I finally had a chance to start building a SkyVan I am working on. It was one of those planes I have always wanted to model, but never got around to it. I used to live near the approach for the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, when I was a kid every time one of these would go by, I always wondered how they stayed in the air....

I wanted an inner structure with foam sheeting so that the tabs/slots would not be visible. So far this is working out well.

More to come...hopefully by the end of the weekend. Attached files

 

Cool and maybe paint it like this one.


So are you gonna have a cargo door? Attached files

 

@3Dmon;
Yea, I would LOVE to paint it like that, but with my painting skills (or lack there of) there is no way in the world that is gonna happen. A buddy who is a retired USAir mechanic used to be the lead on these back in the day for Allegheny Air. He sent me a picture of the one of the ones he used to work on. I think I''ll shoot for that; if I can find the picture.
@What_the?:
It's going to have a 60" WS. I'll wait until it is a more finished before I decide on power. Wings are going to be 1/16" balsa sheeted hot wired white foam. Same with the horizontal. Not sure on the verticals yet. I want fully functional rudders, and I'm not thrilled with FFF strength wise for this purpose. Maybe some 3/32 balsa. I found some really light weight foam that should have plenty of strength once sheeted. I did cheat and widened the cord a bit. Scale would have been a whopping 5" I cheated it up a half inch. It just looked way too darned skinny at 5" At 6" it started to loose the skinny wing look, so I'm hoping 5.5" is a good compromise.
One concern I have is the fuse is rather thin in the back by the tail. Sure hope it is sturdy enough, and it doesn't flutter off.
@xtremeRCpilot:
You and me both. Will be nice to see it in the sky above Pittsburgh again.

Anywho.. Got smacked with 2 bouts of the flu, so progress has slowed...

Decided to go modular with a few things.
Pic 1 Left shows the nose section, and right landing gear brace. For the nose I wanted to have something strong enough to handle the nose gear. Hopefully this should do it. Same for the main gear.

Pic 2 CU of main gear bracing.
Pic 3 Attaching the nose module. I have helped out a guy with his website, so he sent me some foam glue to try. Boy does this stuff work GREAT. It's solvent based, so you really don't need much. It holds GREAT, and the seams are darned near invisible most of the time. Appears to sand well also. Not as fast as holt melt, but WAY better in so many other ways. I also use a cheapie paint brush to clean the foam where I am going to put the glue right before doing so. That pesky foam dust has a habit of getting all over the place no matter how well you cleaned it 5 minutes ago.

Pic 4&5. Starting to look like a Skyvan. "Missing" section will be the hatch for batter installation. Attached files

 

Nice build.

 

Coming along very nrcely. This is a cool build.

 

Taking shape now! looking good
Mark and Trish

 

Thanks guys...
Building has slowed a bit as I'm waiting on the new rollers to make the wood parts, mainly the templates to hot-wire the wings and tail. I THOUGH I didn't have a skew problem as when I tested I tested on blue FFF and ran back and forth at 30" all was well. When I tried to cut wood it was a different story. Taking advice from Flash, I tried different materials, and they all behaved differently, even the pink foam which isn't all that different from the blue. And even placing the wood on a blue FF spoiler sheet caused skewing issues. I'm sure the multi-pass I used for the wood made it worse. The former in the pics above was hand cut, but I really would like to machine cut the templates for the hot wire.
Interestingly enough when I tested some blue FFF at 12" back and forth (about what I was doing when multi-pass cutting the wood) it had a large amount of skew, but at 30" back and forth almost nothing.
Weird stuff for sure, but it really sounds like Trish and Mark have it sorted out.

More to come.....

 

Been Working on the Skyvan a bit more. Now that I have the updated rollers, I can cut ply with zero problems. Even cutting small circles (1/8") is no problem. No need for backlash compensation.

Pic 1 Templates to cut the main wings.
Pic 2 Squaring up the ends of the foam. Letting gravity assist in making sure the ends are square.
Pic 3 Plenty of weight while gluing the 1/16" balsa skins to the cores. I used Gorilla glue for this
Pic 4 Balsa LE and TE glued and clamped to the cores after the sheeting was trimmed
Pic 5 After shaving/sanding the LE & LE edges.
Pic 6 Parts for nose gear mount... note small round circles
Pic 7 About to glue the nose gear mount parts using the wire I will bend for gear to make sure all is lined up. I just noticed that somehow the parts shifted when I set it down to take the pic. I went and double checked, and the parts are glued in right. Parts fit is perfect.
Pic 8 Overall shot of the fuse with one wing panel shown for reference. I need to work on the faring on top of the wing. Not sure why it didn't fit well here as it fit perfect in the drawing.
Pic 9 Nice fit for horizontal/fuse joint. Attached files

 

Wow shes coming along nice Dave
Love the wood working
Great job, can't wait to see this in the air, its going to be awesome!
Mark and Trish

 

WOW... Forgot about this one... Once the weather turns nice in these parts, I stop building. Would rather be flying or outside in the evenings.
Hate to say it, but not sure if I'll finish this one (or the Foam Kadet I started) I have been doing some side work for a few guys at the field, and really forgot how much I liked working with wood. I'm thinking of shelving the foam this winter, and working on 2 wood builds.
A Highly modified Kadet Sr. type plane, and this one I started on the other day. Still need to tweak the formers and such, but close to what I'm looking for. Attached files

 

This is going to be great rcav8r!
Mark and Trish