Back in the spring I started a build of one of my favorite full scale airplanes, the DH-82 Tigermoth. I found plans made by an RCGroups user named Chris3D in this thread:
After a busy summer, I was able to finish it a few weeks ago. Everything is made from 3
mm depron just as Goodychrischild, the author of the thread, did in his build
(Thanks for the great build log Chris). Overall, the build was pretty simple;
the plans were really nice and easy to understand. The only part I had trouble
with was the depron bending. The wings weren't bad, they just took about 5-10
mins of slowing bending on a rounded edge.



The fuselage really stumped me. I tried bending it a few
times but each time I broke the piece. I guess I was too aggressive with the
bending. So instead I put some packing tape on one side of the foam and creased
the other side in several parallel lines and made a pseudo-bend.
The tailplane was pretty simple. I joined the to horizontal stabilizer pieces together with a small piece of bamboo skewer. I just used clear packing tape as the hinge.

For the power system, initially I had a brushed geared IPS
motor. However, the shaft was bent and caused lots of vibrations so I switched
to a 2204 2300kv motor I had from an old mini quad. I am running it on 2s with
a 6x4.5 propeller so it has good power but it's probably not quite suited to
this plane but it's quiet and it works great.
When I first launched it, it had a nasty roll to the left. The weight was perfectly balanced on the roll axis and the CG was correct. So, I am guessing the angle of attack on my right wings was slightly greater which lifted that side or the left side AOA was less... Anyway, I ended putting a little weight on the right side (probably not good practice) to get it to fly. Now it flies great! It is really smooth when the air is calm.
I did end up trying FPV on it with a small CMOS camera and
200mw 5.8Ghz video transmitter but I didn’t like how it felt so I ended up sticking
with line of sight flying.
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Glamour shot out in the flying field with a gorgeous sunset |
Here is a video I made with a few clips of it flying on a
calm country night:
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