A Build Guide for the Cargo Twin

By
Mike Robey

Introduction
The Cargo Twin is a brilliant design by Peter and Stephen Sripol who started the whole
thing off by placing one of the coolest model plane videos ever made on rcforums.

The forum is located at:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1124466

A fellow by the name of Larry Ross then contributed by posting plans for the twin. Not
content with a set of plans for the full sized version, Larry kindly provided plans for 75%,
50% and 25% versions as well. The link to the video is in the first post along with links to
the plans and a bunch of very useful shots of the model.

The plans are first class and a lot of information can be gained from going through all of
the forum posts (at last count well over 1000 posts!). However there are a number of
details which are not on the plans and a few lessons that I have learnt through building
mine. The purpose of this build guide is to provide that information to future cargo twin
builders. The Saga of the Cargo Twin is a classic internet tale. A couple of teenagers
design plane, someone else draws up and posts the plans and then people all over the
world help each other out with tips and answers to queries. I don't think any twin builder
can thank the Sripol brothers enough not to mention Larry Ross for posting the plans (and
for his many helpful postings). Thanks guys!

Foam, Glue and Printing The Plans

The plans are tiled (either A4 or US letter are available). When printing them make sure
you have your print settings set so that a 100% reproduction is printed. Break out the
scissors and sticky tape and very carefully set about sticking them all together. Make sure
you do this carefully because otherwise things might not line up properly when you get to
gluing things together. The Twin has been built from a number of different types of foam.
Living in Australia I only have access to Depron foam so the rest of this build guide will
assume you are building in Depron. The sheets I have access to are 1 meter by 70 cm. I
used 3 sheets. I had lots left over but I could only fit one fuselage side on a sheet (2
sheets) and the third sheet was needed for the wings. The Sripol brothers used 6mm
Depron for the wings and fuselage bottom and 3 mm Depron for the sides and top of the
fuselage. I used 6mm all round. It means a slightly heavier plane but makes construction
easier and results in a very strong fuselage. I used 3 tubes of UHU Por for gluing it all
together. In some places I used epoxy for extra strength.

When you download the plans you will find an alternate nose former. It has less curvature
which makes it easier to get the fuselage sides to follow its contour (especially if you are
using Depron). The top and bottom nose sections on the plans have not been changed to
compensate for the new former. I got around that by cutting these sections out as
rectangles and then trimming them to fit.

Bending Depron Foam

The main wings and several fuselage panels need to be bent into shape. There are two
basic techniques that I know of for doing this. The simplest technique is to use a steel
ruler edge or something similar to make grooves in the side of the foam which will be on
the inside of the bend. The other side is then covered with transparent tape. The foam is
then bent by bending it around a curved table edge or similar. The foam will crack but the
tape will hold it in place. The disadvantage of this technique is the tape which ends up
covering the affected areas of the foam. Doesn't help the looks and can't be painted over.
The second method, requires a lot of patience and perseverance, but results in a smoothly
curved piece of foam with no tape present. As with the first method, start by using a steel
ruler or similar to create grooves running across the foam. The sharper the required bend,
the closer together the grooves should be. Next use a hair dryer or heat gun to heat the
foam on both sides. When it is warm, work from one end to the other bending the foam.
Small bends are needed, too large and the foam will crack. Heat and bend, heat and
bend. At first you will think you are making no progress at all. Keep going and eventually
the foam will retain its curve as shown in the photo below.

The main wings can be bent in the same way but a hair dryer isn't big enough. I used one
of those blower type room heaters and it worked fine.

Building the Airframe

Larry Ross's plans employ an ingenious tab and slot construction method. This makes
lining things up and ensuring consistency a piece of cake. One tip here is to cut the tabs
longer than they need to be so that when glued together the tabs stick out from the
fuselage side. They can then be cut and sanded for a perfect fit. I wish I had thought of
that before I put mine together!

The easiest way to cut the parts is to cut out each piece from the plan leaving a small
amount of paper around the part. Glue this to the foam using a glue stick and then cut it
out using your hobby knife. After the part has been cut out gently peel the paper away
from the foam. Make sure you peel the paper away as soon as you have finished cutting
otherwise you can have problems encourage paper and foam to part company. Where
more than one part is required, pin the part you have cut out onto the foam and draw
around it to get the next part. Remember to keep changing the blade. The blade needs to
be really sharp or the foam and paper will tear.

