I flew my Peanut Bede BD-4 yesterday and was surprised/impressed/shocked by the results. Photos and video below.
I did something that I do not usually do: I released this short kit at the very end of December without my “obligatory” 20-second-minimum test flight. But I knew it would fly.
I drew up this model/kit after being inspired my fellow Cloudbuster, Chris Boehm. Chris has a habit of building the same model over and over. Recently, he published a Peanut BD-4 plan in the Cloudbusters’ newsletter and built two of them. He might have used Bill Hannan’s plan, I don’t recall. I don’t have any particular love for the BD-4 – it is very plain in design (intentionally), but I thought I would build one just for fun. I drew up the tail-dragger version and used the simplest color and markings I could find to produce an all-white model with black registration. Build it quick, cover it simply, get some flights, and move on.
At the Cloudbusters’ January Indoor Contest, I was finally able to put some power on the model and give it a test. I tried my 10″ test motor – yup, still flies the model – nothing spectacular, but trim is still good (had to add some tail weight). I made a 20″ motor – a loop of 1/16″. The model weighs 7 grams, so it should fly on 1/16″ rubber (more on my logic here in a different article). And the long motor might help with the needed tail weight. I tried flying right and it wasn’t the best performance. So I dialed in left thrust instead of right and the model perked right up. I did a flight and it was over 70 seconds!
I added a little bit more tail weight and wound in about 2000 turns (a 20″ motor has room for more) and filmed this spectacular 84-second flight! I think it is still a bit nose heavy (see the last 10 seconds of the flight) and I think there is still more duration to be had on this little model! Needless to say, I am feeling a bit better about the BD-4. I’ll probably be losing this outdoors this year.
