Showing posts with label fuselage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fuselage. Show all posts
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Making the wings + attachment?
We finished the fuselage spine (and we cut a few more holes in it to allow for cable management). We've been working on some foam nosecones and underbody to take the landing, but unfortunately a certain someone made a right mess of it. Anyhows, we'll probably be evolving it into an acrylic nosecone for a FPV camera mounting.
As far as the wings ar concerned, the most of the wing ribs have been completed, shaped and sanded to size, but we've still to add weight-saving holes and a hole for the carbon spar to go through. After that it's a case of putting them on the spar and skinning it with some 2mm twinwall. Once that's done, we have the nightmare of attaching it to the fuselage, a problem presented due to the lack of foresight on my part. I was initially hoping for some kind of removable wing attachment, but that dream is long gone...
After that, we've to sort out the control surfaces, and I've got a pretty good of how the ailerons are going to work, as well as the elevators. We've also acquired some new hardware, as our previous electronics were, well, a bit cheap (and they definitely won't be able to cope with the bigger airframe).
As far as the wings ar concerned, the most of the wing ribs have been completed, shaped and sanded to size, but we've still to add weight-saving holes and a hole for the carbon spar to go through. After that it's a case of putting them on the spar and skinning it with some 2mm twinwall. Once that's done, we have the nightmare of attaching it to the fuselage, a problem presented due to the lack of foresight on my part. I was initially hoping for some kind of removable wing attachment, but that dream is long gone...
After that, we've to sort out the control surfaces, and I've got a pretty good of how the ailerons are going to work, as well as the elevators. We've also acquired some new hardware, as our previous electronics were, well, a bit cheap (and they definitely won't be able to cope with the bigger airframe).
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Phase 2!
After finally completing phase 1 of our project, we can safely move onto the next stage. The test flights so far have been relatively successful, with many of the failure stemming from my inability to fly. But hopefully that should be remedied soon.
We have decided on the shape of measurements of our phase 2 plane, and I will try to put some designs up (it was derived from the design mentioned in the last post) and hopefully it should work out well. I'll be crunching some numbers on the numerous handy flight calculators online, to just check that we haven't made some horribly fatal errors.
So far we've made the basic fuselage shape, using some 5mm sintra for the cross-sections with a balsa wood spine (pics coming soon), and we'll be skinning it with twinwall, sintra, or whatever material satisfies both the weight and strength conditions. Once that is done, we should be making the wings, again with sintra cross-sections, and 2mm twinwall for the actual wing itself, and putting a telescoping carbon spar to keep the wings level.
We have decided on the shape of measurements of our phase 2 plane, and I will try to put some designs up (it was derived from the design mentioned in the last post) and hopefully it should work out well. I'll be crunching some numbers on the numerous handy flight calculators online, to just check that we haven't made some horribly fatal errors.
So far we've made the basic fuselage shape, using some 5mm sintra for the cross-sections with a balsa wood spine (pics coming soon), and we'll be skinning it with twinwall, sintra, or whatever material satisfies both the weight and strength conditions. Once that is done, we should be making the wings, again with sintra cross-sections, and 2mm twinwall for the actual wing itself, and putting a telescoping carbon spar to keep the wings level.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Arrival of parts
Today I happily recieved the new clevises in the mail, along with some more twinwall sample material, and a rather interesting letter. This should speed things up a bit and allow us to finally synchronise and smooth out the elevon movement on the right wing, after my little crushing incident. The shipping status on the esc states a friday or perhaps saturday arrival (hopefully)
P has also obtained some Sintra, with the hope of creating some cross-sectional shapes for the fuselage and the wings, for Phase 2, and that will definitely be useful. I'll just have to investigate weight issues and decide whether twinwall really is the best material to use. Since our aircraft will not necessarily be flying at high speed, and maximum efficieny as well as stability is crucial, so an aerofoil with some camber and high lift at low speeds would be ideal.
P has also obtained some Sintra, with the hope of creating some cross-sectional shapes for the fuselage and the wings, for Phase 2, and that will definitely be useful. I'll just have to investigate weight issues and decide whether twinwall really is the best material to use. Since our aircraft will not necessarily be flying at high speed, and maximum efficieny as well as stability is crucial, so an aerofoil with some camber and high lift at low speeds would be ideal.