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

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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.
With the model assembled I soon found that I would have to move the servos from the position shown on the plan to achieve the correct C of G. The foam wing with the CF on the leading edges had made the model nose heavy. However it was quite easy to move the 4.4g Titch servos from Perkins rearward to enable the correct CofG to be achieved. A bonus here was that the control rods would be very short. The length of the lead from the controller, a Phoenix 10 from Castle Creations, and the length of the servo leads established the position of the RX, this was then held in place with Velcro. The battery location, again using Velcro was established near the CofG as this allows different weights of pack to be used with having to move the battery pack too much in either direction. I was delighted to find that the Smart Dart weighed just 100g (3.5 oz.) without a battery pack. I had three sizes of 2s1p LiPo packs available to try and these were a 310 mAh pack from WES-Technik, a 350 mAh Kokam pack from Robotbirds and a 450 mAh E-Tec pack from Puffin Models. These weighed 19g (0.67 oz.), 22g (0.78 oz.) and 25g (0.89 oz.) respectively. E.F.-U.K. 63
Page 1 and 2:
ELECTRIC FLIGHT U.K. ISSUE No. 83 W
Page 3 and 4:
Electric Flight - U.K. Issue 83 - W
Page 5 and 6:
Dear members, Chairman’s Chatter
Page 7 and 8:
The following change to the BEFA Co
Page 9 and 10:
Letters to the Editor Firstly a let
Page 11 and 12: Next is a series of letters / email
Page 13 and 14: Both these Schulze chargers can cha
Page 15 and 16: Now, the parallel pairs will eventu
Page 17 and 18: Charging at 4.5A with balancers con
Page 19 and 20: Method 1 Three FET devices are conn
Page 21 and 22: uy a PC board with assembled FETs,
Page 23 and 24: Cell Balancers Make + Model Cells L
Page 25 and 26: New-2-U A Brief Round-up of New Ite
Page 27 and 28: Another recently introduced item by
Page 29 and 30: Two models from Graupner on this pa
Page 31 and 32: TLC from your TLO By Alan Bedingham
Page 33 and 34: propeller on 3S LiPo and only pull
Page 35 and 36: I was flying the Vermont Belle, try
Page 37 and 38: Readers’ Models Your chance to sh
Page 39 and 40: On Finals, very graceful Gordon's s
Page 41 and 42: E.F.-U.K. 41
Page 43 and 44: Two A4 sheets of instructions cover
Page 45 and 46: The Collet type These exert an enor
Page 47 and 48: Wing & Wheels Model Spectacular is
Page 49 and 50: Last year the meeting was washed ou
Page 51 and 52: Hobby Lobby B-25 Mitchell. 19lbs 2x
Page 53 and 54: Balsacraft fan Edward Brimo brought
Page 55 and 56: Apologies to David ? This 10 year o
Page 57 and 58: Perkins ARTF Tiger Moth by John Tho
Page 59 and 60: Later one of the new 18/15 outrunne
Page 61: A Smarter Dart by John Stennard I
Page 65 and 66: With some expo and reduced movement
Page 67 and 68: Intermodellbau 2005 by Dave Chinery
Page 69 and 70: The colourful Hollein stand had its
Page 71 and 72: Making an exhibition! This year’s
Page 73 and 74: 22nd Black Lion Indoor Fun Fly. 10a
Page 75 and 76: FOR SALE / WANTED Member's Sales &
Page 77 and 78: New to ELECTRIC FLIGHT? START HERE
Page 79: FANS Morley ‘Jet Elec’ Fan ....
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