RC India

Hey Everyone!
Something cool happened today at the field that inspired me to post about the mods I add to my planes.

As opposed to the patiently and elaborately constructed beauties built by lots of people here, the airplanes I build are crappy looking 6-hour builds that are just too eager to fly. As a result they are small, highly agile (i.e. unstable) and prone to crashing. Also, the field I fly at has a thick cover of shrubs which makes normal landing impossible. I usually have to do a harrier close to ground and then just cut-off throttle or land on tall grass. I used to end up with scratched-up props, bent control surfaces and degraded servos.

All that changed when I added some drop-down antlers to my E-SPPAD 2.5D. These are made of thick gel and ball-pen refills. They act both as shock absorbers and landing skids. This is what I witnessed today. My E-SPAD lost control at 12-14 feet (as I was distracted by a mob of goat herders) and nose dived. I managed to shut throttle just before it hit the ground. But, instead of crashing into a heap, it bounced up to 4 feet, traced a beautiful parabolic curve and landed safely! Not a single scratch.

Below are some pics of the plane and the mods.

that's a nice mod! will add that to my planes, as they always tend to nose in on takeoff... (epecially the tail draggers)

Here's how the parts can be assembled.

Let's start with the tail section. The tail has two plastic alignment rods that go into the 4mm coro holes of the padding on the spine of the wing. Gel refills fit firmly in 4mm coroplast. After that two small nut-bolts are used to firmly attach the tail to the wing. It works perfectly as if the wing and tail were cut out of a single sheet.

Now the control surfaces. The elevator and ailerons have tube hinges. These work better than tape hinges and are much easier to make. See the pictures for details.
The vertical stabilizer stands on 4" tall vertical support rods that go through the holes of the coroplast fin.
The linkage rods have parts from the full plastic set from RCB.

This little monster can be easily dismantled within 2 minuites for compact storage or transport. Also, as can be noticed, I have hollowed out a lot of coro to reduce weight for the new 160W system. The hollow parts were covered with thick plastic sheets. The result: see-through wings!

I hope builders would share on this thread the mods and build techniques they use on their birds so everyone can learn.

Great idea swapnil.
please post some close up pics, of how you dismantle those things.
In what way they can be attached or dismantled ?

Swizera, I've posted the pics in #2 and #3 above as they were blank.

I usually go to the fields in my i10 and it's a long, slow drive. So I thought a 2 min. assembly at the field is okay if it means I can take all the stuff in a two-wheeler.

Well, my  planes never nose-in. I always chuck them head first towards the sky!  ;D
It's the landing part where those long legs really help. All you have to do is a nice 60⁰-70⁰ harrier close to the ground and then you can just cut-off the throttle.

swapnil....thats really asome....

please please post a Video of the modifications that you did.....

it will be of great help for newbies and slow learners like me..... :hatsoff:

Video? I think the pictures I posted explain the mechanism quite well. If you want elaborate details about a particular mod just name it and I'd try to explain in depth.

I usually go flying alone so there's no video of it in action yet. But I'd try and post a spot-landing video ASAP.