The A1-C project was started in the last century. In the beginning I designed the airframe with my father for a small class .25 glow engine. Little we knew about aeronautical structure design, or even just model design. That’s why for the first prototype we took inspiration from the early 3D Fun Flyers, which started to appear on the market in the late nineties.
While not so bad in the general design, it was way too heavy with its all plywood front side and hard wood fuselage spars. At the end anyway the construction was paused, and eventually abandoned, due to other events. All the Rc plane stuff was just stored away in my parents house and there was left rotting for years.
The return of the broken plane
About ten years later, I briefly took it back from the dust trying to complete it to a flying condition. Progress in electric models technology suggested to convert it to electric propulsion for ease of use, and years of aeronautical institute helped in re-design the whole fuselage in a much lighter balsa construction.
I restored and reinforced the wing for better rigidity, but even with the added bracing it was not completely satisfactory. So I ended up drawing a new wing with improved structure.
Unfortunately, after completing the second fuselage and set of wings, I had to move abroad and once again, i had to pack everything for a long, long term storage.
The A1-C
Fast forward another ten years, I was back in Italy and in a semi-stable situation at work, it was time again to recover the ancient remains and make a plan.
The situation was a bit worse than before. The fuselage was broken, the wings were damaged, the stabilizers were gone and a lot of other minor issues were found.
While the wings were considered damaged beyond repair, I decided to try to repair the fuselage, adding reinforcements to avoid future breakdowns in the same sensitive area. A number of improvements were also included, requiring some extensive reconstruction, which in turn removed damaged areas. The result was a mostly new design, the third one (hence the “C” in the name). The A1-C project will soon be ready to fly, follow its progress on the main page of the project here
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