Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH
Adam, have you ever seen an R/C aircraft built mostly out of aluminum? (I have, but it was a custom build for SAE Aero Design--and that particular airplane was still about 1/2 balsa.)
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Have you ever seen an R/C plane with even *close* to the same structural requirements of an FRC chassis? NO!
The great thing about aircraft is that most of the loads are pretty specific. An FRC base is going to get hit -- hard. An airplane is not. You build a nice sturdy spar (balsa is a great material, but there are many others) and then you put lots of ribs who mostly serve as a surface to attach a covering to. You build a nice sturdy wingbox, and hang a lightweight fuselage off it to put your payload in. You have a sturdy motor mount tied in somewhere, and a sturdy tailboom to hang a lightweight tail off of. You put in a couple of mounting holes for servos that weight less than a 1/10th of a pound, stick a receiver somewhere and you have an airplane.
When a balsa structure suffers an impact event, it is typically a total loss.
(I'd love to build a tabbed wooden FRC chassis though)