Building a Morane Saulnier N

After the success on building the Flair Magnatilla I thought that I should build another plane!

 I really like the WWI monoplanes! I looked and looked until I decided on the Morane Saulnier N, “Bullet”.

 History of the Plane.

The Morane Saulnier N, also known as the Morane-Saulnier Type N, was a French mid-wing monoplane fighter aircraft of the First World War. Designed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier, the Type N entered service in April 1915 designated as the MS.5C.1. It also equipped four squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps, in which it was designated the Bullet, and was operated in limited numbers by the 19th Squadron of the Imperial Russian Air Force.

The Type N was not particularly successful. Only 49 aircraft were built and it was quickly rendered obsolete by the pace of aircraft development.

It was powered by the 110hp Le Rhone 9J rotary, air-cooled engine. This gave it a speed of 165km/h, a ceiling of 4000m and an endurance of 1h 30m. It was armed with a single forward firing Hotchkiss machine gun using bullet deflectors on the propeller blades.

My thoughts.

I really liked the shape of the plane, short nose and very skinny tail.  The plane didn’t have horizontal stabilizer and considering the shape of the plane I decided to modify the design and put a small horizontal stabilizer to enjoy flying it!

I found pictures of the plane in all three dimensions and I used Sketchup to make the plans.  I trace the shape around the pictures I found in Google and created a scale that would fit in the 20”x 30” Adams Foam Board and very important that will fit in my car!

I am going to show you how to build it and how it flies in three videos. In the first video you will see the steps and instruction to build it, in the second movie you will see the Morane Saulnier N flying for the very first time and then a video with shots from the ground and above. The plane short nose called for 12 oz of lead weight to balance.  The plane flies phenomenally.

Since it has a round body my first idea was to make the skin with paper mache, I changed my mind half the way because of the strength of the skin. I opted to put a skin of cardboard. I found a nice cardboard that simulates the original canvas, from the muffin trays from Costco.  I used a bottle to make the cardboard round. 

It is an easy build, however more work than the Flair Magnatilla.

I really like the shape of the wings and body of this plane, it is quite different and attractive.  The color is something else, beige and green! With the big French round emblems on the wings and fuselage and the skull in the tail.  The location of the wing is also interesting, they called mid-wing. The rudder is quite small, I was afraid that it was going to be challenging to fly.  It prove me wrong!

I had a motor from the Park Zone Stinson kicking around and took the propeller from the Park Zone Albatross since it looks like wood. I am using the ESC from the Sbach.   Looking at the Albatross I thought that the motor and propeller should be adequate for this plane. After the first flight the propeller proved to be rather small and I put a bigger one with good results.

As I said before, I am not a plane builder, however the challenge of the design with Sketchup and the great looks of this plane, I endeavoured into the build!

I based the design of the wings on the Flitetest FT Spitfire build video. The building video of the FT Spitfire I think is awesome if you want to build planes and get the fundamental ideas for building out of Adams foam board. I didn’t want to build the motor pod to make it swappable because the motor is in the same line of the wing and I didn’t know how to do it.  Next time with the help from Terry O’Brien I will end up doing a better version.

The Morane Saulnier N has few challenges, one being the nose so short and the other the round fuselage.  Nothing was difficult enough to stop me of building it.  The biggest challenge I had with the Flair Magnatilla build was the landing gear, this time my friend Terry helped me to bend the wires in no time. Having the proper tools to makes it easy.

Building instructions

I made a building video to get an idea how easy is to build this plane.

Main Wing

The wing is similar to that of the FT Spitfire just a different shape. Make the spars first and cut out the two main wing pieces.

 Bevel the leading edge, and bend the airfoil as normal (and you could glue skewers into the airfoil bends if you want extra strength, I didn’t, instead I used packing paper with Minwax Polycrilic trastransparent paint for resistance on both sides of the paper). This time I coated the wings prior to it with Minwax Polyurethane to avoid the polycrilic to unglue the paper from the foam.  Also cut a large bevel on the inside of the bottom trailing edge where it will join to the top of the wing. Now cut out the ovoid taper on the top of the wing that will form the joint when you bend it (make sure to cut this from the top to get a nice clean cut. Score the bottom of the wing on the same line to allow it to bend, and then carefully test-bend it up to get it into shape.

