With it's wee size and the minuscule amount of building product needed, you'd be justified in thinking it wouldn't take very long to knock up............wrong It's taken far longer than I had anticipated, which has been a source of much frustration . Based on my own procrastination, I've developed a theory --> the less space the project takes on the building board then the easier it is to push it aside to do something else "important", hence the longer the build will take
The corollary is the amount of building interruptions is inversely proportional to the size of the model .
The only changes to the 50% scaled down design were to:
- Add an elevator, &
- widen the fuselage about 5mm to have enough room to install the radio without going cross-eyed or insane. (yes Carl, it is a bit of a chubby buby)
The cute little 16mm sponge rubber wheels are from Banggood. I had to insert 1/16" brass tube sleeves, CA'd in place, to bush out the holes in the wheels.
The Rx is a 2.2g FrSky clone from Banggood which I fitted Micro JST - 1.25 Pitch sockets to so as to match the 1.7g HK servos. The quoted Rx range is >800m. There is also a Flysky compatible version. The servo leads were shortened to 60mm. I've since obtained another FrSky clone alternative Rx which looks pretty good too. The quoted range for this one is >300m. That's still a looong way with such a small aeroplane
The motor is a mini-drone motor, a Happymodel SE0706 15000KV 1S FPV Racing Brushless Motor again from Banggood.
I obtained two different props to try - a 4 blade prop, a Racerstar 2435PRO 2.4inch, and a 3 blade prop. The 4 blader was way too much for the little motor, even after I removed 2 of the blades - The ESC shuts down after a few seconds due over-current. The 4-blade was originally intended for the original larger diameter motor which it is well matched to. The 3-blade blue prop is tiny, but there is plenty of static thrust & the ESC doesn't overload. The battery is a 240mah 1s cell. I fitted a 2 pin JST PH 1.25 plug to the battery to match the connectors used on the indoor integrated Rx+servos+ESC I'd obtained from HK a few years back. Imagine my surprise when I recently purchased some 200mah cells from HK with the "same" JST connectors integrated into a plastic housing on the end of the cell only to find the polarity reversed to suit E-flite UMX aircraft. The melting insulation was a clue . Be warned!
Finish is not as good as I would have liked - I still haven't got any dope and the postal service is touchy about transporting it. Consequently, it was my ersatz dope finish of hair spray, tissue trim glued on, then clear acrylic lacquer. Flying weight came out at 33g which was a very pleasant surprise No flying report yet, hopefully tomorrow subject weather.