The January 2017 meeting was called together promptly at 7 pm by President Cal Branton.

With no business to discuss he led us directly into the best part of our meetings, Show & Tell!

David P Andersen - Low Cost CAD designing for the average modeler.

David gave a short presentation on the use of ModelCAD 4.0 for creating your own design aircraft.  ModelCAD is a free download on the web and is easy to use.

Be aware that the copy I found was called ModelCAD 300 and was available as a 15 day free trial with

option to purchase.

I found another copy called Model-CAD 12.0 that is available as Shareware for a fee of $55.

The software publisher (Upperspace) describes it as:  This CAD system is specifically designed for PC and scale modelers. In simple terms, it is a tool for designing and drawing.  You can create complete sets of plans and print them to scale for airplanes, boats, cars and trains.

Use the double-line commands or drawing wizard to perfect even the most complex designs. The program also prints out in panels for larger plans than your printer can normally handle.

Create your own airfoils, automatically generate a three-part view of your model, determine the center of gravity, make distance and area calculations, add dimensioning and receive online help.

As an example Dave explained the use for creating ribs for a built-up wing such as his new 1/5th scale IL2 Sturmovic !

• Scan your airfoil into your PC creating a JPG image file.

• Import the JPG image into ModelCAD

• Use the TRACE function to create the CAD file by tracing the outline of the airfoil.

• Using your known chord & thickness you can now scale the airfoil and print for each rib in your structure!

Dave's design techniques are a combination of digital replication and hand drawn detail such as adding the details for ailerons and flaps.

Dave said he can point you in the right direction if you have interest to using ModelCAD for your next design!

Sherwood Heggen’s - Bud Nosen Citabria

Sherwood shared his 1/4 scale Bud Nosen Citabria that he had started building in 2008 from an 20 year old abandoned kit.

He covered it in SIG Coverall with a dope base coat. He then painted it with rattle-can Rustoleum white with blue trim. Sherwood tells us that the base white coat went on easily and looked great.  He then masked and started painting the trim color that looked good initially but when he can back to it later he had found that the trim color had crinkled into a disturbing texture.  He wet sanded it smooth and then read that Rustoleum recommends a minimum of 48 hours between coats.

The power for the original design of the Nosen Citabria was the old 0.61 cu in (10cc) glow engine.  Sherwood replaced his with a MLD-28 and found that the crankcase was a flawed casting and had failed. He tried a second MLD and it had the same issue.  He scrapped the MLD and installed a Zenoah G26 and it runs reliably.

No test flight yet so we look forward to Sherwood's flight report!

This is the 8th model he's built from his design, this time for a good friend in Egypt.  Ah has used some special carbon fiber cloth he's found in Europe that is thinner and lighter to reduce the weight of his structure.  The material cost in the range of 100 Euros per meter.

The final structure proved to be very strong and light but an unexpected side

This aircraft is powered by a Jet Italia 250N (55 pounds) thrust turbine. The final weight ready to fly is about 20 pounds.  Since the model is intended to fly outside of the USA it uses a Richter body bag fuel cell (similar to a bladder tank).

To save weight even further, Ah has used K&B wheels and had removed the plastic hubs replacing them with carbon fiber discs and Teflon bearings.

This reduced the wheel weight by half!

The vectored thrust director again was scratch built by Ah from carbon fiber, sheet metal and parts from McMaster-Carr. What a great looking aircraft!

Dick Steine & Scott Anderson - Share their 1/5th Scale Westland Lysander projects.

Both Dick & Scott became interested in the Westland Lysander early summer 2016 with the discovery that Seagull Models had an ARF kit of 118" span for a 50 cc engine.

SIG Manufacturing imports Seagull models into the US and apparently does not keep an inventory of the kit in the states. Scott ordered his directly from SIG in late June 2016 and received it in October.  (Shipping from Montezuma, IA was $100) Dick ordered his through a local hobby shop in July and received it in November.

The greenhouse canopy has some fitting issues but they can be

Scott has a Saito FG60-R3 petrol powered radial on his Lysander and is looking at using a 22x10 2 blade for his test flights.

Modifications:

Dick built his Lysander to fly so it has little or no modifications. (He's ready to fly)

Scott is doing a limited ARF Bash to make it look more scale including removing 2-1/2 inches from the length of the cowl to bring it closer to scale and installing a modified scale instrument panel and rear pair of Browning .303 machine guns.  (It's going to be a couple of months before Scott's is ready to fly)

The landing gear has been known to be soft so Scott is working with TnT Landing gear to get a set of replacement gear made (aluminum, or composite) before flying season arrives.

We're looking forward to the flight reports!

Roy Maynard - David Andersen's new 1/4 Scale Hawker Hurricane Mk IIc

This project is progressing well! Roy brought in the Hurricane dressed in primer to share with us.  This is a very big airplane!

Power system:

It will be powered by a Hacker 150 (equivalent to a 150cc gas engine) running off of (6) 7 cell 5000 mAH batteries wired in series to get 14 cells of voltage (approx. 50 VDC) to the motor.  Roy is working with Progressive RC for the wiring harness and charging systems. 

Retracts:

The retracts are a work of art and powered by LADO motors. Roy reminded us that it is easy to make a mistake and connect the wrong voltage battery if you are not careful.  He had mistakenly connected his gear to a much larger battery than the 7.2V (2) cell normally used and fried the gear motor and controller.  He expects to get replacement parts in a few weeks.

Details:

Roy has added all kinds of 3D printed details to his Hurricane including customer printed canons, blisters, exhaust stacks and a highly realistic landing light. Roy has a connect that could supply custom parts to other modelers. If you are interested, contact Roy Maynard for his contact information.

Proposed Finish:

Roy has covered the forward portion of the fuselage with FeatherFill G2 polyurethane based primer. It comes on thick and sands easily to smooth out any flaws that might be in a balsa sheeted structure. He's using KlassKote primer in the back where weight is more of an issue. The final colors will be a WWII Great Briton scheme with invasion stripes using KlassKote.

Roy also showed his details instrument panel for his new WWI SE5. The instruments & bezels were all 3D printed. He had a fitting finished with brass leaf paint that he had to order from Europe.