REVOC WING BAGS EXAMINED The RC Pilots’ Source
NOV/DEC 2018
FOCUS! WE TEST SERVOS
OTHELLO’S
SEASON ENDER REPORT
AND
SERVO FRAMES KWIK-FLI BUILD CESSNA 310 PLAN VAN’S RV-4 3-VIEWS HOW TO PAINT WARBIRD RCFLYERNEWS.COM
TABLE OF CONTENTS DEPARTMENTS
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LEADING EDGE MYSTERY PLANE
EVENTS
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WEAVER’S SEASON ENDER NW PILOTS COME TOGETHER TO END THE SEASON WITH FLYING, FRIENDSHIP, AND LOTS OF FUN. Wil Byers
THE EXTREME FLIGHT LASER WAS CAPTTURED AT THE SEASON ENDER EVENT IN OTHELLO, WA BEING FLOWN BY TYLER WILBUR. HE IS PERFORMING A HARRIER FOR THE CAMERA IN THIS PHOTO. SEE MORE IN ACTION IN THE REPORT.
BUILD
PLAN
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BUILDING A KWIK-FLI III GET GREAT TIPS ON A COOL JIG, CLEVER CONSTRUCTION AND LOTS OF OTHER USEFUL TRICKS. Jeff Troy
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RC FLYER NEWS • Nov/Dec 2018
VAN’S RV-4 KITBUILT AIRPLANE TAKE A LOOK AT THESE DRAWINGS TO DECIDE IF THE RV-4 NEEDS TO BE IN YOUR HANGAR. Hans-Jürgen Fischer twitter.com/rcflyernews
NOV/DEC 2018
HOW TO
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BENCH TESTING SERVOS SEE HOW I PERFORM REAL-WORLD TESTS OF TODAY’S RC SERVOS TO SEE IF THEY MEASURE UP. Wil Byers
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PAINT YOUR WARBIRD LEARN WHY PROPER PREPARATION IS KEY TO GETTING A GREAT SPORT-SCALE PAINTED FINISH. Gary Weaver
3-VIEW 310R 104 CESSNA TWIN BECOME A PILOT OF THE TWIN-ENGINE BLUE CANOE BY BUILDING FROM THESE PLANS. Wendel Hosteller rcflyernews.tumblr.com
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INSTALLING SERVO FRAMES DISCOVER HOW BEARING SUPPORT WILL IMPROVE SERVO LIFE AND TORQUE OUTPUT. Wil Byers
REVIEWS CUSTOM 110 REVOC WING BAGS WE GIVE YOU THE INSIDE SCOOP ON THESE EXTREMELY HIGH QUALITY BAGS AND COVERS. Jeff Troy Subscribe @ RCSportFlyer.com
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EVENT
SEASON ENDER Pilots Come to End the Season with Flying, Friendship, & Fun By Wil Byers
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or RC pilots that live in the south, October signals cooler, more comfortable weather. It’s a time of the year when you can enjoy being outside in the midday sun with friends and flying RC. For those of us that reside in the north, October pretty much means the end of outdoor flying, unless of course, we bundle ourselves up to stay warm against the cold. Even wrapped up, our unprotected fingers can lose much their dexterity, which can then rob us of a good time. That being the case, October’s passing typically means the end of RC flying in the inland northwest too. This year, however, during the weekend of October 26 thru 28 a
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group of northwest RC enthusiasts found their way to Weaver’s Airfield in Othello, Washington for a weekend of genuine camaraderie and flying. The weather was grand, as were the pilots and people that attended. It was a fitting end to the 2018 flying season. Airfield Gary Weaver and his airfield, along with his many friends, have been welcoming pilots of airplanes both big and little for years. It has been a hangout destination for pilots to enjoy the flying, the learning, and the sharing stories of planes and piloting.
