What's your indoor setup?

[Tom Hastie]

In order to help people figure out if indoor flying might be for them, I thought I'd start a thread about indoor aircraft setups. Feel free to add your own aircraft onto here. When getting into a new regime of electric, it's always best to start by copying what other people have that works.

Any IFO owners out there who want to suggest a setup? Tigermoth? Shock flyer?

Anyways, my first indoor aircraft was as follows (rough guesses at prices have been included):

E-flite Ultimate 3dfx ~$70
HS-55 servos (Three) ~$60

Castle Creations Thunderbird 18 ESC ~$45
Eflite Park 400 920kV ~$50
Thunderpower 3S 1320mAh ~$50

APC 10x4.7 SF prop (buy a bunch of these)

GWS 4 or 6 channel receiver ~$30-40

On top of this, the other support equipment you'll need is:
-li-poly charger
-foam safe CA and foam safe accelerator

This plane looked very good in the air. The moulded fuselage made it look alot nicer than your standard flat plate foamy. There was lots of coupling in knife edge, but you could fly that you or mix it out. All in all, it was a fun plane to toss around the air at the dome.

So... what's your indoor airplane?

Tom

[John Weekes]

This new thread is a great idea, Tom.

I'm in the market to build a bunch of foamie airframes for the winter. I now realize that given the high rate of midairs when flying indoors, there is little point in investing a lot of time and money in elaborate and detailed foamies...only to be clobbered or clobber someone else at the dome. For those of you who know me, this is a difficult admission...I have an established history of obsessing over models. :o

My two smaller e-motors are an Eflite 370 and Eflite 400 outrunners. I'm looking for simple but aerobatic airframes to mass produce that would fly well on either of these motors. I am open to suggestions.

Further, I'd be interested in teaming up with one or more individuals with similar interests/needs over the coming months to prep a bunch of models...then let the carnage begin! ;) Unlike Tom, I LIKE building with foam...it's fun and easy...although it does take its toll on your supply of #11 blades! :D

John

[Tom Hastie]

My two smaller e-motors are an Eflite 370 and Eflite 400 outrunners. I'm looking for simple but aerobatic airframes to mass produce that would fly well on either of these motors. I am open to suggestions.

Those would work well in a ~36" span flat plate foamy. Similar to the ones you've seen Dave Rees and Eric Dainty flying around. They're slightly bigger than your true "shock-flyer".

I happen to know that Dave R. has some plans I traced of a 36" Extra kit I had. It's very simple construction and would be easy to mass produce.
Hmm... maybe I should get in on that afterall.

Anyone else? what do you fly indoors?

Tom

[Dhammond]

I have a set of templates I made from plans from 3D Batix.com for an Extra 330 (36" wing)availible to borrow
I have built a few & They are Great flyers and easy to build , and also fly Great outdoor's and can handle wind .
Mine is setup with a 10amp phoenix speed controll with an Axi 2212-34,gws 6ch reciever .

[Dave Rees]

hhhmm, indoor set-ups. Well, I guess I can throw in my $.02.

Couple of observations first. IMHO slower and lighter is better! Given the fact that the airspace is definately limited and more often than not there are multiple planes in the air it's good to have a plane that flies slowly which gives the pilot more time to think and react to walls and other aircraft. That said, I have flown my micro hotliner which was more like a Nascar race than flying ;) Turn, turn, turn again, oops, try to turn, crunch!!

Personally I've flown a couple of different aircraft indoors and am currnetly flying a scratch built Tensor and an Ikarus F3A. I'm on to my second airframe of each and in building both (for the second time) I was a little more conscious of keeping the weight off. My store bought Tensor originally flew at over 11oz, my current one is 8.5oz RTF. My first F3A was about 8.5oz and currently am flying it at about 6.9oz RTF. (specifics later) The lighter versions fly like a different airplane. It's amazing the difference an ounce makes on these small airframes. As a percentage of total weight, I took off about 10% from each plane. The other up-side of all this, is that you can probably alter your power set-ups accordingly. My F3A now flies better on a 2cell batt whereas the first one was on 3cells. My first Tensor had a bigger motor than what flies it now. The point is........ keep it light, be aware of all glue used and resist the temptation to put a bigger motor in it. Bigger motor = bigger batteries = Higher wing-loading = faster flight = the walls are that much closer :eek:

Sorry for the rambling, here are my current set-ups:

Scratch Built Tensor
3 HS-55's
CC Phoenix 10
e-Flite Park 370, 1080 kV motor
e-Tec 3Cell 350mAh batt
AUW 8.5ozs

F3A
3 GWS pico servos
CC Phoenix 10
Apache A20-34s motor (I think the numbers are right, will confirm later)
TP 2cell 730's (I'm looking for smaller cap. batts, Any recommendations let me know)
AUW 6.9ozs

In reading some other forums I've found that there are some out there that would consider these heavy. Additional weight savings can be had by hard wiring you're servos to the Rx, (those pesky connectors are heavy ), replacing the servo leads with magnet wire, and some folks are running pull-pull with either light fishing line or dental floss on on all surfaces. Those crazy Europeans :D

Cheers,
Dave

ps: the opinions above are only my observations and are certainly open to criticism ;)

[Gord c]

Your right lighter is better, as in lower wingloading. I liked the flying characteristics of the Tensor too, but way to fragile. So I tried to build my own design only stronger and ended up with the Catsas. 30 in. wingspan. 7.5 oz with 3 cell 830 ma Little screamer and E Flite 300 motors. Those angle iron side pieces are the answer to the wobbly tails in the Tensor and Shockies. Clamped between two yardsticks and heated and bent to 90 degrees, glued to both sides, essentially makes a torque tube fuse.:D . Flying and landing wires are dental floss, with 1/2 in.square patches of 1/64 ply to mount to wings. Flies outside with a decent wind with 1320 lipos as the wing area can carry the weight. Hovers very well or fly along at walking speed. Knife edge loops and snaps are no problem as there is little noticeable coupling. loops in about 4 ft. Just a fun plane. That's what it's all about.

