Twinkle: aka Mini-Northstar Flies

[Tom Hastie]

Finally got my newest plane up in the air for a couple of flights today at lunch.

It’s a scratch built mini-Northstar amphibious aircraft.

I got the inspiration from a guy on RC-Groups who made a smaller (24” span) version of the North Star, and called it the Twinkle. I really liked it, but since the motors I had available were too big for the 24” version, I decided to draw my own plans for it scaled up to 36inches.

Here’s the RCGroups thread on the Twinkle:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=306404

I tried last Friday to get her in the air from the pond near my house. (that’s where these pictures come from). I did one aborted circuit with it, and after some more taxi-ing, the wind flipped me, and dunked my electronics :(. (After doing a canoe retrieve, and drying things out I decided to try again from the grass ball field near my work so I could learn the handling characteristics before commiting myself to water again.

It needs a bit of a long take-off run off grass since the belly doesn’t allow for much rotation, but she does come off grass nicely. In the air, the handling characteristics were really quite nice. With no surprises at stall, or at slow speed.

Next I gotta get the hang of flying her off water.


Specs:
Span 36”
Motor: Himaxx 2025-4200
Brute Gearbox 5.43:1 gear ratio
10x7 APCe prop

I haven’t weighed it, but I think it’s about 1.5lbs ready to fly. I think that might be a little heavier than it originally was since I don’t think the wood has fully dried out from the first last dunking in the water. Heh heh.

[John Weekes]

Cool...plus it looks like you've been able to use up all of your left over scraps of transparent lite covering... :o

Now you're all ready for Aurele's fall Brown Bag Float Fun Fly at the ORCC float pond...Saturday, September 30th! :D

John

[Tom Hastie]

Cool...plus it looks like you've been able to use up all of your left over scraps of transparent lite covering... :o

Now you're all ready for Aurele's fall Brown Bag Float Fun Fly at the ORCC float pond...Saturday, September 30th! :D

John

Yup. I used the rest of my tansparent coverlite. Red and blue on the top, and transparent clear on the bottom.

The fuse is covered in flourescent green and flourescent red solarfilm. The green is just "really bright", white the flourescent red is a really eye-BURNING flourescent orange which looks really great in the air (IMHO). You can see that even my camera had trouble taking pictures of the flourescent red (it appears bloomed/satruated in the pictures.).

Here's a couple of AVIs I mistakenly took of the plane the other day. (The camera was set in "video" mode, and in the bright sun, I couldn't see the LCD, so didn't realize it was taking videos, not pictures).

Lookin' forward to the float fly.

Tom

[Sev Fontaine]

I find that funny Tom. I downloaded some pictures of it from RC Groups about a week ago and almost started to build one. What stopped me from building it was crashing my mini Funtana on Saturday morning. I bit the bullet and ordered a Steven's Aero Stella G400X yesterday morning so I have something to fly at NEAT. Then... I get an email from John Weekes saying that I won the XPD-8 EDF kit that was donated by Discount Hobbies for the ORCC 50th Anniversary Fun Fly. I guess now I'll have 2 planes to fly at NEAT!
Anyway.. enought rambling... Your Twinkle looks great! How is the water handling?

[Tom Hastie]

Heh heh... yeah, I had been eyeing that thread on RCGroups, and I'm glad I took the plunge and built it...

He designed a very cool way to build the wing. You support the three spars on your building surface using some kind of jig. (I used the fuse sides, and the tip floats), and then fasten the outter ribs to the spars with a bit of CA. Then you build in the internal trusses.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2995808&postcount=20
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4550473#post4550473

In no time you have a single piece you can lift off the building board.

Water handling is good (although I don't have much to compare it to being my first seaplane). She comes up on the step easily. I just have to have more caution when taxiing down wind, and being more careful not to get drifted into the far side of the pond. (Man, I wish the ESC had reverse :P).

I waterproofed my ESC last night. (using an old CA bottle - not the bottle the glue comes in, but the jar, the bottle of glue comes in :p and some Goop). I'll have a go again in the pond behind my work at lunch perhaps.

Tom

[Dave Rees]

[QUOTE=Sev Fontaine]
I bit the bullet and ordered a Steven's Aero Stella G400X yesterday morning so I have something to fly at NEAT. Then... I get an email from John Weekes saying that I won the XPD-8 EDF kit that was donated by Discount Hobbies for the ORCC 50th Anniversary Fun Fly. I guess now I'll have 2 planes to fly at NEAT!
QUOTE]

heh heh, from everything I've seen and heard, you're gonna like the Stella:)

Uuummm, I thought I won that EDF kit:p

Cheers,
Dave

[John Weekes]

Huh??? :confused: I guess you now think you win everything, eh??

...I didn't see you walking to the car with the 9CAP! ;)

John

[Tom Hastie]

...I didn't see you walking to the car with the 9CAP! ;)

I'm pretty sure he walked to the car with *A* 9CAP... it just wasn't *THE* 9CAP.


Update: I think my Twinkle has a leak. During some lunch time taxi tests in the duck pond behind work, (the Canadian Geese DIDN'T Look impressed), I noticed that she seems a little lower in the water. Upon taxi-ing back to shore I noticed that the whole cockpit area was full of water.

I tipped her upside down and emptied probably almost half a litre of water out of the fuse.

It LOOKS like all my seams are still glued down tightly, and there are no obvious rips in the covering big enough to account for that much water. I'll have to go over it closely.

Just your standard new plane teething troubles.


Tom

[Tom Hastie]

Got the Twinkle up for some flying on the Ottawa river from my dad's sailboat.

Conditions were great for flying (not so much for sailing)... calm winds, and 6inch waves tops.

Here are some pictures from the escapade.

Unfortunately, the Twinkle still seems to be taking on water. I'm afraid, I don't have much choice other than stripping her, and recovering the whole thing. Now that I know where the problem areas are, I'll be adding some more balsa in places where I need additional surface area to stick the covering onto.

I can do more land based flying though. I'll see what happens. The covering is already starting to look a little ratty from me trying to repair the leaks. Ah well... my planes are meant to fly... not to look pretty :)

Tom

[Tom Hastie]

And a couple more since I like the attention :)

Tom