For the underside of the fuselage where the cargo hatch is, I marked and party cut the
hatch out. I left enough foam uncut to keep it there while the fuselage is being
constructed. That made gluing the fuselage together easier and when I was ready I simply
cut the door free.

Once all the parts have been cut out, glue the doublers onto the fuselage side and then
you are ready to assemble the fuselage. Larry's tab and slot construction method means
you can trial fit the assembly of the entire fuselage before you reach for the glue.

Undercarriage
Leave off the upper nose section until you have sorted the undercarriage out. I could not
find any mention of undercarriage position anywhere on the forum. I think everyone else
just did what I ended up doing which was estimate the position from the videos and
pictures on the forum. I wanted to be able to play with the nose gear without having to cut
open the finished fuselage so it took a bit of thought. The other issue here is to keep the
weight down. The photo below shows what I came up with.

For the nose wheel I positioned it just forward of the front bulkhead (F1). A bit of ply with
some 8mm rectangular section carbon fibre tube glued on top. A hole was then drilled
through the lot. The piano wire is then bent to shape and two collets used to fasten it in
place. One collet is inside the carbon fibre tube and the other beneath it (or on top in the
photo). Careful positioning of the collet in side the tube so that the collet fastening screw
restricts the wheel's movement from side to side. The other point is to angle the landing
gear leg back at least 45 degrees to ensure your nose wheel doesn't behave like a beat up
shopping trolley. I have to say though in the end I didn't like the swivelling nose wheel so I
simply glued it in the straight ahead position. For the main wheels I made up two foam
block by laminating three sections of Depron together for each block. After the glue dried I
trimmed them to shape and glued them onto the fuselage. I found a plastic fitting in a
hardware store that I could cut to L shaped sections out of, drilled a hole in each for the
axle and then glued them onto the foam blocks. One import factor to keep in mind is that
you must ensure that the heights of the main and nose wheels ensure the fuselage is not
angled up or down because otherwise you will have either a negative or positive angle of
attack on the wing on takeoff when you want it to be level. The other point is how far back
along the fuselage to locate the main wheels. If you check out the Sripol brothers video
you will see that the two planes featured have the main wheels in different locations. The
red plane has them just behind the CG (where they would be on a full sized aircraft) and
the blue one had them almost at the cargo door. Clearly they have to go behind the centre
of gravity the question is how far behind. I adopted the highly scientific principal of simply
estimating the two positions used in the two planes in the video and then split the
difference! I've noticed that, no matter how gently I put her down, the nose plonks down
as soon as the mains touch the ground. This leads me to believe the mains should be a
bit more forward than mine are. In hindsight, with the benefit of a half dozen flights, I
would recommend a servo controlled steerable nose wheel up front and position the mains
a bit further forward. I would also go looking for a way to increase the distance between
the main wheels without significantly increasing the weight. I have nothing but praise for
the cargo twin but if it has a negative then its the undercarriage. The narrow width of the
main wheels leads to a lot of wobbling around on grass.

Wing Construction:
When you cut the two wing panels do not cut out the ailerons. Leave the ailerons as part
of the wing until the final step where you can cut them out. Curve the wing using one of
the previously describedfoam bending techniques. Next glue the ribs in. I used four on
each wing. The outboard two will overlap the ailerons, don't worry they add strength to the
ailerons. Next comes the engine nacelles. Important point here is to make sure the
nacelles are glued on straight and level otherwise the thrust angle on one or both motors
will be wrong. I initially glued my nacelles on with UHU-Por. After a half dozen flights they
started to pull away from the leading edge of the wing so I re-glued them using epoxy.
Message here is glue the nacelles on with epoxy. I noticed the wings on most twins bend
a bit in loops and rolls. I decided to fix that by running a rectangular 8mm section carbon
fibre tube the entire length of the wing. I positioned the tube at about the CG (i.e. 1/3 of
the wing chord measured from the leading edge). The carbon fibre tube comes in 1 metre
lengths so I used one piece for each wing and joined them at the centre section. I trimmed
a piece of hardwood about 10 cm long until it was a snug fit inside the tube and then glued
them together using the wood as a joiner. You will need to make cut outs in the ribs and
nacelle sides to allow the spar to slide through. My wings do not bend at all and the
weight difference cannot be more than a few grams. The rest of the wing is pretty straight
forward. The aileron servos mount in the outboard side of each engine nacelle.

