Lil satan build, cant decide on a power plant

Worth a thousand words! Thanks Ken.

Aspeed beat me to it, that's his. That's really what I was suggesting, they do make them commercially available in higher end equipment but the line clip works well. As I mentioned, I have a small set of pinchers made from wood, a sewing machine bobbin and rubber bands which are very light and simple. I painted them high vis colors so if they fall on the ground, they're easy to locate. I have used hemostats early on, while they work, they're just cumbersome and unless the teeth are ground down, they can puncture the tubing.

I do like the blue plastic hemostats, but if I was under the pressure to pit and fly competitive combat I would probably  agree with Ken and use the clip. I demonstrate the use of the plastic hemos in my part-2 video about cranking and running bladders. They are flexible so easier than metal ones to open, close, and manipulate. And they have smooth jaws with no damaging teeth. I'm not arguing the point, just showing my preference. Speaking of which, I've changed my methods since I made the videos and use copper wire to wrap the bladder to the pickup fitting. It makes for faster assembly  for me than fiddling with string. Just make sure and position the twisted tag-end so it can't pop the bladder. JPvelo uses o-rings that are even easier.
Rusty

I think I used a tie wrap and a tie wrap tool on this one.  Sometimes they leak and you have to redo it.  You can figure it out right away when you train it.  Never heard of the O ring.  Might try that. I got a a bunch of those tube balloons for making kiddy animals that might work if they stand up to fuel. Then there are the little red caps. They would both be low pressure.

Thanks for the photo, aspeed.  I need to look a little closer when surfing on the phone.

66 Malibu wrote:Hi Rusty,
Glad to see you planning a comeback to the C/L circle very soon !!
That Lil Satan /TD.049 combo looked great !! Couldn't help but think that it was the LS kit and TD the you got from our horse trading session a few years back...
That TD was either brand new or run for a very short time and I hoped it would find a good home in the air.
BTW, although thru a bunch of adversity, I've got those Chevy parts all in the same pile with all the necessary stuff to make noise soon.
Need about $250 in machine work to assemble it all for a fun street power plant hopefully this Spring.
It won't have the same power level you had at the drag strip but it will be a very respectable and fun engine to drive.
Steve.....

Hey Steve,
I'm glad to hear you're still playing with my old hotrod stuff. And yeah, I'm still playing with your old modeling stuff too... aside from my extended layoff, but that's ending now. I actually got myself all dirty in the shop today.

That certainly is your Tee Dee hauling the Satan around, and it's a really nice running power plant. But your kit remains in the box. The one in the video is a Goldberg kit I bought  decades ago and cannibalized down to nothing but a few scraps of wood and the plans. I basically scratch built it soon after I built my Baby Flite Streak around the time I joined CEF in 2010. I have used your kit as a template for boom repair, but have not cannibalized it like I did to my first kit. My current Satan has a lot of miles on it and will need replacing one of these days. No 1/2A fleet is complete without at least one Li'l Satan.

You also gave me another engine that I won engine of the Month with one time. It's a pretty colored Bee with a muffler, but I forget its name... QRC maybe? That's the one on my Kitty Cat platter plane, and its muffler is in the drawer. It gets to go to 1/2A Day every year. And a Thunder Tiger .10 which I have yet to use. It's still NIB and it is on my bucket list because I've never built a plane that size and still want to.

As for power, Steve, I never put my engine on a Dyno, but my setup, which you have the innards for, was 350 CuI 4-bolt block. I used that open plenum Edelbrock Scorpion II intake, normally aspirated, cheap Hooker(I think) headers, Holley 850 cfm carb(which was probably too big), Mallory dual point distributor and coil, and a pretty mean cam with hydraulic lifters, but only 9.5:1 pistons. I ran it on Amoco white gas through a cold can filled with dry ice. You have the heads too, I think... double camel hump with .202" intake and .198" exhaust valves with double springs. It would occasionally bust the stock rockers. What would you guess, maybe 380 hp? Maybe? I used to tell people it had 400 horses, but I'm pretty sure that was impossible. I drove it all through a Muncie M22 Rock Crusher with a ridiculous 5.13 rear gear... it'd pull a mean hole-shot, Lol. And at its best, it ran a 13.09 sec. quarter mile, never broke into the 12s. Big fun. That was in 1981-83. Can you even fathom a guess at how much hp it might have had to run an ET like that with the setup I described?

I'm sorry to get so far off topic, but I still get excited thinking about it.



Race Day! That's me in the plaid shirt.

RknRusty wrote:I don't remember its weight, probably 6 ounces or so. I'll try to remember to weigh it tomorrow.

I've had a couple of days lately to become reacquainted with my shop. And I actually remembered to weigh the Li'l Satan, so it's nice to know my brain cells are waking back up too. I put it on the scales and the magic number is.............. 6.7 ounces. By any standards that's probably a lead sled, but it's been repaired once and has way too much paint on it. I didn't know then what I know now about saving weight. I could lose about 10 grams by just eliminating the lead that's bolted to the mounting tabs on the crankcase. Maybe if I build the kit Malibu Steve gave me, I can get it to come out a little lighter.

So, you guys that have a Satan, how much does yours weigh?

