The new Dash-8

[preferscale]

Airbus A400M

Joe,

The plans and laser-cut parts are already available for the Airbus A400M from Tony Nijhuis in UK. An impressive 76-inch wingspan bird. But knowing you well, you will probably want to draw you own plans. Also, I am very interested in building a Skyvan model one day. If you ever do one or has the plan for it, let me know. Found a few on the Internet but a bit too sketchy for me.

Regards.

[Tsunami33]

Hmm.... I guess you and I would've been profiled differently in the Air Force. One goes to transport and the other might make it to fighters....

[joe yap]

Back to the modifications.

I spent the last many days making the flap track fairings. The plugs are hotwire cut from white stryofoam before hand sand to final shape. The plugs are laminated with about 4-5 layers of medium weight glasscloth with laminating resin.

The fairings are glued to the wing undersides with RTV sealant.

[joe yap]

I did some functional checks to make sure that there are enough clearance between the fixed and moveable sections to prevent bindings.

[joe yap]

Just now, I did a functional check on all flight controls and motor controls with the working approach lights. So far, no problem with any signal loss, interferences or servo overloads.

[Curare]

So the big question now Joe is.....when is the maiden of this beauty? I think some of us here are eagerly waiting to see this bird in the air.

[joe yap]

You mean the re-maiden? I'm uncertain, but it'll probably sometime near 18 September, before the RCS 2010.

[Curare]

Ok, make sure you shout out loud for all of us to go see it fly once again.

[Artyspec]

Amazing... the craftsmanship is impeccable..

[GLENDON]

drool.......

[joe yap]

A few weeks ago, I re-maidened it at PFW. Although the 'runway' is lined up with trees alongside, the Dash-8 tracks nicely straight along it and climbed away easily on the brushless motors and Lipo pack. The flaps are vey effective and I can really slow it down to a crawl even at 3.4kg AUW. The model behaves very well and shows no sign of any perculiar characteristics. Everything is just by the book.

The model also is a breeze to land. With flaps deployed in landing mode, it decends steeply but very gently before settling down on the tarmac. It didn't take me the whole 'runway' to land.

[csisfun]

Awesome. I guess it's the good old design with four years' worth of improved technology?

[joe yap]

With the flying part sorted out, I continued to enhance the scale appearance. I won't get any extra points for non-retractable gears for the flights, but I hope to earn some extra from static but dressing up the main gears.

The main struts are dressed up with the scale looking fairings and pivot fittings for the drag struts. The fittings and the drag struts are moulded from epoxy resin using rubber mould and balsa plugs. The drag struts also have balsa fairings to enhance the scale appearance.

I also made a pair of strut doors from balsa. The challange is to make them detachable as both the doors and the main struts have to be so for transportation. Both my cabinet and my car can't accomodate the wing assembly with both gear struts in place.

This main gear details already took me a about week. If you have notice it, both gear doors open to the left side on both nacelles. Don't ask me why, because the real one is just like that.

[joe yap]

Just completed 2 sets of dummy spinner/prop assemblies. The spinner bases are plywood balsa sandwich and the main body is blue and pink foam core with fibreglass finishing. The prop blades belonged to the old MA 10x8 electric props, cut to length and epoxied onto the spinner.

[plug&fly]

Hey Joe

Yesterday's flight was fantastic. Too bad I couldn't stay for the landing though. I just tot that the flight could have been a bit slower and I think it would have been really scale-like...Good luck on the comp. Love the sound of the twin.