Re: Building my first F1D

From: John Kagan <john_kagan_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 17:20:50 -0000

--- In Indoor_Construction_at_yahoogroups.com, "Lee Dammann"
<ldamnann_at_...> wrote:
> How about the taper on the spar.
>
> And...... do you soak and bake ribs on a form or slice from a
sheet??

Hi Lee,

Good to hear you are jumping right in to F1D. I've you've built good
EZB's, you can definitely make a nice F1D.

I use a Harlan balsa stripper to make a double taper for the spars.
They are tapered all the way from the center to the tip. The weight
I listed on the plan was for each spar (front and back). If you end
up with a slightly lighter spar, use it on the back.

A lot of people slice their ribs. Jim Richmond and others soak and
bake. So either way should work.

Building slightly heavy, as Mark suggested, is not a bad way to go.
But since these are pretty stout to begin with, you might want to
consider going right for the target weight. With the unbraced
designs there are distortions that are used to make them launch
properly. If you make parts like the motorstick heavy, you can end
up with some frustrating launch problems. If you go light, you may
break some motorsticks until you figure out how to eliminate the weak
points. Your choice :)
Received on Sat Oct 20 2007 - 10:21:00 CEST