An EDF Concorde - in Depron.

The first trial run with all the fans installed.

It makes an interesting sound.
Next job is to add the full length ducts as this will stiffen the wing quite a bit.

it does sound like a bag of old bolts a bit.

still it all works so lets see it finished and flying.

Just looking very exciting..... doesn't leave you much room to sleep though!!

A plan or plane is coming together,how exiting.Will it be ready to maiden the same time as Garrys Lancaster?

Eric
Ah! I see.
I have plenty of connecting wires - many salvaged from dead or rewired LiPos.

Today's progress. The ducts glued on.

I would like to have done more but repairs to my daughters house took priority.
The alarming bit was shaping the duct to fit the underside of the wing. They were a bit different!
It will be 'interesting' to see if the wing each produces the same lift!

A bit of a disaster!!!!!
The LH inboard fan has stopped working, completely dead. So some skin has to be cut out!

Easy to test volts ok at the +/- inputs on the ESC.
A bit of testing showed the fan is fine so it is the 20A ESC that has failed. Typical sods law - it would be much easier to replace the fan!
At least I can get on with installing the connections to the battery while a replacement is delivered.
As the ESCs are all identical is raise the question why. Even at full whack the fans are only drawing 12A each so I was not expecting ESC trouble.

Actually all 3 were removed in order to test the motor on another ESC.
The most difficult bit will be un-soldering and then re-soldering the pos & neg solid conductors. Needs a big iron to melt the solder and the Depron is very close by!
They were originally soldered on with the ESC loose on the bench.

The solid battery wires in the fuselage.

The 6 wires that need to be connected.

The 'capacitor' connector.

The three solid wires in each connector run alongside each other and are pressed together by the screws. This means little or no current actually passes through the connector itself.
The capacitor (the same type as in the ESCs) is soldered across the the connector.
There will be another capacitor where the flexible leads for the battery are joined to the solid wires.

Hmmmm
The duff ESC extracted. Clearly a MOSFET has blown.

This was the first ESC I modified and was used on all the initial testing including when I 'cooked' an EDF running it on a 3s which might well have briefly over loaded it.
I will do some extended tests on one of the installed fans to check the temperature of everything (including the capacitor). If it can run on the ground at full power for say 60 seconds without getting too hot it should be ok!

The saga continues.
As the ESCs were exposed on the LH fans (due to the inboard ESC failure) the idea was to do an extended test (up to a minute at full power) on the outer fan to check how warm everything got with first a short (12") battery lead and then with the full 40", paying particular attention to the ESC capacitor which gets hot if it has to absorb to many input voltage spikes.
This is what happened on the first run up to full power! (but still on a 2s)

No blades at all on the left hand fan - they are spread all over the room!
I have no idea why it happened but it is a concern.
These fans are an 'all glued' assembly so are non repairable! Replacement ordered.
So far I have ordered 6 sets of fans and ESCs and it is still not fully functional!
Perhaps I should have built an XB70 Valkyrie instead!

With a bit of a struggle I have just about got back to where is was!
New fan and ESC.

The RH hand ESC has been modified with an extra heat sink. The two chips under it seem to get quite warm so the other ESCs will be modified also. These extra heat sinks will be exposed to the top surface air stream.
I had intended to use an Orange 6ch rx with integrated 3 axis stability however as delivered (Nov!) it simply would not bind.
HK eventually accepted the fault but of course they are now out of stock!

It will get there eventually!

Now finally I am very slightly ahead of where I was!
All the top heat sinks in place and the wing skin restored.

The more I look at it the more I worry about the weight of all those servo wires.
I think it would be possible for all the reds and blacks from the servos to be directly connected to the ESCs and only the four signal wires run forward to the radio along with just one red and black for power. (6 cores instead of 12)
Maybe I worry too much.