Tiger Moth Mods

[gjohnson]

BTW, if you look on the Ezone BB (do a search on Tiger Moth), there are beginning to be a lot of tips for mods to the GWS Tiger Moth. That's where someone talked about attaching a steerable tail wheel from a dime-store rubber powered plane to the back side of the rudder control arm. Unfortunately, he didn't say how he attached it. Here's a (fuzzy) picture of how I did it. Drilled two holes and bent the wire in a U and then inserted and CA'd (Zap's foam friendly type). My wheel came off one of the Cox electric free-flight planes.

http://www.rcmicroflight.com/upload/TigerMothTailWheel.jpg

[ 08-17-2001: Message edited by: gjohnson ]

[gjohnson]

Here are more mods I obtained mostly from Ezone postings.

UPPER WING
The tape method of holding dihedral in the upper wing doesn't work very well. Mine came loose just from sitting overnight. Mix baking powder (to make a lite paste) in with two-part epoxy and simply fill in the two gaps with the wing tips propped up for the correct dihedrial. After it hardens put the supplied yellow tape on top for cosmetic reasons only.

LOWER WING
Someone suggested skipping the double sided tape and simply spraying 3M 77 glue on the plastic wing joiner. I wish I had done this as the double sided tape began coming loose after only a couple of nights sitting on my workbench.

WING STRUTS
Glue 1/32 balsa on the outside side of all wing struts. I did only the vertical members on the outer struts with strips cut to size. On the inner struts with the cross piece I glued the strut down on a sheet of 1/32 balsa and then cut it out from the sheet when dry. I used Zap foam friendly CA. Someone suggested using a Sharpie marker to color the struts black, brown or other color. I had a black Sharpie, so my struts are now black.

BATTERIES
There are more posts on Ezone for this plane about batteries than any other topic. The 110x7 NiCDs from my J3-Cub stick fit in the battery opening perfectly. For longer flights I will be using 280x8 NiMH from Cloud 9 ($20). The cells are the same size as the 110's. The packs come as 4 stacked on top of 4. It's a simple matter to cut off the shrink wrap and with a bit of soldering rearrange into an 8-cell strip that will fit in the battery opening, re-shrinking with tubing from NY-Blimp or SR batteries. A lot of people are cutting the opening larger and using a variety of battery pack sizes, including the "transistor" sized NiMH battery from Wallmart. See Ezone for people's info on different batteries.

--Gordon

[ 08-17-2001: Message edited by: gjohnson ]

[gjohnson]

Mine is done. I hope to fly it this evening.

After building it, I would recommend glueing 1/32 balsa on BOTH sides of the struts. I only did one side. They are warped in the kit, and glueing balsa on only one side did not completely remove the warp.

--Gordon

[corey c]

I was going to make my struts out of two laminations of 1\32 ply but I decided to try the stock pieces. My stock pieces were warped to but I just creased them on the edge of my desk until they were straight, they seem to hold up just fine but I may make stronger ones later when I put a nice paint job on it! Good luck flying tonight and I'm sure you will love it, this is now my favorite bird!

[Joe]

I posted part of this in SFRC. That is where you saw it in case you look in both websites as I do.

I saw a number of comments about how well the GWS Tiger
Moth flew and decided to buy one. Since I'm having a number of distracting
health problems and have spent a lot of time messing around with doctors
and all that trash these last few weeks, I haven't had too much time to
work on it. I finally got it flying today.

Must say that I am also impressed. Was a good bit out of trim on it's first
flight and the 9V Rayovac NiMh had been used a good bit during set-up so I
didn't do much but fly it around the yard. Made a fairly gentle landing in
short grass. After some JR-421 trim adjustments, tried again without
changing the battery. Came to realize that my throttle trim adjustment was
set too low as I couldn't get it above the treetops no matter what.

Went back and changed that and put in a new battery. Wow! really took off.
Got up above the trees and did a couple of loops. Everything held together
and it was flying like a breeze. Took it up until it was barely visible
overhead. Went off up wind a ways more to check the range than any other
reason. Then came back overhead and flew on past. Saw a couple of buzzards
thermaling so decided to join them. As soon as I hit their thermal and
started going up it pulled the throttle back to idle. Flew about half an
hour before my back got to hurting so bad I had to come down. Probably 35 -
45 minutes on the first real flight after the trim flights. Made a perfect
three pointed on the landing with the prop just ticking over. The wife - a
former pilot - gave me a thumbs up. She had never seen an electric RC and
thought I was doing something new.

I went in at the buzzards altitude - appx 200 ft.- and after aggrevating
one of them with a near miss, went on up a good bit above them. Don't know
if they were just loafing or if the TG out thermaled them. Buzzards are not
too smart or all that good at thermaling. I've gone up through them a
number of times with a glider.

I'm having a lot of fun and expect to have a lot more.

Thanks Everybody!

Joe

:D

[gjohnson]

I flew the Moth this evening. Went through two 110x7 battery packs, about 5 minutes flying time each. Didn't do any loops, but just flew around. What a great plane. Much better than my J3 Cub stik. Landing was easy. The stearable tail wheel worked perfect. After landing there was generally a bit of power left. So I let my four-year old son taxi it around the driveway. Without the stearable tail wheel, this wouldn't have been possible. I'll probably fly it tomorrow morning before I leave on vacation.
--Gordon

[corey c]

I just flew my tiger moth for the first time today and I have to say that this thing is awsome! Your tips sound good so maybe I will start to modify mine, thanks.