Been waiting for someone to design a 3d printed Catalina! a massive thankyou! First section of the fuselage is on the printer at the moment. Going to be a "Black Cat".
You are very wellcome! Nice choice of design. Do you plan to make it all black or with the the white bottom side? (I made an all black plane once and had some troubles recognising the flight attitude.)
I recently built one of these 3D pby’s with a non Prusa printer. Which I greatly regret since due to bad printing (on my side) and less experience that I needed, my plane had crashed on the 3rd flight and sunk to the bottom of a lake. However the plane overall was really high quality and was a fun project to work on. Only wish I could have gotten some more use out of it before it went to the bottom
I love that you guys made this. I'm going to buy it right now. I've done 5 of your planes so far but have only maidened Dusty. Looks like #6 is on the way. LOL
How much up trim did you have to add? you need to move your CG back. 1.) the nose should not be riding that low in the water. Its causing too much drag on your takeoffs and two, your landings wouldnt have been so terrible if you had the correct CG. Looks like youre trying to glide a brick
As written in the PDF guide the CG is chosen with lots of safety. Though there was nearly no trim needed. This was maiden flight, now I've moved CG back a little. Starting a water plane is always like gliding a brick. This is a plane, not a speedboat! Have you seen videos of the original, or ever been flying a water plane on your own?
hola, compre su modelo y actualmente lo estoy imprimiendo, podria hacer una actualizacion y crear las partes para ponerle tren de aterrizaje?. encantado lo compraria esa actualizacion, ya que donde vivo no tengo presas o embalses. para poder usar la funcion de hidroplano. un saludo
The real pby had 3 blades on its propeller!! Not 2!! Get it right! And any idea when 3d lab print makes a body kit so it would have landing gear like the 5A version, so it would be able to land on water and land!?
If you'd bother to read the pdf guide, you'd know I use the two blade for better performance. And if you had read the Catalina forum you'd also know that we've been discussing about the gear issue already. It's not possible to print a watertight fuselage with all the mechanical parts for a working gear, but there'll be a geared version available as soon as I find the time to engineer it.
Try 3 bladed props like the full scale to get more clearance to avoid water prop strikes. With this much spray, it's a non-starter. Full scale plows thru the water just like the model, so its an issue with the original design. Maybe cheat the scale a bit and make it wider to get on plane sooner. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zWSDcAZD7JQ.html
You'll have prop strikes with nearly any model of this size and I've tried many diffent props here. As you see, I hadn't big issues starting it. As soon as it is on sliding cruise the prop strikes are gone. Calling it a non starter is nonsense.
Fair enough. I was really surprised to see how low the full size sits in the water, and how it plows until it gets on step. I'd be flying on a big lake that always has waves. Some takeoff and landing videos punching thru waves would be interesting. I've been wanting to try one of your planes for a long time, but the low plastic temp of PLA makes me nervous. I saw a web post of a beautiful P38 that had melted. Have you had success with PETg? or some other high temp PLA alloy?
I haven't tried PETg for planes yet, but on all I know it should work. You'll have a little more stringing when printing though. I have melted one of my planes that I left in the trunk of a sun heated car, but that was broken anyways. And maybe there might be an issue if you have used very dark PLA and leave it in bright sunlight. For me so far PLA has worked very well. Just keep in mind not to oppose it to temperatures above 60°C and you'll be fine.
Yes, you're absolutely right! But there is only one maiden flight for a plane... I'll try to do some splash and go videos hopefully with a better camera!
Girl actually...! It was my girlfriend and certainly not one of her core competences. But to her defence I must admit, we had very old equipment those times. She was hardly able to see anything on the faint, tiny display in bright daylight.
