Avro Lancaster (oz16377)

About this Plan

Avro Lancaster. Free flight scale model for electric power. Wingspan 44 in.

Quote: "This free flight Lancaster for electric power is the remarkable achievement of Brian Waterland.

So what is the logical progression from a twin? Four engines of course! And what better prototype than a Lancaster? Well, actually there are plenty of better prototypes. There is always a danger that with fins on the ends of the tailplane a badly seated tailplane will give excessive rudder!

However the Lanc has great presence, so a Lanc it is. Like the Mosquito it has a conventional built up (thin Clark Y ish) wing and built up flat plate tailplane and fins. The fuselage is different however. This has a central 3/32 balsa profile to which are attached a number of 3/8 wall thickness 'C' shaped blue foam cheeks. The profile preserves the rigging angles and gives something to which to fix the batteries.

The engine nacelles are a mixture of foam and balsa with the four KPO1 Knight and Pridham units screwed back to ply/balsa/ply formers. For speed the whole model, including the blue foam sections, is covered with Litespan iron on tissue. All this gives a 44 in span model weighing 12 ounces. The outlines are all scale including the tailplane area. The only deviation from scale is the dihedral - which is that of a heavily laden aircraft!

Electrics: The excellent KP 01 units are wired as shown in the diagram with 6 amp domestic twin flex. Do not be tempted to skimp on the size of the wire. I built a full size test rig using 7 strand hook up wire and there was a 1 volt drop between the battery and the outboard motors. This is a lot when we only have 3.6 volts to start with! Each motor is direct wired and does not use the KP shaft switch. Pulling out the charging jackplug starts all the motors simultaneously.

I could not obtain Nicads with a suitable capacity and so the prototype uses six 120 Mah batteries (approx AAA size) wired in series/parallel to give 3.6 volts 240 Mah. Knight and Pridham can now supply 270 Mah cells. The charging socket on the prototype is a Tandy subminiature 3/32" phone jack (closed circuit type - catalogue 274-292) but the KP socket shown on the plan is just as good and, if anything, more rugged..."

Note this plan is derived from the scan as posted on HPA by aeromuddle (see datafile). This version here has had some cleanup, also minor repair done to the missing bottom LH corner.

Supplementary file notes

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