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On the bench and ready for assembly!
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The wheel pants are crazy sick at 1.5oz
each. When you pick them up you don't
feel any weight in your hands. |
Again, the quality of the materials and
workmanship on these FLY-FAN models is
extraordinary... way above the norm.
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| I drilled a hole 5/8" from the bottom of
the landing gear, for the axle. I
dremeled out as wide of an opening as
possible in the bottom of the wheel pant
so that the wheel doesn't rub when it
has a side load on it. I cut a plate out
of 1/8" aircraft ply to stiffen up the
area where I will attach the wheel pant
to the landing gear. |
I mounted up the landing gear and I'm
ready to glue in the ply plate, drill
holes and install the 4-40 blind nuts
from
microfasteners and also bolt on the
DUBRO 3/16" axles along with the
4" DUBRO Tread Lite tires, using the
DUBRO 3/16" collars. I could have
gone with 4-1/2" tires, as well... might
have made for softer landings. But,
these are an okay size, too. |
Here's a shot of the ply plates glued in
with
30min Z-POXY. |
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I like to notch a slot in the wheel pant
for the axle; rather than drill a hole.
This way the pant can be removed without
removing the tires. Once I finish making
the notch with the dremel I drill two
1/8" holes through the landing gear for
the 4-40 bolts I'll be using to mount
the wheel pants. Then I'll hold the
wheel pant where I want it to stay and
I'll put an 1/8" drill bit through the
holes in the landing gear and then drill
some marking starter holes in the wheel
pant. After that I'll remove the pant
and finish drilling out the 1/8" holes,
and then follow that up by drilling them
out wider to accept the 4/40 blind nuts.
I like to glue the blind nuts in with
thin penetrating ZAP CA. That way
they won't fall off when I mount up the
pants. Make sure to let enough time go
by for that CA to fully cure, or kick
it. Because if you ZAP the 4-40 bolt in
that blind nut... it ain't never coming
out.
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| Here's a look at the wheel and wheel
pant mounted up... from the under side.
I always end up cutting the 4-40 bolts
down to 5/8". The 1/2" bolts work but
don't' go past the blind nut, and the
3/4" bolts work, but are close to the
tire. I gotta remember to call
microfasteners and see if I can talk
John into carrying 5/8" length bolts. As
you can see I used
Pacer thread locker on the 4-40
bolts. That in combination with the
sealing washers (available in several
sizes at
microfasteners.com for you guys that
haven't started using these gems yet)
means these bolts will never come out
unless you wrench them out. |
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| Although I don't show it in the
pictures; I dremel flat spots where the
collar bolts hit the axle... for a
better connection. And, for you guys
tired of stripping out the headless
collar bolts... you can use 6-32 bolts
in their place. These are nice and
secure.
Microfasteners.com has 1/4 long 6-32
bolts that work, although sometimes you
have to use a second collar to space
things out so that the head of the 6-32
bolt doesn't rub on the wheel. A better
length on these would be around 5/32"...
I gotta talk to
microfasteners about carrying that
size, too. |
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| Here she is all finished up... the 4-40
bolts are stainless steel and the
sealing washers are stainless steel, as
well. I hope you can see some of the
excellent quality of this model through
these pictures. |
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| Okay... next it's mount up the engine
and setup the pull/pull rudder. Ain't
gonna be much, if any, technical work
required after that. |
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| Here's a pic of the FLY-FAN tail wheel.
It is an excellent tail wheel
assembly... very strong, very small,
very light. But, no tiller arm. Now, I
hear from people that only fly on grass
that you don't need a tiller arm for
grass ground handling. I don't know how
true that is, but I know that if you fly
on a paved runway, especially one with
fences that protect the pilot stations,
you'd better have good ground handling
via a controlled tail wheel tire! This
high quality FLY-FAN tail wheel assembly
could, of course, be modified to have
tire control... but I'd rather just get
something already made for that purpose. |
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"Knockoff" brand. Not the one you
want! |
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| The standard heigh and leaf style tail
wheel assemblies that have tiller arms
require some work, too. They require you
to setup a connection to the rudder that
gives perfect geometry to the system so
that you get great ground handling but
also so that you don't have a spring
fighting against the rudder servos in
flight. I rarely see this done right,
and doing it right on my planes is not
always a quick easy job. Enter the 3W
style tailwheel! These tailwheels are
strong, light, and high quality... and
come in two sizes. What makes them so
great is that they don't require any
hard to achieve geometry. You just bolt
them on and attach a 4-40 all-thread rod
to the bottom of your rudder. You end up
with great ground handling and no
unnecessary wear and tear on your servos
whilst flying. Fast, easy, works just
right, couldn't be better! Make sure
to get the 3W Original tailwheels with
the "Made In Germany" label! |
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| I needed to get some backing behind the
composite skin on the bottom of the
rudder. I dremeled out a little finger
hole first. Then I shaped two 3/16"
thick pieces of wood to fit on each side
of the roundy seam inside the rudder. I
used
5min Z-POXY
to glue those in... then I shaped two
pieces of 1/8" wood which I layered over
this now flat area to make my hard
point. I glued them in with
5min Z-POXY, as well. I was going
to put a blind nut in but forgot... so I
used a locknut inside and had to reach
in with the hemostats to hold it. Well,
yeah, I used the hemostats after I got
the nut started... and to get the nut
started I used a tiny drop of
ZAP
Thick
CA to attach the locknut to my finger,
then it was easy to get started. Don't
use too much CA or it can be an
amazingly painful experience to pry your
finger off the nut. Also notice the use
of the
DUBRO "threaded stud driver" to
screw in the length of 4-40 rod. |
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| This shot gives you a little idea about
how nice the finish is on the plane...
