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Author Topic: Wasabi Eco - Building Thread  (Read 28909 times)

Fred

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« on: August 27, 2008, 13:30:39 PM »
Hi there,

Yes, another building thread for the now famous Wasabi from Flybiwo!  :)

Well... Not exactly just another Wasabi thread!  :D

As the title suggest, we are now talking about a new development of the Wasabi, the "Eco" (Economical) version.

Mind you, Economical don't necessarily mean that the design will be changed to have an economical version of the flying as well!  :p  Everything will be the same as the fully moulded one, except this one will have a bit more wood (yep, the stuff from the trees!  :p  ;) ) in it !  :D

To make the story short, a while ago, Francois was looking for someone who can have a look at the feasibility of a Wasabi made of wood to have an "eco" version of the glider...
After a few mails, well, that was possible, and even better, the build can be perform by everyone and will not take month (I reckon 10 hours to complete the building..!)

So, after a few prototypes (sets of wings, tails...) and a few bad names, today is finally time to present you the beast!

Oh, and more good news, thanks to Francois, the plan will be available for everyone to download!  But Francois will certainly talk to you about that!  :)

First of all, a photo of the finished product...



Yep, everything except the fuselage is made of wood!


Enough blah blah, time to cut some trees and glue some wood !
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Fred

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BUILDING THE WINGS
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2008, 13:31:10 PM »
On the plan, lay out all the ribs on the spar.
The ribs and main spar are all made of 3mm Liteply.



Then, time to glue the second spar, made of 3mm liteply too. this will close the wing TE.
Note that on the plan, all the parts slots together, no mistakes can be made here !



And finally, glue the fake TE, made of square 5x5mm hardwood :




Make sure everything is square before gluing ! that's the main thing to be taking care of during the building process !



Tadaaaa ! :



That's 15 minutes worth of work.. Everything is glued with thick cyano by the way !

WING JOINER :

The wing joiner is a 12mm ext. diameter aluminium tube...





Hold on a minute !  :eek:  12mm is the size of the Wasabi wing joiner already !

Well, this is the only modification made from the stock Wasabi ! The wing joiner have to go (because of the building) from 12mm to 10mm, to have a 12mm tube inside the wing, the maximum dimension allowed by the size of the ribs !

So, for the fuselage, easy, cut the 12mm tube to be the size of the fuselage, and put it in the tube already in place... Job done !
And if you don't glue it (like me..), that can be retrofitted !






Later, we'll start the sheeting and finishing of the wings... Yes, already !  :)
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Fred

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2008, 13:31:52 PM »
Now it's time to cut a few sheets of 1.5mm balsa (2 sheets each wing)...

Really easy, take a sheet, draw the cutting line, glue the sheet !  :D
Start with the top side of the wing, the ribs jig helps you to keep everything straight.
I used contact glue.



A sheet is not wide enough, so another smal triangular piece will be needed...



And here is the result :







Now, it's time to sheet the other side...

First, cut the rib's jigs



Then, to plank the other side, cut the balsa sheet to size, apply the contact glue on the ribs, apply the sheet, and remove...

You can see where the glue must go, top up with more contact glue on the sheeting if needed...




Now, to keep the thing straight, you must sand the LE. The trick here, to sand straight is to glue / tape a sheet of sanding paper on the workbench and use it as a sanding table...





By the way, here are some photos taken between the 2 wing building :





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Fred

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2008, 13:32:13 PM »
Next step, is to glue the wing tips, made of a block of balsa cutted in shape.
You have to put the wing tips first as they will be used for the next step and be used as a "stopper" (?) for the LE.



Then, gluing the LE from 10mm soft balsa.



Time to shape all that now. A "must have" tool for all wood builders is a plane. I use a small one from Kavan with a razor blade.



After that, a good sanding (use the sanding paper from your workbench to be as straight ass possible

The 2 wings took me nearly 2 hours to arrive at this stage...  :)








With the plan, cut the openings for the wing's servos...



And that's it for now !

For the ailerons, no photos, but the building is really simple... The aileron's LE is in 10mm balsa with 10mm balsa "ribs" and closed by 2 sheets of 1.5mm balsa top and bottom... around 10 minutes each to build.
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DEPRON FLYER

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Hi there...
« Reply #4 on: August 27, 2008, 14:30:47 PM »
Hi Fred---- Fon here- finally joined the site!
Great day of flying the other day! Great site aswell....
 Talk to ya soon- cheers Fon...
P.S.  The Wasabi looks great...
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Fred

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #5 on: August 27, 2008, 14:39:20 PM »
Hey Fon,

Welcome to the forum !  :D
And congrats again on your flying on sunday !  :clap:
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Alan_Perse

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #6 on: August 27, 2008, 16:40:34 PM »
Looks Great Fred  :D  :D . God your building it fast. The next time I build a model from wood its gona have to be CNC or Laser cut.
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Peter

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #7 on: August 27, 2008, 22:29:27 PM »
Looks good Fred - nice strong wing. 12mm seems a lot for the wing joiner on a model this size - but I guess it its designed for edge of the envelope stuff!
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IceWind

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #8 on: August 27, 2008, 23:18:17 PM »
<- This guy loved it flying!!!