Accordingly, Weaver’s Airfield plays host to a number of RC events each year. The airstrip is 750 feet long by 100 feet wide, with close-mown grass. There’s a full-scale airplane hangar and a smaller model hangar on site. South of the flight line, the airfield has plenty of room for recreational vehicles and aircraft trailers. Simply put, it is an excellent airfield for RC aircraft activities of any kind. It is certainly a superb site for a Season Ender event in central Washington State. It’s In The People What impressed me about this year’s Season Ender was just how enjoyable it was to hang out
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Tyler Wilbur pilots his Extreme Flight 125-in. wingspan Extra 300 for a nice knife-edge camera pass.
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BUILD
Building a Vintage Kwik-Fli III By Jeff Troy
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RC FLYER NEWS • Nov/Dec 2018
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Cool Jig, Clever Construction, Good Tips Part 1: Framing the Wing
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very article has its backstory. That certainly holds true for my Kwik-Fli III, so here is mine. I had the pleasure of building three of these fine Phil Kraft World Champion designs, all in 1968 and ’69. Sometime in ’68, I was flying my Veco Thunderbird control-liner at
Tamiami Park in South Miami when I spotted a model airplane high overhead doing loops and rolls—and you just can’t do that on 60-foot lines! My T-bird finally fueled out, so I glided it in and went over to where the other pilot was standing. Then came the real shock—he landed his
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airplane and taxied it right up to his feet. WHAT? I was awestruck. I had heard of radio control (RC) airplanes—and even built a couple of them modified for control line—but this was the first time I had ever seen an RC model fly, and it made a dramatic impression on me.
Top Flite’s Kwik-Fli III kit came with a cleverly designed, diecut-cardboard wing jig. Here, I’m truing one edge of the balsa wing sheeting before placing it upside-down in the jig. Subscribe @ RCSportFlyer.com
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How To
Bench Testing Servos By Wil Byers This new standard-size servo features horizontal mounting tabs, which makes it easier to install in certain applications such as airplane wings. The aircraft manufactures will need to design around this new mount, but it should save the builders time and make the installations much more secure. I wanted to test it to see if it measured up to specs.
Verifying Real-World Performance
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s a builder and an RC pilot, you’ve undoubtedly searched for servos. It is an analysis challenge. First, you must determine the size: micro, mini, wing, standard, low-profile, and of course giant scale. You’ll likely search them by their voltage rating, especially because state-of-the-art radio control systems typically run high-voltage servos.
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RC FLYER NEWS • Nov/Dec 2018
You’ll also choose between a coreless or brushless motor, with brushless servos offering savings in current consumption. Next, the torque needed to drive your airplane’s control surfaces must be assessed. Then too, you must consider the servos’ speeds, deadband, centering ability, type of gear train, idle and stall currents, case type, spline teeth, and of course twitter.com/rcflyernews
ELITE
This is one of RCSportFlyers.com new wing servos. It also utilizes the horizontal mount tabs. The motor is exposed as a way to make the case thinner, plus it helps dissipate heat from the small but powerful motor. We had to modify our torque tests mount to accommodate the thin profile of this servo, but we got its performance data.
whether the servo is fitted with ball bearings to support the output shaft. Your analysis is all important in matching servos correctly to their respective controls. I’ve been picking servos for my models for years—back to a time when “powerful” servos were pumping out a “massive” 28 oz-in. of torque when powered by six volts! Nowadays, a typical standard-size servo puts out ten times that amount, it has a two micro-second deadband, and is powered by 7.4 volts—giantscale servos deliver twenty times that much torque or much more. RCSportFlyer.com now offers Savox brand servos, as well as a limited number of RCSF’s brand. Consequently, it was vital for me to invest in some servo test equipment. rcflyernews.tumblr.com
It is essential to verify manufacture performance specifications for servos being sold by RCSportFlyer. com, as well as to analyze servos that may potentially get offered online. It is, after all, crucially important for customers to know the servos they purchase are going to perform as advertised. Understand, I’ve been in this hobby long enough to know that sometimes what is advertised is optimal performance. It is not what is delivered in real-world applications. Unfortunately, some manufacturers are worried about their profit margins more than they are about the builders’ RC aircraft! Therefore, I’m sharing my testing methods in this article so you can understand how I recommend performance assessments.
