Radio controlling the Guillow's foam Space Shuttle.

At the DARS launch in October, I finally got around to flying my R/C Guillow's Space Shuttle conversion as a parasite on a rocket.

By the way, did anyone at the launch happen to get a picture?...

A number of years back, I converted one of these to electric pusher with great success. Back in 2004, I used two HS-50 servos, a micro GWS RX, a two cell 240 lipo, 5 amp ESC and the 12mm direct drive GWS brushed motor. Pictures attached.

I cheated on the elevons by adding all of the elevon to the existing model's trailing edge. This adds a small amount of badly needed wing area.

I recently removed the electric motor and redid the model to fly as a parasite on a D12 powered rocket. I happened to have a old Estes Mean Machine that took a major tube crumple during a household move years back. I took the damaged airframe, cut it down to where the crumple was (a little less than half the length) and added a parasite glider mount for the foam Shuttle.

I changed out everything in the glider except for the HS-50 servos. Added a Spektrum AR400 RX, a 2 cell 180 lipo and used a sub micro 5 amp ESC to provide BEC power to the radio. The equipment was arranged to put the CG where it needed to be with no ballast added.

I did a few hand glides to get the control rates and trim close before launch. I set up the model with a good bit of expo in the aileron channel to keep the small model from being overly reactive and twitchy around neutral.

The first flight on a D12-3 was great. Decent altitude with some slight steering of the shuttle and rocket in roll and pitch during boost and coast. Clean separation and a nice glide back to the launch area. The programmed expo in roll made the little model pleasant to fly.

Second flight was a prang partly due to a switchology error on my part...... I forgot to set the preprogrammed mixing switch on the elevons to set them to zero for the boost. Between the model tipping off the rod a little, the offset rocket CG due to the weight of the Shuttle on the side of the model and the up elevator trim for the booster glide, the model went instantly horizontal and hit the ground before motor ejection.

The tube on the booster crumpled and the foam shuttle took some damage, but is repaired and spackled back to good condition.

Currently rebuilding the single Shuttle booster with an offset motor mount attached to the booster tube's inside surface directly under the shuttle to correct the thrust line to better match the offset CG of the booster and shuttle combo.

Have also started another booster with mounts for two of the shuttles, one on each side, for 24mm E and F power.

Two or three more of the Guillow's Shuttles are being modified for RC. One with micro RC using discrete components and one or two with the tiny and very light Spektrum AR6410 brick.

Will post some pictures of the mods and boosters over time as things progress.

I'll be watching, as I want to build Parasitic Gliders too.

tab28682 said:

One with micro RC using discrete components and one or two with the tiny and very light Spektrum AR6110 brick.

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Sure you are you not thinking of the ar6400 or ar6410 single cell micro bricks? Also, you can rip the guts out of a Parkzone Mirco or similar too

JohnRE said:

Sure you are you not thinking of the ar6400 or ar6410 single cell micro bricks? Also, you can rip the guts out of a Parkzone Mirco or similar too

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Yep. Typo fixed in original post. That is the brick that comes in several different flavors in the various Parkzone uM and uMX micros.

Doing a little work on the Guillow's shuttle and booster today.

Repaired the booster from the prang. In the process of stripping the radio gear from the old shuttle and transplanting it to a new shuttle. Also working on a second shuttle for the dual shuttle version.

The first of the attached pictures show the old shuttle on the repaired booster. The Mean Machine origins are not hard to spot.....

The second picture shows the interior of the shuttle a little better. You can see the HS-50 servos and the AR400 RX. Battery and regulator are already removed. Hollowing out the shuttle saves a few grams of weight and is worth doing. The extended elevons that were added to the trailing edge of the stock shuttle wing and the linkage can be seen.

The last picture shows one of the new shuttles in progress.

I picked up one of the Super Neon XL kits on the Estes sale to convert to the dual shuttle and made a start on it today as well. Makes a very economical way to get there at 8.99.

Will show more of the project as it develops. It will be a little sporadically over time as I tend to have too many projects going on at once...

Cruising along a little bit each night on this project. Decided to convert three or perhaps even 4 of the Guillow's shuttles, including one for a friend. Will use a salvaged AR6410 brick in a least one of them. Would like to try the AS3X version of the brick with the gyro system, but none of the AS3X bricks works with elevons. I have an AR6410 type RX, but with no servos, with elevon capable AS3X on my Eflight Hyper Taxi, but not wanting to strip that model yet.

Not really needed, as minimal aileron rates and a nice dose of expo on the aileron channel makes the little Shuttle easy to fly.