this is a picture shot directly at the
rudder. |
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Now that it has the landing gear,
fairings, tires, wheel pants, rudder,
tailwheel assembly, hatch, canopy,
rudder and tank trays, fiberglass
tunnels for the canisters, and cowl all
on the plane... I thought it might be a
good time to weigh it in that state.
9 lbs 14 oz
I haven't weighed it RTF, but if I
was to make an educated guess on the
final weight after flying it I would say
around 39 lbs. Heavier than I thought,
but flew good. |
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The cowl is carbon fiber and weighs
15oz. FLY-FAN
really seems advanced with the composite
materials. This plane is the
"Competition Special" version of which
FLY-FAN says:
"Light weight,
with superb strength and combined with a
marvelous surface, this model truly
represents state-of-the-art fiberglass
technology. The fuselage is being
manufactured from
kevlar-carbonfiber-fiberglass-herex in
vacuum technology. Wings and stabilizers
are likewise produced in
carbonfiber-fiberglass-herex. All ribs
as well as the main spar, have been
designed as balsa-carbonfiber-sandwich.
In order to reinforce the leading edge -
regularly a sensitive area of fiberglass
wings - we have applied a glass strip
along the full length of the leading
edge." |
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Here's my rudder tray setup. FLY-FAN had
already installed the carbon fiber tray
and cut out the slot for the servo tray.
So it was just a matter of dropping the
servo tray in place. I fitted a 3W
rudder arm on the servo tray to have
geometry options. This arm with all of
its optional mounting holes will get you
a perfect setup every time.
I used
microfasteners.com 2-56 x 1/2"
stainless steel machine screws to mount
the servos to the tray. And, I'll use
the microfasteners.com 4-40 stainless
steel bolts to mount the
DUBRO ball
links to the servo arms. I bought an
approx. $300 package of microfasteners.com nuts and bolts a
couple of years back... and I'm still
getting my money's worth out of them.
Oh and I used
Pacer thread locker from
ZAP to put in the little 2-56 bolts.
But, I'll use RTV sealant on the 4-40
bolts instead of thread locker. This to
keep any thread locker from penetrating
into the ball joints and stiffening them
up. Most places I use thread locker, but
for the ball joints I use RTV. |
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| The rudder is not overly large and it
didn't have alot of throw. So, I sanded
down the back of the fuse by around 1/8"
to get the throw I wanted. |
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I had only worked on the plane for about
6 hours total to this point... including
some graphics I applied. But, I spent
another 6 hours sanding down the stab
inner tubes and the stab tube to get it
to fit in the inner tubes. Anyway, shown
above is some of those
Kirbys Kustom
Vinyl Graphics that I applied. Graphics
are cool.
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I think my favorite part of getting a
plane RTF is putting on the graphics.
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| Gonna put a nice 3W logo over that Chuck
Connors jaw-line but other than that she looks pretty
nice. |
Ah, much better. Well, back to work... |
I drilled a hole for the rudder control
horn and there's no hard point there.
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| I enlarged the finger hole I made to put
the tailwheel hard point in place and
then glued in the rudder control horn
hard point. I used two pieces of 1/8"
hardwood on each side and a couple of
chunks of balsa in the middle . I used
ZAP
Thick
CA to glue each piece in place. |
After I drilled the hole through the
hard point and tapped it out with a
10/32 tap, I ran the 10/32 bolt through
the hole. Next I removed the bolt and
poured several drops of
ZAP
Thin
CA down each side of the hole to
stiffen up the balsa. Then I re-drilled
and re-tapped the hole. |
The stock 10/32 bolt that comes with the
rocketcity control horns was too short
for what I had in mind. So, I needed
some 10/32 all-thread to continue with
the control horn setup. Here's the scary
part, I had it stock. At that point it
dawned on me that I'm way too into this. |
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