The Refried Bean Build-It flies

I am partial to yellow wings with orange fuse. Showy, loud, yet not over the top. (and the colors on my Jumping bean)

Phil

cribbs74 wrote:Good deal, have you settled on a color scheme yet?

Not really, but I'm not going to sit around wait for my muse to visit. Tonight I'll cover the wings in white. Then cut some angular rays out of the blue and arrange them so they spray out from the forward wing roots and... do something. I'll probably paint the old center part of the fuse navy blue and the cockpit black. Some kind of matching scheme on the booms and tail. Now, while writing this I thought of maybe a white nose, starting with the front doublers and if I can possibly pull it off, some flames behind the engine. I guess I can try to freehand that. I might make the belly a simple solid color.

pkrankow wrote:I am partial to yellow wings with orange fuse. Showy, loud, yet not over the top. (and the colors on my Jumping bean)

Phil

I wish I had some yellow, but I don't. I need a patch of yellow to fix the rudder on my "new" Flite Streak the club guy gave me.

Rusty:

If this is a "Refried Bean" what's next?

How about "The Flying Burrito" in honor of "The Flying Burrito Brothers".

Remember them? Ya gotta be REALLY old!

Hey Rusty,

Better be careful with the "last chance" statement lest we see broken bones in the future.

SuperDave wrote:Rusty:

If this is a "Refried Bean" what's next?

How about "The Flying Burrito" in honor of "The Flying Burrito Brothers".

Remember them? Ya gotta be REALLY old!

Not that old. I have at least one Flying Burrito Borthers album in my LP collection. All I ever do to the turntable is dust it though. Zeppelin II has been sitting on the platter for years now.

And no, my next build is this:
Hybrid-Profile Flite Streak/Cox Hyper Viper scratch build
The drawing is in the first post. For some reason the link takes it to the last post.

cribbs74 wrote:Hey Rusty,

Better be careful with the "last chance" statement lest we see broken bones in the future.

Okay then, "Last chance before its maiden voyage."

I didn't get out to the shop after a hard day of housework yesterday until about 8:00 PM. With dreams of Monokote and pretty stripes and markings in my head most of the day, I sat down to admire the skeletal Bean one last time. The leadout guides had been located and glued in place and all was ready... until I had an attack of common sense. The control horn was still off of it, awaiting either relocation or modification since it was too close to the tail boom for my liking and, I decided it would be really dumb not to check all that out before hiding the bellcrank.

I found a horn in my hellbox with a two sided foot, so that would save the trouble of making a new aluminum one. I ground off a corner to fit around the hinge that was in the way and voila, a left footed horn that sat far enough out to be clear of obstructions. I mounted it and bent the wire to check the throw. Looks like about 30 degrees of up and slightly less down, which can be adjusted by opening the front relief in the #1 rib. I'm really glad I didn't cover it now.

After I got all that sorted out, I pulled full up and down, held it tight and forced the elevator to check for flex. The rod flexed a lot. I thought it was going to be stiffer than that. Back to the hellbox and out came a new unbent guide. I measured and bent it to fit, then screwed that to the boom with an epoxy covered screw and washer and all was great, problem resolved. Believe it or not, all that took until 11:00 PM, so no Monokote, but a good setup.

I have only one problem that I know of. I should have made the tail booms taller because on landing, the control horn can scrape the ground. I guess I'll have to make some sort of skid to keep it off the ground. Just another detail to work out. This problem had occurred to me a while back, but I had pushed it so far to the back of my mind I had forgotten about it. That can be fixed after the wings are covered, which I hope to finish tonight.

One last detail before I cover it though. I want to re-measure the elevator throw, just for the sake of precision. So I have a question. In fact I think I'll give it its own thread, but I'll ask here too. When I measure the throw, I try to hold a protractor even with the stab and see where it points on the degree scale. But this is clumsy and inaccurate because the protractor is too big for the tip of the elevator to reach the degree scale, and it's hard to know if I'm holding it straight against the stab centered on the hinge line. How do you builders and modelers do it?

I don't use anything except the TLAR method. Seeing as you already have a protractor why not just make a guide marked at 30/30 out of balsa or thin plexiglass.

Make it small enough to fit where you need it on the rudder and use a clam clip to secure it.

cribbs74 wrote:I don't use anything except the TLAR method. Seeing as you already have a protractor why not just make a guide marked at 30/30 out of balsa or thin plexiglass.

Make it small enough to fit where you need it on the rudder and use a clam clip to secure it.

Yeah, that works. A bent wire will do. I can make three at 25, 30 and 35. I'm just growing more anally precise in my old age. Since 30deg. is always in the neighborhood, and you usually don't want to go much over it, I can at least get a good guesstimate at how far from it each throw is. I actually drew a 180 degree wheel on my table, but it's still hard to position everything right.

Since the BFS taught me how much difference cumulative precision creates a beautiful flying machine, I've been more concerned about it than ever before. I thought I was just a crappy pilot until I flew it. I could fly the others, but never as totally in control as I wished.

They make a tool for it but the LHS wanted $40 for it, so I let them keep it. Thanks for the advice.

Oh, and I meant to mention, the sewn elevator works beautifully, very smooth. And if I turn the plane over and shake it gently, it falls right down to the other side. Not too stiff after all. Thanks to Ken for that.

Got a wing covered. And I didn't even forget to glue the tip weight on first. It's turning into a really blinding white plane, I need to get some colors on it. I might even put my new AMA number on it. The damn thing is seven digits, the longest one I've ever seen. I guess I better get little numbers... or build a bigger plane.

