Cessna Birddog
Nederlandse tekst
I
started building this model at christmas 2005 and it was the first "real" model
after my restart in this hobby. It is built from the FROG plan which can be
found at The House of Frog,
one of Mike Stuart's websites. The dimensions of this drawing are close to scale,
but to improve the stability I've chosen to increase the tail surfaces by 20%.
This certainly worked out well, because the model scored very high for it's
flights at the IIFI 2010. But in the static
judging the model scored not very well, which was no surpise to me
Construction
I used rather hard balsa, because that was what I had at that time. Because the model has a good size (22" span) it didn't turn out overweight: 35 grams.
A large part of the balsa is in the nose cowling. Togethe with a Guillows plastic prop I didn't need any additional ballast to get the model well balanced.
Pilot
Each model looks more realistic in the air with a pilot in it's cockpit. So I cut a pilot from creme coloured meat tray foam and finished it with artist acryllics.
Covering
The covering is Esaki over mylar. This has as advantage hat it is not sensitive to damp conditions. The mylar is atached using a good coat of white glue which has dried and can be heat activated using a clothes iron. The tissue is attached by doping the mylar, putting wet tissue over the mylar and flooding thinners over the covering.
Flying
The model flies on a single loop of 3/16" rubber which can take up to 1400 turns. It can fly for over a minute in the local park and doesn't gain much height in it's flight, which looks quite realistic.
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