Equipment Power Supply When it comes to testing a component such as a servo, a quality power supply is an absolute must. I purchased two. The first operates on 120 volts AC, has a regulated output of 0 – 30 volts DC (adjustable in .01-volt increments), and delivers up to 10 amps continuous current. The second supply has 120 VAC input but delivers 3 – 15 VDC at up to 40 amps continuous. Torque Tester As a way to measure the torque accurately, I purchased a high quality, battery/AC-powered digital torque tester. It measures torque in units of foot-pounds per inch up to 90, or kilograms per centimeter to 100, or Newtons per meter of 10. The tester Subscribe @ RCSportFlyer.com
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How To
Paint Your
Warbird
By Gary Weaver
It’s All in the Preparation and Setup — Simple!
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’ll start this how-to article with a bit of Weaver history. I started flying full-scale airplanes in the early 1970s when I was 18. My father taught me to fly the family’s Super Cub. I subsequently bought one of my own. However, in the early 80s, I sold it…. Then I started to build and fly RC airplanes and was quite passionate about it. However, in 1999 I decided to build a Challenger ultralight, which I flew
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a bit and then sold. Next, I built a Just Aircraft’s Highlander. I sold it after flying it a while too because in March 2014 I purchased a CubCrafter’s Carbon Cub EX kit. With the help of my good friends Steve Dentz and Dick Ovrid, the EX took about 800 hours to complete. The reason I preface this article is that I’ve learned much over my years of building models and fullfull-scale aircraft. As with many of
In March of 2014 I purchase a Carbon Cub EX, which is manufactured by CubCrafters in Yakima, Washington. It took me about 800 hours to complete the airplane, which was done with some help from my friends Steve Dentz and Dick Orvid. I covered the airplane in Stitz fabric and painted it in aircraft grade epoxy paint.
RC FLYER NEWS • Nov/Dec 2018
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In years past I built my warbirds to enter and fly in competitions. This photo was taken at the 1993 RC Quarter Scale Association of America (QSAA) meet in Las Vegas. I finished first out of 74 pilots in the scale warbirds class. I was competing with my Texas Longhorn P-40 Warhawk, which was powered by a Sachs 4.2. It had a 90 in. wingspan and I was using a Futaba radio system.
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How To
Servo Frames By Wil Byers
This is how the servo frames with bearing support come from AloftHobbies.com. You get two frames in a pack. The pack includes the plastic frames, two sealed bearings, two servo extension shafts, and eight servo mounting screws. The injection molding of the plastic is made well, as are the bearings and extension shafts. The shafts have a 2.5-mm screw thread on them that mates to the servos spline. The external bearing servo trays are made to fit for MKS DS6125, HBL6625 servos. You’ll pay Aloft Hobbies about $19.00 for two frames, plus their shipping costs.
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Give Your Servos Longer Life
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lider and sailplane pilots have been using servo frames for many years. They’re not new to the soaring community. Nope! The RC soaring community pioneered the technique of using frames to fasten servos in place inside composite
wings. Furthermore, soaring enthusiasts have been incorporating improvements in servo design and installations for their aircraft for probably the last five decades or more—always leading the way in engineered solutions my opinion.
I’m embarrassed to say I’ve spent too much time in the editor’s chair for this magazine over the last couple of decades and not nearly enough time building my models—or for that matter even installing the radio gear. The truth is almost-ready-to-fly
This photo is redundant to the one at the left, but let me explain. The frame is actually two pieces. There is the part of the frame that gets glued into the wing. There is also the upper part, which gets broken free for the frame. It is then attached to the servo and screwed to the frame. This design makes it easy to remove the servo for either maintenance or to replace the servo. Again, the quality of the plastic injection-molded parts is very good. These frames are not brittle, so you don’t need to worry about breaking them. AloftHobbies.com has a wide range of servo frames, including some that are CNC cut wood.
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3-VIEW 3-VIEW
Van’s Aircraft RV-4 By Hans Jürgen Fischer
It’s the Most Popular Kit-Built Airplane in the World!
