The Tao of Walking Ridge

Mark Freeland of Retro RC designed an original retro looking RC plane with wide wings called an e’Moth. Designed to be a fun flyer capable of staying up in the air for 15 minutes or more, it was my first build in more than a decade. The interlocking lasercut parts were fun to assemble. Marking the part numbers on the parts before removing them from the sheets was a good idea and helped greatly keeping track of the bits.

I personalized my ‘Moth in a couple of ways. The checker design is functional (helps tell top from bottom) and looks cool. Since the Clark Y builds flat I was able to tack the aileron bits to the wing with tape and line them up very well so control surfaces and wing checkers line up. Ultracote was very forgiving and easy to work with after that.

I also dropped in a Hacker A20-34S motor. This was clearly more than the plane needed but the results are impressive climb out with a 7×4 inch prop. The kv rating for the motor is 1500 which tries to spin the recommended 7×5 just a bit too fast resulting in high current draw. The plane flies will with the 7×5, but the additional torque at take off makes ground handling more difficult. The 7×4 does not stall, so it pulls as soon as you throttle up with little torque. It is airborne in 5 or 10 feet with any headwind at all. The 7×4 also provides longer flight times with this motor. I can fly 12 to 14 minute flight times with just a 1300 mah 3S pack. Yet there is plenty of power to penetrate a bit of wind if needed.

I also widened the landing gear a bit to make it handle like my other tail draggers. I made the track 6 inches wide and it doesn’t roll at all on takeoff. One hard landing shows the foam of the wheels just barely touched the wing with no harm done. Most landings are nice and smooth. I considered beefing the landing gear up with some carbon fiber, but that would have required opening up the slots in the fuselage and I wanted to retain the option to go back to Mark’s narrow Moth landing gear.

It is a handy little plane that flies big (rolls well off of grass runways) but can also maneuver in small quarters. Compact to carry, balsa, retro design, and big wheels to fly off grass. What’s not to love? Mark also answers emails quickly so if you have any issues during the build he can help (I didn’t need help with the build, but did ask some questions about the alternate motor and got a quick response).

And it is a taildragger.

       - the Muse

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Radio Control. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.