Pictures for Leon

LAST EDITED ON Feb-10-04 AT 11:52 PM (CDT)
 
OK, I finally finished the thing. Here are a couple of pics of the new plane for Leon. He asked for them. With much trepedation, I checked the CG after I got it together tonight and much to my astonishment, It was spot on. I also put it on the scale. Man, I really didn't want to look, but it wasn't as bad as I feared. Right on 61oz. Should have been 56oz, but hey, at 700+ square inches, I'll take the 61. It beats the 74oz the previous Tango Red weighed.

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Not bad, I guess

It looks GREAT, Randy! Looking forward to seeing it fly at NWCLR. Nice day today, and maybe a few to follow. Keep us posted on how testing goes. Steve

Totally awesome, dude! What a plane!

Tim

Wow Randy,

I wouldn't care if it weighted 80 oz. and flew like a log I'd still love it...beautiful model....the skills I see displayed on this forum are truely awesome..wish some of them would rub off on me!

Thank you for the motivation

YEA!! What he said -- Nice job

Make sure you wear sun glasses when you fly it or the reflection may blind you. The workmanship & finish are awesome.

WOW!!!!!

I want to be like Randy when I grow up.

Paul

Randy,

Nice looking shop, and plane, too, I guess. Do you enjoy the JM+MH daughter's show as much as I do? Dr. Quinn made her return to TV there last night.

Randy,

Beautiful......!!!! Way to go. At 61 oz, a 4 stroker will pull your arm off. I know I flew Windy's Red Baron with a YS 53 I believe and his weighed almost 80 oz. My arm was spasming after the flight and it flew great. Cut a rug, but stay out of my way when I fly my Quasar. It weighs 65 oz with a DS60LRE with 720 squares. Flies like it is on rails.

OS,

Now that's tragic. You can recognize what TV show is on in the picture background.

What can I say? I've tried to be observant ever since working on my 2nd Class rank some 50 years ago. It was a requirement then.

LAST EDITED ON Feb-11-04 AT 10:05 AM (CDT)
 
Looks really awesome!
I see the USA-1 plans on the wall.
Bill <><

Bill,

Yea, I've been starting at those plans for a bit. Soon to start.

All,

The pictures actually don't do the colors justice. But they do mask a decent but less than stellar finish. OK, but not front row. That was the goal: light but presentable.

Thanks for all the kind words.

Pure eye candy. WOW!

Andy

Stunt1
Randy,

Very nice looking plane. Hope it flys as good as it looks.
I think once you rub it,it could be in the front row. Don't sell yourself short.

Mr.1969 NATS

Bob Lampione
AMA 605:+

LAST EDITED ON Feb-11-04 AT 01:08 PM (CDT)
 
Bob,

Oh, it's not bad at all. It's just that I was concentrating on really making the finish light. This finish is done with no dope at all and while some auto finish components are of equal weight to their dope counterparts, others are quite a bit heavier. You really have to watch it when using this stuff and I was probably more tyrannical about it than usual. As a consequence, while the finish it certainly decent, it’s just not in the class of the museum pieces from Ted, Paul and others in this neighborhood. I expect it to score decently in appearance points in the Northwest contests; it’s just not the killer finish it could have been. Now that it’s done, I’ll spend the extra time on the next one to try for that 20-point finish. I learned a lot with this plane and hope to apply the lessons learned next time.

Just as well. If I built a 20-point plane, my bottoms would probably be 20 feet.

Note: The clear has been partially sanded (just to knock off the dust really) and polished with Aurora 4000 hand glaze. Needs more sanding and will probably get it before the first big contest.

As Windy has said on occasion and I agree: No finish is ever completed, just abandoned.

LAST EDITED ON Feb-11-04 AT 01:41 PM (CDT)
 
Its so pretty (can you say that about a cl plane?)
Thank you for posting the pictures ,I like it better everytime i look at them.Was he kidding about rubbing the plane out ? Looked great to me.

Thanks Again

leon99

ps I type too slow you answered the question while i was typing it.

You are actually gonna FLY that thing? OOOh, I can't look! Beautiful job!

Wow Randy. That looks from the pics to be the prettiest one of yours I can remember seeing. The color scheme sure does compliment the beautiful wing tip shape. I like the way the tips of wing and stab are so smoothly tapered looking. It seems a ##### shame to have one of those mufflers hanging out of that pretty plane. Are they really too loud without the muffler? See you at the first contest of the season, Keith V

LAST EDITED ON Feb-11-04 AT 09:28 PM (CDT)
 
Hi Keith!

Well, I actually had a brief notion about making an internal muffler. Then my sense kicked in and I thought, hmm, I really need a reliable plane. An internal muffler doesn't seem to the the correct path at the moment. Maybe the next one. I have a pretty good idea for one.

You can complement Larry Cunningham on the smooth taper. The wing is also elliptically tapered vertically. Again, thanks to Larry and the absolutely great Excel application he's writing. That is one great tool for designing something like this.

So, what do you have going to replace the product of Elvis' unfortunate maneuver recovery skills?

Nice, very very nice.

Hi Randy; I have almost finished another Saturn I added cheek cowls to hide the wraparound header. Magnum 36 on a pipe. Ill try for some pics here. Keith V

So much fer the picture posting, Keith

LAST EDITED ON Feb-12-04 AT 10:31 PM (CDT)
 
Keith,

You have to make sure that the pictures are in .jpg format and are under 50k in size.

If you email them to me, I'll fix 'em up and post them for you.

Good gosh, Randy!

Paint scheme is wonderful, nose treatment is really something.

