Hi Doc,
Now that we have our own thread I hope we can all talk more about take-apart CL planes. The future is clear, smaller cars and shops. Take-aparts and ARC/ARFs go together well.
BTW: my 50+ number is a little heavy on the +. Like many of us, I'm just in denial!
...... It runs in our family, my mother was still 39 when I was well into my 40s!
RE: the two small CF tubes, above and below the BC, the 1st time we used this was in a 1/4 Midget RC Pylon design in the 1970s. We did not have to clear any BC, we just thought it would be light and strong. We used FG arrow shafts for the spars and the take-apart system. They worked great. These planes were put under more stress than our CLPA planes so I am sure it would work well. I think Bob Z. has already done it in one of his many take-apart (T/A) CL designs. I talked to Bob H. and he is interested in trying it. I wish I was not so lazy, I would make one from scratch myself. ;-)
If you have seen the clever Yatsenko tube design sold by Jim at CLC then you can envision the two CF tubes (long male tube inside a larger female tube in ea. wing). This would be even easier to install and use than the Yat. unit. All you would need is a locator key in the aft section of the wing and a simple Nylon thumb bolt (inside the fuse.) to hold in ea. wing from sliding off the male tubes. The aft key could even be one of those waaaay cool incidence adjustors we use in our RC pattern planes that allows micro adj. of the incidence of ea. individual wing. This would allow perfect trim adj. :-)
If we could find close to 1/4" square CF tubes it would be even better. Then we could just slip the female part right over our wing spars. This would be a strong and easy construction method. I think we could still do this with the round ones, rather than lace them on like the Yat. method.
RE: your BC in the middle of the large tube. That would work, but I think that it would not be needed, per reasons on a prior post. But once more CL people start thinking in terms of T/A designs I think that we will find many different solutions to this.
Larry Wong (in SFO) just sent me a photo of his excellent solution. It is a nice wooden version of the metal cast design where a square unit the size of the inside of the fuse. is mated with small bolts to a square cast unit in ea. wing. The metal casting units are beautiful, but I think way overkill in strength for our relatively small planes. Larry's wood units are more than strong enough, and they mate very easily with the wing and fuse wooden structure. It is also very light and almost free, ...... compared to the $100 for the AL cast unit from Australia, a little less from China.
Kim's T/A thread on SH has great photos and how-to instructions. It shows the CLC version.
Regards,