Ed Hamler's Fokker D-VIII Building Tips

SAM 27 Club Project for 2006 is the Earl Stahl Fokker D-VIII from the Bob Holman Plans Laser Cut Kit.

We will be illustrating some of the techniques I used to construct my Earl Stahl Fokker D-VIII from the Bob Holman Plans laser cut kit for the SAM Champs R/C Commemorative event at the 2006 Muncie, Indiana event. The kit includes CAD drawn plans and laser-cut parts for all of the curved balsa surfaces and the Plywood firewall and dihedral braces. You supply sheet and stick balsa and the wires involved. I have prepared a "Bill of Materials" for all the necessary parts in Excel worksheet format which you can download here . A web page containing the information is here

The fuselage is constructeed from 3/16 inch Square balsa sticks. Build two identical sides over the plans and assemble the squared fuselage over the overhead fuselage view. There are laser cut bulkhead piecs that glue to the top of the fuselage crosspieces. The curvd pieces are notched to accept the stringers you see in this photo (below).

There are always ambiguous portions to building any old timer design. You have to count on reading as much as you can about the original model and the experienc of modelers who have built the design. The original design employed wire hooks embeddded in the wing to clasp it to the wire cabanes that were the wing's supports. We decided to modify this to a more traditional (and somewhat lesss difficult to construct accurately) rubber band hold-down for the wings. This involved mounting bass supports to the cabanes that extend far enough outside of the wing to allow rubber bands to hold the wing in place. Getting a threee-piece wire cabane bent precisely so that the wing's angle of attack is held properly is no small feat either but we will detail a simple balsa jig that will make the entire process accurate and simple. Another anomilie is the "winglet" that all Fokker fighters had between the landing gear. The original article showed a sharply undercambered airfoil for the winglet (duplicated in the CAD plans and laser parts) while the actual aircraft had a simple thin Clark Y type airfoil. The original article published In MAN in 1941, contained the text by Stahl that said that he removed the winglet fopr flight and only attached it for display. We will show a simple means to make one that can be flown with the model that attaches ibn such a way that it will trail without causing aerodynamic forces that must be compensated for and will pop off if a rough field landing occurs thanks to Van Hereferd who has built a few of these models. We will get more detailed as we go along, including step-by-step photos of any tricky parts so it is perfectly clear for our Club members and friends who are building one.

This simple jig is glued in place without the wires using Ambroid or Sigment to hold in place while you bend the cabane wires to fit the wing hold-downs in place on the model, then dissolved with acetone to remove the balsa jig. Exact sizes and a drawing for the jig will be posted with this article. It is cut from scrap 1/4 inch balsa sheet and it holds the wing rests at the proper location, angle of attack shile you bend and cut the 1/16th music wire that is tied with thread and then glued to the bass wing rests. We will show how Ed has placed his radio equipment. You may decide to do it differently, but why re-invent the wheel?

Ed is making his firewall removeable and his first power plant is a reproduction Italian 2cc Diesel Given to him by guest SAM 27 member Gabriele Montebelli. As shown in this photo, Ed has hooked his throttle servo to a 1/8 inch dowel that goes through the firewall and can be calmped over the exhaust both to help start the engine(priming the engine)and to shut it off. He places a small, felt-tipped head as shown in the lower right photo.

Click to Download a PDF file of the original Earl Stahl Construction Article + Plans from June-July 1941 M.A.N. (956 KB File)

Ed Is planning to mount a Brown Junior Ignition motor inverted to another removeable firewall. He plans to mount the ignition system to the firewall and make it removeable with the engine. It gives him an LER-eligible Class C model and an A Texaco model at the same time!
Ed Shows off his D-VIII at the SAM 27 meeting.

At left, you see where Ed mounted his servos and a good view of his method of attaching hatches. The triangular ply piecs serv two purposes: 1) provide a depth stop to hold the balsa hatch flush with the surface and as a gusset to reinforce the fuselage at the perimeter which will add rigidity.

 
   

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