion motors (right).
Paul’s motors are ready to run and at the time of writing cost just £16. Searching
in my building material storage boxes soon revealed a deficit of 3mm balsa but a
surplus of 3mm Depron foam.
I was about to abandon the project until I had a chance to restock with balsa when
I realized that I could substitute Depron for balsa on the flying surfaces. Without
the natural rigidity of the balsa framework I would have to use some CF strip for
strengthening but otherwise there seemed to be no problems. Using foam allowed
me to build the model in a couple of hours.
The fuselage was built exactly as per the plan complete with undercarriage and
motor and 3mm Depron used for the wings, fin, rudder, tailplane and elevator.
The only modification I made was to use a straight trailing edge on the elevator to
keep this parallel with the front edge and give some additional strength.
The wing leading edges required stiffening and I used a very convenient 3mm half
round section strip of CF rod obtained from Woolmer Forest Composites. Flat
3mm CF strip or even 3mm square balsa or spruce could be used. The half round
CF on the leading edges did affect the C of G but I’ll come back to this later.
Apart from the wing leading edges the only other strengthening was a length of
3mm CF strip on the rear edge of the fin and on the front edge of the elevator. 3M
Blenderm tape (left)
hinged the control surfaces,
coming from OnlyRC. This
firm sells this excellent tape
at a price much lower than
you will pay in the chemists
and in three different
widths. The wings were
joined with epoxy and no
dihedral braces were used.
62 E.F.-U.K.