SS1 Airfoil

We happen to be extremely fortunate to have our cousin, John Carlson, available to lend experience and expertise to this project. John has built a strong reputation as a premier builder of RC aircraft, as you can see [HERE!]. We have tapped into this resource pretty heavily, as the rest of us would only be guessing if we tried to figure this out ourselves. John will serve as our advisor on matters like airfoil shape, control surfaces, servo size and location, stuff like that.

John's first contribution was to cut the airfoils in his Minnesota garage.

How perfect is this guy for our team? The foam was rescued from a dumpster when the roof was refurbished at the Honeywell residential controls facility in Golden Valley. John was rescued from that same dumpster on that very same day. (note the print of the workboot on the foam blank).

John used a large hot wire foam cutter much like the one described [HERE!].

Congratulations!
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Initial foam blanks and the power supply and foam cutting bow
Initial foam blanks and the power supply and foam cutting bow
Templates attached to the blank ends; top airfoil shape cut out
Total airfoil shape is free from the foam blank, the extra pieces cut off from the top and bottom will be used as a cradle if we need to sheet the wings with balsa later.
Left and right wing panels placed root to root, you can see the left and right tips sweep up for the washout that helps stabilize it in glide mode (reduces stall at low speeds).
Upper view of both wings put together
Complete wing cut out as seen end on.

SS1 Airfoil - take two

11/30/07

A lot of time has gone by since the last update to this page. It is a sad story. I received these beautiful airfoils from John and tried to install them on the airframe. I realized at this point that we made a huge mistake by not designing a feature into the airfoils to align them and the airframe. I tried to improvise an alignment jig but it didn't work and I totally screwed them up. So I put everything away and thought for a long time about how best to complete this task.

I determined that I should install aluminum rods from wingtip to wingtip. These would pass though holes in the fuselage, allowing me to accurately align the wings as well as the vertical stabilizers, which will also be attached to the aluminum mounting rods prior to fiberglassing.

The mounting rod's real benefit was in making it possible to accurately trim the compound curves required to mate the airfoil with the airframe. This was the nightmare that did me in on the first set of wings.

Router table cut grooves for the rods in the 2-inch foam
Holes were drilled in the fuselage for the mounting rods.
The airfoil profile templates aligned the the mounting rods
The hot wire tool was used to trim the foam to the template
After I took this photo I decided that I would get a smoother wing if I covered the surface with posterboard before fiberglassing.
I attached this with 3M General Purpose Spray Adhesive 45, which does not eat styrofoam the way other products do.
I had added some extra shoulder to the airfoils so I could practice cutting the compound curves at the joint. I trimmed this off after I had the correct contour.
Here is the final result. Looks good!
(FYI - the boy stands exactly five-feet tall in his stocking feet. Note that he is in his stocking feet.)

To see how these parts get assembled with all the others, click [HERE!].

INDEX

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