I'm using Monokote. I don't dislike it as much as I did the first time. I stuck it and shrunk it with just the iron like I do with Ultracote. No heat gun needed. I'm getting used to the temperatures now. You kind of glue and shrink at the same time, unlike Ultracote where the temps are clearly separate from each other. I got a little wrinkle on the lead edge of a wingtip, but not a bad one. I don't think it's enough to cause any drag.

It turns out there was a plastic burr on the bellcrank hitting the edge of the relief hole in the #1 rib. I cut it off and it was perfect, exactly 30 degrees in both directions. No further fiddling needed. It's getting there.

Also my early prediction that it was going to be nose heavy might be wrong. If I use the old Jumpin Bean plans CG at 1" behind the LE, it's a bit nose heavy before I put the Mono on the wing. It might be right on after finishing everything. But I wonder, now that my average chord is a little longer, should I expect the CG to move back a little bit?

My understanding is that the cg is located at behind the L.E. at a certain percentage of the chord. So a wider chord would move the C.G. back.
Jim

JPvelo wrote:My understanding is that the cg is located at behind the L.E. at a certain percentage of the chord. So a wider chord would move the C.G. back.
Jim

Yes, you are right about that. A lot of the RC builders say start at 1/3(33%) of the chord, others say more or less, but I have never had a CL plane fly anywhere remotely close to that. They are horribly tail heavy in that area.

I don't know if CL planes are different because of the leadouts and lines or something. My CGs usually fall closer to 20%. The Bean's original average chord is 5" and it flew properly at 1" behind the LE, which is 20%. I don't remember the Li'l Satan's chord, maybe around 6". Iirc, it balanced at 7/8" behind the LE, and that's less than 15%.

I'll be safe using the old 1" mark on the R-F Bean(its new AC is 5.375") and working back from there. It might not even do a loop there, but that's better than launching into an instant loop with a neutral elevator and slamming the backside of stooge. The BFS was totally uncontrollable at less than 1/4" behind the plan's mark.

I got the wings covered and the nose epoxy fuel-proofed. I really don't like Monokote, I'll be glad when I run out. There are a couple of things I like about it, like windex activates the glue for adding overlays. But I crinkled my wingtips and even patched one because I was so disgusted with it. Ultra is much more supple and moldable.

Top


Bottom


Tomorrow I'll break out the paints and paint the wood. Maybe dark blue with a black or silver canopy. I bought some dark red for possible flames on the nose.

I found it!
here's the blank canvas:


My overlays will be either this:


Or this:


Then a black canopy with blue on the rear of the center fuse, and white on the forward nose with red flames. I'd like some more blue on it somewhere, maybe on the bottom.

It should look really good, have you weighed it yet?

cribbs74 wrote:It should look really good, have you weighed it yet?

No, I can maybe take it to the UPS store and see if they'll weigh it. I'll do it in the shop with my tiny balance hanging from the ceiling and fishing weights. Those sinkers aren't accurate at all.

How do you like this. Click for a bigger view.

That's red Monokote I cut out with scissors and Windexed on. It's wrinkle free, much better than the Streak's colors now that I had it to learn on. This kind of work gives me cricks, but it's worth it for the results.

Don't worry about the nose, it's just getting its epoxy coating filled and smoothed. It will be white with flames too. I'll decorate the stab and booms with some sort of matching colors. I'll put some silver lines in the canopy to make it look like it has window panels.

Wow Rusty looks great! I need to step up my game.

Windexed monokote trim sticks pretty well, but it can lift along the edges over time. If you have some clear spray or dope, painting the edges or spraying the trim can help hold it down.

andrew

Looking at it again, it reminds me of the Evel Knievel Stunt Rocket.

andrew wrote:Windexed monokote trim sticks pretty well, but it can lift along the edges over time. If you have some clear spray or dope, painting the edges or spraying the trim can help hold it down.

andrew

So far I haven't had any lifting on the BF Streak overlays. After they had set up for 24 hours, I traced the edges of them with a q-tip soaked with acetone. That gives the glue a little boost. Wherever they came to a sharp point, I did use a bit of epoxy.

I was thinking on this plane I'd try fingernail polish, but since you mentioned it, maybe I'll mask off a rectangle around it and spray it with clear Lustrekote. That's what I've always used to seal down my water slide decals. I also learned from the Streak to cut off the sections that will go on the wingtips and lay them on separately. This job turned out neater than the overlays on the Streak, which has a few embarrassing wrinkled areas.

I wish I could claim I thought this pattern up and free-handed it, but I opened a photo of a plane with this pattern in my photo editor, cropped and re-sized it for my wings and printed it. Then I folded a sheet of Monokote into two opposing layers taped to a glass pane. I tried to trace-cut it with an exacto knife but that was making a mess of it, so I finished tracing it with a fine sharpie, un-taped it from the glass pane and cut it out with small curved fingernail scissors. The pair came out really well.

Once I stuck it all down with Windex, I had to tack a couple of places with the iron to hold it down. It will be fully set tomorrow so I can handle it enough to do the other wing. I'll do a little something on the underside and decorate the stab and other parts. Like I mentioned, I'll paint flames over the white nose. My red flame paint is a tad darker, but I think it will look fine.

I've done the best building job I'm capable of and I wanted the looks to reflect that. My building skills are improving. If I only had a few extra woodworking tools I could really do better and probably faster. So far, I'm entering my sixth week on this project, a couple of hours almost every night. It will be ready to fly this week, then just wait for the right weather. It looks like it will balance with little or no added weight.

cribbs74 wrote:Looking at it again, it reminds me of the Evel Knievel Stunt Rocket.

This? It kind of does, but no stars... and no assh***