One Bad Mutha Duck

[Glacier Girl]

Well just for S & G's, here's the build on the Agri Duck.
A plane so ugly it's cute. Or if you will just plain cool looking.
More of what would happen if a cartoon plane came to life.

Anyhow, normally these are built from either foam cor on in one case fan fold.  Me being me, I went with 1/2" blue foam and depron.

Why? Well because I couldn't find any of the above in big enough sheets to not have to piece the fuselage together. Ok and because I had this stuff already.

Well the fuselage is pretty straight forward build wise. Slabs form the sides, bottom, and top.  Just add a couple of foam formers inside to help stiffen it up.  Glue of choice for this one is Gorilla Glue, as it bonds well and the foaming action helps fill in any not so perfect joints.

[export!]

Cool boat - where is the plane?

[Glacier Girl]

Ok just to not confuse you. The front is to the left in the previous photo. Motor goes where the fuselage is notched.

The rest of the photos are pretty much just to give you a size of this thing.  Yep it's big. That's a Badius sitting on top of it.

Has an approx 9+ foot wing span, and is a T tail instead of the normal vertical/horizontal stabilizer set up.

That's a 4 foot level leaning up against one of the wing templates.

Finished wings will be depron, mostly because the foam has to be scored and bent in four places to form the leading edge, and it's almost impossible to do that with 1/2" foam.

I already have them cut out and bent. Had to run to Lowes, to buy 1/4" ply to make up the formers for it. More on that when  get there.

Lastly are the wheels. Pretty slick and only problem I've run into so far.  The wheels are nothing more then a piece of carpet tube, glued to a pair of lite ply ends.

The tires are nothing more then inner tubes, and there is my problem.  As you can see they were cheap for a reason. Due to not real strict quality control, this bird would have staggered like a drunken sailor on roll out.

Alright it would have waddled like a duck.

That will hopefully be rectified with a pair of better quality tubes.

[Glacier Girl]

Cool boat - where is the plane?

DUCKS FLOAT TOO SMART ASS

[Loubud]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[tam popo]

Well guys, I made it to this new thread, but haven't got a clue wot I'm doing!!!!! Its strange I'll be back tomorrow and have a look around....byeeee......

[Loubud]

Shugs
Bout time you made it here.
Hope you're feeling better these days.

[AceJ1200]

OMG,, I mean Damn that thing is gonna be huge
Looking good Brad

[patnchris]

One of the guys in my club flys a Mud Duck on gas....It's huge and weird looking, but it flys pretty neat....Pat

[Glacier Girl]

Alright, so now time to work on the landing gear.
As you can see it's pretty straight forward. Bent the 1/8" wire to match the diagrams on the form.

The wood connectors are made from 1/4" lite ply. Wire is wrapped with strong cord and then everything is soaked with epoxy to hold it in place.

As you can see the gear incorporates a quazi bungee shock system. Several wraps of bungee cord is run from the spring rod down to the axle.

The wheels themselves use a brass tube for a bearing. Just a matter of epoxying the tubes to the wheels, then sand the axle ends so the wheels spin freely.  I went one more step in waxing the axle so the wheels spin with even less drag. 

Each axle is drilled for two hair pins to locate the wheels.

Then it's time to place the landing gear to lay out the lite ply supports.

The supports, 1/8" lite ply, are epoxied to the foam, and after dry 4 retainers are installed to hold the gear to the supports.

[Glacier Girl]

Now then something I should mention. Okay, I screwed up.
Using the 1/2" foam instead of the 3/16" foam core, I forgot to take into account the width difference.

Yep, nothing fit after cutting all the stuff out. I ended up recutting almost every part to correct it.  DUH!!!!!!

So anyhow, back to the build. The vertical and horizontal stabilizers both use wooden dowels for strength. Two on the vertical, and one on the horizontal.   Thou I'm thinking I may add a second one to the horizontal as I'm not sure I trust just the foam for it.

Well the horizontal stabilizer gets notched in the front for it's rod, just a matter of epoxying it in place.  Yeah right. Wood dowels tend not to be straight, so I ended up having to tape it straight and then glueing it multiple times to get it to stay.

The vertical stabilizer as said before uses 2 dowels. The front runs all the way to the bottom of the fuselage, and is glued to it. Along with the stabilizer it also will support the tail rod. IE: it don't have no wheel in the tail just a skid.

The rear dowel ends at the bottom rear of the fuselage.  Was loads of fun laying out an exact hole for the front dowel to exit, back one is a piece of cake.

Once its all dry, the vertical and horizontal stabilizers can be glued into place.  I'm going to hold off on glueing the horizontal stab till I about done, so it doesn't get banged up.

Last step is to glue a pair of 1/2" quarter stock to the top of the vertical stab to help support the horizontal.  Also a pair of struts will be built and installed to tie it all together. I'll work on that later also.

[Glacier Girl]

Lastly just a couple more shots. Rear of the fuselage trimmed out for the vertical stab install. And the stabilizers dry fitted in place.

[raulcroes]

That Duck looks awesome Brad.

Are you building off of blueprints? I may build one too! I wonder how this duck flies. keep us posted.

Raul

[raulcroes]

Will you be powering it electric? I can only wonder what size motor, esc and lipo it will require. foam is not something thats gona be easy to come by here in Aruba. I guess if there is a will there will be a way.
Raul 

 

[ktaylor]

Raul, he already has the motor in his inventory  (actually 2 of them), left over from one big P-38 that never could find it's way into the air, the plane was cursed.  Here's the motor.
http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=2097&Product_Name=HXT_63-64-A_280Kv_65A_Brushless_Outrunner_(52-30)


Bard, I did the calcs, on 6 cell, run either a 19x10  APC, or a 20x8. Either one should work great.  The 19x10 gives you almost 11 lbs of static thrust with a pitchspeed of 49 mph at 47 amps,  (58 amps at full charge & before voltage drop)

The 20x8 will give you 14 lbs of static thrust with the same amp load, (right around 1000 watts,, haa ha, your duck would put you into the KW club again) and pitchspeed of 40 mph.