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Building Tips and technical articles. => 1/2 A building. => Topic started by: Larry Lindburg on January 07, 2018, 12:25:23 PM
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Anyone with experience to tell which engine enables a Ringmaster Bipe to balance/fly properly. The Sterling plans designate no center of gravity.
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No answer for your question, but if you want to fly inverted, I'd thick you'd be better off with the golden bee wouldn't you?
Just a suggestion.
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To the best of my knowledge/recollection/whatever, and based on what was available when I was a kid in the late 1970's:
Beyond the obvious:
- The Babe Bee tank has a pickup on the bottom, which makes it good for free flight but not CL. The Golden Bee has a separate pickup tube, which you can locate on the bottom or on the outside of the circle without moving the fill/overflow vents
- The Babe Bee (at least my examples) have a cylinder with a single bypass port, the Golden Bee has two. This is probably subject to variation, and if the engine's been around for a while you have no way of knowing what it has
Whatever you use, rebuild it, and make sure it's clean clean. Then make sure any fuel that goes into it is clean clean. A bit of dust that goes right through the needle valve of a 40 without being noticed is a honkin' big rock to an 049, and has an equal chance of screwing up the needle or the reed. Reeds matter, which is why there's so many options. I'd start with something new from Cox International, or a Davis teflon reed, and go from there. Hand-cutting reeds from brass shim stock works really well just long enough to fool you into thinking you're a genius.
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The Babe Bee and Golden Bee were both SINGLE bypass engines.
All the rest; Black Widow, Super Bee and TeeDee were DOUBLE bypass engines.
It didn't take long for EVERYBODY to see how easy it was to upgrade ALL engines to double bypass.
The creation of the Super Bee made the P-40 from a taxi-trainer to an airplane that could fly.
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Please let me rephrase: based on weight of the engine, which engine is better suited to the Bipe? Does anyone have this experience? My Babe Bee is dual ported with polished killer crank and turns 17000. I know a trick to let them run inverted. The gold bee has the same set up and rpm. I usually use Merlin or Nelson plugs on my Coxes.
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The Babe Bee and Golden Bee were both SINGLE bypass engines.
All the rest; Black Widow, Super Bee and TeeDee were DOUBLE bypass engines.
Oops -- thanks for the correction. I must have swapped out the piston/cylinder on the Golden Bee at some long-ago time without realizing it.
The "product" engines (the ones that went into plastic planes) are a grab-bag of different cylinder arrangements -- I suspect that things changed by manufacture date, and were tailored to the plane they went into. I have a bucket full of them (literally: a cousin in high school trolled all his friends for engines and gave them to me; since he was a basketball player and BMOC he got LOTS of them). That's probably where the Golden Bee cylinder came from, because I sure never had enough money to buy a 'fancy' engine new.
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Please let me rephrase: based on weight of the engine, which engine is better suited to the Bipe? Does anyone have this experience? My Babe Bee is dual ported with polished killer crank and turns 17000. I know a trick to let them run inverted. The gold bee has the same set up and rpm. I usually use Merlin or Nelson plugs on my Coxes.
So it sounds like your question is mostly concerning cg then?
I'd so, and you have both engines, it would make sense to me to try the golden bee first and see how the cg feels in flight. If it feels too forward with the Golden Bee, then switching to your hopped up baby bee makes sense.
The other order of engine/flight testing seems slightly more risky to me.
Goodluck, the plane looks nice.
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I flew the Ringmaster Bipe with a Golden Bee. All Sterling's beginner kits are nose heavy for obvious reasoning. I learned to fly inverted with this plane. When the power cuts be prepared for the cartwheel landing. These aren't going to glide like a built up winged 1/2A. The later Sterling kits offered the one piece Nylon mount which was a bit heavier than the 2 piece aluminum mount. Almost all of these planes fly better with the landing gear removed. The Bipe though needs a little attention in the strut area and top wing connection. It will break during these landings. Sterling die cut square holes in the upper wing where the fuse struts were splayed into. Epoxy here is beneficial, however the strut is then glued to the fuse which also becomes a breaking point. Careful fitment and glue joints here will promote longevity.
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I just shorten the nose...
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Larry,
Check your in box. I sent a .pdf of the CAD plans.
Have fun, Pat
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Thanks, Pat. This will answer my question.
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Hey Larry. I could feel the heat from my house HB~>. Don't pick up any prop screws I picked us up 100 of them. I got both the regular allen and the button allen bolts both in 1". If I see you in Iowa city I'll give them to you there if not let me know I am off work right now we can get together.
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Mr. Larry,
Can you explain your trick for allowing the Babe Bee to fly inverted?
Thanks in advance.
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Mr. Larry,
Can you explain your trick for allowing the Babe Bee to fly inverted?
Thanks in advance.
If you could figure out how to keep the fuel from dribbling out, you could just mount it sideways, with the "bottom" of the tank pointed to the outside of the circle. I have not tried this -- I want to hear Larry's version, and I want pictures, too!
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The trick is as old as the hills or at least 1956. Run tubing from one vent to the other vent. The tubing must be routed beneath the tank or crankcase. Notch a small V in the tubing at the bottom. Now the babe bee has a stunt tank. My other trick with the babe bee is to drill a hole in the tank and route the pick up tube to an external tank. That mod might be called cheating. I am having problems compressing photos but I will try to post a photo later.
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Thanks Mr. Larry.
No pictures required...I understand exactly how you do it.