Category Archives: Experimental

Australian Squirrels with 4″ Propeller

October 1, 2011Experimental, Gallery, SightingAustraliaDarcy

We ship lots of Squirrel kits to Australia but there are a lot of DIYers there.

Keith Harbottle is setting up a High School Camp and he was not able to source the 5″ propeller.

The Squirrel should work fine on a 4″ propeller. The workshop is being deployed this week so we may get some more pictures.

Below are a couple of his experiments. He made a smaller Squirrel to see if it worked better with the 4″ propeller but I think he will find it’s much easier to just make a standard Squirrel then substitute propeller.

I’m curious if those 4″ propellers turn in the opposite direction. 🙂

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Preshrinking Tissue Paper for Stick and Tissue Planes

August 7, 2011ExperimentalTips, TissueDarcy

Here’s a tip from Chuck Young.

He’s been helping kids make planes at school.

In order to prevent the tissue from shrinking and warping the plane, he’s been preshrinking the tissue.

I’ve heard of this before and I know it works.

What I’ve been doing is having children crumple the wing tissue before building. That way there is a bit of pre-tension in the tissue so the problem never occurs.

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Foam planes

June 12, 2011ExperimentalDayton, FoamDarcy

Here are a couple of experiments with foam.

One is a winglet system that curves the wing and clips into place to facilitate easier gluing.

The other is a plane made from foam and tissue. I tried to minimize the foam use by cutting the parts out of each other. Then fill the gaps with tissue.

This was one of the first Dayton experiments.

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Foam Construction

May 31, 2011ExperimentalFoamDarcy

Winglets:

One method I tried was to take a small piece of paper and fold it so it sits at 90 degrees. I install a winglet then place the paper under the wing to support the winglet. The tacky glue gets stuck to the paper. It also draws some glue away from the foam.

I’ve been toying with the idea of having some groves so that a temporary brace can be installed while the glue is drying. It could be removed later. That is easy enough with laser cutting.

I found a great technique which is to place the wing upside down on a glass or other small object. The winglets hang down and gravity keeps them well aligned .

I tried this on a group of children last night and found that they were able to carry it out without any problem.

Tailplane:

The other challenging glue joint is the connection between the tailplane and the tailboom/motor stick. The challenge here is that in my test kit, the curvature of the tailplane is in the wrong direction. I looked at pins, and a couple of other ideas. I personally love pins but I don’t think it belongs on this beginner plane. A V-Tail is something I’m exploring too. With that, you can get both vertical and horizontal stabilizers in one step. I took the horizontal tailplane and scratched it so it could be folded into a V. More on that later.