Roy and his latest creation the AEROBIPE

This view from the rear shows the substantial tail feathers and ailerons giving the Aerobipe outstanding flight performance

My latest model is an AEROBIPE.

It was scratch built from an old Sig kit plan which I had enlarged to 125%.

The structure was self designed, built for e-power lightness and therefore does not follow that of the original glo powered version.

I basically built a model which agrees with the overall outline as shown on the plan.

Airframe: Wingspan- 43"top and bottom Wing Area- 620 sq in Weight- 5 lbs ready to fly

Ailerons added to bottom wing only Top wing dihedral now flat. Bottom wing dihedral just enough to avoid looking droopy.

Power system: Motor- Mega 30/3 brushless Gearbox- MAT H500 belt drive at 2.64:1 ratio Prop- APC 12x8E Battery- 14x CP-1700 Ni-cad Duration- 6 1/2 minutes aerobatics, 8 1/2 minutes cruising

Roy Thompson -

This front view displays the clean lines. Even on our rough field, The Aerobipe handled smoothly with a short takeoff and a slow smooth landing.

After seeing how this plane performed, the craftsmanship and detail. It is an inspiration to those of us who still believe building is better - We look forward to seeing more scratch built designs from Roy.

Tom R. -

Photos From Dave Moore 6-21-03

Here are a couple of pics for the message board. The purple and yellow plane is a Mountain Models Miniflash. It flys really well with a Hacker B20 22S. The yellow and blue plane was my Edge 540. It met it's maker when it collided with a rather large light pole at the local school yard. The white one is a vertical RC Katana. She was smashed into the ground one windy day. Even the gas flyers were not flying.

The curved Tail and rudder sections are laminated to form a light, clean rounded surface.

The Wing framed and sheeted, the landing gear have been installed and the servo can be seen.

I Purchased the Great Planes Spitfire 40 kit after reading an electric conversion article in Radio Control magazine (RCM). I really love war birds and the Spitfire is right up there with the P51. I also wanted a plane with retracts. After reading the article I decided this was the plane for me. I consulted with Tom Hunt about motor configurations. As per the article, I also felt it was a 16 cell plane but did not want to go with a brushed motor (Astro geared 25). Tom felt the Mega ACn22/30/3, with the Modelair-Tech 750 belt drive will fill the ticket. I already have this configuration in my Fokker D7 and it works great.

When I finally decided to buy the kit there was not one available, Great Planes had discontinued it and all the hobby shops in the states and Canada had sold out. I searched the internet and finally found a kit in New Zealand! Gulp... buy a kit from New Zealand... would it ever get here? in one piece? would I get a global rip off? Hey.. what the hell... I really wanted to build this kit. The money conversion was straight forward, the price was comparable to here in the U.S., and twenty and change wasn't too bad for shipping, so I did it. Four days later a substantially packed box arrived at my job with DHL stickers all over it. I anxiously opened the carton and carefully checked the parts, all present and accounted for. This all happened around Christmas 2002, I built the tail pieces around January 1, 2003 and have working ever so slowly building the kit I would like to show some of the photos I have collected so far.

Tom Reilly

I am showing the battery hatch construction. I made three extra formers and after sheeting was able to cut the hatch free.

You can see the lite ply battery tray this was left over from the servo tray which I removed.

A view looking forward shows the very light structure. Even with the light ply fuselage doublers the plane should come in around 7 pounds.

The next step is installing the wing servos, I am using Hitec HS-85MG servos for the rudder, elevator and the two ailerons. The part I hate the most is aligning the horizontal and vertical stabilizers. Which I might add is ready to do.