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Tigermoth


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: 
RCGroups

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.
For painting, I went with a pretty traditional scheme; camo on top and solid yellow on the bottom.

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.
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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