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Erwin 5 Build Tips

The Erwin 5 is an all carbon, 2-meter slope ship. This article has several pictures and some notes on the building of my current version.

Erwin 5 elevator showing the channel for the control horn
Erwin 5 V-tial half
Wing root showing 2 joiner tubes, bakllast acces in between and the wire channel aft
Hitec HS-5125 thin wing servo
V-tail control horns
V-tail control horns installed
The V-tail cradle with control horn access hole.
This is the pallet that slides up into the nose

 

Airtech Passion Building Info

The Passion is a 2.45-meter sailplane from Airtech in France. It is an all around plane with an eye towards slope flying and F3F but is also a very capable thermal ship. This article has tips from the building of my current Passion.

Routing out the aileron and flap channel

 

Scraping the wood away from the hingeline

 

Pushrod holes in the fuse

 

Gluing the pushrod housings to the fuse

 

Pushrods housings installed

 

V-tail control horns

 

Center mark on the V-tail

 

Ready to glue the control horns in

 

Control horn channel

 

Control horns installed

 

Control horn installed

 

Routed out servo pocket

 

Fuse setup

 

Receiver tucked forward of the wing

 

Control horn and control rod setup

 

Wing tip routed out

 

Servo leads

 

Ballast block and ballast tray

 

Ballast tray installed

Columbus Day 2004 – Wilson Lake, Kansas

Greg and Mirko took a trip to Wilson Lake, Kansas for what has become a tradition, the Columbus Day slope get together at one of the Midwest’s best known slope sites.

Mirko and I left Milwaukee dark and early on Thursday at 5 AM for the 12 hour drive to Wilson Lake near Lucas, Kansas. We took a different route that I had been using in the past and it seems like a better way to go. Basically I-80 to York, Nebraska and then south on US-81 which is now 4-lane all the way to Salina, Kansas. Very nice.

We got to the lake about 5:30 PM and met a few guys just packing it up for the day. We were still in for a couple of hours of flying! We didn’t drive all this way for nothing! The highlight for me was the first flight of my Erwin 5. The wind was light but it was “magic air”, the buoyant air at the end of the day, and the Erwin loved it. I spent quite a bit of the remaining daylight sorting and tweaking.

After it got dark we headed over to Jack Cooper’s new home and the new shop for Leading Edge Gliders. Very nice!
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