Ultimate Indoor Foamy Build, The Series!

[Matchless]

[Our good friend Jeremy Chinn has something VERY cool for us this week on The Leading Edge! The winter flying season is here, and FG is full on electrics for the coming months, and what a better way to kick it off! Thanks Jer!! The 5 part series begins now. Checkit!]

INDOOR SEASON IS HERE! – GOT FOAMY?

All around the Northern Hemisphere, the temperature has dropped and as a result, its time for us to pickle our glow and gas engines and head inside. For many this means setting aside flying and turning to the simulator or building to get your flying fix. It does not have to be that way however. Forget about the simulator and open your mind to flying with a true high performance airplane- Time to build an ETOC level foamy!

Like all of the Flying Giants readers, I love blue skies and the sound of a 100cc twin ripping the air, however for me foamy season is what truly consumes my imagination. Indoors, you always have perfect air, and there is never any wind to correct for or shy away from. Sunburn is nonexistent, and the john is never far away. After adjusting to the differences of the environment, it can truly become one of the best places to fly – maybe it will become what consumes your imagination too!

Two primary things get in the way of people enjoying indoor flying – location and equipment. Location is a fairly specific problem and can be addressed in many ways often as a club or as part of a group. I’ve linked a good thread or two on how to conquer this problem at the end of this article.

Equipment is a somewhat more fun thing to address and what this series of articles will focus on. Most FG readers are giant scale fanatics, and as such, the componentry and methods in foamies can be foreign to them. Even if you already fly indoor and foamies, I’m sure you’ll pick up a trick along the way. I hope I can draw some analogies and lay out some details, which will help you get the right equipment to allow the most fun! To further this thought help cement the ideas in your mind, I’m going to include a free plan for a foamy which is a proven good flyer and uses each of the techniques I’ll cover in building one right here. Get the materials and build along with me!

Before we get building lets cover a couple important indoor specific ideas.

First off, Indoor flying usually involves walls, a floor and a ceiling- that’s what makes it indoor! Because of this, everything you can do to make things happen slower will allow you to have more time to stay away from each of those obstacles. There is no way around this fact – Airplanes with lighter wingloadings fly better and gives more time to react to the environment. And to get this in-line with giant scale thinking, you have to adapt your thought pattern of thinking in pounds and ounces to thinking in a pattern of ounces and grams. Saving 15 grams in an giant scale airplane does not sound like much, but on a 150gram airplane, that’s a 10% savings, or equivalent to taking 3 pounds off a 35% airplane!

The second idea is the idea that indoor airplanes are designed to fly, not designed to crash. Of course this is applicable to big airplanes, but with indoor airplanes, the results of this line of thinking become obvious very quickly and are of extreme importance. Many builder’s instant reactions to the indoor environment is to ‘reinforce’ their airplanes substantially and make them strong to resist crash damage, however the real result is that they cause their model to have a much higher wingloading which in turn causes higher flying speeds. The pilot then gets in trouble much faster, can’t get out of trouble safely and the higher momentum of the airplane causes more damage in the resulting crash! When in doubt “add lightness”.

Well, enough blathering, its time to build something. The plan I’ve included is of the JUKA Foamy I’ve been developing for the past month. It has turned into a very capable indoor freestyle performer and with a few small mods, it can easily fly the indoor F3P pattern or even the past ETOC routines, but its true intention is good old indoor freestyle! If you prefer to build a kit or another free design, get hold of it and get ready to build!

I’m going to cover building this foamy in several sections: Needed Materials, Cutting the parts, Painting/Finishing, Basic Assembly/Alignment, and Gearing it up. I’m covering them in that order because that is the order in which I build! I hope I can pass on lots of the great ideas I've picked up from other foamy builders and designers, and a few I've perfected on my own.

Lets get some necessary materials and tools together. I’m going to cover the materials needed specifically for this build, plus tools you can use on any build. You can also adapt this build style to almost any other design. I currently build both my indoor pattern planes and my freestyle planes with the same basic materials and tools.

Needed Materials/Tools:

Foamy Plans/Patterns
3M Removable Gluestick

Dualsky 2812RTR or Axi 2203-46 Motor or similar 15-20 gram 40-50 watt motor
Thunderbird 6 or 9 ESC or similar light 5-10 amp ESC
Berg 4L Receiver or your favorite 2.4 setup.
4 Dymond 4.7 servos or your favorite sub 6 gram servo.
2s 300mah Dualsky battery or your favorite 2s small pack
APC 7x3.8 propeller

2 sheets of 3mm Depron
2 sticks of .040 carbon rod
2 sticks of .020 or .030 carbon rod (.040 will work in a pinch)
1 stick of 3mm flat carbon
1 stick of .025 music wire
1 stick of .032 music wire
1 stick of .070 or .060 carbon rod or tube or fiberglass rod
1 sheet of 1/32” plywood
1 sheet of 1/16” plywood
1 roll of 3M Crystal Clear Packing tape
Kevlar Thread (sewing thread is an acceptable substitute)
3/32” heat shrink tubing (approx 4-6” necessary)
Thin foamsafe CA
Thick foamsafe CA
Foamsafe CA Accelerator

#11 Knife blades (Plenty)
Stainless Steel Straightedge
Foamy Hole Saws (instructions on how to make this will be covered later)
Sanding Block
Rubbing alchohol
Self Healing Cutting mat

Finishing Materials

Sources?
I purchase all my depron from my LHS, but RCFoam.com is a good supplier as well.
For carbon, I go to F1D.biz. They have a great catalog of Free-Flight stuff, much of which is useful in making lightweight foamies.
Several places sell the electronics, with the servos maybe being the most difficult to find. I believe Shulman Aviation is selling the 4.7gram servos (I bet Jas will pipe in and let us know if he's still selling them and has stock).


Get all this stuff together, download the plans attached to this thread, and tomorrow we’ll start cutting and building!

Special Note -- If you have trouble downloading or opening this Zip file, check out this thread for a possible solution.

Invalid Zip File Problems -> The Solution

[Jason Noll]

maybe just me, but I think you have a broken file bud.

JN

[Dan_nO]

Same here Jason

[Jr.]

yep

[superdh]

i cant open the file either...

[MrFlash]

Might be worthwhile trying again fellas.

It seems ok to me. 5 dxfs of the parts inc a final build overlay

[adrian]

what is winter??? - lol

[bigadd43]

ARE U GOING TO DO A ARF OF IT

[poring]

What do you use to open these files?

[hobbyguy]

Matchless,
Have you ever used Midwest's Cellfoam instead of Depron. They have 3mm material. The sheet size

is 11 1/2" x 47 1/2". If you want to use this material, I'd be most happy to provide you what's needed.

Love the article too!

The "Hobby Guy"

[3DCrazy516]

MATCHLESS YOUR OSM!!!!! Looks amazing I can't wait to build one now!!!!

[eblenkle]

Hey all

the dxf files are for autocad, if you don't have autocad, I think you can download a viewer by entering dxf files into your browser. Or maybe someone will convert these files to a medium that more people can use.

Ernie