Fuselage and tail coming together

Made some progress on the fuselage this week.  So far I've added the stringers, installed a tray for both the ESC and the battery, installed mounting brackets for servos, and filled in the tail section with spider foam.  Also got the vertical and horizontal stabilizers framed out.  Some pics below:

Fuselage after the stringers were added

Another view of the fuse with stringers

 The 4 tail section quadrants are filled with foam and then carved/sanded to shape. I had some extra spider foam from some carbon fiber glider projects left over so used that.  I hot-wire cut the basic shapes out, and then used a razor and sand paper to get the final shape

Here I've added a tray near the top of the fuse to mount the ESC. It mounts upside down (so will be accessible from a hatch in the bottom.  I'm using a Castle Creations Ice 75 ESC.

Here's a view of the battery tray.  This is looking from below the fuse through the opening where the removable hatch will be.  The black stuff on the tray is a soft rubber (tool drawer liner) that helps keep the battery from sliding around.  The ESC lies below this tray.

Another view of the ESC and battery trays

Here's the horizontal stabilizer and elevator being framed up on the building board.  This plane has a huge horizontal stabilizer...it's as if they didn't understand the benefits of higher aspect ratio wings back then.

A view of the stabilizer and fuselage next to each other

I taped the tail surfaces to the fuselage temporarily just to get an idea of what it looks like together.  First time it's actually starting to look like a plane! 

The instructions have started getting a little ambiguous a this point in the build...there are some general guidelines, but not much in the way of details, so I'll have to take some liberties for the next few steps.  I plan to install the control rods for the elevator/rudder next, as well as a power plug that allows me to effectively unplug the battery without flipping the plane upside down.  Then I'll build the dummy motor (it's made out of balsa and doubles as another hatch and access to the real motor up front.  After that I'll work on the landing gear and upper wing cabanes, and finally sheeting the fuselage.

I'm planning on using the color/paint scheme from Albatross D.II. 1729/16 flown by Hptm. Schmickaly (shown below).  I like the natural wood fuselage of this plane and it didn't have the complicated lozenge patterns for the wings that are on many of them.  There are several other neat color schemes out there, too, so I haven't completely decided yet.

Moving from Wings to Fuselage

Finished sanding the wings last week, and now started the fuselage.  So far I've got all the formers in place with the four keels (top, bottom, left, and right).

Finished wings shown below.  They'll just need to have the servos mounted and then covered.

The fuselage is built in two halves.  The left half is built on the building board with half of the formers, the top, bottom, and left keels, and ply-risers in the front section.

Another view of the left half of the fuselage.

Here's the whole fuselage (minus stringers) after adding the right-half formers and right keel.

View from inside:

Another view of the fuselage.  Next step is to add the firewall/front former and the stringers.

I've realized now that the motor I have for this model is probably over-powered (E-flite power 46), but I'd rather have too much than too little power.  I will have to cut out either the top or bottom keel between the first former/firewall and the second former in order to be able to install/remove the motor.  The motor will mount to and behind the first former/firewall.  Next post I can show pics of this setup.

Both wings done

Completed the ailerons on the upper wing last week, and finished the lower wing last night.  Next step will be sanding - need to sand the leading edges to shape (they're just 3/8" square stock right now) and make sure everything is nice and smooth and ready for covering later on.

Upper wing with ailerons complete

Closer view of the upper wing left half

Lower wing with main spar, ribs, and trailing edge

Lower wing is complete

Upper Wing

The Albatross kit arrived last week from AerodromeRC and I've started building the upper wing.  Below are a series a pics showing my progress...the wing is mostly finished tonight, except for sanding, install of the servo bays, and the ailerons.  It's gone together fairly easily, although the fit on the laser-cut parts could be a little better.

Kit arrived, taking a look at all the plans and parts. It comes with a stack of laser-cut balsa, two rolls of plans (wings on one, fuselage and tail on the other), and some neoprene rubber pieces which are to be used for the tires.

Here I've got the wing plans tacked down to a ceiling tile (for pinning) and some clear shelf paper over it all.  Had to cut the plans to fit on the 2x4ft ceiling tile, but fortunately both wings fit.

First night of building.  About half the ribs are in, and the lower spars and wing tips are in place.

End of the first night...most of the ribs are in place except a few at the wing tips.

End of the second night, the wing is basically complete, except for ailerons, servo bays, and final sanding.  Next up is the lower wing, which is built in two parts (each half bolts to the fuselage). 

Pietenpol AirCamper

After I convince my wife to move here (house in friendswood on a private runway with its own hangar in the backyard), my next project will be to build a full size Pietenpol AirCamper

Waiting for stuff...

While I wait for some materials (balsa, hardware,etc.) to come in for the Albatross, I've been working on getting my UAV working properly. The UAV is a parkzone radian (powered glider) with an APM2 autopilot system (from 3D robotics: http://www.diydrones.com/notes/ArduPilot) The DIYdrones group (www.diydrones.com) holds periodic contests for UAV tasks and the latest was one to fly out at least 300m, image something interesting on the ground, fly home, and repeat 5 times.

 Here is a link to my initial tries (10mb zip file) at this...images and kmz files that can be opened in Google Earth to show the flight path.

 I got 10 flights in this morning and all succesfully imaged the fish-shaped sandtrap nearby, but only 2 of the flight logs were recorded. I'll give it a try next time. Below is one of the images and a screenshot of the flight path from google earth:

The Albatross and it's predecessor

I'm intending this to chronicle the build of a 54" wingspan rc airplane model of the WW1 Albatross DVa, shown here.  It's a kit from AerodromeRC.  I've received the kit but am waiting for some additional balsa stock to arrive.



I will be using the motor (Eflite power 40) from a previous RC plane, a P40 Warhawk, that I built as a kid in the late 80's.  It was originally nitro powered, but I converted it to electric a couple months ago.  I crashed it on it's second outing when the receiver lost the signal.  Of course I managed to video the whole thing:

  

P40 Crash Movie from David Hertzog on Vimeo.

Stay tuned.  The balsa I'm waiting for should arrive this week and then I'll start building next week.