This is my 1/12th scale Sopwith Triplane. It’s built entirely from Dow blue fanfold foam.
You’ll find more about the construction of the plane, here.
I had endless problems with this plane and gave up on it several times. I started the build in November of 2011, and didn’t get a successful flight until March of 2013. I got lots of crashes, but not actual flights.
As designed, the plane was ridiculously tail heavy. I eventually moved the motor mount forward, replace the original motor with a heavier motor, and moved the battery, ESC and servos as far forward as humanly possible. With all that, and the addition of 3/4oz of lead in the nose, I finally got it off the ground.
The plane is very difficult to fly. I built the wings with no dihedral (cuz I hadn’t yet figured out how to put dihedral in) and that surely adds to the problem. The real plane has a bit of dihedral in the wings.
Current setup:
- Emax GF2215/20 60 gram Outrunner Brushless Motor
- Emax Budget 18 Amp Brushless Motor ESC
- 4x 8g EMAX ES08A Sub Micro Servo
- Prop Adapter
- GWS 9047 slowfly prop
- 800-860 mAh 3S LiPo batteries
AUW: 457 grams / 16 ounces