Hi Ty,
 
Thanks for the reply. I'm sure skilled modelers like you and others will be able to come up with some cool ideas. :-)
 
My default idea is to use the inside of the upper fuselage to "lock" in the wing.
 
1. Use my 2 1/2" circular saw blade to saw two 1/2 circles (1 1/4" depth) into the middle of the 1/2" fuselage. One over the high point of the wing, and one near the rear over the wing.
 
2. Make a ply "center" rib with two 2 1/2" dia. 1/2 humps to slide into #1 above. My guess is 1/8" ply should be OK for this center rib, with lightning holes. It will be trapped inside the fuselage and the force will be spread out over several inches?
 
3. Put thin ply doubler's on the outside of the fuselage to envelope the above inserts (for the bolts below).
 
4. Drill holes into the sides of the fuselage through each hump for 10-24 Nylon bolts going into 10-24 inserts on one side of the fuselage.
 
5. The lower part of the fuselage under the wing will be glued to the wing and come off with it.
 
I think the above should be very solid in all three force directions on the wing/fuselage joint. (I could be wrong, according to my lovely wife: I have been wrong before, many times! ;-)
 
If you see any problems with this idea please feel free to point them out! (please be gentle, I am a Virgin, doing this with a profile for the very 1st time!  )
 
Regards, 

Check with Pat King,  he is in the profiles.  He has plans for a Ringmaster trainer with a removable wing.  It is rubber banded but I don't see why you couldn't use nylon bolts instead.  It is a very simple attachment method. 

Hi Ty,

If your referring to that nice guy from the north rain country, the one with the great sense of humor and kind heart, .... then your right, he REALLY needs a take-apart airplane. A few months ago, after a contest, I watched him pack his environmentally beautiful Prius. It was an adventure! He was on a 1,000+ mile vacation trip with his lovely wife, all their luggage, all his model gear, AND his large one piece plane. .... I offered a saw but he did not take it. TRADITIONS die hard in CL! 

BTW: I think that the Prius is a good name for this vehicle. This may explain why:

"Prius" is not a verb but a Latin comparative adjective or adverb, the neuter nominative singular form of the adjective whose corresponding masculine and feminine nominative singular forms are prior. (see also Latin declension - Irregular adverbs and their comparative and superlative forms) with meanings "ahead, in front, leading; previous, earlier, preceding, prior; former; basic".

A Toyota spokesperson once stated that "Toyota chose this name because the Prius vehicle is the predecessor of cars to come.

I must confess to a mild bias. We are a happy Toyota products family. All three built right here in North America. :-)

Regards, 

Hi Ty and all y'all, ..... ( Southerner's, please teach me how to write that correctly. :-)

Thanks for the ideas. I should have mentioned that this is a full size (620 sq in WA) electric powered Classic profile with flaps.

I like many of the ideas so far. If I had the extra energy (just too lazy ;-), and started with a clean sheet of paper I would make this profile (and all CL planes) with a CF tube spar and a two piece wing. This would make it very easy to have this spar go through a tight hardwood hole in the fuselage. Better still would be a stub wing a few inches on each side glued to the fuselage. This would have a female tube inside to receive the male CF tube wing spar. This would be the lightest, strongest and easiest way to do it. And like others have said, having a two piece wing and tube spars is a +. :-)

Please keep the ideas coming. Who knows, maybe we can all have take-apart planes to fit into our fuel efficient cars in the future. ;-) 

Regards, 


EDITORIAL (off thread topic), Please read at your own risk 

I hate to break my own rule and participate in keeping a thread off track, but I can't help it. Ty, Now I know how a Texas Bass feels rising up to that "Popper", he knows better but he just can't help himself! ;-)

Ty, yours is a Cute name joke on Kia but they too actually have a good reason for their name.

It is copyrighted as a made up name but it comes from some Chinese Characters that are roughly translated to mean: "Arising from Asia". It also has a meaning "Bringer of Victory" and also "Unique".

I think we Americans would do well to take all of Asia very seriously as competitors in the world market. I have dealt with them for years and can tell you they are very smart, well educated, focused and they think waaaay ahead of our very "short time frame" thinking patterns. South Korea makes excellent products and when they unite the North and the South into one non Communist country patterend after the present day South they will be even more formidable as a competitor.

Regards, 

Years ago I converted a one piece 2 meter glider wing to a two piece.  I epoxied brass tubing into the center section and joined it with music wire.  Kind of a redneck method but it worked well and never broke. 

Hi Rudy,

I'm actually building a take-apart electric profile at this time. It is a "40-size" and the motivation is for something to take with you that takes very little space in the car, especially if you're travelling far. Here in South Africa we mostly have the Nats in Johannesburg, where I live. We have regular entries from places like Cape Town that is 1000 miles away. It's actually a lot cheaper to fly than drive right now, and this was the main motivation for the project which I started planning last year. I've drawn so many plans, but being a "suck it & see" engineer, I eventually thought that it will be better to just start building and see how it goes.

My plans are still being developed as I go, but I'll post some photo's soon. I basically have used a fixed box between the spars with the bellcrank in the inner wing, and this goes through the fuz, and the outer wing bolts onto this like the Yatsenko models. The fuz has 1/16" ply right up to the flap hinge line where it splits, and the inner wing flap is connected to the bellcrank. The outer wing flap has a slot in it and connects to the inner flap as it gets bolted on. The pushrod is on the inside of the fuz and I use r/c horns and clevises to getto the elevators.

I was going to post someting on the electric part of this forum next week, and I really thought that I would get many crazy remarks about why anyone would want to build a take-apart profile in the first place. (I'm quite used to the crazy remarks anyway!) I'm now feel quite good that someone else also considered doing this, so let's see what comes out of it. I've made one of the wings and the basic fuz, so in a day or so, I'll report back and let you know if I think it will work. I do have a concern about holding the fuz thightly between the wings. This was also my motivation for using electric with virtually no vibration, and of course the lack of fuel and oil getting into all of the joints.

BTW, I'm using foam wings with balsa covered leading and trailing edges with cap strips. All of the aluminum joiners can be made with basic hand tools except for a rod that needs a thread in it and this needs a good straight hole right through to start with. Anyway, let me see how I go over the next few days, and I'll post something again.

Keith R

Robert, looks very well thought out.  Also I think it could work with two peice wing with a carbon tube joiner.  Hope to see it in Tuscon.

Robert, is the fuselage bottom just balsa or is there something else in there for extra strength?  Like maybe a plywood keel?  Great idea and very nicely done.