Building out at least 3 boosters for these guys from 1.64" body tube. 24mm single glider booster with offset motor mount, 24mm dual glider booster and probably a dual glider booster with a 29mm motor mount for Estes 29mm black powder Es and Fs to start. Have the first two almost done and about to start the third booster.

Servos are inexpensive enough these days at 3.95 each to park 2 in each of the Shuttles without the brick. Will borrow Micro RX units and micro batteries from my other RC models as needed.

Ought to have a a nice shuttle and booster fleet for the 2015 flying season.

Nice work, Tom.

I wanted to add R/C to one of these Guillows foam orbiters for a long time. One time I started, cut out the bay door area, started to hollow out part of the payload bay to hold the radio gear. But the R/C get was still too heavy. A 7 gram receiver, 6 gram servo, 10 gram or so battery pack, just way too much, it would have been too heavy for a glider that small.

Had been thinking of it again more recently since an Ember type brick and 30 mAh LiPoly would be way lighter.

The R/C orbiters I have done, I prefer to turn it by using the rudder. First time I tried mixed elevons it was way too sensitive in roll, and the early 1980's era Cannon super micro servos did not produce the same total travel (that is, up elevator made one servo move the output arm more than the other, causing a roll error). By contrast, rudder for steering is smooth as butter to fly…. during glide. It does cause opposite roll on boost when attached to a rocket or ET/SRB stack (aileron roll effect rather than rudder yaw effect), so I had to program the transmitter to move the rudder the opposite way on boost, to produce the correct roll response, then when I flipped the switch to glide mode it made the rudder move normally (as well as make a servo sep the orbiter and go from high rates to low rates as the orbiter needed more control authority on boost than it needed for glide.... opposite of most other R/C RBG's).

So, if/when I convert one of those, I'll use rudder only and not use elevator since once the CG is set right it's pretty good in pitch (on my other bigger R/C orbiters, after having too many problems flying twin servo mixed elevons in 1983-84, I switched to rudder for steering and made the elevons work as elevator only).

If you (or anyone) wants to try rudder for steering, only make the lower half move. If the whole rudder moves (full height), then in certain low angle of attack glide situations it can cause roll reversal. Using only the lower half solved all that.

If you want to try one with an ET and SRB's, you can find info in this old thread about a 1/110 model I did. Actually my first was 1979, balsa orbiter, BT-55 SRB's and 3" ET. And then 30 years later, same scale, with the Guillows orbiter. I was hoping to make it into a kit but other things happened instead.

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?8053-1-110-Scale-Shuttle-model-is-a-success!


Also, here is a link on my home page with some more info and pics.

https://georgesrockets.com/Scale/Shuttle2009.htm

I still have the prototype, and if I do finally convert the orbiter to R/C, it'll be to fly on that ET/SRB stack,

- George Gassaway

Thanks for joining in, George!

I have actually flown the little foam shuttle on rudder only as well, but it was a lot of years back and it was a little heavier than my current elevon controlled shuttles. It was only flown as a drop vehicle from other RC models and never launched as a parasite on a rocket.

I enjoyed flying the little shuttle as a pusher electric and will confess to some non scale aerobatics with it: loops, rolls, split S and half Cuban 8s. It much prefers to not fly inverted for long....

I can confirm that it does turn nicely with rudder. However, I much prefer the added pitch control availability. Having pitch control allows a much quicker transition to optimum gliding attitude from a release from the booster in any orientation that it ends up in. Also, very handy to be able to optimize the glide path and final approach with pitch control and to be able to flare before touchdown. My rudder only model tended to arrive at landing with a little too much enthusiasm. While you can reduce the sink rate of a rudder only model for landing with a carefully timed tight turn to final that causes the model to speed up a little and the sink rate to reduce, I much prefer two channel control.

I need to calculate the exact wing loading and cube loading with the (about) one ounce of radio gear and see what it actually is, but my experience is that it glides about as well as the Estes free flight shuttle, with the bonus of picking your landing spot. That is good enough for me. I think of this thing more as having radio controlled recovery than as a RC boost glider....

tab28682 said:

Would like to try the AS3X version of the brick with the gyro system, but none of the AS3X bricks works with elevons.

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Not quite true. If you are willing to have equal elevator and aileron gains, simply rotate the brick 45* around the vertical axis. Rudder stabilization remains unimpaired, but now both gyros receive +- sqrt(2) of both pitch and roll rotation rate.

I had a friend do this on a "flying pizza box," i.e. a flying wing with an aspect ratio near 1 and elevon control. He had two independent gyros, so the angle at which he rotated them could be intermediate of 0 and 45, but the idea is the same. Worked great, went from nearly uncontrollable to smooth as silk.

