Notebook

It’s the system of the world. The unsaid norm. An unspoken fact yet, a known truth.  You move forward and you stumble over. Take a step further and you find a dead end. It’s very similar to the New York City. The tallest building, the sky rocketing tower; all seems amazing but scary from a distance. But as you mount the building, reach the top and view the bottom, it all becomes a tiny dot. An easy spectacle. You become the winner of the game irrespective of the frightening stages you went through. Claustrophobic. You are packed in an elevator. All exhausted and suffocated. But as you reach the destined floor everything seems fair. Even the nauseated feeling. Yes, as you climb the ladder life becomes tough but fascinating at the same moment.

Reaching the sky of success without keen hardwork is not possible. Nothing in this world is impossible until we try it.

A great team is determined by knowing whether it has the capability to constantly strive for achievement and patiently wait for it to be effective. Our team has that capability and that patience due to which it is considered as one of the most creative and innovative team.

In the beginning our project ‘RC-Plane’ we were not even sure of its parameters / requirements. As it’s our first project, we have no idea about its design and calculations.

Yes it’s true without involving into a thing we cannot get the idea about it. Without team determination and untiring effort it were not possible for us to complete the first stage of our project i.e.  ‘Design’.  Though Design is one is one the most critical part of any project especially when you are working with all the proper dimensions, with a good ratio and keeping all aspects related to theory of flight and aerodynamic calculations. It includes structure Drawing, CAD models, & Airfoil designing. The designing of vertical and horizontal stabilizer took our two days to figure out its exact ratios and dimensions. The complete research and designing process took almost 2-weeks to frame it out.

The second stage of our project is to modify our design in such a manner that it is effective and cost efficient considering all the systematic parameters of RC-plane. Now the next most important thing is to estimate the price of our RC-plane. Being the new players in this field of hobby it were not easy for us to just start our work without the basic knowledge of its components, stability criteria, weight & balance analysis and power plant understanding. Our team is very thankful of Muhammad sharif for helping us in many of the matters. The notes of Rohit Wadhwani and google searches gave us the extreme professional knowledge of RC plane working.

DAY 1 - Carpentry

We reached the carpentry shop at 9o’clock with the calculation of stabilizers and the plane. We started our work by drawing the design of stabilizers on drawing sheet with actual dimensions and then making the mirror image of it, of balsa. The working with balsa and ply initially looks us difficult but later it seems pretty easy. We continued our working and end up with finalizing the horizontal & vertical stabilizer and two sides & 3 compartments of fuselage.   

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Once the design is completed with exact calculation there comes the practical and most interesting task for the RC Plane hobbyist that is to construct the structure of the plane.

 First of all the body mainly consists of the Horizontal and Vertical Stabilizer (including rudder and elevator) and of course Wing (along with ailerons) and the Fuselage.

Once your calculation is completed of horizontal and vertical stabilizers, draw the exact dimensional drawing of stabilizers on the large sheet of paper. Take the balsa sheet (5mm thick), cut them into strips of required dimension (approx 5 mm width) and join them to make the designed structure. You can give support to the structure by attaching balsa strips inside the structure that is in between the stabilizer’s boundaries. Now cut the rudder and elevator as per calculation .Now your elevator and rudder along with stabilizers are completed.

Cut the small pieces of X-ray sheet (1*1 inch) in order to attach rudder with the vertical stabilizer and elevater with the horizontal stabilizer so that they can move easily.

Now you are almost done with the tail part, the rest major task is to construct the fuselage. The  sides of the plane is first constructed then cut the upper and lower parts accordingly. Draw design of the plane (side view) on ply wood (3mm thick) giving shape of the plane you like or designed as per aerodynamic considerations.

Now make the front side of the plane for engine mount, taking the size of the engine mount to be attached. Keep in mind to keep the front area of the plane as lower as possible in order to avoid the wastage of thrust generated by the propellor. The front structure will be made of three plys ,the middle one opposing the grain pattern on the wood from those of the outer sides. Attach them with gymsa. Similarly make the small square part for the rare side of the plane.

