Tony's Concorde build page

The Concorde aeroplane is something special. Instantly recognised the world over, still looking futuristic even though it was retired from active service several years ago.

As we live near London Heathrow airport, I've heard the unmistakeable thunder of Concorde's 4 jet engines many times, although I never had an opportunity to fly in one myself. In March 2010 I was treated to a close encounter with one of the retired Concordes of which you can see some pictures here. (Read on after the pics)

Following that I REALLY wanted to build & fly one myself, so a search on the internet revealed a suitable drawing by Steven Wong (here) which I am now using to build one myself. Thank you Steven for making this drawing available !

OK, here we go with the build..... I will more or less follow "Dennis P" who built a Concorde from the same plan back in 2005 (here).
It is not clear if that one ever flew but mine sure will !

Fuselage

"Dennis P" built his Concorde from 5 mm Depron with balsa reinforcements. I only have 6 mm depron available but that will do just as well so that is what I will be using. The reinforcements will be from depron as well. Building started on 2nd April 2010.

	On the left is a sample cross section of the fuselage in the same shape that Dennis P did. I'm not too sure about the strength of this so my fuselage will be a bit less rounded to make the corner section stronger, like the picture on the right.
	After deciding on the shape of the top of the fuselage, next job was to amend the drawings to allow for 6 mm depron instead of 5 mm depron, cut out the fuselage sides, formers and reinforment strips and put them all together, like this :
	The fuselage top goes on next (2 layers) and once the glue has dried the top of the fuselage is sanded to give that rounded roof line.
	At the front of the fuselage we need to add the nose section and at the back the tail section. Both of these are made up of 10 identical pieces each, which are glued together and then sanded to the right shape. This picture shows the separate nose pieces, and above it the tail pieces which are already glued together.
	Next is the very messy job of sanding down those blocks to the much more rounded shape that they need to become. Here are the tail (left) and nose (right) partially completed. The final sanding will be done when they are attached to the fuselage, so they blend together.
	I cut out the 2 sheets making up the wings plus the tail fin and as we now have all the main parts I couldn't resist pushing them together to get an idea of what we're heading for. Looking pretty already ! At this point the total weight is 210 grams; I expect the final weight (ready to fly) will be around 600 grams.

Wings

	16 April 2010. It's time to put the wings together. The electrical wires go in between the 2 sheets so they will be invisible later on. On the left you see the top of the bottom sheet, with the wires and the carbon fibre rod that I added for some extra rigidity of the wing. On the right I have glued the top & bottom sheets together; you're now looking at the underside of the wing.
	And this is what the top of the wing looks like. The wires feed directly into the fuselage at the top; underneath they will feed into the engine housings ('nacelles') so they will be completely hidden from view. I did create some grooves in between the wing sheets for the wires to run through. As a result the wing remains completely flat even with the wires inside it.
	The nose and the front of the wing are the most vulnerable parts of this plane. The wing can be given some reinforcement to limit damage from any hard landings. On the left you see a small piece of pine wood sitting on the join of 2 depron sheets. After gluing and a lot of sanding, it can be made to look like the picture on the right. The ruler is in centimetres by the way.
	And here it is on the real wing. This is that strip of pine being glued to the front of the wing; it is thin enough to be bent to the shape of the wing. The masking tape will keep it in place until the glue has dried.
	1 May 2010. The glue has dried and the tape has been removed. It's holding ! Next it's time for some more sanding all along that curvy edge, rounding off the pine strip and blending it in with the rest of the wing.
	The 'belly' of the Concorde is quite a complex shape. The back of the nose and the front of the tail cone join with the bottom of the wing and fade away into it. Instead of doing this with a 6 mm piece of depron, I used 2 3mm pieces which were sanded separately (and differently) before they were glued together.

