I had some balsa wheel blanks that Lloyd Shales gave me. I also made some on the laser from some heavy paper.

I found you could glue the hub into the paper but it’s a bit tricky. I was able to ream the holes of the balsa ones and push the hubs in. They stayed in place well with friction.

I need to put some thought into the hub design. I suspect I can come up with a folding wheel that has two points of contact with the axle. Then it doesn’t need a plastic hub. We’ll see what I can come up with for the next experiments.

The first batch of test Daytons are starting to go out. Packing them was interesting. I wanted to fit the sheet without folding it. I will try and fold some too to see if that hurts them or not. But for now I want to be sure.

I managed to get the propellers into the frame of that flat-box. I made the boxes using the laser since they needed to be precise to stay under the size of an envelope but still have room for a sheet of paper.

I decided to start the instructions for the Dayton model plane since it seems the design is working out very well. It’s pretty easy to build and it seems to fly great.

The design isn’t final of course but I want to have people make them and see what else I can learn.

Here’s what I have for the instructions so far. It sure is faster this time around (compared to the Squirrel) since I have better tools (CAD software for instance).

This part is just the assembly instructions. Flying will be on the other side of the paper. So I have a whole page for that and some educational stuff.

• What’s missing from the building?
• Is it clear?
• Do you know someone who would like to try this and give me feedback?

Update:

Okay here it is after a bit more editing. Gary has been eyeballing it and helping me make corrections and improvements.

After the meetup last night I did some revision to the printing adding color and double sided printing.

I also did a bunch of changes to the laser cutting using what I learned from yesterday.

Here’s a batch of planes ready to go!

Anybody want to try?