Easy-B
I finally seem to have time to catch up on the projects I've been collecting for years. I would always pick things up for 'when I have the time' and now I no longer have an excuse. A few years ago I found a collection of rubber band powered micro planes at a thrift store and I snatched up two models.
I've been covetous of these model airplanes ever since I saw a video of one flying lazy circles in an auditorium at a couple miles per hour. Here's an example:
I opened the boxes and saw the instructions were in Japanese and English and all the pieces were there, the strips of balsa wood, the gossamer plastic and the rubber band. The planes use a few pieces of piano wire for the propeller shaft and tail hook and two of the tiniest teflon bearings I've ever seen. After this quick inspection the boxes went on a shelf. I pulled them out a few weeks ago.
I decided to construct the larger plane first, reasoning that working with larger pieces of wood might be easier (I don't know if this is true) and followed the single page of instructions. The instructions were sparse but got the message across if you read everything carefully.
There were a couple errors in the instructions and I took the drawing illustrating how to stretch the plastic film over the wing too literally. From the picture it seemed like I would have plenty of plastic to cover both the top and bottom of both the wing and the stabilizers but when I measured the remaining plastic after gluing the first piece, I discovered I was already a couple millimeters too short to cover the bottom of the primary wing. I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes to the aerodynamics of the ultra-light wing but it was irritating. I could have partially covered the bottom of the primary wing but I thought it might be better to leave it entirely uncovered.
Handling the plastic was a nightmare. It was so thin and light I could barely see it and I couldn't feel it between my fingers. It would also static cling to everything. Despite it's thinness when i tried to cut the excess with a hobby knife it just snagged and tore. I had to resort to using scissors to cut the remainder and it was very difficult to hold the wing and the scissors perfectly parallel, close together, and still as I closed the jaws on something I couldn't feel and barely see. The result was a horrible jagged mess which I trimmed as best I could before gluing down the edges.
Throughout the whole project it felt like I was one distracted moment away from smashing the whole thing to bits. The resulting plane is so light any small pressure causes the wood to bend alarmingly. While taking these pictures some fuzz on my sleeve caught on the tail and I nearly broke the whole wing in half before I realized. I'm still not sure if it will survive until I can find a large enough indoor space to fly it properly.
Building the next one has moved to the bottom of my queue of projects but I'm still happy with the result.
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