Great news if the plans will be available, this seems a really nice plane.

Fred excellent building! :)
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..Nando

Fred

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #9 on: August 28, 2008, 12:50:14 PM »
Thanks guys for the comments !  :oops:  :D

Alright so, time to finish the glider !

All the stab ribs are made of 3mm plywood. same principle as the wing really, nothing really serious here !

So, first, cut the ribs according to plan



The spar is made of a 6mm carbone tube (5mm inside). To have a clean cut on the carbone tube, put some masking tape on it, draw the line, and cut with a small saw.



Then, it's just a matter of putting the ribs on the tube, check that everything is straight according to the plan, and glue everything with CA, or PVA  ;)
The smaller tube is made of 3mm carbone tube (2mm inside)
After 2 minutes, you should get that :



Left thing to do now is the sheeting. Sheeting is made with 1mm balsa. I kept mine plain, but you can put lighting holes in the sheeting if you want to gain a few grams (and less lead on the nose too...)
Same as the wings really, but smaller  :D



And after a good first sanding sanding and the LE glued in place (5mm balsa):



And the final touch, the balsa block at the tips and a final big sanding !



Just curious, fit on thefuselage ...



Perfect !  :)
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Fred

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #10 on: August 28, 2008, 12:50:35 PM »
The rudder (sorry, just a few photos here as this is really a non event...) is made of the same principle of the ailerons...
The LE of the rudder is made of 12mm balsa with slots for the sheeting (1.5mm balsa if I remember). But ribs made of balsa are glued first to the LE according to the plan. The bottom is then closed with a balsa block.

The LE is then sanded to a D shape and slots are cutted for robart's type hinges.

Takes 10 minutes to make, and so as the stab, mine is sheeted with plain balsa, but lighting holes are possible to make.






Of course, before covering all your hard work, you can have a final look at it :



Sweet !  :D  ;)
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Fred

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #11 on: August 28, 2008, 12:50:58 PM »
Well, that's it ! Now you have all the parts / components, you are now at the stage where you can use the excellent Manual from Steve. Everything is the same except for the rudder hinges system (we used Robart's hinges remember).

To glue the part that goes in the fin, the link for the rudder and finally, how to put the rudder hinges, you can use the manual made by Steve about the stock Wasabi !




(NOTE : you can see here the slots for the Robart's type hinges...)


(NOTE : Instead of steel cable, I used Kevlar wires)




The covering has been made with Vinyl, not the lightest one. Same here, everything is possible and up to you !
You can simply varnish the wood, use Oracover, Vinyl, silk, paper etc etc.. Endless possibilities depending of your taste, experience etc etc...


For the aileron's servos, you can epoxy a square piece of Carbone fiber / fibreglass to re-enforce the sheeting where the servo is. For the control horn, a slot is cutted with a hobby knide, then glued with epoxy



For the stab articulation, I used the same system as Pierre Rondel did on his Wasabi, I used a 4mm carbone tube with Sulivan's link epoxied on each ends.



Oh yeah, on my Wasabi fuselage, the hole that host the tube for the L shaped control horn was 7mm of diameter... Cannot find a 7mm diameter tube, so, stupidely (I have my moments !  :D ) i used a 6mm tube, and glued it in place in the hole with 30 minutes epoxy... The only problem is that the tube moved and now, the tube is not straight ! As a result, my stab is not horizontal, but go down to 8mm !  :censored:  :censored:  :censored:
When I'll get less lazy, I'll redo this part, and reglue the tube straight  :o  :o
Not very beautiful to see in flight ! Sorry about that, stupid mistake !  :censored:

So, back to the Wasabi now !
As I said, the Wasabi is entirely covered with white vinyl. My plane was to use the vinykl on the wings in one piece to articulate the ailerons with it, leaving no gaps on the top side of the wings, and have a perfectly smooth surface... Well, I have failed here ! I'm really not good at covering, so after a few bird names and 2 kilometers of vinyl, I gave up and used white tape to articulate the ailerons...

The underside of the Wasabi is stripped with red, that helps a lot !

Before :



After :







Tadaaaaa ! All done !  :)
Next, the Wasabi at the slope !  :)
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Alan_Perse

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #12 on: August 28, 2008, 14:00:43 PM »
Do you think you will fly it this weekend Fred? I might try and get some flying in myself sometime this weekend.
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joe

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #13 on: August 28, 2008, 21:51:59 PM »
Looking good Fred. Better be 35Mhz Synth Receiver in there. I want a go. No, I need a go!! :D  :D
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Fred

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Wasabi Eco - Building Thread
« Reply #14 on: August 29, 2008, 07:42:52 AM »
Anytime !  :D
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