Homax Products Welder Contact Adhesive (above left) was used to build the EPP Edge 540. Check your local hardware, home improvement stores or contact Homax Products directly at
homax@homaxproducts.com. The
AT A GLANCE Type:
Construction: Wing span: Wing area: Airfoil: Length: Weight:
Wing loading: Prop:
Motor: ESC:
simple yet strong and effective motor mount (center). Simple pushrod guides made of lightweight wire (above right) keep the lightweight pushrods from flexing while doing more demanding aerobatics.
R/C foamy EPP foam 32 inches 234 sq. in. flat profile 34 inches 7.5 ounces 5.4 oz./sq.ft.
GWS EP–0843 brushless 300 10-amp
Radio: 4-channel, 4 Hitec HS-55 servos Manufacturer:
E-Foamy
Dist. by: Fancy Foam Models
www.fancyfoam.com
The business end of the Edge 540, the E-flite Park 300 brushless outrunner motor. Small as it is, it is able to keep the Edge in a hover or high alpha while only drawing 6.5 amps.
do a nice job of cutting this material if you want to pursue a design of your own. This is another reason I decided to start
with the prefabricated kit. All the major components were precut and beveled for the hinges and I was assured of some success for early flying efforts as this type of model flies so differently. I also have an CAP 232 from the E-flite line of kits, but being made of bal- sa and plywood with film covering, a crash would result in a major rebuild or complete scrapping of the model. Not so these EPP foam planes. They are
more like some child’s “Nerf” toy. Crash it, step on it, kick it, whatever (within reason- able limits but still not recommended), it springs back to its original shape and is ready for more abuse. The worst damage is usually a broken plastic slow flyer prop if the prop saver O-ring is not up to the task on that particular impact. It’s more like a flight simulator than a model airplane in this respect.
FLYING MODELS
A very different way of thinking that en- courages pushing the “edge” of the envelope for a lot of flyers. One becomes more daring when there are fewer penalties and less to loose. The profile models made from some of the other materials while lighter, seem to be more prone to damage and this was one of the other things that finally drew me to this particular type of construction. I have very little time any more for rebuilding some elaborate model if an inadvertent mistake is made. Mostly due to pressures from the work a day environment. Another paradigm that you will have to
get used to is making hinges out of glue! Usually one uses adhesives to hold some- thing in place or immobilize it. In this case, one is using the adhesive to not only attach the control surface, but also is dependent on the flexible nature of the cured adhesive to function as the actual hinge for the control surface. By being full length, the hinge is also sealed aerodynamically making the
control surface more effective by eliminating the leakage along the hinge line associated with other methods of mechanically hinging a control surface. The closest thing in the current modeling world to this would be the MonoKote type hinge usually seen on the smaller R/C and C/L models. This is actual- ly a big advantage in making the control surface more effective. One other thing worthy of note is that
when installing the controls you simply cut a hole just big enough to fit the servo and then glue it in place with a couple of dabs of the same Welders glue used elsewhere on the model. This is another paradigm shift that you might have to get used to and took me a bit of time to get my head around it. When I was first able to get started (fi- nancially) in R/C back in the mid 1970s the radio systems were extremely expensive and the only way I could get into this part of the hobby was to buy a used Kraft Gold Box Se- ries 71 four-channel system on the then new
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