I came up with this idea while drinking a Soda a few months ago one night when I realized that school is expensive. These wheels work great, have very low bounce and are cheap cheap cheap. I made the video right away, so after a few flights here are some tips that I don't have in the video:
After flying in cold weather(10F) a few times and a few rough landings with a 2 pound plane, the hot glue holding the aluminum hubs together did break. However, now that it is above freezing here(35F) I have not had any trouble. So maybe just don't fly with these below freezing? Or you could glue them together with epoxy, or a silicone glue.
If you want smaller wheels, buy smaller cans of your beverage of choice.
I have recently tried using a silicone-like glue to mate the ends of the backer rod together to form the tire and that seems to have worked very well. I temporarily taped the rod ends together till the glue dried. Just make sure the glue doesn't chemically melt the foam. The silicone is much softer than hot glue so you won't have a hard spot in you wheel.
One last tip: The rims lasts a lot longer(indefinitely?) when you use a hub or a bushing of some sort. I have used some brass tubing, or a coffee stirrer, or blue plastic Q-tips.
Materials:
-Hot glue
-2 pop cans
-5/8" foam tubing called "Backer Rod"
I'm open to any suggestions on improving these wheels. After testing my steerable nose wheel plane on warm/hot asphalt it seems that the backer rod doesn't hold up real great. The Backer Rod seems to shrink a bit with heat and a 3 pound airplane. so any ideas for some new tires for the wheels would be great! otherwise these still work well and look great.
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What did you use for an axle? What did you put on the outer end of the axle to keep t he wheel from coming off? Looks very small and neat. How is the axle attached to the struts? What did you do to keep it attached firmly to the strut at a right angle? How are the struts attached to the plane? It looks like you used some sort of fastener but to attach to the plane but it's a foam plane so how did you do it?
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OK here we go: 1. my axle was a piece of 10-32 threaded rod. 2. I used a nut to hold the wheel on. 3. the axle is held on by two nuts, one on either side of the plexi glass. it seems to hold is plenty strong/square. 4. see 3. 5. The struts are attached to the plane with screws. I drilled holes in the plexiglass in 3 places. The screws anchor into popsicle sticks on outside and inside of the bottom of the plane. so it goes like this from the outside in. Strut-popsicle stick-foam-3 layers pospsicle sticks. After a few flights the plexiglass shattered... I would not recommend plexiglass struts anymore unless you can land really smooth. ;) I would go for aluminum or fiberglass and anchor these solid or with rubber bands. It doesn't look as nice having rubber bands on the outside of your plane, but it is so much more forgiving and will survive many many rough landings/crashes.
Hope this helps!
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~psguardian
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I haven't tried this, yet -- I plan on picking some up soon.
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