Walter
I'm not to the point of being able to balance the plane yet. I just pulled the tape and its not looking good for shooting clear this weekend here in SE Michigan. The only decent day is going to be Saturday, and naturally that is my annual trip to the Toledo RC show. I'll put some pics here on what I have done. Windy advised me I was going to have a nose heavy condition and recommended I get the motor aft as much as I could. He recommended cutting the nose off some to go along with it with the Saito .72 up front. First I should mention my rational for the motor was that it was the cheapest big block I could get. I don't really know if I want to fly big block planes or not. I have no ego problems needing one for that reason and am only an advanced flier and have no desire to progress to expert. I have the Vector 40 pretty well zeroed in with aerotiger .36 power and its as sweet a package as I could want and what I plan to fly in competition this year. The Strega is really exploratory for what I may or may not want to do next year. I also have an electric project to evaluate that to see if that is the path I want to take. I fly RC also and the Saito .72 is just a really sweet motor for the size range planes I fly. So the cost of a Saito that if I don't decide to fly big block can be dropped right into any of a number of RC planes I have or a custom stunt motor at twice the price... well, the Saito was my answer. Only reason I even decided to go there was the Strega ARC. If I did decide to fly it in competition I wanted appearance points, and I wanted to evealuate 3 new paint systems for me: hivh volume low pressure gun, water soluble latex paint, and Klasscote clear epoxy. I guess this is a testamony to Windy's article on ARF/ARC's in Control Line's current issue.
I'm using the ultraproducts manifold and venturi system. They are not shown in the first pic but you can see the cutout for them. I'm using a clamp mounting system for the motor so I can go to other motor options if I decide to stay in big blocks but want to use another power option. The first pic shows the motor in the plane mounted as far aft as it would go in the mounts, which is 3/4 inch aft. I looked at doing a shaft extention but was not comfortable with not having a jam nut on a 4 stroke. So as much as I didn't want to get into that much of a project I decided to cut the nose off. I removed about 3/4 inch. Prior to the cut I cut the nose ring as has been mentioned in other threads on the plane. After cutting 3/4 inch off the cowling and mounting the nose ring back in I wound up with the esthetic you see in pic #2.
Pic #3 shows the fuel tank solution I came up with. The original tank floor is removed. A 6 ounce sullivan clunk tank fits vertically just right. I cut out the angled air guides that are in the orignal and glue them to the new tank floor (which is the lower horizontal plywood member of the arc) to keep the tank from shifting laterally. It doesn't look like I'll need much of a shim. If I do I'll have to improvise. Its pretty close as is though to the needlevalve level. The spinner worked out to be about 2 1/4 inches. That is one thing you might want to use to determine exactly where you are going to place your cut if you decide to go that route. I'm not sure the weight of your motor vs a rojet .76 that Windy is flying. He felt the plane was tail heavy with his motor and put lighter and thinner elevators on it after flying it. Tail weight not necessarily being a bad thing in my application I elected to stay with the orignals. I obviously changed the canopy and the rudder. Windy mentioned the rudder needs to be larger and a Rabe to deal with the big diameter 2 blade props of the big blocks. I have gone that route also. Hope this helps. If all 3 pics don't upload, I'll put them in seperate posts.
Bob Branch
Topic: Strega Arc (Read 2807 times)
