Cessna 150M Project 5

[lastvautour]

Great build.

Lou

[Gearup]

the wings and tail are pinned for the C150. The early 150 had a fast back fuselage like the C140. Later it had the omnivision windows and swept back fin. The tail just looks nice, but it's not any faster. It also had this big flaps that overlapped the aft windows. Aerodynamical good, but when fueling the aircraft, any fuel spillage ran off the flaps and onto the windows and when it evaporated over many spills , the windows took on a red hue from the fuel. And it was a pain to clean...ask the rampy (my first job at 13).

Hmmm, the spinner may be too long. More work ahead.

 

[Boomerang]

 All of these are works of art in their own right.

 Well Done Fraser

 Gordon

[lastvautour]

Excellent build.

Lou

[Gearup]

Wings and tail glued. See Construction techniques and Luscombe for details.

[Gearup]

Filling has begun. The 150 flaps at the inboard end are a bit of a challenge as they overlap the wrap around windows wt the back. Need more work on getting the gap right. Will be fun to paint...

[Gearup]

It always pays to review your work. Seems I oriented the inboard ends of the flaps the wrong way. Dont know where my brain went there?? So i'll have to do a bit of rework in the wings. perhaps a bit of surgery and wood replacement... However, they are definitely not coming off.

[Olli]

Amazing 

[Gearup]

So I am reworking the inboard ends of the flaps. I think I got the image of the end shapes wrong by looking at the drawing upside down....

A bit of sanding and filling will work in the end.

[Gearup]

Now another thing Ive had to look at. All of the models I've made, except the Banshee, are tail wheel, float or displayed gear up. In other words, I now have three light aircraft that will be nose draggers. Therefore they will need ballast forward of the main gear to prevent them sitting on their butt.

I made a simple balance rig for the models and set it on the scale and zeroed it out. It took 3 grams of lead shot to balance the nose gear equipped aircraft. It will be less if I can get the mass farther forward, but it is still a larger volume than I thought it woud be. Hmmm. I 'll have to come up with a creative solution TBD.

[Gearup]

Here is the 150 gear.

The mains are spring rods enclosed in a fairing. Therefore they look the same as the Cessna 140 for all purposes. The difference is they are shorter and more squat. This is because of the location further aft on the fuselage in the tricycle design.

The nose gear is an air-oil oleo strut. So it was built the same as the Piper 140 nose gear with scissor links with addition of a fitting above the nose fork.

There was a modification for the 150 that allowed for the nose strut to be removed and the main gear legs located forward plus a tail wheel bracket added to the tail cone. This was called a Texas taildragger conversion. It was cool looking and if it was an early straight tail 150, it looked like a baby 185. Only problem was the short gear allowed the prop tips to get close to the ground when the tail was lifted on takeoff.  Aftre flying Fleet Canuks for tail wheel experience, I had a chance to fly the Clubs 150 taildragger. The instructor neglected to tell me about this little issue until I gave a good push on the controls to get the tail up. And no, I did not strike the prop, but the instructor certainly made this clear on further take offs not to treat the take off like a Fleet. Of course a wheelie landing was also discouraged to do this and three point landings were preferred. 

[lastvautour]

You have a way with metal.

Lou

[Gearup]

Believe it on not, I have been fascinated by aircraft landing gear systems since I saw operating models of different gear types in the Ottawa National museum of technology in the late 60's.