[John Weekes]

Very cool, Gord. Hope we can see it fly at the dome this winter...:D

John

[Sev Fontaine]

Now that the indoor season is under full swing... I thought i'd revive this thread.
I'm very excited to fly indoors this winter and have already attended over 5 events. I fly every weekend at the RA center and about once a month at either Carleton University or Algonquin college.
Anyway... here are my indoor airplanes.
588
The first one is an electrifly Turmoil. As with all electrifly foamies the quality is poor. If built by the book they will end up fairly heavy and have poor durability. The main problem is that the foam is very brittle and will litteraly shatter. I built this one with lightweight in mind (less weight in a crash = less energy = less damage). I left all the carbon fiber that came with it in the box. The only piece of structural carbon fiber on this plane is on the trailing edge of the wing. I also left all the supplied hinges in the box and used blenderm tape instead.
To reinforce the airframe... I used a stringing technique with fishline.
589
My second foamy is a reproduction of a biplane used for indoor F3P competition in Europe. It has a full fuse and is quite rigid. It's built entirely of 3mm depron with only a small amount of carbon fiber used for the landing gear. It runs on a Hacker A20-36S, CC PHX 10 speed controller, and LiPower lites 2S 480mah lipos.
As you can tell by the pictures there is a very large side area to the fuselage which translated into excellent knife edge performance. In fact... knife edge flight can be accomplished with very little and sometimes no rudder input.
I'm still learning the characteristics of this plane but so far so good.

[John Weekes]

I've been flying with the following 2 models:

Tensor 4D - scratch built
Eflite Park 370 Outrunner
Castle Creations ESC 10A
Kokam 3S 640mah
HS-55/BlueBird 371s

Eflite Yak-54
Rimfire outrunner 28-30-950
CC ESC 25A
ThunderPower 3S 730MAH
Hs-55s

I've started building and flying the following 2 models using free plans off the Midwest site:

OneDesign
Eflite Park 370 Outrunner
CC ESC 10A
ThunderPowr 3S 730MAH
HS-55s

Zactly bipe
Eflite Park 400 Outrunner
GWS ESC 25A
Thunderpower 3S 730MAH
HS-55s

Originally, I installed the Park 400 outrunner on the OneDesign...loads of power...probably too much. So I'm experimenting with the Park 370 and a 10x4.7SF APC prop. ...I'll bring this model to Carleton on Sat. The OneDesing is very short coupled and is very quirrelly to fly...fun though... ;) I would not recommend this design for the faint of heart.

The Zactly is currently on the bench. I'm hoping to have it completed by Sat. Hopefully, this bipe will be more predictable than the OneDesign...otherwise, I'll be continuing my search for a model (besides my tired old Tensor) that I really like to fly.

John

[Sev Fontaine]

I recently came up with a monowing version of my full fuse biplane. I really liked all the flying characteristics of both my biplane and my turmoil so I kind of mixed the two designs and came up with this.
I plan to finish it this week and maiden next weekend at the algonquin dome. We'll see how things go. I'm hopefull!
599

[Dave Rees]

Well, Christmas came a little late!! Just picked up a package from the post office :cool:

Well, in my quest to get my indoor plane even lighter I took the plunge and ordered a few things that I've been reading about. Now I've just got to get the airframe idea out of my head on cut some foam!! My goal is for a sub 5oz plane to start working on the F3P sequences.

Firs up is servos....... Dymond D47's. Aparently very precise and strong for their weight. I'll let you know! Dymond D47, 4.7g, 20oz/in torque. Compare with GWS pico, 5.4g, 7oz/in, or the HS-55, 8g, 17oz/in.

Next......... Motor. Microdan 2003 F3P. This little gem is a powerhouse at only 12g. Swings a 7X3.5 prop pulling about 5.8 amps producing 8.1 oz thrust. This is all according to manufacturers specs. We'll see ;) For comparison.... the Axi 2204-54 is 24 g, and the Apache a20-34s is 29g.

Simply doing the math, my 6.1oz F3A (newer lighter batts than listed in above post) equipped with this motor and servos will lose about 23.9g or .84oz :eek:
hhhmmmm, a 5.26 oz F3A........ I think I'll like it!!! Lose a little carbon and replace it with kevlar thread for bracing and should have no trouble getting it under 5 oz's. Still want to design my own though :)

I'll let you all know how things progress.

Cheers,
Dave

[Dave Rees]

I've discovered that I'm not an airplane designer nor am I very good at using AutoCad :( I was working on my own design foamy and it really wasn't working out so I decided to "refurbish" the F3A that I've been flying for a while. It's been a bit of an experiment to see how much weight I can take off and still have a flyable plane. Well I've managed to get the weight off, now we'll see how it behaves in the air.

Got it down to 4.6ozs, thats 132grams. Took 1.5 ozs off the airframe!! hehe, should be fun, or catastrophic :p

Cheers,
Dave

[Tom Hastie]

4.6 oz? That's NUTS...

where are you hiding the helium?

[MSgtRob]

This is my single wing mod of acesim.com Carbon traveler convertible.
Carbon rod and rip stop polyster covering "nearly" unbreakable.
The original is biplane and still my favorite to fly.
check out the sight and build log for more..