Here’s a short video I received from George Clark. He’s been building all sorts of different Squirrels. Check this one out:
“Darcy:
The tiny Squirrel soars, the elastic breaks mid-flight and ka-boom!!
George”
Category Archives: Gallery
Small Squirrel from Solid Balsa
Submission from George Clark:
“I took a crack at building a very small Squirrel. It is challenging to get such a small plane to fly correctly. This is the second small Squirrel I have built and is another solid balsa plane. It is obvious that this is the lower size limit for the design. Currently, I am powering it with 2 strands of 1/8 rubber and a lightweight 5 in. plastic prop. Total weight with rubber, is 5.5 grams, the prop constituting 1.8 grams of that total. The rubber is too much for the plane, so I will be reducing it to a single strand of 1/8. The prop is also too large. A 4 in. or even 3 in. prop would be better. I have a 3 in. balsa prop that may work.
Regardless, the plane flies as is, albeit nearly straight up and pirouetting as it does so. In the one of the attached photos, you can just see the plane scooting over a neighbour’s roof. Thankfully, it circled back. I was only able to get one flight photo as it was really moving. The wing chord is currently 1.5 in., with a span of 10 in. I may increase the chord to 2 in. or perhaps even 2.5 in. and see if the result will settle the flight characteristics a bit.”
Outdoor Flying
I couldn’t resist flying in the calm weather. These Squirrels were in the trunk of my motorcycle so were a little warped. They seemed to fly well. I had them set up a litte towards stall (with the wing far forward) and they seemed to do ok. After seeing the videos I realize I’d have gotten a lot more height if I moved the wing back a bit. Bit it was still lots of fun.
George Clark of British Columbia, Canada builds solid Squirrel
George sent these pictures of a Squirrel constructed from sheet balsa today. Here are the details:
“I decided to try an all-balsa Squirrel. I used light, competition balsa for the plane. Wingspan is 20 in. Weight of the plane, excluding prop assembly is a mere 8.2 grams. The tail and fuse weigh 3.4 grams and the wing weighs 4.8 grams. With prop and 2 strands of 1/8 in. rubber, total weight is slightly under 12 grams, giving a very low wing loading of .2 grams/sq. inch. The plane flies reasonably well with the 6 in. plastic prop and plastic prop assembly, however the prop turns very quickly and thus runs out fairly rapidly. I have a 7 in. balsa prop(pictured) with greater width and pitch that should work better. The balsa prop actually weighs about the same as the plastic prop.
As you can see by the photos, I’ve reversed the tail assembly. I kept the wing adjustable, but flat(no incidence). I added several degrees of positive incidence to the stabilizer instead, which seems to work fine. If you look closely at the leading and trailing edge of the wing, you can see that I added two pieces of 1/32 in. square balsa strips longitudinally as turbulators.
If this plane flies well, I will shrink the design by approximately 50% for indoor flying. For now, I am using twist ties to secure the wing to the fuse.”
De-Thermal (DT)
Here’s a Squirrel after returning from a flight. The de-thermal system has caused the elastic to get tangled in the propeller. It is by design that the elastic comes of the rear hanger. Not by design that it gets tangled in the prop. No big deal. I bet that if it encountered a bad thermal, the tangling would stall the propeller causing further drag and increasing the chance that the airplane drops out of the thermal.
