1st Barracuda in the USA

[djlyon]

It came in a large brown box to my home on 7/26/2010. I opened it checked out all the parts instructions and the plan. My first thought was “typical German over engineering”. That is a compliment. The box had a sheeted foam wing and a lot of laser cut parts that looked as though they would fit together perfectly. Even the fuselage top and bottom sheeting was perfectly cut to fit. At first I thought the wing was a simple balsa sheeted foam wing but after examining the small one sheet plan for a time I realized that between the sheeting and the foam was all was all the structure of a spare, carbon fiber top and bottom and fiber glass top and bottom necessary to make this a strong, stiff wing with nothing to be added for racing with a Nelson, Jett or Profi. The bottom of the wing was already routed out for the ailerons, the trailing edge was nice and sharp the leading edge was completely shaped and uniform from tip to tip. It only needed wing tips. All of it spoke to more German over engineering. I thought to my self geez this thing is going to go together quickly with very little cutting and sanding. As I began assembling the fuselage I realized that Uli had put a lot more thought into the design to ease construction than I had noticed. Getting the V tail correctly installed and aligned with 0deg incidence on a quickie can be tricky. I have built a lot of quickies from kits and scratch and as a result collect tools necessary to do this job and sometimes I actually succeed at getting the tail at 0des. Uli has made the top of the fuselage the 0deg incidence reference plain, the width of the fuselage is constant between the leading and trailing edge of fuselage and there are 2 V formers underneath the Vtail. Designed this way it can not go wrong. As I went through the building process I did use my collection of tools to verify every thing was aligned and at 0 deg incidence. As it turned out I did not need the tools, if I had just put it together it would have come out correct. I do use a different build sequence for the Vtail than Uli’s instructions. Uli provides a V block of foam for joining the Vtail halves at the correct angle. That is a nice touch . The first thing I do is join the Vtail halves before any cutting or shapeing. Then I fit to the fuselage. I mark the tail at the fuselage sides and then shape the tail outside of these marks. That way I do not get the incidence wrong while shaping the tail

After I was completely finish with plane including assembly but not yet covered or painted I thought I did not really need a building room to build this plane. I could have done it on the kitchen table or small balcony or even in a hotel room on an extended business trip. I have actually built a racer in a hotel room on a business trip and it took much sanding and cutting than this one. Room service was very tolerant of me. For those without a place to build and paint just cover it with the film of your choice and it is ready to go.

I fiberglassed the whole plane.

I have six flights on it now and it is smooth and tracks very well. With the Nelson, the control throws recommended by Uli are just right for the starting point adjustments to suit flying style will be very minor. I have the cg at 73mm. No trim was required. Everything was flush. The plane takes off with no rudder or elevator input in a straight smooth climb. It weighs 1423 grams

Denis

 

[attackjack]

Thanks

Thanks

Hi Denis,

thanks for this detailled report of your first impressions building the barracuda. I´ve been missing the RC-network for some weeks because of "no time"...

An interesting detail you described, is to sand only surfaces of the V-Tail that need to be profiled and to leave the root of the tails straight for perfect fit in the fuselage.

Also interesting is, that you compare the quality to US-Kits as very well developed, easy and very rapid to build. For german developers it´s difficult to compare our kits to the common standard in US, the home of model-pylon-racing.

What do you think, is this kit feasible for newcomers to get started pylonracing?

It would be great if you would report your experiences during races or during training.

Greetings to california

Uli

 

[djlyon]

The Barracuda kit is superior to any US kit I have seen or built. Especially for the newcomer to racing. Many newcomers today, to pylon racing or modeling in general are only familiar with ARFS and building a kit plane can represent a real challenge. The design of the fuselage and embedding of the wing structure under the balsa skin eliminates a lot of that challenge.

I have built several of the kit racers made here: Racer2, Seeker,and Hurrikane. I have also scratch built Double Ds. I have built several of the above. The Racer2 came with a sheeted foam wing with all the necessary Carbon built in for Nelson power but still needed fiber glass in the center for stiffness. The fuselage was standard construction (few parts and no tab and slot). Lots of careful alignment required. I bought several Seeker and Hurrikane fuselage kits without the wings. I either used my own wings or Big Bruce composite wings (shell wings) Super TRC sells sheeted foam core wings for the Hurrikane, Seeker and Snaker but they are not strong enough for Nelson, Jett or Profi power. They are only intended for the 424 class (TT40PRO power).

The fuselage kits for the Snaker, Seeker and Hurrikane are nicely made laser cut tab and slot construction like the Barracuda. They have a little fewer parts than the Barracuda but they still have the challenge of Vtail alignment.
Here it is expected that when one buys a kit with a foam sheeted wing that they will only be using it for 424 racing, no extra strength required. The argument is the shell wing is smoother and has a constant truer airfoil. Good argument except
for the master builder. The Barracuda's wing eliminates that argument. With every thing under the skin and the well formed leading and trailing edges it is ready to go with a TT40 or a Nelson and need not worry about an advantage from a shell (smooth and true). Glass it as I did or cover it with film, it is smooth and true. No kit builder here is going to take that effort with a foam core wing.

The kit is great for a newcomer and when the newcomer wants to go with the fastest it will support that too.

Denis