Nacelles

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	Time to make up the engine housings ('nacelles'). Starting with the flat cut outs, the reinforcement strips are added and then the formers. The servo's are also set up and glued into place while we have such good access. If these servo's were ever to go wrong in future it will mean some proper surgery to replace them, so they are double/triple checked at this stage.
	The sides are now joined together via the formers and the front of the housing is sanded into shape. In the picture on the right you can see 'before sanding' (left) and 'after sanding' (right). Next these engine housings need to be glued underneath the wing but before I do that I need to finish off that part of the wing while access is easy.
	The control surfaces at the back of the wing ('ailerons' and 'flaps') are cut out, and then re-attached via some tiny hinges which allow these surfaces to move up and down (by means of those servos mentioned earlier) which provides the 'steering'. For the experts amongst you : the ailerons and flaps will be fixed together via a torque rod and then set up in elevon configuration as there won't be any rudder.
7 May 2010. Here's another dry-fit of the fuselage and wing :
Plus a short video clip (3.5 MB, WMV format)
	14 May 2010. Here's a view of the underside of the wing. The control surfaces are in place as are the torque rods. The torque rod is a way to link up control surfaces, such that the movement of one control surface causes the other to move as well.
	Next I made up some motor mounts from a double layer of liteply and fitted them to the nacelles with some 30 min epoxy glue as this will take all the power and vibrations directly from the motors. Fitted the motors and soldered the speed controllers on. Each motor has its own speed controller even though they will always be running at approx the same revs.
	21 May 2010. The nacelles are glued to the wing, the electronics are all connected up (through to the other side of the wing) and the ailerons are connected to the servos.
	Finally the covers are glued on and a hatch is made for future access to the motors and electronics.

Finishing

	28 May 2010. It's all starting to come together now, and here's an alternative use for books! Used to hold down the wing onto the fuselage while the glue is drying. Also very useful is sticky back plastic, normally used for book covers, but I quite like it for covering model aeroplanes with, it's quick, reasonably easy to apply, cheap, and gives a lovely shine to the depron. It also adds strength because it will resist bending of the depron. No prizes here for guessing which wing is covered and which isn't.
	4 June 2010. More covering with sticky back plastic and doing a little bit of painting as well, in black ! The little blue/red circle is to mark where the center of gravity (CoG) needs to be. It is important to get that right or else the plane will not fly at all. The position of the battery will be adjusted to ensure that the COG ends up exactly where it needs to be. The bits of depron around the little circle are just there to give me something to hold on to while launching the plane. I'm not planning to add any landing gear so it will be hand launch only.
	11 June 2010. Completed most of the covering and most of the decals. The decals are made with waterslide decal inkjet paper. You create the decals on your PC and print them on this special paper. Then seal the ink with some spray varnish and leave to dry. Finally submerge in water for approx 1 minute and slide onto the model, slowly sliding off the backing paper. Leave to dry. I applied the decals directly to the depron and then put the sticky back plastic on top. This keep the decals clean but means that you only get 1 chance to apply the plastic covering as the plastic easily pulls off the decals from the depron.
	18 June 2010. Done !! We're ready for the first flight. All-up weight with a 1300 mAh LiPo battery is 695 grams, this is a bit more than I expected but well within the expected range. Fired up the motors with the propellors fitted and there is plenty of pull, drawing around 200 Watts. This is over the recommended 100 W/lb for 'sporty' flying so the plane has ample power for its weight. Here are some more pics.
Plus another short video clip (7 MB, WMV format)

Modifications

During the build I diverted from Steven Wong's plan where I thought the build would be simplified or for other reasons. For anyone out there trying to build the same plane I have listed those mods below and I will add to them as I get more feedback from flying it.

	In order to achieve the recommended Centre of Gravity (CoG), Dennis P had to hollow out part of the cockpit area in order to put the battery far enough forward. My motor set up must be much lighter than his, because in my Concorde the battery needs to go BEHIND the area where the hatch is (to the left of the hatch on the picture). The battery is dropped in through the hatch, pushed 90% into the compartment to the left of the hatch, and then I use a small block of polystyrene to fill up the area below the hatch to stop the battery from moving forwards during flight. PS the battery position was subsequently changed from this, see the notes on Flying below.
	The tail fin is now just a flat surface. In the early pics you can see I had 2 strips of depron on there but that made it very tricky to cover with decals. Only the experts will notice that it's missing.
	The battery is accessed via a small hatch just behind the cockpit which is not that quick to get access to, so I've added a power switch that is easily accessible from the outside. This cuts the power to the receiver (and therefore also the power to the speed controllers and the servo's).
	With 200 Watts of power going to the motors, the battery will need some cooling. Two small plastic tubes just behind the battery hatch make up the air intake which feeds cool air into the compartment where the battery is.
	An air intake is no good without an air outlet in order to create a flow of cooling air so here it is, right at the end of the fuselage, underneath.
	Not shown in the drawings but essential for a hand launch is a decent grip. Just a few pieces of depron in the right place should be sufficient.