When I did my first-ever crude balsa orbiter, about 1/80 scale, I boosted it piggyback style on the side of rocket that had an 18" BT-60 main body and 36" of BT-55. The tube adapter was a bit crooked….. so I used that as a feature not a bug to act like a little bit of pitch-down canard. Later, after the ET/SRB stack for my 1/110 model crashed, I used the same booster to carry the 1/110 orbiter as in this pic:



In late 1983 I made up a 1/72 R/C orbiter based on Luther Hux's plan in Model Aviation, though built much lighter. To get the most performance out of it without needing to use E or F engines, I came up with a minimized booster rocket for it so it could use staged D12's. A BT-50 engine mount right under the belly, then a "Main body" of BT-50 under that, arranged for rear ejection (A vent tunnel from the engine mount tube to rear eject main body). When the ejection went off and chute came out, then the orbiter would slide forward and come off for glide.

For stability, the booster used a stiff fiberglass tube as a forward boom, with 2-3 ounces of noseweight (lead shot) at the front inside of some BT-5 tubing. For added yaw stability and to make up for possible yaw-roll coupling issues with the orbiter's big vertical tail, I gave it two ventral fins. It worked out nicely, though it always pitched up some at liftoff, so I angled it nose-down 20 degrees or so from vertical to allow for the initial pitch-up (and always used a rail launcher).

The photo below is a good side view showing the layout, the nose boom extended about another 18" or so.


Launch at NARAM in 1984



I also later made a 29mm version of that booster so I could do some flights on an F15 or F10. That worked well too, but cost a lot more to fly than 2-staged D12's. On its last flight, fall of 1989, the shock cord burned off at ejection, and so the orbiter did not come off. It really smashed the orbiter, in theory I could rebuild it but never did.

So, it's interesting to see that you have done some of the same with yours. Not quite the "bare bones" type of booster, but the offset engine mount and ventral fins and smaller rocket than typcial for a "piggyback" glider of this mass.

In 1992, I had the opportunity to try out the new Aerotech 32mm reloads, for a new prototype Aerotech R/C RBG kit that Bob Parks had designed, Raven-7 (60" span model to fly on F and G power, a more glide oriented alternative to the Phoenix). I got to thinking that the 32mm reload with F13 or 12 would probably be great for doing an R/C orbiter again. But rather than 1/72 again, I scaled the orbiter up to 1/60.

For the carrier rocket,, the old offset thrustline booster had two problems. One was it wanted to pitch up since the thrusting was still not thru the overall lCG. And the other was the rear ejection which was an Achilles heel, which led to the crash that almost destroyed the 1984 orbiter (all the way down on its final flight I was thinking if only I had R/C sep on it like on my shuttle stack).

So, the booster design for the 1/60 model put the engine casing behind the orbiter. That made the thrustline thru the CG pretty close to dead on, best as I could determine where to locate it. Now, with the engine in back, there was no way to run the ejection charge. But as you know the 32mm reload has no ejection. So the orbiter used R/C to separate, much as I had done with my 1/72 shuttle stack boilerplate.

The booster itself was pretty much stripped down to being just a 3/8" spruce beam with things glued to it. A piece of BT-55 was split into two lengthwise halves, each half cut to an angle at the front and a thin plywood oval out over the front and back. Those two were glued onto the sides of the booster beam to hold a parachute inside of each, so they looked like external fairings but they served as half-shells to hold the chutes in. So when the orbiter was attached, the orbiter belly held the chutes inside of the BT-55 fairings. When the orbiter sepped, the chutes fell out. In the photo below, the booster has not been painted black yet and decals not added to the orbiter yet, because I wanted to test fly it first before going ot the trouble. Also seen is Parks' Raven-7 prototype I built, and an Astro Blaster.



And a boost.




The points you make about having elevator control are good ones. But when I was thinking of converting one of these before, the radio mass would be so much that adding a 2nd servo didn't seem worth the extra weight. But with an Ember type brick, there's two "servos" anyway, no extra mass radio-wise so it's more a matter of bothering to set up the elevons to move as elevators in addition to the rudder.