Wing Attachment
I hate wings held on with rubber bands. Let's just call it an idiosyncrasy and leave it at
that. My first flight involved the receiver failing and my Cargo Twin nosed in from about 80
feet. I could not help but scold myself because the main wing was torn and if I had used
rubber bands it probably would not have been damaged. What can I say? I just hate using
rubber bands. This meant I need to figure out how to fix the wings using bolts. After a lot
of head scratching I came up with the system shown in the photo below.
Two 4mm ply plates run across the fuselage. Blind nuts for each mounting bolt are glued
into them. I got paranoiac I epoxied some fibre glass tape around where each ply plate is
glued to the fuselage to spread the load across the fuselage side. I could not use resin
when I did that because the resin eats foam so I used epoxy glue instead. I cut up the
transparent lid of a lunch box to make a plate to glue on the wing centre section. This is to
spread the load across the wing rather than have it focused where the bolts go through.
Finally four plastic bolts screw into the blind nuts to fix the wing onto the fuselage. The
total cost in weight for this was 80 grams. I think the whole thing is way over-engineered
due to a failure in my thinking but for a cost of 80 grams I wasn't worried. What was the
error in my think you ask? Well I kept thinking if my plane ended up around 800 grams
and I pulled 5 or 6 g (pretty easy to do) then that means those bolts and their mountings
have a force equivalent to 6 x 0.8kg = 4.8kg applied to them. What I later realised is the
force is actually the G force times the weight of just the fuselage and not the weight of the
whole plane. Remember the force is trying to make the fuselage and wing part company
so the wing is being forced in one direction and the fuselage in the opposite direction.
Even with 6mm Depron all around the fuselage is pretty light.

Tailplane and Rudder

All pretty straight forward so not much to say. After watching a few videos I decided to
glue some 3 x 1mm carbon fibre strip all the rear edge of the fin and tailplane where the
control surfaces will hinge. This is pretty standard in indoor foamy main wings and I
figured that tailplane was actually bigger than a lot of in door foamy main wings! If you are
going to paint the tailplane or rudder do it before you glue them onto the fuselage. Also
when you finally glue the tailplane onto the fuselage make sure that you have the fins on
the end of the tailplane the correct way up. If they are upside down you will have to pry it
all apart and re-glue (ask me how I know!). Finally, given the size of the tailplane and
rudder, leave it off as long as possible during construction otherwise you will drive yourself
nuts every time you need to flip the fuselage around. That tailplane is a big sucker!

Electronics
All of the information I gleaned from the forum indicated that most Twin builders used a V-
Tail mixer to get the differential throttle rather than go for programming the transmitter.
Typical receiver used was the AR6100. After consulting a fellow club member (Chris
Holme) I decided to go for a more complicated setup. I wanted to use a UBEC because of
the number of servos involved. This in turn added a few other wrinkles that needed ironing
out. Firstly UBECs can put out RF interference so eventually I went for an AR6200
receiver to minimise any possibility of signal loss. Also I wanted to build in some
redundancy in case the UBEC failed. What resulted is shown in the wiring diagram below.
You can leave out the UBEC detector. All that does is light up an led if the UBEC isn't
working when you power up. Using this setup the BEC in one of the ESC's will take over if
the UBEC fails and if that fails then the BEC in the other ESC will kick in. I fly mode 3. To
get mode 3 I simply plug the aileron servo(s) into the rudder port on the receiver and
viceversa for the rudder (i.e. plug into aileron port). This diagram is drawn with that in
mind so if you are a mode 1 or mode 2 flyer, the only change required is to have the
rudder servo going into the rudder port on the receiver and the ailerons going into the
aileron port on the receiver.

