The 2017 International Ringmaster Fly-a-Thon is History!!!

Kim wrote:

Thanks Fred!  I just shot off an order for both, a 3.5 and a 4oz, so I'll be able to switch them out.  I may get a tiny one for the Fly-a-Thon.  My buddy, Leo is currently experimenting with tanks that will give him the minimum 5 laps to help him pull off a hundred flights...with us chasing his Ringmaster around the circle with our Pit Kits....

RE: Leo.. (if flying an S1) 5-second laps.. 30-40 second flights.. 20 seconds to refuel/re-start/launch with multiple-pitmen.. sounds like he could get 100 flights in less than 2 hrs... I'd watch that vid! "IRFAT-the movie"..

roddie wrote:

Kim wrote:

Thanks Fred!  I just shot off an order for both, a 3.5 and a 4oz, so I'll be able to switch them out.  I may get a tiny one for the Fly-a-Thon.  My buddy, Leo is currently experimenting with tanks that will give him the minimum 5 laps to help him pull off a hundred flights...with us chasing his Ringmaster around the circle with our Pit Kits....

RE: Leo.. (if flying an S1) 5-second laps.. 30-40 second flights.. 20 seconds to refuel/re-start/launch with multiple-pitmen.. sounds like he could get 100 flights in less than 2 hrs... I'd watch that vid! "IRFAT-the movie"..  

It all sounds good, though we may have a Keystone Cops movie in the making!

Fate always seems to slap me down whenever I get a little uppity, but I INTEND to have cameras running on both days...as in body-mounted GoPros, Time Lapse, and all the regular stuff.  I'll have everything charged, with a big ole cardboard box for nothing but cameras.

I WILL be taking an intermission about mid-day to fly three planes belonging to my Uncle Wayne, who plans on coming up Sunday:  a Goldberg 'Buster' he built in '69, a Dumas (Veco) 'Scout' he built in '67, and a Stearman (may be a Sterling), built by my late Cousin Bill.

But, other than that diversion, it'll be all Ringmasters all the time!

So, a little more work on the Ringmaster.  Not gonna mess with the wing until this blessed Solar Eclipse thing is over...makes it hard or a boy to concentrate.

Where the original Sterling instructions were just that: a bunch of written instructions with a minimum of drawings...I could use a little more written guidance about the order of getting this wing together right.

It could also be my brain is just tired...

Still getting a little bit done each day.

You say you'd like wing advice?... You may refer to my Yak-9 build, they should be nearly the same.

Make a thick center rib. I glued a pair of 3/32nd together.
Once you get the LE and TE block or sheet, whichever it uses, in place and confirm it's all square, dot each rib joint at LE and TE with a CA tack. Flip it and put whatever goes on the bottom of the TE and then slide the spar out. It can go in your spare wood supply. It serves no structural advantage and poses a source of more damage in a crash.
Rusty

https://servimg.com/view/16760059/301
https://www.coxengineforum.com/t5015p25-yak-9-build-part-one#65628
https://www.coxengineforum.com/t5232-back-to-the-yak-yak-9-build-part-ii

I'll second the rib ripper, cast thee evil thing in thine closest trash bin. Or use it somewhere else, your call!

Also be sure to glass the LE and TE where they split. Those like to seperate upon rough landings.

Or do none of these things and just don't crash!

Cribbs74 wrote:I'll second the rib ripper, cast thee evil thing in thine closest trash bin. Or use it somewhere else, your call!......

I'm pretty sure my Yak spar was spruce. It was a nice piece of square dowel.
I hope my advice is accurate, It was over 4 years ago. My, how time flies.

Nice job Kim, The spar in my Sterling S1's wing was glued-in with Ambroid years ago.. so it's there to stay. I'm definitely heading Ron's advice to reinforce the L/E center-joint though.

Roddie, you should pick off all of the glue joints and re glue them. I would find it hard to believe if your wing is still straight and not twisted. If you clear the glue joints from the spar to rib connection, this would allow you to twist the wing back. Easily accomplished with acetone and a acid brush. The plywood used in Sterling kits was horrible. It was birch and poplar laminations and it falls apart. I would take a close peek at that bellcrank mount and replace it with epoxy. More than likely, some of them have already shrunk back enough to allow a # 11 to get in there. The rib ripper as I mentioned some years back is a piece that does more damage than good. However, the newer laser cut kits are not the same construction. You can't omit this piece of wood due to the fact the leading and trailing edges of the S-1 were not built up like Kim's but solid. I have folded a few Ringmaster's under hard maneuvers. A new one would more than likely do it instantly if you omitted parts.

