A long overdue rebuild

And now for something completely different
This embodies quite a bit of what Depron building is all about.

Light & low powered (100W) yet with a sparkling performance and a substantial cruise duration (45 minutes).
It is probably my most reliable flyer (yes its 35mHz!) and despite its light weight it is fast enough to handle quite a bit of wind.
But it is getting rather old for a 'foamy' (over 3 years) and the fuselage in particular has been repaired and patched many times.

So keeping the same dimensions it will have a new fuselage and tail but hopefully incorporating some improvements in its construction.
The basic fuselage.

The wing pylon will have a substantial balsa/Depron/balsa spar which the original did not.

A wing pylon does not suffer anything like the bending loads of the wing root but does suffer a huge twisting force if a wing tip hits the ground in any sort of 'arrival' landing.

The fuselage sides will use 6mm Depron rather than 3mm and is sized to exactly hold a 1500mAh 3s but with no other reinforcement to allow the Depron to give a bit in a less than perfect landing.

The only other change will be to reduce the height of the pylon by nearly one inch (it currently uses a 7x6 although was originally sized to clear an 8".

This where you think I had a perfectly good plane this morning............
The fuselage destroyed, the parts liberated and the old boom now fixed to the base of the new pylon spar.

Note the tiny 4ch full range Corona radio and the 3.7g elevator servo that will be built into the base of the fin.

Finger crossed it should all be 'building' from now on.

3 build posts in one day.

The basic fuselage built onto the old tail boom.

The battery slides from the hatch up into the nose. That way it can't fall out!
The radio and ESC installed.

Not ideal side by side but it is a very low power installation. The low power also means I can get away with no ESC cooling.
The 4th channel will be available for the recording altimeter.

Starting to almost look like it was.
The new fuselage mounts the wing almost 2" lower.

But still gives clearance for the prop - just!

The total frontal area is thus slightly reduced although the fuselage surface area is more or less the same.
I have set the fuselage axis almost parallel with the wing datum so it will fly slightly nose high at slow speed. The original was set parallel to the tailplane datum so the fuselage was more in line with the airflow when gliding.
It is now set more like a power plane than a glider but I doubt very much I will be able to distinguish any difference!

Today's progress. The pylon completed with all the electrics installed and tested.

The motor faired in.

The nose still has to be sanded to profile and a radius put on the corners of the fuselage.
The tail feathers being built up around the elevator servo.

Nearly there!

Now virtually finished.
Compare with the first picture in this thread.


If you look carefully you may notice that compared to the initial pictures of the new fuselage the nose is a bit shorter.
I chopped 1" off as it was nose heavy!

And it flies!
No real surprise it handles much as it did before.
Video to follow.

After a bit of adjustment the second flight of the rebuild. It was deliberately kept low and close for the benefit of the camera.

Not that evident in the video but as expected it definitely flies more nose up at slow speed and with care can be made to touch down 'tail before nose'.