I fly with Mike Scott.  He has one and said he will take some pictures as soon as he gets a chance.  I will post them for you.

Ken

Here's what I did.  Built 2 of them and the conversion works well.

Thanks guys, I can see that both airframes uses top "reloading" which is great at the field. I thought of using the engine cowling at a hatch. I did it that way on my Nobler. The drawback if of course that you need to flip the aircraft on its back to change the battery. As both Mike and Jim have made a top hatch I will make my Vector that way too.

Now its on to find a suitable power train. The 35-48 size motors with a KV of somewhere between 900-1000 seems popular so I will try to find something suitable. ESC will be an CC EDGE 50 Lite. Battery should do with 4s 2600mAh or what do you think?

/Andreas

"Now its on to find a suitable power train."

A cobra 2820 - 970 kv is all you need.  I used a Zippy Compact 4S - 2700  APC 11x5.5 E prop.  A TP 4S - 2800 would be lighter.

2826 versus 2820?
I would say it comes down to what your AUW will be.
I have built two of these, from the original version. First was an ARF, and was fairly light so could have used a 2820. But I flew it with an AXI2826
Second one was an ARC, but was much heavier. I think a 2820 would be have been pushed a bit too hard.
Assuming CG is correct the extra ounce of motor weight won't matter to the plane, but will allow for more power to be produced by the motor without overheating.

Originally I had a 2826/10, 12x6 APC on 4S TP2800. Based on the first one I made the mistake of shortening the nose, and ended up needing quite a bit of nose weight.

Now it has a three blade 11x5 "Igor" prop, which requires a bit more power so it has 5STP2800. Motor is a Orbit 15-20, which avoids any motor resonance problems.
(I tried an AXI 2826/12, but the flight RPM was right in a bad resonance range for the motor. Could have been bad bearings, because Igor gets away with it.)

So if you have a suitable 2826, I would say use it.

Due to the shortened nose I had to make a balsa hatch. First one was similar, but used the fiberglass hatch.

The little baffle is made from Depron, and ensures most of the cooling air goes to the motor, with a small hole letting some go directly to the ESC.
The only air exit is on the underside of the fuse, between the wing and stab.

Pat MacKenzie

Back in the days I built my own timers based on PicAxe chips. That way I could include my passion for electronics and coding into my C/L hobby. The timers I built were pretty simple passive timers, flight time and throttle were adjustable with potentiometers, a 30 second delay were hardcoded in the software, and end of flight warning. I did add a test mode with 2 minutes of flight time, very nice to have when you are testing props (or as myself, when restarting the C/L hobby you appreciate short flight times...). I built several versions of these timers and both the hardware and software evolved pretty rapidly. My Nobler have a timer of my latest design, and somewhere I have a spare one. If I can't find my spare timer I will probably buy something ready made. I can't even open my schematics files I made 10 years ago, God knows what software I used for that....

Pat: Thats food for thought indeed...

Andreas

I have this very setup in my Vector 40 electric ARF.  48oz ready to fly. .015 by 62' eye to eye lines. Very good setup.

"Now its on to find a suitable power train."

A cobra 2820 - 970 kv is all you need.  I used a Zippy Compact 4S - 2700  APC 11x5.5 E prop.  A TP 4S - 2800 would be lighter.

Its obvious that, for a given airframe, there are as many setups as it are C/L pilots  Here is what I will do, I have a 3548 (2826) motor with a KV of 900 on the shelf. Very low runtime on that motor. I have run the numbers trought the Castle Creations app and it seems OK.

Pat: Heey, cool! I will look into that timer.

Andreas

I had a 2826 in my Nobler.  As I said, it was overkill but if you already have one and a Castle (which I use) you can make it into anything from a heavy .15 to a light .60.  I was going to get another 2820 for the Nobler and move the 2826 to my .60 size profile so bottom line - go for it!   Just watch that battery tie down or learn to land with a 65% CG! .

Ken

Looks like one of the older kits with the wooden cowl.  They were the best.  Great start on your project.