OK...so leave the rib-ripper in, but double the center rib. I've read the comments about this spar before, and wondered why it would be included in a re-designed kit. The wood for it is super light/soft, and I have a hard time believing it does anything structurally, but know I am no expert in this stuff.

The bellcrank area is kind of vague in the plans. If I'm seeing it right, the bellcrank bolt extends above and below the wing's center sheeting, but can't tell in the box photo. A couple guys on the Facebook page are posting build threads, so maybe they'll cover it.

Kim, laser cut wood is quite light and soft. Die cutting like Sterling provided, worked far better when the density of the wood was hard therefore the good lighter stuff wasn't used as much due to it crushing. The laser cut kits use wood much lighter than the kit wood Sterling provided. The 3 piece leading edge in your kit doesn't offer as much integrity as the solid leading edge. The wing is relying on the internal spar combined with the 1/32 shear web on the back of the leading edge to offer flex resistance. The wing can be covered with iron on material, but a doped on substrate would offer even more strength but the puncture resistance is a lot less.



Essentially your bellcrank is known as a suspended bellcrank. Much stronger than the single platform bellcrank which was standard on most .19-.35 size planes. The only problem is that the area capturing the bellcrank doesn't offer much room. Just make sure you have no hanging up on the platforms. I'm assuming the fuse covers the bolt?

Ken, You and Ron C. have given me a lot of helpful insight on both the Sterling S1 and S5 Junior. The S1's wing is very straight.. so I'm wondering if just "re-gluing" the joints would suffice? I have a full tube+ of the "good" Ambroid still. The old plywood I'll try to remove and replace with better wood. I don't have any 1/8" ply.. but I do have a large sheet of 1/32" plywood that I can cut pieces from and laminate x4 to make 1/8" plates.

The bellcrank-mount has me baffled too.. although different than Kim's kit. It seems that it's location places its' arms very close to the slotted-rib.. with very little throw. I mentioned this to Ron.. and he said to just use the inner-hole on the bellcrank and adjust the elevator-deflection to 25 degrees max using its horn.. but it looks as if the bellcrank could still hit the rib.  




Is the mount too close to the rib? I can remedy that when I make-up new substitute ply-plates.. or else lengthen the slot in the rib.

I'll likely use stranded-cable lead-outs after we get this figured-out..

Thanks for any advice you can give.

Roddie,

Most of the stuff I say is just regurgitating what Ken has taught me. It's quite possible that the mount for the BC is a bit off however, I haven't built a plane yet that hasn't required me to enlarge the slot to some degree. Use a 3" nylon bellcrank not the steel one, unless you bush the holes.

Use the plastic (nylon( BC and cut the rib out to let it work , There don't look like enough room to get 25% deflection at the elevator ,, If you move the platform the pushrod will bee in line with the rib! Dremel tool (with router ball end) worked good for me to do this

The simplest and most accurate tool for removing material in a wing that already built is a 3/8" dowel about 1 1/2" long wrapped with sandpaper 60 grit. Work the dowel with thumb and forefinger back and forth. While the Dremel tool has been mentioned, these tools can't access the area square enough in tight quarters to accurately remove the material without taking more than necessary. Yes, we all have done it, but the above is a bit more time consuming but in the end, you can certainly recognize which tool does a nicer finish. The chuck of a Dremel tends to hit things that you don't want and in a situation where the leadouts are already installed, the Dremel can get a hold of a leadout wire and rip it right through every rib in a split second.

Using solid leadouts in my opinion on that plane is a bit foolish. They're going to bend, they're going to rattle to the point you want to throw the plane out the window on the drive to the field and once bent, there's just no straightening them without having some kind of hangup issue. Stranded leadouts are much smoother and sustain the punishments delivered to them.

Solids do have a place and they can work quite well on a Perfect bellcrank. The old Sullivan C/D leadouts would saw from the hole all the way through the bellcrank, the new crap they offer just cuts the wire strand by strand and this is accomplished in little to no time. This is why the holes need to be bushed. The Perfect bellcrank has it's furthest most hole slightly further out vs the Sig, not a problem because you really don't want to use that hole for this plane. You want the slowest hole which is the innermost hole on the bellcrank. This is where the Sig bellcrank comes into play. With the Sig, you can drill directly on the I which is in the word Sig molded on the bellcrank offering a hole closer to the centerline of pivot vs the Perfect or any other bellcrank for that matter.