The wing will be assembled and bent at the same time, in three steps. Test bend the wing around this spar to make sure everything fits, that you get a nice airfoil, and the ovoid cut in the top is large enough to allow the wing to bend fully. This is a lot of folding, so make sure you check it carefully and know what you are doing before putting the glue on it. Now install the aileron servos at the end of the spar. Once you are happy with the fit, glue the leading edge and the remaining surfaces of the spar (top and rest of bottom), and quickly bend the whole wing into place around the spar. Hold it in place securely for a while until the glue sets, making sure the spar emerges from the wing at the correct position in the airfoil. Once this is set, glue the entire trailing edge, and hold it until set.

Here is a video on how to cover the wings with Vinyl to obtain a smooth paintable surface.  I went with brown packing paper on this plane, but I thought you might want to consider the Vinyl option. I did covered the wings of the Fokker D.VII with Vinyl and it came out to be really nice!

Repeat all this with the other wing. When complete, trim the parts of the spar that are extending from the wing and test fit the joiner-spar. Trim the wings at the joint if they don’t join up fairly cleanly, it’s OK. If all looks good, don’t forget to make small hole in the bottom of the wing to pull the servo leads out of the hole and tape them out of the way, then glue both wings together with generous hot glue. Using a business card take the excess of glue before it gets hard.

 I covered the wings with brown packing paper and glue it with Polycrilic to give extra strenght to the wings..

Fuselage and tail

Assemble the structure following the dimensions on the picture. 

Cut out the tail pieces, cutting bevels for the elevator and rudder. Glue the stabilizers to the fuselage, making sure it is square, and glue. Glue a popsicle stick to the bottom or the top of the elevator to connect the two elevators strongly. Elevator and rudder servos are installed as far forward in the fuselage as possible.  

You need to place the rudder and elevator servos prior to put the skin on the plane.

I found long pushrods from the Dynam Catalina and found plastic tube to prevent the flexion on the thin long rods.

For the skin, find the cardboard of your choice and using a bottle roll the cardboard to get the round shape you are looking for. 

Make patterns with scrap paper for the skin sections and cut pieces of cardboard and glue them sequentially.

This process is tricky but fun.

 Cowling.

The front part of the cowling is made from a jar of Preggo tomato sauce from Costco. 

Cut the front and make the hole and cuts with a dremill.

Glue a piece of popsicle stick at the end of the cowling to fasten with 3 wood screws. To determine the length of the cowling present the motor on the fuselage and cut the bottle accordingly. Fit everything together for testing.

Motor box

I made a motor box to hold the motor in place.

The round part of the cowling was made out of cardboard, this time is much easier than the body since is cylindrical.

Landing gear

I bent 2 pieces of 3/32” piano wire, and sit them on top of the popsicle platform that I glued to the bottom of the fuselage. 

Then fit the scale sized Dubro 3” wheel, and used 3/32” sap straps to fasten the wires to the fuselage. I used a cotton rope with epoxy to attached both wires together by the wheel. You can make that joint using copper wire and soldering it.

Painting

 I used regular spay paint from Home Depot.

Decals

I printed the decals in my color printer.

 Flying

I am amazed how well this plane flies. On Maiden, no troubles whatsoever, requires rudder input for nice turns and with only rudder it will turn quite nice too.  I would say that flies very scale with not tons of extra power.  Take offs are a dream and landing too.  Very little trimming required on first flight!  No bad tendencies at all.

This plane is lots of fun to build and to fly, very nice. Aerobatic capable I did some rolls and loops, just perfect! Minor adjustments to the landing gear.

This plane has already caught many eyes. It’s a very unique plane that you don’t see in kits at all.

Terry wanted me to put the wing support ropes but I was too anxious to fly it!

What else can I say about it... I love it! She is just beautiful.

The power set I used Is as follows:

• 960 kV motor from the ParkZone Stinson.
• 2200mAh 3S
• 50 amp ESC from the Sbach (I didn’t have any other ESC kicking around!)
• 12.5 X 6 APC propeller.
• The battery hatch is underneath the motor
• CG right on the wing spar.
• As for the pilot, I took it from the Flair Magnatilla until I found a second one. I don’t know where it came from but is perfect for the plane.

Plans

Fuselage

Wing and horizontal stabilizer

Vertical stabilizer

If you email me I can send you the Skecthup files!

Have fun building this plane and send me pictures of your build. Should you have any questions, just let me know.

Thanks for reading.