RC Skis

[Commissar-Krad]

This may not be what we usually see around here, but it's a bit of scratch building I did recently.

So, winter is upon us. Around me that means snow. Snow to get wheels stuck in, be it your car or your RC airplane. They sell floats for the plane I have so I went down to the local RC shop to pick up a set of those and a new prop. They didn't have any floats in stock, so I bought the prop and went out to fly a bit. Landing in the snow with wheels does not work out too well and so when I got home I set out to make some skis for my plane. I grabbed some of my plasticard and plastiweld and went to work! And so, here are the results, some scratch built RC airplane skis.



Here's one of them on the plane:



We shall see how they work out...

[paulson games]

Looks pretty cool. If they prove on the thin side you can probably get some plexi material at the hardware store like what's used for lighting panels. It's usually 3-5mm thick and you can also bend up the front by heating it with a propane torch.

My dad was heavy into RC planes and I helped him build some when I was a kid. I was in Southern CA so we didn't have to consider snow landings. It's a really neat idea though.

Let us know how things fair on the test flight.

[Commissar-Krad]

The motor on this one is stock so I didn't want to add too much weight. I think the 1mm card I used should be adequate. It's got enough flex where it will adjust over little bumps and chunks of ice or what not and be just fine. The plane's not too heavy so I don't think any thicker will be needed. It will depend mostly on my piloting. Obviously, orientation will be more important than with wheels and I need to get a good nose up landing so they don't dig into the snow. The thing i am worried about is if they do catch will the glue hold up. If there is any carnage to film you can expect some pictures on here!

[mangozac]

Nice work Krad! Did you just the use the Plastruct cement to glue them together?

[Commissar-Krad]

I used the plastic weld and then went back and used superglue to coat all of the seams. The weld seems to create a pretty solid hold as it melts the pieces together. Hopefully the superglue will help keep any separation from beginning.

[paulson games]

Super glue gets brittle when it's cold and loses it's grip pretty easy. One of the tricks to get rid of stubborn super glue is to place models in a freezer and once it's cold it flakes right off.

The best thing to use is the plasti-weld or plain old model cement like testors model glue as it chemically welds/fuses the two pieces of plastic together.

Also stuff from a hot glue gun tends to work ok when dealing with parts that'll be in the cold (but not the low temp versions) it retains a bit of flexi and won't tend to crack as easy as most other ahesive type glues.

[Commissar-Krad]

Yeah, they are sufficiently welded. I put enough that the plastic got rather soft and oozed more than it would when building an aesthetic model. Superglue was an afterthought.

[Hiflt4]

if its perm, jb weld will do the job.