Rare Bear

[jetmex]

Somewhere along the line, I ended up with free time. The older kids have all moved out, and when my wife is working my youngest son is in school, I actually have the house to myself! So after all the chores are done.....



This is the Thunder Tiger Rare Bear ARF. Fiberglass fuselage, two piece wing, nice model. I'm doing this one for a friend who has no time to build. There's a military version as well, wouldn't mind having one of those.




Power is a YS-120 4-stroke. I have the feeling this thing will be a little faster than TT intended it to be...... ;D I managed to bend up a flex header (without breaking it) so that it exits in the scale location.




The business end. Spinner is a four inch True Turn that just about fills up the cowl opening. The kit came with a three blade aluminum spinner, my friend opted not to use it, so that piece will fit my Spitfire nicely.....!

Does anyone else have any cool projects in work?

[jetmex]

Little bit of a dry spell, but the Bear is finished!! Got her done about the middle of March, but haven't flown her yet due to weather, work and just generally too much other stuff to get done. If all goes well, maiden flight should be early next month after the cross country and the Galveston airshow! ;D ;D







Here's a shot of the project in work now:




Is ANYONE over hear building and flying anything?

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Ooh she is pretty.

Not building anything, but I smoothed out the berms and am going to try and fly. Dang it been a while.

[GFReid]

Jaime, I have the exhaust exiting the scale location on my Bearcat too. It turned out to be a little bit of a mistake in my case as it makes a real mess on the side of the plane...even gets under the wing saddle into the fuse... but the 4-stroke should be a little better with a lower oil content.
The Rare Bear looks great!
If it flies anything like mine, it should be well mannered, you just have to keep the speed and power up a bit on final or it'll drop out of the sky on you. It'll give you just a little 'tremble' right before it does it. Definitely a 'goes where you point it' plane.

[Bill]

The Rare Bear is a favorite airplane of mine! You did a great job. Have you flown it yet?

[jetmex]

Yeah, I know, it's been a long time since I've been over here. For those who are interested, the Rare Bear was completed and delivered in August. We didn't get a chance to fly her until early December, and the results were not quite what was expected.

We met at the field and did all the usual preflight inspections. The engine fired up just fine, though the airplane had a tendency to nose over every time she dropped into a crawdad hole at our field. I then decided to carry her to the runway, whereupon the left wheel and axle fell off! OK, so we didn't check EVERYTHING....

Got that taken care of, went to do a full power checkof the engine with the airplane vertical. We had just gotten to full power when there was a loud pop and the engine died. Pulling the engine through revealed no compression at all, and nasty thoughts of broken rods or holes in the piston went through my head. It turned out to be that the glow plug had unthreaded and blown out. I can fix THAT!! ;D

With the new plug in, engine ran just fine, and Wally taxied for takeoff. She tracked straight down the runway and lifted off gracefully. Wally turned left on climbout and he pulled in to come around to the runway, there was a loud BRRRRP and the airplane pitched straight up. I though the engine had gone, but Wally yelled "Flutter!" He throttled back, got the airplane level and we decided being on the ground was not a bad idea. One more lap and he was on final. Just as he flared, the airplane pitched up again and he almost didn't get the airplane on the ground before the runway ran out. When the airplane touched down, both retracts ripped out of the wings, mounting blocks and all.

Post mortem revealed that the entire tail section had fluttered, and hard. It broke one of the elevator clevises loose from the horn, which caused the pitch ups. We found we could twist the tail quite a bit in both diirections fairly easily, as there's no spar in the vertical fin and not much structure from the wings aft. The gear blocks weren't well glued in from the factory, which is why they came out.

We read quite a few reports of the tail being weak on this model after this flight, don't know if Thunder Tiger has done anything about it. Meantime, she's in the boneyard being stripped of parts and waiting on a decision on what to do with her. I'll keepyou posted.....