Thermic 50E (oz16359)

 

Thermic 50E (oz16359) by Jim Zare 2025 - plan thumbnail

About this Plan

Thermic 50E. Radio control powered sailplane model, for electric power with Park 250 brushless motor. Wingspan 50 in, wing area 192 sq in.

Quote: "Thermic 50E. I fly at a couple of FAA certified club fields several miles from my home. Over the years I have flown many times in a park within walking distance. Because of the FAA rules for RC aircraft and drones it is illegal to fly anything over 250 grams without a transponder.

I have had a lot of fun with the Thermic 75E (oz16266) so I decided to reduce it by 2/3 to create a park glider under 250 grams. The resulting Thermic 50E comes in at 185 grams or 6-1/2 ounces ready to fly. Believe it or not this is with a Spectrum AR6610T telemetry receiver installed.

The first attempt at this downsize was to merely print out the Thermic 75E plan at 66%. It had a stick built fuselage and all of the features of the larger version. The model looked great by was not stable in the air. It would stall or dive and get upset with a mild wind gust. I never really had a successful flight with this model. However, on the last test glide it flew in a perfect glide across the field encouraging me to try the wing on something different.

As a result I enlarged the stab and rudder and increased the fuselage length. This made a huge difference in stability.

Instead of building another stick model with 1/8 sq balsa sticks I fabricated a balsa slab sided conventional fuselage.

For power I chose the BL-250 motor from Stevens Aero Model https://www.stevensaero.com with a 2S Eflite 300 mah Lipo. I believe this motor is a Suppo A 1510.

I used a Red 6/4 folding prop from Amazon that fits a 2mm shaft with some success on the revised model. It proved to be much more stable and showed promise.

The final airframe tinkering was to lower the trailing edge 1/16 in to provide a bit more incidence in the wing..."

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Thermic 50E (oz16359) by Jim Zare 2025 - model pic

Datafile:
  • (oz16359)
    Thermic 50E
    by Jim Zare
    2025 
    50in span
    Electric R/C
    clean :)
    all formers complete :)
  • Submitted: 30/09/2025
    Filesize: 216KB
    Format: • PDFbitmap
    Credit*: JimZare
    Downloads: 445

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Scaling

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