Morphin' Monocoupe.

Morphin’ Monocoupe

Blame it on pilot error… airframe fatigue… a dodgy receiver… anyway, my Velie Monocoupe had one too many hard-nose ‘landings’. It was time for a serious rebuild.

I decided to stretch the nose to give the battery and motor a greater balancing effect – this has allowed me to remove a whole pile of balance weight I’d put into the plane. This weight reduction should allow the plane to be more buoyant and to fly longer on the same battery.

I replaced the fuselage sides. You can see the angled join just behind the wing struts.

I made-up a foam hatch to allow me to load the battery inside the fuselage.

The swappable pod is a tight sliding fit with a skewer to prevent forward movement. Hopefully that’ll be enough to stop it pulling out the front and disappearing off on its own.

I positioned the locating skewer so that it would ‘contain’ the battery and prevent it slipping backward and messing up the balance. I’ve also a piece of springy foam in there to allow me to use different sizes of battery.

Inside the hatch, you can see three steps in the foam – the first is the swappable pod and the next two are the fuselage which is double thickness at this point.

That little ledge matches this stepped cut-out in the hatch cover and helps keep the cover from moving sideways.

Much of the damage to the Monocoupe’s nose was caused by the unforgiving way I’d fixed the front undercarriage mount to the plane. It was too rigid. Here I’ve used elastic with a popsicle stick pad under the wire to protect the foam. That should allow a bit of give for bumpy landings.

I wondered about ‘clipping’ the wings to get rid of the damaged ends. You can see a pen line where I intended making the cut. But then I realised it would make the ailerons pretty short. I considered extending the ailerons towards the fuselage, cutting and joining new to old, but decided it was probably easier to try a repair to the wingtips first. Some extra foam, tape, and my trusty hot glue gun did the job.

Not content with that, I fiddled with the servo wiring and controls and I now have flaperons with an elevator mix. We’ll see how that goes!

I added window detail around the cabin. I didn’t want to copy the Monocoupe and decided on a chunkier ‘look’ to match the new nose. This is clear hard packaging plastic with pvc tape cut into thin strips for the framing - I saw that idea on the Messerschmitt Bf109 build by ultramicrobe.