These are pictures of my Sukhoi SU-29 from Fancy Foam.
Purchased in late September 2004, assembled and first flown on October 3, 2004. My son had taken his camera
to college, and I didn't have access to it until he came home for a visit in early November. These pictures
were taken after I had completed 21 flights... including one minor crash that required some repair to the fuse.
Fuselage is made of 6mm thick Depron foam, with carbon fiber tubes for support. Channels for tubes, hinges,
wiring, and servos all pre-cut with a CNC router. Very nice work! Makes assembly very easy. Here is the
equipment used:
E-Flite Park 370 4100kv Brushless motor.
Cobri 20mm gearbox at 6.6:1 (66-tooth spur, 10-tooth pinion).
Castle Creations Phoenix-25 25amp Brushless Speed controller.
ThunderPower 1320mah 10-12C and Tanic 1500/1550mah 10-12C 3cell lithium polymer Batteries.
APC Thin-E and Slow-Fly props, currently using a 12x6 Thin-E.
JR R610UL micro receiver.
Hitec HS-55 sub-micro servos (four).
This combination draws about 11amps at full throttle and provides 15-30 minute flight times, depending on throttle. The JR's antenna has been wrapped around a piece of nyrod, and taped at both ends. Doesn't reduce the range by much.
There is a story behind the colorscheme. Short version is... this is not what I had originally envisioned,
but it worked out ok in the end. Long version is that
I started out planning a Yak-54/55 colorscheme (blue, yellow, red, and white)... but after experimenting
with different craft paints and my cheap airbrush... I gave up painting a complicated scheme. Just too many
runs, or poor coverage, no matter how I thinned the paint. Played around
with sign-vinyl and Ultracote. Using a very low temp setting on my iron, I was able to apply the Ultracote
without melting any foam. Came up with a cool color scheme using pearl blue, pearl yellow, with carbon-fiber
Ultracote trim. One advantage to Ultracote is it makes a very good hinge. No need for packing tape! I
applied the Ultracote to the top side of the wing, as I was going to leave most of the bottom plain white. A
couple hours later, I noticed the wing had bowed quite a bit. The Ultracote was making a banana out of the
wing! Figuring the best way to fix that was to also apply Ultracote to the bottom, to even out the forces.
That worked very well... making the wing nice and flat.
Only downside was... Ultracote weighs a ton! After completing just the wing, I had added 2 ounces to the
weight of the plane! Ok, that isn't going to work. So I stripped it all off, except for the hinges, and
added small strips of blue sign-vinyl on top, and holographic on the bottom... to ease visual orientation in
the air. Flew it a dozen flights like this. After an evening of flying in cloudy weather, were the stripes
on the bottom are visible through the semi-opaque Depron, I decided I needed something more. The only
paint color I had any luck in spraying cleanly was fluorescent yellow. So, I painted the top of the plane,
between the blue stripes, with this yellow. Made a world of difference in the visibility! Now I can fly
it well after sunset or on cloudy days.
