Mini Wanderer

[Hank GB Z]

I finished my Mini Wanderer and test flew her today. I did several changes to my model. Big ones were to go with bolt on wing instead of rubber bands and I added ply braces to the outer joints. I did this by cutting the ribs that are joined together aft of the spar and then making a brace and gluing it in. I'm attaching a pic for clarity. I also added lots of gussets to the wing on all the corners. I added the triangle stock to the fuse and rounded it over as much as i could, I started do that work with a spoke shave cut down on the saw dust. My AUW is around 185 grams and that includes adding 14 grams to the nose to get the CG to the aft limit shown on the plans. I have the emax HV servos (i forget the model) that fit the servo tray and i'm running the 450 mah 2 cell battery for a Rx batt. Covering is Ultra Coat Parklite and the graphics i cut out on my wifes Cricut. I think i will cut out more stars and add them free hand.

Today i test flew her out at Kite Hill. I started with a gentle toss to check the cg but she went out into the lift and was flying. Flew for 5 min landed and checked everything and went back out. Next flight was for over 30 min. It did help that today was just about perfect weather for this model. nice constant breeze with regular thermals but the model does penetrate up wind, I only needed to add down elevator if i wanted to gain speed. I will add a hook to the bottom for hi starts next. I'm really happy.

Good work Aloft and Red.

Hank

 

[Wayne]

Nice! We have not tested her with hi starts, so please proceed carefully. That balsa spar will not take much more than normal flight modes. Did you add the cabon to the bottom of the spar? (Not sure how old your kit is, early kits did not include the carbon.)

Looks great and looks to be flying very well for you.

we have seen a number of customer builds of these and a few have been interesting as they came out about twice the stock weight as the builds went a little off track with additions to the builds, but even the super heavy versions are reported to fly really well. As long as our customers are happy, go for it! (If you are going to make a heavy one, better beef up that spar. Spruce replacement would be a good idea.)

 

[Hank GB Z]

Hey Wayne,


I have a kit that came with the carbon but i didn't add it. I felt that it would not add much strenght for the amount of work involved. If this is a concern i would think changing the design to have spruce or bass wood spars wouldn't be a bad idea. You can keep the out panels to have balsa. My Pilot models Lavender is like this and it makes a very strong wing.

I plan to make my own upstart with some surgical tubing i bought from McMaster. If the wing folds up i'll reach out for a set of ribs to build a new one.

regards,

Hank

 

[Wayne]

Yeah, I have been debating doing just that for a while now. Now that we have a better source for Spruce that is a little more consistent in their tolerances, I'm much more open to do this.

 

[Red]

Yeah this one was never designed to see a bungee launch, so please be careful. I would highly recommend some reinforcement at minimum, spar replacement with spruce sounds like a great idea lol.