Guys,
Now that I have the building board clear I wanted to do an update on my electric profile a kit bashed Tutor II. This was my first venture into electric stunt. I did the usual change out of the controls and hinges. I liked this ship because it had a deep over wing fuse section that allowed me to include a cutout to mount the battery through the fuse and back over the wing to correct the CG without adding weight. This worked fine but does put the vertical CG a little high. All in all it has been a fine ship and over the past three years I have learned a lot about electric power with it.

The ship has a few short falls that I think can be corrected to make it a more competitive profile machine. To me the big weakness is the thin aft fuse section that allows considerable twist to the tail section. This causes the ship to kinda go all over in the wind. To strengthen this I plan to add a new aft fuse outer skin from 1/64" plywood. I intend to add formers over the existing skin and increase the aft section to 1/2" all the way back (it is tapered to 3/8" now). I will use a little curvature to hopefully add stiffness and reduce the fuse drag a bit, also going to reduce the height about 1/2".

The other annoyance I have had with this ship is in the wind. It has a very long tail moment (18" hinge to hinge) it seems to want to turn around a point pretty far back of the CG. Normally, I will try to move the CG back a bit then reduce the flap movement relative to the elevator.  The current ship has a stab/elev that is 17 - 18% of the wing area. I will do a new stab/elev that is 23% to 25% of the wing and to get the corner a little better shorten the tail moment to 17" (H to H) around were current ships are.

Lastly, I will add some removable cowl sections (similar to the ones Tom Morris has on his profile) to cover the battery and wiring. With luck I should be able to hold the current weight, maybe even reduce it a bit if I can get it to complete the pattern on a 3300 mah pack (11.5 oz vs 12.5 for the current 3900 mah pack) and change out the arming switch (about 1 oz) with and arming plug.

Anyone make any similar or other mods to the Tutor II that work?

Best,        DennisT

Finally made some progress on the fuse mods. Added some stiffening ribs and made the fuse 1/2" thick straight back then added the 1/64" sheet covering. This worked great, it is now extremely stiff!!!

Next will add some fillets to the fuse/wing and stab/fuse then install stab/elev, cover. With luck should start getting the basic ship ready to go by next weekend. After that I intend to mold a couple nose cowl pieces to cover the battery and motor/ESC/Timer. They will be held with magnets to allow easy removal for battery change out.

Best,       DennisT