First of all attach the engine mount to the base, then attach the wooden parts with offset cuts on the marks of the wings . Now attach the sides of the plane with the top (roof) and base by applying gymsa.  Thus, Fuselage is completed.

So, what now?

 Mark the length and thickness of horizontal stabilizer on the rear of the plane ,cut the marking , and insert  horizontal stabilizer in it, attach it using gymsa, after viewing its alignment and straightness. Now stick the vertical stabilizer on the rear top (and at the center) of the plane in the same manner.

Congratz! You are almost done with the construction of the body. Well you can add extra features in the body depending upon your design.

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LIGHT UP  YOUR RC PLANE : Once your physical design( STRUCTURE) is complete ,your first task is to reduce the weight of the plane. For this purpose you can cut sections of desired shapes on both sides of the plane.

MARK THE SECTIONS : As in our case , we have mark the lines with the offset of 2 inch from the border on both sides of the plane and then make section marks on both sides of nearly 5 inches with 2-3inch distance . Now with the help of paper cutter blade ,trim out those pieces. You Lift your plane and feel quite lighter with the previous one. 

TRIM OUT SECTIONS :A sand paper can help you to round off the sides of the plane , this is done to resist the breakage of the plane and minimize the forces while it is in the air as the forces are maximum on the edges.  Your structure will look like this.

SETTING UP ENGINE MOUNT AND LANDING GEAR  : Mark the points of the screws of the engine on the front side of the plane and the landing gear setting screw marks on the front side. Making sure that the 1inch hole is made on suitable location in the middle to pass out the pipes from petrol tank to the engine. make drills to the marks.

Now the next step is the mount of the engine. At the front side of the plane the engine mount is to be placed. Take the engine and at first remove the cylindrical part of the engine via LN KEY so that your work become easy, Now take the engine mounts and place is on the engine via screws. Attach the landing gear setting on the drill points and tight them with the help of screws . Once it is done now attach the engine mount on the front side of the plane and tight is with the help of screws.

Now take the CG point of the plane with respect to your design and take 2 inch more from the front edge of the wing(CG distance from front edge of the wing+2inch)(if trainer plane).take two to three strips of balsa and join them and plane them at the inner side of the plane with respect to the lines mark (via CG DISTANCE+2INCH) .now taking 2inch distance from the center line mark a point of 2-3inch distance on the line marked and similarly mark and insert the rod for plane stand after that mark a point on the other side of the center line with same distance but a little bit right side to avoid over lapping of the two rods and then drill and put another rod into it.Hence now your structure is on the stands.

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If you see, the trainer is not straight or say unstable then you can change the distance between the rods of landing gears attached inside the plane, to get a proper texi. After that attach wheels with landing gears with support i.e. collar on both sides of it. Collar contains grab screw that fixes inside collar and LN key used to tighten the grab screw in collar.

Covering:

After placement of landing gear and nose gear next step is to cover the plane with Vinyl sheet to make it look good and to provide strength to the structure. The vinyl sheet is applied with drier to properly fix the covering on plane.

Now after covering the most awaited part of the plane is the construction of the wings. There are several ways to design wing, some people use balsa wood to make the skeleton of wing and then apply covering over it while other use  thermopole to keep the weight as low as possible. We used 2in thick thermopole to make our wing.

Firstly make airfoil on profile (software) of your decided chord, in our case we make airfoil of 10chord and placed our CG at 22% from leading edge of airfoil. If it seems difficult to you to make airfoil on software you can also easily download, one from google.

Once you done with all settings, take print out of your airfoil (actual size), paste it on balsa wood or on ply wood and cut it. Make exactly four copies of it, after that placed all airfoil altogether and tape them tight and use sandpaper to make them exactly same. Once you did this step you are done with the difficult part.

Now cut the wing span into half for example, if your span is 60inch long then cut it into 2pieces of 30inch of thermopole and then paste the airfoil on both sides (2x2) of the thermopole, make sure that they are align to each other . Now the most difficult part is to insert an aluminum rod in a blind hole at CG point. Insert hollow aluminum rod from one side of the wing’s blind hole and pass out from the other side of the wing’s blind hole. Repeat same procedure for other piece of wing span. Now once this is done your wing spans are ready to be shaped. Use hot wire (transformer) to cut the wings in the shape of the airfoil. Use sand paper to make the surface uniform throughout.

