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Electric Stunt => Gettin all AMP'ed up! => Topic started by: Matt Colan on September 28, 2009, 04:13:42 PM
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I'm actually contemplating getting a smallish RC 3D airplane and converting it to electric CL. I read a bit on Walter Hick's thread about what you all said about his thoughts. I remember seeing Richard Oliver converted an RC plane to CL, but not sure who made it. Grandpa has said that the Somethin Extra was a great flying RC plane, but don't know how it would fly for CL.
Any ideas, but mind you, I have no idea if I'll ever do this H^^
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Matt,
the Sig Somethin extra flies very well as a control line plane - you will need to look at the construciton of it however and not use the wing joiner tube - pretty easy to make a couple of extra ribs and put the wing through the fuse.
Ia m thinking of using the Something extra for electric as well - it is a nice looking plane - will be changing a few things on it tho......but that is just me being me
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Well it would be a safer bet to stick with a dedicated CL design.
If you are trying something new, it is best to limit changes to one thing. That way if it flies like cr*p, you know what to blame.
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Elsewhere in this forum and the 1/2A building forum I've posted two 1/2A size electric planes. One is a Brodak Baby Clown Arf and one is a 28" span flat foam 3D plane form BP Hobbies. My observations are only for these size planes.
First I found the flat foamy 3D plane flew on short lines like 30' with much less power than the Baby Clown. I attribute this to the much thicker airfoil of the BC. The 3D wing is just a plate airfoil. The 3D palne was also much more agile than the Baby Clown and could do much tighter loops with flaps coupled to the elevator. I then added flaps to the BC and that allowed it to do tighter loops but not as tight as the 3D plane.
From all this I believe that the better agility of the 3D plane is due to its much, much larger control surfaces. The elevator is more than 50% of the total horizontal stab. The flaps are about 30% of the fixed wing area. I believe that these size surfaces may help larger planes but I have no experience with them.
But one down side to the 3D planes is that they are not made for high air speeds as required in most CL. I ended up limiting the 3D palne to 20' lines snce it flew fine at that short length and i can fly it in my back yard. I am now flying the BC on 40' and 50' lines and enjoy having more "airspace" to see the aerobatics. I am really still stuck in the 50s at heart and will continue with conventional CL planes. But I enjoy both types of planes.
One final note - due to dizziness I fly both these planes by RC around a weighted camera tripod. I hope to get my Super Clown flying with a handle soon.
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Well it would be a safer bet to stick with a dedicated CL design.
If you are trying something new, it is best to limit changes to one thing. That way if it flies like cr*p, you know what to blame.
Alan - I agree - but if you are just using the fuse shape (as I will be) and everything on the vector numbers (including the wing) then there shoul not be too many issues.
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The reason why I would want to do this is because I think it would be relatively inexpensive to convert to electric CL minus the electric setup, rather than buying a CL ARF.