From my understanding this is a newer kit. In the original kit the wing was in one piece (which naturally is better, but the increase in shipping costs will be high). I wouldnt say no to a fiberglass engine cowl thou…. From the pictures of the Vector ARC on Brodak's web there is a solid sheet fin and solid sheeted body and no cut-outs in the flaps. The body on my aircraft has multiple lightening cut-outs. The plywood doublers in the nose have large cut-outs except where the IC Engine sits. The Engine bearers are cut like an 'L' int he tank area. they are only full 3/8"x1/2" in the IC compartment. As the Engine bearers have an 'L' cut, there is no balsa between the bearers. If you look in the tank comparment you will see the stringers and top deck. The changes they have made in the Engine/tank are good as it will be easier to grind away the engine bearers.

For the money, the quality is very good, I will go over the entire aircraft to check all glue seams and put extra CA where needed. I will keep you posted… 

/Andreas

Guys, I sat down with the body of the aircraft, the motor and a couple of beers this evening and tried to figure out how to do this conversion the easiest way. From my experience the KISS approach normally yields the best results, if one tries to overdo something it will get unnecessary complicated. The results of my 'think-aircraft-beer' evening are as follows:

1. I will glue the cowling in place as Mr. Vigani suggests.
2. Cut the top deck from F2 all the way forward to the nose ring (but keep the nose ring in place).
3. Grind away the engine bearers.
4. Make a new former and mount the motor to the newly made former. As you understand the motor will be rear mounted, not optimal maybe but in my opinion it will be the easiest way.
5. The motor will be mounted somewhat off center on the former to get some degree of outward thrust.
6. Use the nose ring to align the motor and then glue the new former in place.
7. Grind up the hole in the nose ring as much as possible, to increase the airflow to the motor.
8. As for battery mount I found a thread on this forum where Mr. Hunt posted pictures of his type of battery mount and I think I will use something similar.
9. Make a new top deck from balsa, the magnet mounting seems like a nice idea.

However if one looks at Mr. Mackenzies reply #11 that way seems even simpler but you will have to flip the aircraft to change battery... oh crap, now this starts over again.... going to bed!

/Andreas

My Vector conversion is moving along quite nicely. I'm quite happy about the results so far. The motor/battery compartment is finished. I'm however a bit concerned about the torsional (spelling?) stiffness of the aircraft nose. I have thoughts of putting a layer of fiberglass/epoxy resin over the nose. If I would have to redo the whole thing to this point, I wouldnt have left half of the the engine bearers in the tank/battery comparment.

I also glass the nose of all my planes, as well as the joint between the wing and fuse up to the high point of the airfoil.  Great protection against getting cracks.

Okay, then I'll glass the nose too. The nose will be more rigid and more resistant to wear and tear. A layer of thin fiberglass cloth and epoxy can't weight that much.... As for the seam between fuse and wind I have used epoxy mixed with micro fibers (I think that is cotton fibers) very light and you get a very strong bond.

Today I haven't got anything done on my Vector, I had to race to the hospital as my son was raced there in an ambulance with a head injury why can't he just fly C/L instead of doing stupid things...

/Andreas

Just a thought on wing fuselage joints.  "Back in the Day" we used to make these huge fillets.  1" or more on the LE and over 1/4" on the rest of the wing.  Now we just run a bead of blue stuff around the joint and mold it with a wet finger.  My point is that they can add enormous strength and can be very light.  I carve mine out of block and they act like a gusset keeping the nose pointed where it belongs.  Everyone did it before, now you only see them on classics.

Ken

Fillets yes, I dont think I will do any fillets on my Vector as I plan to cover it in Oracover/Ultracote.  I dont like to cover the fuse in *cote but it will be the easiest way. I would have preferred to cover the fuse in Koverall, but as I never have worked with Koverall I`m worried that the seams will show thru the paint as one cannot sand Koverall like one can do with silk.

As for fillets in a general way, we have this fantastic product here in Scandinavia called `Marine Epoxy`. Its very strong and yet easy to sand. Very much like Sig Epoxolite, but much easier to sand.

Ken: You seems to be an excellent builder  The fillet/gusset in your picture is a beauty in its own

Coming along nicely.  Might want to increase the hole size a bit in the ESC mount.  Nice clean work.  Good call on the bellcrank.