Dynasoar Mega Orbital Transporter end of season flights

[burkefj]

A little end of season R/C rocket glider action with one of my now sold out Mega Orbital Transporter kit prototypes.

Specs: 8.25 oz, 2.6" diameter, 20" wingspan, 26" long, on single use E-6 24mm power. I was using up the rest of my single use motors since they are getting expensive to order in batches of 100 just for the few people that don't want to mess with reloads.

These go together so quickly, literally one hour to assemble, 30 minutes to install the radio equipment and half an hour to put all the decals on. Boost trim was spot on as shown here with just some roll trim needed for glide. If you add the 45 minutes it takes me to cut out and fit all the parts to make up a kit of this I'm still under 3 hours from nothing to ready to fly. No paint on the model, just the decals and some clear packing tape on the bottom of the forward tube to keep it from getting wet.

Glide times weren't my longest but we had a cross wind and I was trying to hit the centerline of the runway right in front of me every time for the video so I had to sacrifice some glide time for energy management and setting up into the wind.

I went with orange stickershock decals instead of red this time to be a bit different.

This prototype was an experiment to make it light enough(shortened and used no coupler and 2.5mm spars) to see if I could get it to fly on the D2.3 but although it came out at 7.16 oz rtf it was too sluggish on boost to be interesting, so I pulled out the motor mount, cleaned out the old foam mmt centering strips with a small rasp and installed a new 24mm mount and re-balanced it for E-6 motors.

It came out below the drone weight limit for registration and remoteID as well although you still need to stick to the altitude restrictions at your flying site.

 

[burkefj]

Re-tweaked things with a pnc-80K cone, since I have a lot of those now, about 9 oz rtf for the kit version which uses two tubes and a coupler to reduce cost and fit into shipping boxes. My lighter weight prototype above without the coupler and two piece body tube, still just under the 250 gram drone limit even with the slightly heavier reloadable 24mm motors. The PNC-80BB cone with balast is almost identical in weight to the PNC-80K without any weight, the rx/battery need to be in a slightly different location inside the cone for balance. Was happy it worked out with either cone, I think I like the pointy version a bit better.

 

[burkefj]

Decided to finally replicate the original cockpit design as well, so enlarged it from a decal scan and hand cut it out of vinyl trim.

 

[burkefj]

And just because the devil makes me do bad things when I don't keep my naughty little hands busy I made a display nozzle using some photo paper and a template generated in open Rocket and a short piece of cut off body tube sliced and re-glued so it would fit in the back of the model behind the motor mount...

 

[burkefj]

And because I found another long and short scrap pieces of tubing, I decided to make one more that had the wing moved back slightly so that the elevons were actually behind the rear of the body tube just like on the Free flight model, moving the wing back an inch meant that it wasn't possible to get a natural CG without a lot of tail weight so I moved the coupler to the rear of the model instead of the front along with moving the rail buttons slightly further back and this allowed enough tail weight along with removal of the servo extension leads in the front to get a natural balance without nose or tail weight. It did mean I had to cut through the coupler to make the servo pockets which was somewhat challenging with just an exacto knife given the thickness and the glue but it worked out okay in the end. That's one reason I don't do my kit version that way as well this only works if you're using a PNC 80BB cone, the PNC 80k I use now is too heavy to get a natural balance point with the wing moved back. I double checked the wing and tail dimensions to a scan of The originals and my scaling was spot on, although I think I originally had done it by eyeball only.

 

[burkefj]

Got to maiden all four today, three are here Perfect 80 degree nw weather with no wind.

 

[burkefj]

I decided to get creative and do the decals myself for this one, orbital transport inspired but tweaked to be TWA. The red decals are entirely cut out by hand using an exacto and trim vinyl as is the cockpit. The passenger windows are the centers of the pre cut letter "O"s and I found a couple of pre-printed Estes decals sticker shock had made me for another project. It took me a little over an hour to complete the model. I also made up a little display nozzle using a template from open Rocket a small piece of coupler and some photo paper. There's something rewarding in doing things by hand sometimes.

 

[burkefj]

For the TWA version since I did a single tube without a coupler that I could move to the rear of the model it was a little nose heavy so I wound up having to make a little magnet secured latch on the side to access the receiver and battery location. This is my lightest version so far. I maidened it this morning and it took just a few clicks of up for a vertical boost and a slight bit of roll correction. I'm sure most of this is just caused by me eyeballing neutral elevon settings when I set it up. I'm really pleased at how well all of these that I've built have flown and in calm air I'm getting almost exactly a minute 30 glide time with every single one even though there are slight differences in weight, they're just extremely consistent and use identical settings for the glide positions. For the hatch it's just hinged with the same trim vinyl I use for the decals inside and outside and I left a little tab so I can grab it with my fingers and open it. I CA'd one of the magnets to the hatch and put some trim vinyl over the top just to keep it from popping loose, then I made a little standoff with basswood for the inside of the body since the magnet is kind of thick so the one on the inside had to be inset about an eighth of an inch.

 

[BEC]

Gee, you could use a Sharpie to ink a door surround and call it a main deck cargo door

 

[burkefj]

Gee, you could use a Sharpie to ink a door surround and call it a main deck door

Up close the hatch was pretty obvious with the cutout line, I was afraid it would get too cluttered if I did more. I guess I'm a slacker.

 

[BEC]

Nah....at the rate you create these things, no one can rightfully call you a slacker.

I was just amused at the idea of a Combi version of the OT orbiter. A Combi is an airliner that has both passengers and cargo on the main deck....and since there are outlines for the passenger doors in the decals, it just seemed logical to make that hatch a cargo door.

 

[burkefj]

Nah....at the rate you create these things, no one can rightfully call you a slacker.

I was just amused at the idea of a Combi version of the OT orbiter. A Combi is an airliner that has both passengers and cargo on the main deck....and since there are outlines for the passenger doors in the decals, it just seemed logical to make that hatch a cargo door.

I created an orbital combi-starliner, who knew!