ARF Flite Streak fuse repair

LAST EDITED ON Dec-02-04 AT 08:06 AM (CST)
 
Pics of the repair after I hit the ground and broke the nose off trying to make my horizontal 8s "rounder".

Per Dirty Dans lead as described in Stunt News I added carbon rods to pass the loads all the way back to the high point of the wing.
I drilled holes in the fwd fuse interior blocks to receive the rods. .250" hollow rods fit pretty good, secured in place in the hollow fuse with a fair amount of West Systems epoxy / micro ballons slurry. I drilled some small holes in the rods to give the epoxy some teeth into the rods.

Haven't flown it yet - but I grabbed it by the nose and swung/shook the beejeezeers out of it. No flex and no cracking so it should last a few more flights.

LAST EDITED ON Dec-02-04 AT 10:38 AM (CST)
 
I recently repaired one for a friend that flys mainly free flight. He is finding CL a real challenge. After the repairs, I added an inside 1/4" balsa nose doubler. Sure helped keep vibs down and after the next crash, that part survived. I also made a two wheel landing gear, which helped on take offs and landings.
I hadn't read about the carbon rods, so I used square hard balsa sticks and lots of epoxy. At times I feel building a kit of the Flite Streak would be faster thatn repairing the ARF version .

>I hadn't read about the carbon rods, so I used square hard
>balsa sticks and lots of epoxy. At times I feel building a
>kit of the Flite Streak would be faster thatn repairing the
>ARF version .

Ty,

You hadn't read about CF rods to repair the Dirtmobile? Cripes, I write the Bad Boy Stunt column just for guys like you. And now I find you're not even reading it?!?!

On my list of things to do this winter is to build at least one, maybe two, Q-ships. For the one based upon ARF Flite Streak, I'm going to give up on stock motor mount sticks. Fuselage will simply get shot through my table saw, removing perimeter pieces, mount sticks and whatever else might be inside.

It's then a pretty simple thing to slice up appropriately sized pieces of maple--they'll be full-length, abutting wing sheeting--and glue them in place. Some 1/8" balsa stripped to width will replace perimeter of fuselage.

I would like to add that I have found this to be a good idea only because the Dirtmobile has been flown **a lot,** and back when I was fiddling with engines and a long list of different setups, merely to see if Brett was right--and was he ever!--I'd sometimes change motors four or five times per flying session, squeezing even cross-fuselage 1/4" hardwood dowel into eventual oblivion.

Plus, inverted, I skipped it off hard ground when it was still pretty new. And Mike Hazel, thanks to me short-tanking him in Classic at the Fall Follies, managed 3/4 of the four-leaf clover just immediately prior to pulling upright with a dead engine, smacking asphalt a real good 'un. He and I flew model rest of the weekend, but towards the end it was making strange noises.

I got more than my money's worth out of the Dirtmobile, a whole slew of folk had fun flying it, some in contests.

And the thing is still flyable!

LAST EDITED ON Dec-02-04 AT 03:58 PM (CST)
 
Dan,

I sleeve the bolt holes in the mounts with brass tubing cut just a hair longer than the width of the fuse. You can see them in the pics, but you gotta look close. When you tighten up the mount bolts it compresses the tubing flush and keeps the washers/nuts from sinking thru the doubler. Cheap and takes about 10 min.
I also use a pair of aluminum mount pads that the engine attaches to, similar to the plate shown in the Cardinal Arf pics in a recent thread.