This is a gallery of pictures, movies, and info on planes built by Yann, Bertrand, Jean-Claude, Ronan, Martin and other members of the family.

JUMP MENU

• Demoiselle Slowflyer
• Space Walker
• Spit-400: Mini Spitfire with Speed-400
• P51-400: Mini P51 Mustang with Speed-400
• Delta 400: Fast and Furious Delta with Speed-400
• P38 Lightning
• Micro Bipoutre
• Micro Slope Soarers
• Trapanelle Slowflyer
• Flying Carpet, Flying Discus, E-charger hovercraft, and other Free Flight Fun

Demoiselle Slowflyer

Pictures of the Speed280-powered Demoiselle slowflyer kit. I think this plane is a bit large, heavy, fragile, and not very fun to fly.

Click here for DjVu Photo Album

Space Walker

• Design: kit from Air Loisir, 27 rue Francois Monnier, 72100 Le Mans, France
• Construction: Jean-Claude Le Cun
• wingspan: 1600mm
• motor: geared Astro 015
• battery: 12 cells, 1700 mAh NiCd

Spit-400: Mini Spitfire with Speed-400

Design: modified blueprint published in French magazine "Fly". Adaptation/Construction: Bertrand Le Cun Wingspan: 950mm; length: 780mm Mass: 350g without motor and battery; 550g total. Motor v1.0: Speed 400 6v, direct drive, Gunther prop. Motor v2.0: Speed 300 with AeroNaut gearbox and GWS prop. Battery: 8x600AE NiCads or 8x700 NiMh

P51-400: Mini P51 Mustang with Speed-400

• Design: Balsa US Kit.
• Construction: Jean-Claude Le Cun, Spring 2000.
• Wingspan: 910mm; length: 720mm
• Motor: Speed 400 7.2v, direct drive, with 125x110 (5x4.5) Gunther prop
• Battery: 8 cells, 600AE.

Delta 400

• Design: Delta 400 Kit by RCB (from the Netherland).
• Winsgspan: 540mm
• Mass: 225g (without battery), 370g total.
• Construction: Jean-Claude and Bertrand Le Cun, Summer 2001.
• Motor: Speed 400 7.2v, direct drive with 125x110 (5x4.5) Gunther prop
• Battery: 8x600AE NiCad (145g).
• Radio: 2 x Hitec HS-81 servos,

But the one shown on the video is still alive and kicking.

	RealVideo Movie (Modem Quality) Download (956KB)	Hi Quality MPEG Movie Download (51MB)

Micro Bipoutre

Dual tail boom indoor/parkflyer.

• Design/Construction: Yann LeCun, July 2001
• Wingspan: 600mm; Chord: 115mm
• Mass: 100 grams, all included
• Motor: N20 + gearbox with Gunther prop (recycled from a "Roadkill" kit)
• Battery: 7 cells, 150mAh NiMh
• Radio: 2 volz servos (without their soft shell), with a Sky Hooks and Rigging RX-72 receiver.

The wings are made of three sections (double dihedral). Each section is a 20x20cm sheet of 3mm depron folded on a couple of balsa ribs. The bottom fold goes halfway down the width of the wing, resulting in an undercambered "Jedelski" type airfoil. The tail boom were originally made of balsa, but were later replaced with carbon tubes (the balsa was too fragile to sustain rough landing). The N20 geared motor was taken from one of those "roadkill" kits. The prop was turned around and the motor polarity reversed to turn it into a pusher configuration. The nose/fuselage is a piece of yellow foam. The tail is an inverted V. I like inverted V-tails because when turning, the tail acts like a combination of ailerons and rudders. This results in automatically coordinated turns (whereas upward V-tails tend to produce adverse roll in a turn).

The plane flies fine, but the wing loading is a bit high, so flying can be tricky and not for beginners. In particular, it's easy to stall in tight turns.

Micro Slope Soarers

This is a quickly built and very sturdy depron/carbon micro slope soarer.

• Design/Construction: Yann Le Cun, July 2001
• Wingspan: 800mm; chord: 130/90mm
• Length: 550mm
• Mass: 110 grams
• Radio: Hitec feather, 2 HS55 servos, 250mAh receiver battery

The pictures only show the most interesting piece, which is the fuselage design. A 6mm carbon tube runs all the way to the front of the fuse. The fuse itself is built of 6mm depron sheets. This design makes it almost indestructible, and therefore ideal for teaching kids to fly model airplanes.

In the first version, each wing was made of a single 6mm depron sheet heat-gunned into a slightly undercambered airfoil. The new version is made of a 3mm depron sheet folded around a few balsa ribs.

Below is another quickly built depron/carbon slope soarer built by Bertrand Le Cun. The first two pictures show how the wings are constructed (3mm depron folded around 4 balsa ribs).

Trapanelle Slowflyer

• Design/Construction: Jean-Claude Le Cun, July 2000.
• Wingspan: 104cm; Chord: 21.5cm.
• Motor: Astro 010 with home-made 4.17:1 gearbox (12 teeth to 50 teeth)
• Prop: 11x4.7 GWS prop.
• Battery: 2 cells, 800 mAh Tadiran LiMnO.

Flying Carpet, Flying Discus, and other Free Flight Fun

Flying Carpet: Design/Construction: Ronan LeCun. It's a square piece of 6mm depron heat-formed into an S-shaped self stabilizing airfoil. Two vertical fins ar glued to the back and a heavy piece of metal (nail or piano wire) taped to the leading edge for balance. The lift/drag ratio isn't that great, the weight is a bit high (because balancing requires a lot of weight in the front), but it's fun to watch it glide down from the dune above the beach.
Electric Flying Discus: Design/Construction: Martin Loncelle and Yann LeCun. A small free flight discus powered by a motor/capacitor taken from an E-charger toy airplane. It's a single piece of 3mm depron glued over a 6mm depron fuse (shaped into an S-shaped self-stabilizing airfoil).
E-charger Hovercraft: Design/Construction: Yann LeCun. This is a very simple free "flight" hovercraft powered by an E-charger motor/capacitor. It is made from one of those foam dessert plates found in some cafeterias. Make an elliptical hole in it, glue a tube made of depron (or even strong paper) to the hole. Build a motor mount and add a fin. The only tricky part is to make sure the whole thing is balanced (the center of gravity should at the center of the plate). That's it. Charge up the capacitor, and put the hovercraft on the floor: it will cross the room hovering millimeters from the ground. A lot of fun for a few minutes of building time.
Simple Free Flight Glider: Design/Construction: Ronan and Yann LeCun. A small free flight glider whose wings are a single piece of sanded 6mm depron, and fuselage is a carbon tube (or a hardwood dowel) with a piece of thick solder wound around the front of the fuselage for balance. The V-tail is a piece of 3mm depron epoxied to the carbon tube.