I just love the way the rudder works for steering an orbiter. I am not a very good pilot for aileron models. My X-1 flights always had an extra amount of piloting pressure and difficulty because it had no dihedral and depended on me to control the bank angle with the ailerons. Never had an accident due to the aileron control but there were some nervous moments. By contrast the 2X SkyDart was OK to fly with mixed ailerons due to the dihedral effect of the swept leading edge. Of course the orbiter has a lot of dihedral effect from the wing sweep and fuselage and high rudder interaction, but it always felt "twitchy" to me (flight #1 did a 360 roll when I only wanted to bank it a bit) and the last flight I ever made with mixed elevons, I spiraled it in. I did a quick interim repair to try out rudder control and when that worked out great then I rebuilt the model and never went back to mixed elevons. Of course, if I had today's radio gear and computer transmitters, I'd have had less trouble. But still, I'm just not an aileron guy. If I ever rebuild my X-1, it is going to have an Eagle Tree Guardian (or future replacement) in it for the roll axis. And if I ever get my NARAM/FAI Space Shuttle stack out f mothballs to compete with again, it is going to have an Eagle Tree Guardian in it to control the BOOST (The boost of that full stack requires about 110% of my piloting ability. Uh, yeah.....so I mostly sat back and did nothing unless the boost became bad enough that I had to do something).

- George Gassaway

TheAviator said:

Not quite true. If you are willing to have equal elevator and aileron gains, simply rotate the brick 45* around the vertical axis. Rudder stabilization remains unimpaired, but now both gyros receive +- sqrt(2) of both pitch and roll rotation rate.

.

Click to expand...

I have actually done that before, but rejected it for the little shuttle. It complicates the elevon linkage to have the servos so close together (in a planform view of the top of the model) after the brick is tilted. It is tough enough to do the linkage with the brick horizontal.

I might do a little looking on rcgroups.com for the AS3X micro RX only out of a trashed Eflite Hyper Taxi and use the discrete micro linear servos in that model. Discrete servos could be mounted to give better pushrod geometry than a normal AR6410 brick in the middle of the model would.

tab28682, very cool setup. Have you considered using the longer burning 24mm Aerotech reloads like the like the E11J or F12J to get more altitude? They would fit right in where the D-12 goes.

Mr G said:

tab28682, very cool setup. Have you considered using the longer burning 24mm Aerotech reloads like the like the E11J or F12J to get more altitude? They would fit right in where the D-12 goes.

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Certainly. The twin shuttle booster will be set up for any 24mm motor in the D-E class.

One thing to remember with the little foam shuttle is that it is pretty small and would be nearly invisible at anything over 600-800 feet and hard to see close to those altitudes. Can't fly it if you can't see it.

Good point. The eyes aren't getting any better.

georgegassaway said:

............ I am not a very good pilot for aileron models. My X-1 flights always had an extra amount of piloting pressure and difficulty because it had no dihedral and depended on me to control the bank angle with the ailerons. Never had an accident due to the aileron control but there were some nervous moments. By contrast the 2X SkyDart was OK to fly with mixed ailerons due to the dihedral effect of the swept leading edge. Of course the orbiter has a lot of dihedral effect from the wing sweep and fuselage and high rudder interaction, but it always felt "twitchy" to me (flight #1 did a 360 roll when I only wanted to bank it a bit) and the last flight I ever made with mixed elevons, I spiraled it in. I did a quick interim repair to try out rudder control and when that worked out great then I rebuilt the model and never went back to mixed elevons. Of course, if I had today's radio gear and computer transmitters, I'd have had less trouble. But still, I'm just not an aileron guy. If I ever rebuild my X-1, it is going to have an Eagle Tree Guardian (or future replacement) in it for the roll axis. And if I ever get my NARAM/FAI Space Shuttle stack out f mothballs to compete with again, it is going to have an Eagle Tree Guardian in it to control the BOOST (The boost of that full stack requires about 110% of my piloting ability. Uh, yeah.....so I mostly sat back and did nothing unless the boost became bad enough that I had to do something).

- George Gassaway

Click to expand...

Being much more of an experienced RC guy than an experienced rocket guy, I am completely comfortable with elevons and ailerons for primary roll control. I have ben flying RC since around 1972.

You are right in that todays modern programmable transmitters really make setting up models to get the feel that you want so much easier than in years past. I am using the fairly new Spektrum DX9 TX to fly the little shuttle and was able to quickly set up three control rate choices and exponential values on one of the three way programmable function switches on the TX.

The little shuttle glided well enough from a hand toss that I was able to evaluate the rates and expo before the boosted flight.

This past week let me get a lot of new models flown for the first time!

Here is a photo sequence of the R/C Guillows Shuttle conversion launching on its dedicated booster on a D12-3, developed from a modified Mean Machine that was crimped in the middle while in storage.

The boost and release went well, but I hand set the Shuttle CG a little too nose heavy and the control rates a little too small and the glide was steep even for this little shuttle. An easy tweak will correct before the next launch and improve the Shuttle glide.

Note the offset thrust line on the booster on the third photo. I mounted the 24mm motor mount to the inside of the booster body tube next to the shuttle to correct for the offset center of mass. Worked very well.