2006 Foam Park Flier Update

Here is a recent design of my own. It is loosely based on a P-38, so I call it a Q-38. I wanted to be able to use 3/16" carbon rods for fuselage tubes, and IPS direct-drive motors for propulsion. I also expected to use my 250mAh Etech Lithium Polymer batteries, but in the end the motors drew too much current. Instead I used a 700mAh 2-cell pack. It has a 24" wingspan, since the wing is made to the width of a sheet of fan-fold foam. With the 700 pack it flies well, tracking nicely and I was especially pleased with the speed and manuverability. The only draw-back is to be expected, and that is a fast landing speed. The wing loading is a little bit high, so the bottom end of its speed envelope is pretty high. This problem leads to a minor design flaw that results in a lot of broken props. I think some kind of landing gear or support under the fuselage stick would help solve this problem.
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This is the Extra 300 from 3dFoamy.com plans. I've modified it to change to a built-up sort of structure. The tail feathers and fuselage are 1mm depron, while the wing skins are 3mm. I haven't had a chance to weigh the parts yet, but the airframe certainly looks better than the shock-flier setup. There is a single 3/16" carbon rod for a wing spar, and the rest of the airplane is only foam. I used medium-sized hinges with hinge pins to help make for very free control surfaces. Hopefully I'll have enough servos to put a separate servo in each wing, so that I can come up with some aileron and flap mixing. The blue-foam spars seem to make for a structure that is very twist resistant.

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Here are some pictures of the rest of my current fleet. The rainbow one is a mini 3DX. It currently has an IPS motor, but I'm in the process of upgrading it to an IPS twin for better power. It is a blast to fly because it tracks so well. I built it in a hotel in Lafayette, LA about 2 years ago. It has had some long sits in the hot car and is a little bit warped, but from the way it flies, you would never know. The paint is testors, and the scheme helps keep the colored side up when flying at dusk. It has kevlar thread pull-pull linkages for the tail, and balsa-stick pushrods for the ailerons. Last time I weighed it gross weight was around 7 ounces.

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The flame-painted Edge 540 is similar to the Sukhoi in the foam part 1 web page.