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he RV-4 full-scale airplane was designed by Richard VanGrunsven in the mid 1970s. It is a two-seat, monoplane with a tandem seating configuration, with the pilot sitting in the front of the passenger. The prototype flew its maiden flight in August 1979. Van’s Aircraft Company is located in Aurora, Oregon. Van’s Aircraft RV-4 was an enhanced development of the popular RV-3, which was a single-seat airplane. The RV-4 is a lightweight, homebuilt aircraft, which is available as a kit, less a few
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RC FLYER NEWS • Nov/Dec 2018
components such as engine, etc. Van’s claims the RV series of aircraft have become the world’s most popular kit-built airplanes. Their RV-4 is only outsold by the now discontinued RV-6. As of November 2014, 1372 RV-4s had been built and flown, with additional aircraft in their building stages. The RV-4 is a new and improved design based upon the RV-3. However, it is not simply a stretched RV-3. The RV-4 airframe is designed for engines up to 180 hp (134 kW), including a Lycoming O-360. It features an
improved wing design for less drag, with increased wingspan and wing area over that of RV-3. Note that RV-4 kits are only available in a tail-dragger configuration, however, there have been a few converted to tricycle gear. Further, the RV-4 design is capable of sport aerobatics, which has added to its popularity with pilots wanting more from their airplane. With a maximum takeoff weight of 1500 pounds, it works well as a cross-country airplane too.
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PLAN
Cessna 310R By Wendel Hoestetler
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RC FLYER NEWS • Nov/Dec 2018
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the Blue Canoe’s Evolution Made it a notable Airplane.
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essna’s 310 is a four-tosix-seat, low-wing, twinengined monoplane. It was the first twin-engined aircraft Cessna put into production after World War II—produced between 1954 and 1980. It was unofficially nicknamed Blue Canoe by the United States Air Force pilots. The 310’s maiden flight was
January 3, 1953. As a new design it featured innovations such as exhaust thrust augmenter tubes and tip tanks in early models. It was an economical airplane to operate and garnered a place in the military’s fleet quickly because of its handling and utility. The Cessna 310 had many variants during its production
years. The R version was introduced in the 1975 model year. It featured 285 horsepower (213 kW) Continental IO-520-M or IO-520-MB engines, three-blade propellers, a lengthened nose that contained a generous baggage compartment, and 5,500 lb (2,500 kg) maximum takeoff weight.
Commercial The advantages of the Cessna 310 over other designs was its speed, operating costs, and aftermarket modifications such as the Robertson short takeoff and landing (STOL) kits, which made it a popular bush aircraft. Modified, it could use short runways and carry a large, useful load of 2,000 lb (910 kg), while at the same time cruise at relatively high airspeeds.
Military The United States Air Force (USAF) selected the basic Cessna 310A for service as a light utility aircraft for transport and administrative support in 1957. The USAF purchased 160 with the designation L-27A and gave it the Blue Canoe nickname, later designated to U-3A in 1962. The U-3 saw active service in a support role when the USAF deployed aircraft to South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, where they were used on courier flights between air bases.
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REVIEW
WING BAGS By Wil Byers
It doesn’t matter if your RC aircraft is big or little, Revoc Custom has bags that will fit your model. What you need to know right up front is that their bags are the best your money can buy, and we’ve seen a lot of bags over the years!
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Protect Your Baby Against Rashes and Gashes!
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o, here is the scenario: You buy an RC airplane that you’ve been saving for over the years. It finally arrives. You unpack it from the shipping crate. You then salivate like Pavlov’s dog! Then you question yourself about how you’re going to protect it from damage while
transporting it to and from the airfield. You search the Internet for solutions on how to package and carry. There are many. There are boxes; but, then how do you pad the box to hold your airplane secure? Also, boxes can be cumbersome, and a good box is not easy to build. You can make a support stand that slides
in the trailer or car, but again how do you support the wings so they can’t shift during transport? Then there is the inexpensive solution of wrapping your model in padded blankets. In the end, that savings results in heartache when you see the damage your model suffers when the blankets pull away and damage is done.
Our ASH 31 Mi has a four-piece, 8.4meter (27.56-ft) wingspan. Here you see the inner wing panels protected by Revoc bags, which even cover the wing joiner spar tangs. We photographed them outside—too big for the backdrop. rcflyernews.tumblr.com
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