Veron Aeronca Champ - RC Conversion

Gary's building a Guillow's Cub and will be converting it to RC, see: www.modelchat.org.uk/forum/model-buildin...uper-cub-24inch-span
In a recent Chat Room conversation, I said I'd done a similar thing with a Veron Aeronca Champion a few years back and could post pics if they might be of help. He responded in the affirmative, so here it is.

The story goes back five years when, with the advent of lightweight RC Flightpacks, Ian Pallister (the then BMFA Scale Indoor Rep) introduced Scale Indoor RC into one of his BMFA Scale Comps. (We will be holding the first Nationals Scale RC Indoor event at Notingham in April this year - see February 2014 BMFA News for more details). I'd built the Veron Aeronca Champion a few years earlier for a rubber scale duration event, but I could never find the right combination of prop and rubber to make it perform well - it either hit the roof, or landed early. So, with an available ready built model, all I needed was radio gear. Barry Beech of Mainly Models in Hitchin came to the rescue with a newly introduced Vapor indoor RC model and offered me two ex-demo models at a price I couldn't refuse. His only stipulation was that I fly them first before I trashed them for their radio gear. This I did and as a consequence, I've rebuilt the one I destroyed for the Aeronca and I still fly them both from time to time!

The plan for the Aeronca can be found here: www.outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=758. Mine is finished in my favourite scale model colour of silver (it's the lightest and most opaque pigment) in markings of the late Bill Bowker's machine that he kindly let me have a go in at Old Warden.

This what the (much repaired) Vapor looks like now:




and this is what the RC Aeronca looks like:






To be continued!

I cut the Vapor fuselage just in front of and just behind the RC Pack and cut the motor pack off the front. The latter was bound and epoxied to the front of the former and both introduced on their now short carbon stick to the front end of the Aeronca. I'd fixed a plywood strip at the back of the engine compartment with a hole in it to accept the rear and of the flight pack and made up a small plate to go over the front end from the lid of a Baked Bean can. Two 12BA nuts and bolts hold the assembly in position:

interesting conversion Andy.
what does it fly like.

Thin wire ( 0.020" I think) ends were fitted to carbon control rods (1mm?) with heat shrink. The tailplane spar was split down the middle and a rudder cut from the fin. Both were hinged with thread a la control line models of the 50s and 60s. The control horns were cut from the same Baked Bean tin and again fixed with small nuts and bolts. The formers at the rear of the fuselage were knocked out and holes cut in the tissue to let the controls rods through - the back end of the model was still adequately stif as the longerons, uprights and cross pieces were still in place.

The back end:

The motors & gearing in those look like the tail motors off some commercial heli's .... am I correct?
Mike bought a Walkera heli at the 2012 Nat's & had nothing but trouble with tail motors burning out. After some research it turned out that they had a very short life expectancy, is this the case with these motors?

Pol.

How does she fly - not very well at first. The Vapor weighs about 16 gm, the Aeronca about 60. The latter therefore flies a lot faster than the former. The pitch of the prop was much too fine for the Aeronca, so I twisted more pitch into it and after about four iterations, off she went. It's a very low powered machine taking about three or four circuits to gain height, but it does fly in a 'Scale' manner and she does look good in the air - I'll get some video at the next meeting I go to.

She also managed second place in her first comp, so all in all, I consider the experiment a success.

Don't know the answer to that one Pol, although I do believe the motors originated as pager/mobile phone vibrators. As far as longevity is concerned, I have at least 8 models with similar motors and all have been flying on and off for up to five years without a failure.