Archive for July, 2008

Make Your Own Control Horns

Sunday, July 27th, 2008

Tired of spending hard-earned money on fancy control horns that don’t give you the leverage you need?

Dave North came up with the design shown here. (I suspect this a generic design that’s been floating around for awhile, but I’ve only seen it on Dave’s planes.) It’s scissor-cut from 1/64 light plywood, stiffened with a coat of cyanoacrylate glue and epoxied into place.

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Wild Wing Combat

Monday, July 21st, 2008

Gary, Mike and Dave in Wild Wing Combat

Mike Nadler, Gary Morgan, Dave North and I rolled and tumbled in ceaseless Wild Wing combat on a recent sunny day at Baylands.

Gary hadn’t yet built his Wild Wing so I shared my orange-finned WW with him and shot photos of the combat. In return, he took pictures later in the morning when I flew my new red-finned Wild Wing.

The result of this team photographic effort was nearly 400 pictures, about half by Gary and half by me.

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I Eat Carbon Rods!

Monday, July 14th, 2008

This little cutter makes quick work of sizing carbon fiber rods.Cutting carbon rods is a pain.

Compression cutters such as side cuts mash the ends of the rods, fanning out the fibers.

I’ve been using a little Dremel-driven abrasive cut-off wheel to do the job, but in the process it spews carbon dust, which is Very Bad For You.

The turtle-faced cutter pictured here nips right through carbon rods up to 1/8 inch in diameter, producing a clean cut with no squished ends. No dust, either, and it doesn’t take much pressure to lop through the carbon.

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Vertical Takeoff

Monday, July 7th, 2008

Dave takes off with the Boomer

The Boomers and Wild Wings we’re using for combat sessions have plenty of power, enough that it’s easy to climb straight up with a flick of the throttle.

So Dave North likes to show that they can take off from the grass: all you’ve got to do is point them up.

The usual Baylands breeze is a bit of a challenge to keep a less-than-7-ounce plane propped upright on the grass, but Monday the winds were gentle, so it was a snap for Dave to prove his point. Multiple times.

We’ve got the photos and a movie to prove it.

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A Versatile Cutting Tool

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Razor Tools

When you need to cut deeper than 1 inch, single-edge razors won’t reach. Nor will a typical hobby knife blade.

You need a box cutter, one with a slender snap-off-blade that extends out to about 3 inches.

(A single-edge razor reaches only half an inch. A #11 hobby blade has a 1-inch cutting depth.)

I noticed that Butch, the Boomer guy, regularly uses a slim utility knife, AKA box cutter, for carving jobs.

So when I decided to carve out a battery bay in the nose of a foam Wild Wing, a box cutter was my tool of choice. It’s long enough to slice out the bottom of the pocket, no problem.

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