Friendlito Build

Late last year I ordered a 2m RES thermal soarer to supplement my Omega, which is good for breezy days but less so for calm days, the model I chose was a Friendlito from Modellbausservice Schuster in Bavaria, Germany.

The kit arrived with all the wood, yes wood, a combination of balsa, spruce and ply. There isn't a plan though, all you get is a CD with a number of pdf's in German with lots of good photos. Initially I was a little concerned, particularly for the wing build but as all became clear I didn't need to worry. The design has been really thought through and the CNC cut parts are very good and fit together well.

The fuselage can be dry assembled and if you so desire you could just go around and superglue the joints but I didn't as ensuring the fuselage is straight was a concern as it's over 1m long and very thin.

To make life easier when installing the controls I inserted the rudder threads in the fuselage before I fitted the bottom otherwise life would have been very difficult as the thread is fed through holes in each of the frames as is a bowden cable for the elevator.

The nose provides a bit of a challenge in that the motor fit is very tight side-to-side and the side walls need a scallop in each to allow the motor to fit, which makes installation even more interesting. I bound the rx to the tx and then checked out the servos and set up the motor control and rotation on the bench before going further. To install the motor, once the nose was ready for it, I used a couple of long 3mm threaded rods, which I connected to the motor and pulled the motor with the ESC still attached to the front bulkhead.

The wings had been my biggest concern but the designed had that covered. The rear of the D section has cut outs for the ribs and the whole fits over the bottom spar beautifully. A comb is then used to position the ribs correctly towards the TE and hey presto it all falls into place. A dry run was ready proof of this and gluing then became a low risk task.

All in all it took me about three weeks to put the model together with the following result:

The Friendlito or Little Friend is now ready to go (with propeller blades) and I'm just waiting for calm conditions to test fly it off the flat.

I have another model on order from the same guy, a Friendly F5J this time, again in wood, with a wing span of 3.6m.

Friendlito first flights

Today, 24th Jan, I flew the model for the first time at Coombes thanks to the lack of wind (approx. 8 mph from the west). It was rather cold though!!

I launched the model on half power and it climbed away in a straight line and on increasing the power to full chat it tended to go into an increasingly steep climb but not too bad and easily controlled. Straight and level gliding needed almost no trimming and turns were easy needing just a touch of elevator to keep the nose up. Deploying the spoilers was equally unexciting until almost full deployment at which point the model went into a controllable dive.

I did a second flight to confirm the initial impressions and tonight I've been busy adjusting power compensation and spoiler deployment curves in OpenTX Companion ready for the next test flight.

Robin Strange