Baby Ringmaster on the loose.

Nice plane, and the weight sounds fine. Yes, a couple of degrees of side thrust will keep you from running away from the plane.

+1 about 2degrees should do it. Nice job on the build. I like the way you filled in the nose.

Ron

Thanks guys appreciated. I only filled the nose like that because I've never seen one, and I couldn't work out the nose from the CAD plan I have.

Cheers

These thrust wedges work well and don't distort the wood like washers do.

http://brodak.com/thrust-wedges-1-2-3-degrees.html

Thanks for showing me the thrust wedges, what a great idea. It will be great to be able to quantify thrust angle. Rather than washer thickness.

Cheers

Very similar to my BRM except I'm using a healthy beam-mounted TD .051/ 1/3 oz wedge tank up front. 1/4 oz in the wing tip but no engine offset seems to be needed in anything I've tried yet.

Should the need arise I'd consider the wedges shown rather that washers to achieve engine offset. I'd be concern that the wedges might cause the engine bolts to cut into the engine mounting lugs and leave a scar.

SD

UH-OH, I have a pair of Baby Ring Masters, too! (is this hijacking a thread?)
So, I need an airplane to get me inverted, on purpose, and this is one suggested by Ron, I think. Hopefully, I won't have to glue it back together as much as he says I might have to!
They are built from plans, and I cut all the parts, first. One is for my Brother, and the purple and white one is mine. I built a tank to fit in the wing, because I didn't have one that fit well behind/beside the SureStart engines. Then, I forgot to install it in the wing, before it was covered, with Ultracoat. The fuselage is painted with Coverite's spray can paint. I opted to use a traditional Sterling-type elevator control horn on them, just for conformity to the RingMaster authentic look. It's ready to go, and weighs 5-3/4 ounces on my old, old old postal scale. 33 foot SpiderWire lines will be used for control. Wish us luck! Thanks, Gus

My beam-mounted TD .51 left plenty of room for the Brodak 1/3 oz wedge tank that I used on my BRM.

SD

SuperDave wrote:My beam-mounted TD .51 left plenty of room for the Brodak 1/3 oz wedge tank that I used on my BRM.

SD

That's the nice thing about beam mounts.
The engine is going to have to work hard to pull the fuel against the centrifugal force from that far outboard. I tried it on my Stuntman23 for the same reason and it was most uncooperative. But I had a large venturi Killer Bee. Your Surestart will no doubt pull a better vacuum. If there is any extra length in the fuel line that can be removed, I'd recommend making it as short as possible. If it does seem to have a fuel draw problem, try a smaller prop to get the RPMs up.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.
Rusty

Ah, Rusty...Good call on the outboard tank issue! It did cross my mind, but I had not thought of solving it the manner you suggest. The pick-up tube is standard 1/8" brass, but the vents are smaller. So, VRRROOOM on the rpm if there's a problem. Okay. I am able to shorten the fuel line a little, and I could use slightly larger diameter, also. That little, whitish stuff IS snug on the fuel nipple! Do you think that could help too, if I run into problems? How far out of kilter could I place a tank on this, and still get it to run well? Would above the wing, on the fuselage side be too far from centerline to get a good run? The planes I "design" are allowed-for in the nose area, for the engine and tank to be positioned conventionally. What about stretching the nose to allow for a decent-size tank? Throw the CG off too much? Geez, what a rookie!

I just REALLY need to get some reliable "stick time" to get comfortable with unusual attitude flying! This is a step in that direction.

Gus, my brain is fried from writing a story for Cox Int.
If you don't have the answers by tomorrow I'll try to help.
G'night,
Rusty

Gus I'm going to defer to those who have more experience with external tanks.
The reason I switched all of my 1/2As to pressure bladders is I threw up my hands early and gave up on getting wedge tanks to work. I can only reliably tell you what didn't work.

Ken cook and Fit90 are the ones I can think of right off the top that have mastered wedge tanks. Ron's seem to work. I have yet to ever successfully run a wedge tank. I have had good luck with unpressurized party balloons on engines that I didn't have the fine thread NVA needed for pressure.

Fly your plane and see what it does. It might work fine as long as I don't touch it.

I agree with Rusty 100%, pressure bladders are the only way to go for me. Easy starts and smooth running no matter what angle the plane is at.

Jim

This is one of Kens' it worked really well

Not bad. Also not much different from my Stuntman attempt. Maybe if I had put a gray backplate on it it would have worked. But I was after Killer Bee power because a BW couldn't fly it fast enough for stunting. I finally ended up solving it with a Tee Dee.

Neither of these worked for me:

RknRusty wrote:

Maybe if I had put the tank on the inboard wing it would have worked. C-Force forcing the fuel toward the engine rather than fighting it.

I thought too, about locating the tank on the inboard side of the fuselage, but the lead-outs are right there. I'm waiting to finish my brother's, to see how mine works, because I don't want to give him a dud. Maybe stretch the nose just a bit, to get a tank in there? I'll fly it, and see what happens, when the wind stops howling. Temperature was in the 80s, today and yesterday. Last week, it was snow and ice. Kansas!

So... I thought that before the weather took a nose-dive, I'd take the Baby RingMaster out for one. Ha Ha! Wind was at least 10 mph, gusting to 20. It was going to be interesting. Set-up BRM, run-out lines, (33 ft. SpiderWire) , stooge in place, fueled and started, be-bop out to the handle, Pull Cord! Great ROG, decent power and climb, but when the plane gets to the upwind side of the circle, it turns in, and flies straight and level across the interior of the circle- from the 90 degree point, to the 270 degree point. Of course, I was back-pedalling swiftly, to maintain line tension, and managed to regain control at the start of the downwind leg, when the wind snapped it back to normal flight. I flew the downwind 1/2 of the circle, with no funny business, but the 2nd lap was the same as the first. Then the 2nd downwind snapped right into place. So... I have invented a new maneuver... I call it "D PLANE,D PLANE" because as viewed from above, it looks like a capital "D" lying on it's side! Now, you will frequently hear little people shouting - D PLANE, D PLANE, and that's just their request to have you perform the new maneuver, again.

And the weather turned really crummy today, so rather than clean the shop area, I cobbled together another airplane. 22" symetrical Depron 2mm. foam wing on a balsa fuselage and tail. Slated for the nose is a Babe Bee engine that Ron cleaned, and put together for me. It's still pretty lightweight, though. It has paint, and 4 colors of Ultracoat and Monokote trim on top and bottom, to protect the foam from fuel and oil. I haven't placed the bellcrank or leads yet, because I learned from a GREAT flier - the relationship between the CG, rake angle and stuff, so I'm gonna use it on this plane, in those rules! Now, I might have a Scratchbuilt plane that can actually perfom the pattern! It was entirely built from scraps around the shop, so it may be named: All'SCrap. See if I can get a shot of it in here, too.

This is the first plane I've made that isn't purple, for a long time! It looks weird.

That's pretty darn good for slamming out a model in a day. It seems like no matter how simple, anything I build takes a month.

Now about D Plane. Remember always take off with a tail wind so you don't enter the upwind side of the circle until the third quarter of the first lap. That way it has a chance to speed up fast enough to power its way through the wind. But if you had 20mph gusts it could have been trouble anyway. If it's too sensitive to a crosswind, you might need more tip weight, but that and engine offset and rudder deflection are all best evaluated on a calm day with the aid of a spotter.

Doug,

That flight sounds like what was going on with my Ringmaster. 20mph on 1/2A!!!!! You are brave.