Flying

Late June 2010 the plane was ready for its maiden flight, but it wasn't until August 1st that it actually happened.

Flight 1 - August 1st 2010 - after the final checks onsite the moment was finally there : power up for real and first launch. Will it fly or will it crash ? Will it climb away slowly or take off like a rocket ? At about 75% throttle I launched it with a steady arm and a 30 degree nose up angle. It maintained speed, direction and........ up angle ! Clearly the plane was quite tail-heavy and therefore hard to control, so I brought it brought it back down which was a very gentle affair and no damage was sustained, phew !

Flight 2 - August 7th 2010 - moved the battery forward approx 2 cms and.... success !! Concorde flies ! She took off into a slow but steady climb, approx 20 degrees. once at height I turned her into a shallow banking left turn and she responded beautifully. I flew for around 4 minutes before attempting some landing approaches and then landing safely on the 3rd or 4th approach. Some observations : still a bit tail heavy, loses height quickly when banking too steeply (45 degrees or so) and needs a fair bit of speed to maintain level flight.

Flight 3 - August 8th 2010 - off to Chobham Common for some long distance/high altitude/high speed testing. Battery was in the same place as for flight #2. Flew for around 5 minutes with only 2 scary moments. One was where it came out of a turn upside down and I hadn't noticed as it was quite far away; the other was where it got into a hover ('hanging' with nose straight up) and I was unable to pull out of it; eventually it dropped away sideways and it took several seconds before I was back in control.

Flight 4 - August 30th 2010 - a windy day, off to the local field with my daughter in control of the camera. The battery was in the 'proper' position i.e. directly below the battery hatch, which turned out to be almost perfect wrt COG position. Flew for a few minutes, surprised how wickedly fast this thing moves, it becomes a very small speck in the sky very quickly ! Then, at the furthest point I turned her towards me but she did not seem to have the power to make it back, against the wind. Eventually she disappeared behind the tree line and I had to shut her down as she was out of sight. We called in the search party and after almost an hour we found her, almost half a mile away, planted firmly upside down in someone's front garden, inches away from a brick gatepost with her nose buried 3 inches deep into the soil. Battery hatch twisted, one pine strip half detached and one nacelle detached. A lucky escape, nobody hurt and the damage is repairable. On closer examination, one of the propellors had come loose, which explains the apparent loss of power. One more to add to the pre-flight checklist !
We did manage to get some footage before she disappeared into the distance, and here it is :
And here is the video clip of that flight.

Flight 5 and onwards - Oct 2010 onwards - damage repaired, off to Chobham Common again. Battery directly below the hatch and 30 gr of weight added just in front of the battery; all-up weight is now 845 gr, which includes 185 gr for a 3S 2200 mAh battery.
Actual COG is now 40 mm in front of where it was shown on the drawing. After some minor trimming of the controls during flight (adding a bit more 'up') she now flies level both upwind and downwind. This is it! The experimentation is over, we now have predictable flight; certainly no beginner's plane but very controllable. During that flight #5 I managed to (almost) run down two 2200 mAh LiPo batteries (3S), giving about 11 minutes flying per battery.

Here is another, longer, video clip made on 13 Oct 2011. Plus here are the best bits of that last one but in slow-motion (41 MB).

This is the end of this build log. The plane has now had more than 10 flights and is holding up well. I even managed a high-alpha approach and landing as there was quite a breeze recently. What next ? More of the same.... I have started on a 50% bigger version of the exact same model, this will be the winter 2010 build project. It will be approx 90 cm wide, 180 cm long and will have twin EDF propulsion instead of propellors (like my Learjet). This is about the limit of what will fit into my car. The build log of that big Concorde is here.



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