Remove some material from leading edge of the both wing span and placed 5mm balsa strip over there and then make leading edge of wings round through sand paper. After that cut ¼ th of the wing chord from the lagging end of the airfoil of both pieces of wings to place conventional ailerons over there. Now divide 30 inch conventional in a following way, fix 2in from end, following 19in moving aileron (use x-ray), remaining 9in fixed from right. Repeat same procedure on other side and then join two wing span pieces through aluminum rod, placed rod in holes that we had made previously. Place thermopole over aileron if wing span seems out of the shape, use sand paper to make whole wing uniform, and make sure there is no 90 corner in wing, transform all corners in rounds. After that make two cavities for servos in wing and then placed vinyl oven wing. Finally your wing is ready (Y) 

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Now before attachment of the wing you must attach the probe and propeller to the engine and check it’s working. Now fir of all take the fuel tank and attach its component …attach the weight to the tube and the tube to the tube link to the bottle cap rubber. now press hard the rubber to make it air tight and then take the fuel pipe and attach the fuel pipe one with the fuel tank main head opening(for the fuel ) and the other with the lower end opening (for the air). Now for the propeller and probe fir place the rubber on the back side of the probe and then place the probe to the engine front by using threads (on it). Now take the propeller and place in the engine rod making sure that the nose of the probe is closed properly and then tight it with the screws. Now your engine is ready to test. First open the fuel lock to make the fuel flow in the engine and then by giving jerks to the propeller again and again with the rechargeable cell(1.2V and 2700mA [min]) connected to the spark plug to the engine .once your engine is started then remove the plug connection after 2-3min and let your engine running for long period of time to make it perfect and use to.

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For the balancing of the wing over the plane put the wooden sticks of half inch diameter, one inch in (from each airfoil end) and below the wing placement area. Drill the holes on the both sides of the plane parallel to each other and then stick it with gymsa.

Now make the areas for the placement of the servos. Two hollows in one ply plate for the elevator and ruder and one hollow in one plate of ply for the engine speed control servo the plates of the ply will be place about 2 inch of the plane base for easy placement of the servos and make sure that the cavity made for each servo must be in such a way that the servo top don't contact the other servo or the plane side.

Make the connectors by using the hard steel wires or the rods of cycle tires and placing the kelevious at each end of the rod. Connect the rods by breaking the small circular region on the rod and then binding it with the thread and then using gymsa for making it strengthen.

Place the control horn on the ruder and elevator making it sure that it gives the maximum torque at that position. Now make the cavity at the tail of the plane for easy movement of the rod connected with the ruder and servo . And the small cavity at the top for making the connection from the rudder to the servo. The cavities will be made on the basis of the once assumption of the rod placement. Make another cavity at the base of the plane from the front side for the control of the front wheel. The connection of the front wheel and the ruder will be on the same servo. And another connection will be made on the servo and the engine speed controller. Hence place the servos with the screws to complete your plane fuselage. Make sure that your servos are neutralized by the transmitter receiver at initial and again servos  are set at specification rotation at last by it.  At some space place the plate of the wood to stick the battery to that plate.

Now place the servos first on the wink and then neutralize the servos using transmitter receiver and the with the alignment of the servo tops end mark the straight line and then place the control horn there. Now connect then via wire or the connector. Due to the large distance of the servo from the receiver use the extending wires and V wire for the same movement of the servos

Once all the servos are placed and checked with transmitter receiver and are marked to which channel they are checked then connect all the servos and place the receiver inside the plane binding it with tape or the wire.

Now place the wing on the plane and then once it is set or centered then bind it using the rubber bands and then check the CG by picking the plane from the wing’s end just below the rod placed. The nose should be a little heavy or of equal weight balance.

Now your plane is ready to fly but first take the texi of the plane to check whether the plane is working properly or not … then fly the plane to the heights of the sky.

Guess what happens in the end? 

You start to remember the beginning.