Building material: Aluminium.

[Franco Gozzi]

Has anyone ever tried to build a plane with aluminum sheets?
Once on an issue of Model Airplane News I saw a picture of a Japanese WWII fighter all made by aluminium. The builder was the owner of SAITO Engines, according to the picture description. The article did not say whether the plane was able to fly or not.
Maybe a possible combination could be aluminium sheets, balsa and plywood with epoxy as glue.
The advantage? No covering film required.

Let me have your commnets.

Regards
Franco

[NitroDad]

I would think it be to heavy, but you never know. there is a site selling aluminum covering.

http://www.scaleaero.com/flitemetal.htm

[Franco Gozzi]

Wow interesting! But I believe that you can make it by yourself out of standard alluminium sheets at a lower cost.
What do you think?

Franco

[Franco Gozzi]

Hi NitroDad,

actually when I said that aluminium could be an interesting alternative building material I did not just mean as covering film.
As you know there are a number of aluminium alloies and profiles which could be applied in our airplane construction.
The fact is that aluminium sheets, dowels, sticks, ect... are not as common and available as balsa ones at the hobby shops.
Moreover our benches are not exactly equipped to work with aluminium.
Balsa and plywood is a heritage of the old timers days and, as a matter of fact, the number of them, including myself, is still the majority at the flying fields.
I am just saying that we are not "that" used to construct our planes with polymers, carbonfiber, aluminium, ect... we naturally prefer to use balsa and foam at most.
To the point that when it happens that we have to repair some of those plastic ARF's, we don't even know where to start from, do we?
Mine is an invitation to consider other construction techniques which we can get more interest and excitement from.

Last, I need to say that I have posted my thread to slow fly by mistake meanwhile I meant to send it to Scale, sorry for the inconvenience.

Franco

[tandemairbike]

I remember reading in RCM coverage of either the 1973 WRAMS show in White Plains New York or the Toledo show. One of the precision scale models on display was a Wilga. A polish monoplane. As I remember it was either 1/6 or 1/5 scale and built entirely of aluminum. It had an engine and radio in it so I assume that it flew.

Tandy