R.C. Falcon Models Tiger Moth

Gallery Article by Jörgen Toll on Jan 5 2004

 

I thought I'd post some pics of my Tiger Moth...  It Flew for the first time (successfully) last Sunday.

It's a 3-channel Radio Controlled Tiger Moth built from a kit by Falcon Models.  I bought the Kit from
www.mft.nu. If you live in Scandinavia I can truly recommend this shop!

The Falcon kit is expensive but of high quality. Everything is CNC milled out.

I made some changes on my Moth.

The Wings were supposed to have a 1.5mm balsa list as leading edge. I exchanged it with a 1.5mm Carbon Fibre rod instead. The trailing edge has a 1mm CF rod that came with the kit.

I also exchanged the wing mount with CF since I planned on making the wings de-mountable. The kit instructions calls for glueing the wings to the Fuselage. The Wing struts have their ends reinforced with CF and is held in place by the rigging. They are not glued to the wings.

 

Click on images below to see larger images

I drilled holes in the wing mounts for a bracket that would hold them together. In this pic you see the upper wing joint inside the "fuel tank". I left the fuel tank top loose so I can disassemble the wings. The top is then held in place by Lego parts that are cut down in size and glued to the top and the bottom to act like snap-fasteners (not in pic).

The wingspan is 60cm.

Total weight 97g.

Driven by an electric motor and Lithium Polymer batteries.

Top speed: Brisk walking pace.

I choose to glue the front, bottom and top of the engine cowling to the fuselage instead of having a cowling that you had to dismount the propeller to get off. The Cowling must come off to change batteries, so Instead I fastened the sides of the cowlings with Lego parts so they can be opened without tools for battery changes.
I also covered the fuselage floor in front of the landing gears with acetate film since this area would be hard to cover with iron on film later.

The Kit is made with NiCd batteries in mind.
I chose to go with Li-Polys instead which are much lighter. But that means the CoG moves backwards and to counter that I had to move the servo tray forward and place all the electronics as far forward as possible.

The pic above shows the Tiger without its covering.

Since I opted for Li-Polys I went with a more durable but heavier covering, Airspan. The Kit comes with Mylar film.

Here is the final result, painted in Humbrol colors with an Aztec airbrush, in a Swedish Airforce trainer scheme. 

The first attempt ended in a minor disaster. The aircraft had its CoG right where the drawings say it's supposed to be. But it turned out to be tail heavy and stalled right after takeoff.

Since I had moved everything forward, I had no choice but to add nose weight. I put my second Li-Poly Acc. in the nose cowling and it flew like a dream!

The Tiger Moth has Wes tech 2.4g servos, and a Wes tech 1c drive set with the 5:1 gears and a CF prop. I use a GWS Pico receiver that has its connectors removed.
I use 2x145mAh Li-Poly cells for power.

The Tiger weighs in at around 100g. Not bad since I made quite a few changes that makes it heavier. I could not have done these changes had I not opted for Li-Polys.

Feel free to comment!

I hope you all enjoy it. 

Jörgen Toll

Click on images below to see larger images

bottom of the fuselage.

launching....

success!!!  Here's proof that she actually flies

 

      

Photos and text © by Jörgen Toll