The Ring offers little to no surface area for the large stab. In a crash, the controls get thrown hard and generally tugs on the horn extending it too far which tears the stab right off of the fuse. If the elevator doesn't come off,  if your using pinned hinges they  rip out of the slot of the elevator tearing out the bottom. Pretty frustrating actually and difficult to fix. Use triangulate stock under the stab glued to the fuse and elevator for a gusset to offer more of a footprint. Epoxy here is best which allows for a bit of adjustment due to not drying instantly, the slower the better. NO 2-56 hardware, clevises, brass threaded adapters, etc should ever be used as they're too light and will fail especially clevises. A Sig bellcrank works well with .093" wire and a Dubro makes a solder adapter that's 4-40 that fits directly onto it.

Ken Cook wrote:The Ring offers little to no surface area for the large stab. In a crash, the controls get thrown hard and generally tugs on the horn extending it too far which tears the stab right off of the fuse. If the elevator doesn't come off,  if your using pinned hinges they  rip out of the slot of the elevator tearing out the bottom. Pretty frustrating actually and difficult to fix. Use triangulate stock under the stab glued to the fuse and elevator for a gusset to offer more of a footprint. Epoxy here is best which allows for a bit of adjustment due to not drying instantly, the slower the better. NO 2-56 hardware, clevises, brass threaded adapters, etc should ever be used as they're too light and will fail especially clevises. A Sig bellcrank works well with .093" wire and a Dubro makes a solder adapter that's 4-40 that fits directly onto it.

I definitely can see how that could happen Ken. I'll glue-in some triangular-stock on both sides under the stab.




Although I used the kit's cloth-hinges.. I'll install a quality nylon horn. I have several of them.. and a good assortment of music-wire. I may even have the Dubro 4-40 solder-link.. I'll have to check.

I'll head your advice on lengthening the slot on that center-rib to clear the bellcrank arms, using a stubby-dowel wrapped with coarse-grit sandpaper. The lead-outs are not made-up yet.. but will be stranded-cable ones. Would .015"/7-strand be sufficient? I need to consult one of Rusty's threads (his Yak-build?) to see how he "bushed" his nylon bellcrank for the cables. I'm thinking that he inserted his cables into 1" lengths of small brass-tubing and sized the holes in his bellcrank to fit the tubing. I'm not sure whether he shimmed between the tubing and the bellcrank to make his final-bend to prevent "binding".. but I'm guessing he did.

I'd really like to build a bellcrank-mount to provide bracing above; as well as below. I'm sure that I can engineer that while the bay is still open.. along with gusseting into the #2 inboard rib-bay.

I might smash the airplane early-on while learning stunts.. but that's no reason to not build-in some simple steps for longevity.. right?

Roddie,

This is a perfect example of what Ken was talking about.



If you look closely you can see the triangular pieces...

Cribbs74 wrote:Roddie,

This is a perfect example of what Ken was talking about.



If you look closely you can see the triangular pieces...

Yup.. I see them. I can't imagine it was flight related though. Did the model take a fall off the bench or something?

Flight related

Cribbs74 wrote:Flight related

crap... and it took the rudder and fin too? Engine-out while............?

I don't remember fully what happened, pretty sure it was an inverted nose in. All I was trying to convey was the elevator getting thrown forward and ripping out the hinges.

Only took a couple hrs to fix. Don't fall in love with your planes. Fly 'em, wreck 'em and learn. Ken's tips won't save your plane, they will just keep you from having to throw it in the trash after a crack up.

Best advice offered there Ron, don't fall in love with your plane. Well said and so true. I wouldn't call that a crack up, I call that a Saturday CA repair and go back flying in a few minutes. A good crack up is when you can't identify the plane from the engine.

Cribbs74 wrote:I don't remember fully what happened, pretty sure it was an inverted nose in. All I was trying to convey was the elevator getting thrown forward and ripping out the hinges.

Only took a couple hrs to fix. Don't fall in love with your planes. Fly 'em, wreck 'em and learn. Ken's tips won't save your plane, they will just keep you from having to throw it in the trash after a crack up.

Point taken Ron.. very glad that you fixed your airplane sir. I've been very anxious to fly my Rare-Bear with it's CEF tach-race engine that "you" were able to extract 19K+ rpm's from this past year. My wife Lynne LOVES that model. She formatted/re-sized/printed all the graphics that appear on the model.

Lynne.. pit-girl at 42 feet on 5-15-14.. we just couldn't get the model in the air..





Sorry.. it's not a Ringmaster by any stretch.. but is three years late for the CEF Reed-Speed party..