Wright Stuff Kit Interest

[jacdad]

Excellent topic. If you guys do proceed, I wish you success. Git It Wright made some very important points. Unless you have access to large quantities of good balsa, you may want to limit your efforts to making plans and instructions, instead of full blown kits.

I don't know if this will help or not, but I'll share our experiences, mostly from the point of view of a prospective customer.

First year experience was 4 years ago. My oldest son built the two planes from the Freedom Flights kit for B division (2005). The planes flew well. Covering with tissue was an adventure, but we learned a lot.

2nd year was BLG with my youngest. He was in 6th grade. We got the Freedom Flights glider kits. Building was an adventure, especially the wing tip lamination (yogurt lids worked best). One good glider was completed, another was a crazy thing that flew decent, but not consistent. Before regionals, we needed a better glider, so I just drew up wing plans to the specs, but with angled tips instead of the circular ones. The difference was wings were easier to make than FF wings. The kid did a nice job, and the glider actually flew a bit longer than the FF glider, despite being 2.8 grams.

3rd year, we just started with what we had the year before, then with the wing span increase, just drew up new plans. We tried fuse changes to try the needle nose thing. Worked well. By this time, all wings and stabs were just drawn up and built, using the specs from the rules. I know some teams went high tech with 2 at States using wing tip dihedral and tip fences. Our much simpler glider with full wing dihedral (much easier to construct for MS kids) lucked out and won due to supreme guts in launching technique. At a higher site, maybe not.

This year, the kid had a few things going for him. An older brother who had done WS for 4 years, and building experience. All he did was look at his brother's plane, and made a motor stick as close as he could. Second plane had a little stiffer truss on the motor stick, but both were light (<3.5 gr.). Wings started with last years glider design, then he wanted 13 cm cord (13 is his "lucky #) and built wings similar to glider wings, but bigger in size. Planes all now use built in motor stick/tail boom angle and post/socket on wing and stab. Worked well enough. He can now cover with mylar much better than I can.

I guess the bottom line is, all of these designs worked well with good construction. All of the ones we came up with are relatively easy to build. Any team with a coach/mentor that has some experience can do this, though most teams that I see continue to buy kits of some kind. So I guess I see your idea being targeted at the teams without mentoring. You would provide the mentoring, design, and maybe some components, provided that you can put them in your package and not charge too much more than they would cost elsewhere. One thing that remains is, how do you get in contact with those teams so they know about your services?

[jacdad]

Sorry, but just had another thought. The motor stick and bending seem to be a big problem for many teams. If you guys figure out how to provide a light weight motor stick that doesn't bend, I think a lot of teams could use it. We have experimented with trussed sticks (mostly), just large wood that is low density, and tapered solid sticks, some with carved areas to lighten them. Just a thought.

[GitItWright]

Straws-

Those tissue straws are tough to make in production. I came across a box of coffee stirrer that are very nice. Ont your average large diameter ones. I took info off the box and here it is...

The are named "BEYOND" straws, Part#07655 Distributed by Vistar Corp. Plastric straws are good because they are ready for application. One length in the box and there would be more than plenty to use. The issues to overcome are they are smooth and need special prep for application. In both cases abrasing the inside and outside of the straw is a necessity. 600 Grit sandpaper/emory paper works well in both instances. Then a wash of rubbing alcohol helps the gle to function. Cross wrapping with thread and glue should help keep the straw in place but extra security will come if a small round file creates a half cavity to nest the straw then thread and glue.

Good Luck

[wlsguy]

Straws-

Those tissue straws are tough to make in production. I came across a box of coffee stirrer that are very nice. Ont your average large diameter ones. I took info off the box and here it is...


Good Luck

I assume we're talking about the time consuming task of making paper tubes for the wing to fuse attachment.
Like many other teams, we hated making paper tubes and looked for something else.

We ended up using "Evergreen" brand Styrene square tubes in the 1/8" size. I think the part number is EVG-252. They are at most hobby shops that carry model train supplies
The inside hole is a little larger than 1/16" and they weigh 0.16g/inch.
Normally we use 2 pieces each 1/4" long for the wing posts and 2 pieces each 1/8" long for the rear stab. This adds around 0.12 to the plane but is a whole lot easier than making the paper tubes.
To keep everything tight but still allow adjustment we either make our wing posts a little larger than 1/16 or just use a tiny amount of rubber cement to hold the wing posts in place during the trimming process. The rubber cement is strong enough to keep the post from moving if it gets bumped but doesn't harden and allows for adjustment later.