Rusty

Rusty, you sure your scale is accurate? I'm at 4.52 ounces and I used Koverall for covering which is like armor plating. The only reason I used it was due to the grass we have here, it's like flying on asphalt at times. I have 4 coats of clear and one coat of color and a Super bee for power.

Mine is 3.2 for the airframe plus 2.5 for BW and Rubber Duckie. That's 5.7 ounces. I didn't try to build light, and this has been fixed several times.

Jim, yours is scratch built? I see a lot of wood in there that wasn't in the Goldberg kit.

Yup! From FlyingLines.org...the Wido Satan:

http://flyinglines.org/kb.widosatan.html

I bet it good get a lot lighter if one wanted to build it that way. Ribs could use the Swiss cheese treatment, the ribs/sheeting over the bellcrank could be narrower. I'd like to make another, but build the bellcrank on the very inboard edge of the center section in order to leave room for an unpressurized bladder on the outboard side.

I think if you are building a Lil Satan with a Golden Bee or BW, that the firewall should be shortened to the leading edge so no tail weight is needed, and the balsa weight on the nose is gone too.  If the plane is built already, then just wait till it breaks there and shorten it then:-) The Surestarts might be OK as is.  I only have one of them and have opened the carb hole a bit.  Hope I didn't bugger it up.  Might need a bladder or crankcase pressure.  Will see if the weather warms up.  Still like the TDs and Foras though. There are other designs that may work better than the Satan too. I made a bunch of foam wings to practise using a hotwire that look like good candidates for a 1/2A combat. or maybe a .15.

Rusty,
Am sure glad that the TD, QRC, and Thunder Tiger are put to good use, because all three were the best primo pieces that I had.
Holding on to the new LS kit is a smart move because 1/2a kits are going up heavily in price but more importantly is  that most of the companies that made them are long out of business. High cost doesn't matter if there are none to buy and you want / need one.

Regarding Lil Satan weight, I have a  really nice built LS with a horse shoe backed Black Widow ready to fly less fuel at 4.49 ounces.
I got it at the last Perry Southeastern Model Show that I attended for $10 !!!! You have to love buying C/L stuff at a R/C show !!!! The sellers would rather be dipped in mud than have to pack up and go back home with any C/L stuff. Any interest at all on your part and you are going home with it at great deal price !!

Regarding your old Chevy engine stuff, seeing that you had all the right pieces for the time, I estimate ( not knowing the cam specs) that you were 380 to 425 horsepower !! You had to have at least 390 to 400HP run 13 seconds flat in a stock bodied 67 Camaro.
Most all your valve train problems came from the Monster valve springs that damaged a lot of stuff. I disassembled the heads expected to just a basic valve job but the springs had almost pulled out 4 or 5 rocker studs out of the heads and all 16 valves were bent. Those springs were typical of that time period. The double hump heads are 64 cc units so even with flat top pistons you  had 10.5 + compression ratio !!!!
I would not try to live off the difference between 425 HP and what you engine produced !!!
I'll keep you posted on progress...…
Steve...

66 Malibu,

Where did you stick the tank? How much effort did you put into saving weight? I'm amazed that yours is so much lighter than mine!

Jim,
I didn't build the LS myself, I bought it at the swap meet 100 % ready to fly.
The fuel tank is inside the wing ( already covered ) in the first outboard shoulder wing bay beside the fuselage.
I don't know the size or brand of the tank due to the opaque covering.
Without opening the wing up I would guess it is a perfect tank of 3/8 ounces or so.
My new HF digital scale read 4.49 ounces and I weighed it 4 different times to make sure there were no snafus.
Don't know the builders methods but it appears to be done by someone pretty well skilled.

Steve...

I've got to learn to build lighter!

Ken,
My Satan has spars and 1/16" shear webs. I didn't try to save weight and built it with whatever balsa I could find that was big enough to cut parts out of. My batteries are not only old and suspect, thy were cold too.And the soft platform it was resting on might have screwed up the weight. I realized that later when I was weighing my Hyper Viper parts. I'll weigh it again to be sure.
Rusty

There's no spars in the Goldberg version.

Ken, my Li'l Satan kit was a completely cannibalized box I bought back in the late '80s, with only the instruction sheet and a few ribs. I know there are no spars, I just thought it was a good idea at the time. The 1/16" shear webs were too much un-necessary weight, but I didn't know any better back then. I also knew nothing of choosing wood.
Rusty

Here's where I'm going with the build so far. Trying to fabricate a tank. Turned out so far, may have been a bit generous with the solder, learnt some stuff along the way to. Going to bump the belcrank a bit in board to make room for the tank. Based on how tall the ribs are it had to be fairly slender to sneak 3/4oz in there. Going to go with a beam mount but use the radial mount wood to beef it up a bit.

Tah dah, now to test for bubbles. Learnings, silver solder works way better, solder flows to the heat so make sure you use gravity as well yo your advantage. Keep the solder away from the torch. And use a good flux wow does that stuff make a difference. Use a small piece of damp cloth or paper towel to keep joints from melting when your heating adjacent to finished areas.

A dimond cone shaped bur for the dremel is perfect for making the brass tub holes.

Hey, great job on that tank! Don't close it in until We (me) get to see it mounted and jigged with an engine. I'm taking notes!

Jim in MS

Here is the plan. Beam mount and where I'm going to put the tank. Since I glued the ribs I was basicaly committed to this location. I think it will be ok.