The whole design is beautifully balanced, I would dearly love to create something of this caliber, someday..

You are a true artist. She absolutely HAS to fly perfectly, no other outcome is possible.

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"Beauty, more than bitterness, makes the heart break." -Sara Teasdale

Hey Randy,
If I were to look at the wing from the top (straight down ) how close would it be to Gierke's wing? Could you trace your plans over his?
Oh by the way I like the new plane.

John, it ain't even close. This is the third interation and was pretty much designed using Larry's new spreadsheet program. The only similarity is they are both elliptical wings.

In the attached picture, the perspective is bad. Makes the tail look bigger than it is. The wing is something over 700 square inches.

How long before it goes into the air?? My new plane is 3-4 weeks away but now that my 4 Stroke is running so well I lost some of the hurry to finish the new one.

I think you remember I told you at Albany 2002 that I had drawn up a plane VERY similer to the Tango .. (The NOVI 5 with Dave's permission). It's nice to see a design I haven't had time to build ready.

Randy
A stunning model,beautiful, I would also settle for 61oz with a 4S.!!

Great paint job, what paints did you use please.

Good flying

>>...my 4 Stroke is running so well I lost some of the hurry to finish the new one.
John Leidle

Now there is a comment we don't hear very often from that particular individual, no matter if the engine in question is a two- or four-stroke powerplant.

Sorry, John. I simply could not resist. See you soon up at Arlington. Will you please mow a circle, as you did last year, so I can hog it to myself?

Dan,
I had be myself as I am not one to follow the masses........ the old type Taffinder tin uniflo tank works just fine . It worked first time I used it (June 2002) & it works today. The only thing wrong with my 4 stroke is I listened other people. Plastic never work well for me.
As soon as I get my new blade on my mower I'll get you a circle with your name on it.

LAST EDITED ON Feb-14-04 AT 10:19 PM (CDT)
 
Tony,

There is no dope on this plane.

It's prepped with Minwax Polycrylic. Has silkspan over the open bays, elevators and rudder. Just bare wood and polycrylic over the rest. A bit of judicious use of CF veil on the nose and around the stab on the fuselage. Filler/primer was pPg K-36 catalyzed primer.

The colors are pPg Omni urethane auto paint. The colors are mostly Ford and GM (except the stuff that looks white - it's not - it's BMW)

The clearcoat is Matrix Ultra Gloss catalyzed polyurethane.

Randy Powell

Edit: For anyone that's interested, a couple of facts about the beast.

-Carbon fiber cowl and gear I laid up myself.
-Morris controls except for a Windy horseshoe bellcrank.
-Saito 56 with metal chicken hopper tank...kinda. My own design anyway.
-All molded blocks except the canopy. Had to carve that.
-Wing was built with a modified "Millenium" design as was the stab---apologies to Tom Morris.
-Don't ever use polycrylic without silkspan between the wood and the primer. What a pain.

>-Don't ever use polycrylic without silkspan between the wood
>and the primer. What a pain.

Could you elaborate on this some?

LAST EDITED ON Feb-16-04 AT 01:03 PM (CDT)
 
'zilla,

Well, I discovered that the PC will sink into the grain more than I thought it would. What initially looked pretty solid, ended up showing grain. I had to use a lot more primer that I would have liked and still ended up with a bit of grain showing, though it looked fine initially. I went through a lot of extra sanding on this one. I think if I had gone ahead and used the silkspan over the whole structure, it would have taken a lot less PC and K-36.

Hey, live and learn.

To everyone: Thanks for all the kind words. We'll see how it flies if it ever stops raining.

>'zilla,
>
>Well, I discovered that the PC will sink into the grain more
>than I thought it would. What initially looked pretty solid,
>ended up showing grain. I had to use a lot more primer that
>I would have liked and still ended up with a bit of grain
>showing, though it looked fine initially. I went through a
>lot of extra sanding on this one. I think if I had gone
>ahead and used the silkspan over the whole structure, it
>would have taken a lot less PC and K-36.
>
>Hey, live and learn.

I think the carbon veil is even better.

I like the silkspan also. I never do straight PC anymore. It just creates more work later as you described.

My new plane is completely covered in carbon and PC. IT is basically "slick" now and should require very little primer. The carbon also "bridges" much better than anything else I have ever used.

Very nice work.
Just one question though, is the 3b prop on the model the one you use on the Saito? If so, what size is it?
Cheers.

>Very nice work.
>Just one question though, is the 3b prop on the model the
>one you use on the Saito? If so, what size is it?
>Cheers.

I have no idea. This is the prop I used on the last plane (with the same engine and tank setup) and it worked very, very well. But that was, after all, that plane. A completely different design. So I don't know how well it will work, but I'll find out...if it ever stops raining here.

The prop is a Eather 13x4 flat back three blade that I cut down to 11.5". The blades were modified some to allow the previous plane (a, shall we say, portly gentleman) to penitrate a bit better. This plane is a lot lighter...a lot and may do better with some more diameter. We'll have to see.

Whenever I start to trim a new plane, after the basic stuff of getting the wings level and balancing the turn and whatever, I usually take every prop I have that could conceivably work (8 or 10 of them) to the field and try them one after another. I keep a log to see how they do in the particular conditions I'm flying in and will most often end up with 2 or 3 that have certain characteristic that I'm looking for. They go in the box and I try them in different conditions to try to narrow down what I will use when. But the prop on it now was a killer on the last plane, so it's a good place to start.

Stunt1

Hello Randy,

That is one great looking airplane and a nice choice of colors.

Regards,

Mr. "69" NATS,

Bob Lampione
AMA 605