[GitItWright]

We ended up using "Evergreen" brand Styrene square tubes in the 1/8" size. I think the part number is EVG-252. They are at most hobby shops that carry model train supplies
The inside hole is a little larger than 1/16" and they weigh 0.16g/inch.
Normally we use 2 pieces each 1/4" long for the wing posts and 2 pieces each 1/8" long for the rear stab. This adds around 0.12 to the plane but is a whole lot easier than making the paper tubes.
To keep everything tight but still allow adjustment we either make our wing posts a little larger than 1/16 or just use a tiny amount of rubber cement to hold the wing posts in place during the trimming process. The rubber cement is strong enough to keep the post from moving if it gets bumped but doesn't harden and allows for adjustment later.[/quote]

The plastic straws that I found and referred to are probably 50% lighter than the Evergreen Styrene tubes.

Good Luck

[carneyf1d]

rolled motor sticks are light weight and definitely dont bend if theyre made out of .020-.025 wood. also, low density fat motor sticks work well. use like a 4.5-5# fat motor stick.

Sorry, but just had another thought. The motor stick and bending seem to be a big problem for many teams. If you guys figure out how to provide a light weight motor stick that doesn't bend, I think a lot of teams could use it. We have experimented with trussed sticks (mostly), just large wood that is low density, and tapered solid sticks, some with carved areas to lighten them. Just a thought.

[GitItWright]

Let's remember that this thread concerns maufacturing a kit for WS.

A rolled motorstick in a production kit is not economical to manufacture. As for large, low density motorsticks, there is no guarantees. We purchased a number of motorsticks from Freedom Flight this year- all failed a typical torque load from a 1.5 gram motor ready for launch on a 7.1 gram airframe.

As an added thought, we did see success with placing a 1/64 plywood spacer between the prop bearing and the motorstick itself. Not much longer than the bearing will suffice. This spread the excessive torque load so that a temporary condition of downthrust was negated due to the bearing "dishing up" into the low density wood. The extra downthrust is minimized on launch until torque bleeds off. This may be a feature to include as part of a kit. The added bonus is that it also allows a smidge more space for the rubber motor along the bottom of the motorstick.

Our three most successful airplanes (over 3 minute flights each) used 6-8# wood with 10" motorsticks weighing in at 3.5 +/- grams each. The rest of the airplanes were built and propped to keep the airframes at 7.2 grams or less. This meant there was much time spent on design, in wood selection and construction. Round wingtips and round fins minimized glue weight throughout.

Good Luck

[calgoddard]

Wow - 3.5 grams for a solid motor stick for a 2009 WS plane, that's really heavy, and not necessary.

Rolled motor sticks are also not necessary for a very good WS plane built to minimum weight. A rolled motor stick is hard to make properly, and takes jigs, etc to fabricate correctly, esecially when it comes to inserting the wing post sockets through the rolled motor stick. The wing posts have to be centered, vertical and parallel. Here's another problem, once you install the wing post sockets through a rolled motor stick, significant changes in the CG of the airplane are very difficult to effectuate.

The last time my daughter built a rolled motor stick for a WS plane it took several hours of meticulous extra work. The finished plane was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. However, her partner's plane consistently flew longer and it had a solid motor stick. She ended up flying the plane with the solid motor stick at the State finals. Her plane with the rolled motor stick became the back-up. It sure looked impressive, but it didn't fly quite as well.

In some classes of indoor free flight rubber powered aircraft, a rolled motor stick is absolutely necessary to be competitive, e.g. F1D. This is not true in Wright Stuff becasue of the relatively high minimum weight of the aircraft.

[kjhsscioly]

That does seem quite heavy for a motor stick. We used normal hobby store wood for one motor stick, and wood from an FAI kit in the other. Our motor stick and tail boom never gave us trouble with bending, yet only weighed about 2 grams combined. The lighter was 1.6. The measurement is stab inclusive. I have never rolled a motor stick , as regional and state were very close together and i did not have the time, but my planes have always come in under weight and needed extra clay.

[gh]

Having tried a few rolled stick WS models in '05 and '06, I have to say that the only real advantages to having rolled sticks/booms were that they can be much longer (so your stab incidence can be lower and the fin can be smaller/non-existent). The boom can also be plugged into the stick, but that's not really necessary unless you built it long in the first place.

At any rate, it really was unnecessary; with 7.0 grams to play with, you could really go nuts on a lot of the design if you have decent wood and you go easy on the glue.

As for the kit, I've always heard that the most difficult and time-consuming bit about making WS kits was the wood stripping and selection. That's probably why Ray Harlan quit making those kits: just think about the hundreds to thousands of 1/16″ square strips he had to make.