Pigi 3d Foam Stunt Plane Repair (part 6)
After I installed the landing gear it raised the front of the plane up causing the rudder to drag the ground. I wanted it higher for the clearance of the camera on the bottom of the plane so I fabricated a tail dragging wheel. I used some more steel wire from the local hobby shop and bent it to make an axle an axle. I used one of the foam wheels from the original super cub landing gear that I removed when I upgraded it. I sandwiched it between two pieces of foam board from the Dollar Tree hot glued it together and attached it to the back of the airplane with bamboo skewers .
After testing iit in the drive way I realized that I wanted it to be slower so I built a tail skid from foam board and a bamboo skewer to add drag to help slow it down on pavement. The wheel will work well when landing on grass. You can see the first test flight after the crash here
After testing iit in the drive way I realized that I wanted it to be slower so I built a tail skid from foam board and a bamboo skewer to add drag to help slow it down on pavement. The wheel will work well when landing on grass. You can see the first test flight after the crash here
Piggy 3d Foam Stunt Plane Repair (part 5)
When I first bought this plane I did not have a landing gear it just had a bent piece of wire shoved into the bottom of the fuselage to slide across the ground on impact. No landing gear is okay if you're just going to Belly land in grass but I want to mount a camera to the bottom of the plane so I need more clearance and I need something to contact the ground to keep the camera from hitting when coming in for a landing.
The plane has a plywood plate glued into the bottom of it with a reinforced block on top of that for the original landing gear so I am going to fabricate landing gear to use the existing holes. The sketch at the bottom shows a cutaway of the front part of the cowling with a wooden motor mount and the wooden landing gear block. I bent the wire from the local hobby shop to go into the openings on the wood block and then covered the metal wire with hot glue and screwed a plate of sheet metal over the wire to hold it into the wood. I purchase some of the same wheels that I used when I upgraded my Super Cub landing gear to make it easier to land in higher grass. ( See SuperCub landing gear upgrade post). The wheels have to be drilled out to accept the larger wire size used for the axles. I slid the wheels on and used hot glue to cap the end of the axle and prevent the wheels from coming off.
Piggy 3d Foam Stunt Plane Repair (part 4)
Now that the wing repair is complete the next part is the nose where the motor was broken off of the airplane.
When the plane crashed I gathered all the pieces that I could find to use to glue it back together. The glue joints in this foam can be reinforced with barbecue skewers made out of bamboo that you can pick up at your local grocery store. I chose to make two plates out of Dollar Tree foam board and glue them on the outside after the glue joint had set. I dry fit all the pieces making sure that the motor would be in the same position as it was before the crash. ( slightly tilted down and to the right). I glued the pieces back in first and then the motor and motor mount with plenty of glue allowing it to squeeze out on the sides. While the glue is still hot you can take an extra piece of foam and squeegee off the excess glue. After the nose had completely dried I cut two pieces out of foam board to fit the contour of the nose and glued those onto each side for strength. Once all the glue has completely dried the plane can be reassembled
Pigi 3d Foam Stunt Plane Repair (part 3)
I started by taking some measurements and test fitting some pieces into the front wing cavity. I wanted it to be a tight fit but not so tight that it's forcing the foam away from itself I wanted a tight friction fit because it's impossible to get inside the wing to glue all the surfaces. I fit the vertical piece in first then used some test pieces to get the right size and glued them together using a high temp hot glue gun. Then I just repeated the process with a smaller "T" in the rear cavity of the wing. I measured the length of the T pieces and marked the center then slipped them into the wings with the center line in the center of the fuselage so the weight added would be the same on both wings. Then I slid the wing together to do a dry test fit (no glue). The wing fit securely on the braces with a tight snug fit. I had my daughter( Thanks Sarah!) help hold the plane because you only have a certain amount of time before the hot glue begins to set up. You will notice that the aileron was broken in half in the crash also. I did not try to glue it at the same time because I wanted to make sure that it was a straight fit and it will flex enough for me to get glue into after the wing is dry. My daughter held the airplane on its side with the wing tip against the table and rotated it as I applied the hot glue to the broken edge of the wing. I then quickly slipped the wing together and held some pressure on it until the glue dried. After the wing was dry I proceeded to glue the aileron back together and held it until the glue dried.
Piggy 3d Foam Stunt Plane Repair (part 2)
As you can see from the way the wing is constructed that there are only two vertical reinforcement bars and no horizonal reinforcement bars other than the outer skin top and bottom. This plane is old so I think I'm going to try to reinforce the wings. I have several ideas for vertical and horizontal reinforcements but I don't want to add too much weight and alter the center of gravity of the airplane. Look at the illustration below and you'll see how the wing is made and then a couple ideas of how I can add reinforcement to it. Any horizonal or flat reinforcement will give the wing strength from front to rear and help when the wing contacts something it won't tear from front to back. Any vertical reinforcement added to the wings will help with the loading of the wings or in other words the load that the wing will support. Whenever you pull up on the elevator and an airplane is in a high speed movement as the nose of the airplane pulls up then the wings are forced upward because the body of the airplane is still trying to move forward trying to both push the wing down in the center as the air pushes up on the two ends. I am going to try to add some vertical and some horizonal reinforcement to the wings without adding too much weight I think later I will try to rebuild this airplane from scratch out of foam and change just a few things but maybe try to redesign the wing to be much stronger then maybe do a crash test to see how the result held up.
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