Maiden flight of La Herencia
I've been looking at this huge biplane hanging from the ceiling in my father's study for years. Almost 15 years actually. He designed and built it himself, but never had the engine to make it fly properly. Some years ago I told him the plane would fly with an electric motor one day. And he said "Son, the day you're ready to that conversion, the plane is yours.". It happened this year when I was shocked by the huge motors and minimal prices from Hobbycity in Honk Kong.The next hindrance was finding a place to work. You can't put down a huge plane like that on your living room table and start working. Not if you're married anyway. My father-in-law came to the rescue, giving me the key to his new workshop.
There were several improvements to be made and I documented most of it with my camera. The whole building process can be viewed picture-by-picture in Flickr. The plane has now been named "La Herencia", meaning "the heritage" in Spanish. Last weekend we took La Herencia out for its first flight as an electric plane. It flew beautifully, giving an excellent finally to this 15 year old RC project. I got some video footage of it as well, allthough filming it in the air prooved almost impossible for my cameraman, whom will remain anonymous.
Technical details
- Wingspan: 2m (79 inches)
- Weight with existing fuel engine and fuel: 6,3 kg (13.2 pounds)
- Existing fuel engine and propeller: .120 four stroke engine with a 14x8 APC propeller
- Construction: Balsa all the way through with some pine and plywood reinforcements
- New electric motor: HXT 63-64-A 280Kv 65A Brushless Outrunner (52-30)
- Propeller: APC Style 16x10 E
- ESC: TURNIGY Sentilon100A HV 2-12S Speed Controller
- Batteries: Two Polyquest 3700mAh 4S 25C Lipoly in series (8S)
- Weight with electric setup: 7,0 kg (15.4 pounds)
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