Basic Bipe II (oz6626)

About this Plan

Basic Bipe II. RC sport biplane for .40 power.

Quote: "The RCM Basic Bipe MK II by Darrel C Stebbins.

To us old-timers, a scale biplane is a beautiful sight to behold. However, after spending hundreds of hours carefully studying plans and photographs, cut-ting, sanding and trimming parts, fitting, smoothing, gluing dozens and dozens of little pieces to other little pieces, sand-ing, filling, covering, doping, priming, sanding, painting, sanding, rubbing, touching-up, trimming, applying decals, finish coats, rubbing, rubbing, and rubbing, do you honestly think I'm going to take my beautiful bird out to our sandy, motorcycle-rutted, tree-lined flying field for my first-ever biplane flight? No way!

If this strikes a responsive chord, take heart - the RCM Basic Bipe Mk II has arrived! You too can build a biplane in a week; a forgiving, docile, agile .40 pow-ered rascal that will perform any maneuver that biplanes are capable of; is not squirrely on the ground, and will, when properly trimmed out, fly hands-off right-side-up or inverted.

Picture yourself at the field - non-chalant, rakish, devil-may-care - no shaking knees, no spots before your eyes, no soaring blood pressure, no slippery thumbs - what the heck, if you break this one, you can have another one flying next week. Sound good? Let's all fly biplanes!

The first step, for most modelers, is to undergo a complete attitude adjustment. Psychiatry may help. Use booze only as a last resort. Remember, you are setting out to deliberately build a plane 'sans finesse.' Hide all sandpaper finer than 180 grit. Place all filler, spackle, primer, putty, fillet material and polishing compound in a locked cabinet and give the key to a strong-willed friend. Convince yourself that the only appearance criteria will be, 'how will it look on a low-level inverted pass from one hundred feet away?'

We named the bird The RCM Basic Bipe on purpose, there is nothing on
this plane that isn't there for a good reason. The only concession to grace and elegance is the rake-back on the leading edge of the fin, Makes the whole thing look pretty, doesn't it? You can add stuff to this basic structure to make it beautiful, or to make it resemble one of the real sport biplanes for the Sportsman Class event, but don't leave anything out that is shown on the plans - it's there for a reason. The dowels, for example, add considerable strength and stiffness to the trailing edges of the wings, and to the ailerons and tail surfaces - don't leave them out to save weight, or in order to use conventional hinges. Build your first Basic Bipe just like it is designed - you can pretty-up your second one, if you insist.

A .35 or a Wankel will pull this bird around, but almost everybody eventually winds up installing a good .40 or a .45, just because it's more fun with a little extra power. l have a Supertigre .46 on one of mine, and it really does get it on!

When you are sure that you finally have the proper (for this project) mental attitude, start by making templates for the foam wing cores. Try to get them to resemble the airfoil shown on the plans, but don't be too fussy. When you have the cores cut, install the balsa leading edge strips and 1/8 dowel trailing edges — use strips of masking tape to hold them in place while the glue is curing. Cut the ailerons from 3/16" sheet balsa and glue the 1/8 dowel leading edges in place — note that the dowel stops short of the inboard ends to leave space for the aileron horns.

With a plane and a nice long sanding block, work the balsa leading edges of all four wing panels to shape. The leading edge sheeting for all panels is 3 in x 1/16 balsa, top and bottom. If you start with three-foot-long pieces and cut them to 24 in long for wing sheeting, you
will need about 13 sheets of 1/16 balsa for the whole plane..."

Hi Steve, Here is Darrel C. Stebbins' Basic Bipe Mk II from RCM magazine issue 06-77.

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Update 18/02/2016: Replaced this plan with a clearer copy (scanned from fullsize plan) thanks to Balsaworkbench.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, text and pics. Also previous scan version.

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