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Building Tips and technical articles. => Building techniques => Topic started by: Perry Rose on April 11, 2025, 09:14:38 AM
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A new use for an old design.
After suffering the departure of the entire nose section in flight I was left with a good wing and tail asm. I didn't want to build another fuselage so I copied, somewhat, the fuselage of an old R/C design called the Swizzle Stick. I designed it for the Brodak 40 as it's about the same weight as the OS .25LA. First flight was a vibration event but had lots of performance. I installed the .25 and it was more manageable. I tweaked the flaps for wings level flight but went too far. Next time out I'll have a tweak-a-thon to level the wings.
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Great idea Perry. The only suggestion, where I to build one. would be to close in the top and bottom of the motor mount fuselage with cross grained 1/16 balsa. It would stiffen up the tail plane area a lot without adding much weight.
I have many found hours of flying the old RC Swizzle Stick. Your CL version looks really good. Now, I wonder if it would qualify as a profile?????
John M.
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The nose under the tank is filled in and attached to the wing leading edge and the balsa extends under the wing to the spar. I wanted to pinch the aft ends together but a knot prevented it. The engine sits on an aluminum New Mexico Universal Engine Mounting Plate. The 40 only had the sticks to hold it and it shook them pretty good. The push rod prevented me from adding any balsa to the aft section of the fuselage.
This is a picture of the fuselage sticks as they were cut out of 2 pieces of 1/2 x 2 1/2 x 30 pieces of pine tack glued together. The wing sits in the cut out section the stab sits on top of the sticks.
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I've had a similar idea but done nothing yet. Swizzle stick was our club plane for a few years. Racing them and combat were a hoot.
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Perry, can you post pictures of the underside of the airplane to further illustrate the build method?