Balsa-EZ Part 1: design and planing

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Balsa-EZ Part 1: design and planing

Postby TacitBlue » Tue Oct 25, 2005 10:56 pm

Heres a little project I've been working on. I love the Long EZ, and I like building balsa models, so why not combine the two. I know real EZs are made of fiber-glass/foam composite, but that wouldn't be as fun as designing and building one with balsa. First I needed a three-view line drawing of the craft. Well amazingly, not a single one exists on the ENTIRE internet... at least not one that I could find. Enter FS2004! :)

From this screenshot I croped out just the fuselage and then converted it to gray scale.
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Add and "emboss effect to draw out the lines, and there we go.Image

After that I printed it out to the scale I wanted and drew in the the pieces where I wanted them. Note that I don't have a scanner so I used my camera for this shot.Image

I did the same with a view from above to plan out the wings and canard, also to get the dimensions of the fuselage ribs.Image
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All of the plans in the "from above" point of view came from the same screen shot, so I know they are in scale with one another. The view from the side however was a bit tricky, but I managed. Shortly after I started construction, I freaked out because I thought I was building in the wrong scale, but I checked all of my measurments between the wing and fuse plans and it all matches up. Long EZs just have small-looking fuselages I guess. Anyway, check out part two to see the first part of construction and see a neat little trick for transfering patterns to wood. ;)
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A&P Mechanic, Rankin Aircraft 78Y

Aircraft are naturally beautiful because form follows function. -TB
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Re: Balsa-EZ Part 1: design and planing

Postby ozzy72 » Wed Oct 26, 2005 3:22 am

Good luck with it ;)
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There are two types of aeroplane, Spitfires and everything else that wishes it was a Spitfire!
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