Christchurch and District Model Flying Club
 

Mini Infineon…by Andrew Tubb

   This is another free plan, from the RC plans portal, drawn by Si Mills and originally about 32” span.

   If you haven’t realised by now, I want all my indoor fleet to be in the 24” span range, although this is nearer 26”.

   I had a hankering for a bipe a long time ago and bought plans for a 30” span model called ‘The Hairy Gnome’. Martin Burr borrowed the plan and made a depron profile model, using 6mm depron, which I think had a better than 2:1 power to weight ratio, incredibly robust (it seemed) and chuck-about-able. Nicely done Martin,  but,

   … I really wanted a 4-site biplane, but there was no way I was going to pay the best part of £100 for a model, we don’t have the hall for at the moment to be honest I don’t have the skill to show it off at it’s best, and besides I’m happiest putting bits together economically, (cheap as poss basically).

  So, this is more mine than the last offering, in so far as, it had a ‘built’ fuz not profile, and was made more of epp. 

  After printing the plan and reducing the size on a good copier to 85% I was ready to start cutting out.  The fuz, fin and rudder were cut as one piece, and I’ll separate the rudder soon, before it becomes part of the rest of the model.

The wings and tail plane were cut as one piece and there is no carbon in them in this version, elevator and ailerons will be separated before fixing in place. Excessive flutter or vibration will have to be dealt with in the next incarnation if the 3x.05mm carbon strip doesn’t work. I’m hoping to add a minimum of carbon to this model and hope to use button thread and a few small bits of carbon to attach that to. If it’s worked you will have seen it fly by now.

   Be as accurate as possible when cutting out the model parts from a plan, it will pay dividends later. Better to cut a slot too tight and open it up than have to fill it with slivers and glue.

I want to use a trio of in-expensive e-flite 6gm servos for about £5 each at Channel 4 (obvious plug guys, hope it’s noted  ;-)). They’re a little heavy, but hey. 

   There are no positions indicated on the plan, so I followed the HELIX path and placed where it looks best.

   Hmm! That all seems fine, but when you change battery size or configuration, CG calculations all go to pot. If you can use the battery pretty much on CG then you have less worry when you change it. On a profile/indoor model this could be ok. A lot of profile/indoor models have reduced nose length so radio gear positioning is a critical part of the design and set up for good handling and hopefully more benign flying characteristics. Another consideration with batteries is the dynamic weight, (maybe the wrong term), but as momentum increases, so does the apparent weight of an object, it has the potential to leave the model suddenly and/or do more damage.

         Anyway, this was going to be about how I put my mark onto the Mini Infineon… This entry will not get into the club mag until March I believe, by which time I hope to have written part 2 and tell you the final fit, assembly and 1^st flight

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