The next thing to consider very carefully is where all of these bits and pieces are placed in
the aircraft. This is especially important because the twin is too big to transport fully
assembled. You will most likely need to remove the main wing and so you want to
minimise the amount of plugging and unplugging you have to do. Obviously the battery
has to go in the fuselage, the aileron servos on the wing and the other servo's in the
fuselage. I mounted the ESC's on the underside of the wing between the motor nacelles
and the fuselage. Everything else is installed on the underside of the wing root. This
means when attaching the wing, I poke the battery plug forward and the connect the hatch,
rudder and elevator servos. I used stick-on labels printed from a label maker to make sure
everything gets plugged in correctly. Think about what would happen if the elevator servo
got connected to the rudder port on the receiver, especially with differential throttle!
Control Surface Hinging and Final Setup
I hinged my control surfaces with Blenderm tape. I was a bit hesitant to use tape on such
a big model but its all you need and it works fine. I set all my control surfaces to 30
degrees throw and 40% expo and that seems about right in flight. The only change I have
made is to increase the rudder a bit. It didn't really need it, I just felt like a bit more rudder.
I used piano wire for the control rods and a couple of control horns left over from a shock
flyer to act as guides for the rudder and elevator control rods. I positioned the guides about
halfway between the servos and the control horns. I positioned the elevator and rudder
servos just behind the main wing. I cut a battery hatch in the cabin roof above the cockpit,
The hatch is simply hinged at the front with tape and held close at the back with another
piece of tape. Sounds crude but works fine and is pretty much invisible. The 2150 mah
Lipo fits in the cockpit as far forward as it will go. This gives me a CG of about 1/3 of the
wing chord back from the leading edge. In flight this seems fine. Pitch stability is good
and yet it hovers without heaps of up elevator.

Cargo Door
I conducted the first few flights with the cargo door taped closed and not connected to a
servo. When the time came to mount the servo I was faced with a problem. The ideal
location for the door servo is above where the door hinges on the fuselage. Problem was
my CG was just forward enough with the battery pushed as far forward as it would go. I
didn't want to add any weight behind the CG (other than cargo of course!). I mounted my
servo just forward of the CG on the upper tray. This made sorting out the connecting rod a
bit of a problem and it took me a while to get that correct. Some points to note when
adjusting your door:
• Make sure that the door can hinge evenly. I initially used tape hinges but they
allowed the door to twist when it was being opened and closed by the servo. In the
end I removed the tape and used foam safe CA to glue some cloth hinges much the
same way we hinge control surfaces on larger models.
• Adjust your travel perfectly. If the servo is straining against something trying to
move the door when it is shut then the servo is going to be drawing current for the
whole flight. For the first attempt make sure you position the plane with the tail
sticking over the edge of a table so the door doesn't hit anything when it opens.
Before you power up set the travel on your transmitter to something really small
(say 20%). Then once powered up you can adjust the travel.
• Position the control horn on the door carefully. Take into account where the servo
will be placed and keep the connecting rod as far to one side as possible.
Remember you don't want your paratroopers or tanks getting stuck on the
connecting rod as they slide out the back!
 • Make sure the control rod doesn't bend when the door is opening and closing. If it
does then either the door won't open in flight (the rod will simply bend instead) or if
your cargo slides onto the door when you take off, the rod will bend and the door
will open and your paratroopers will be killed on takeoff.

Cargo Dropping Tips

Place a strip of 6 mm Depron on the floor just behind the CG. This will act as a restraint
and stop your paratroopers sliding backwards on takeoff and shifting the CG. Going
vertical when you want to drop will dislodge your paratroopers. Make sure your servo
leads for the rudder and elevator cannot fall into the cargo bay. Otherwise you run the risk
of a paratrooper catching on the lead on the way out.

Conclusions
The Cargo Twin is a classic internet story. Two high school kids design and build a plane
and then put a video out on the internet. Another fellow comes along and draws up a set
of plans and puts that out there as well. Many others start building! At last count there
were well over 1000 posts on the twin forum! They provide a wealth of tips hints and
information. The flight videos alone are invaluable in showing how the thing flies and close
examination can also provide answers to many little construction questions. If you build a
Cargo Twin then you will not regret it. It will take a bit longer than you think but you will
enjoy the process and end up with one of the coolest planes around. They are easy to fly
and yet incredibly agile. Best of all you can drop things from them! Anything from soldiers,
toy tanks and even loads of cherries have been dropped. I cannot thank the Sripol
brothers enough. Their design is both novel and brilliant. Larry Ross, wherever you are
out there, you deserve an award for providing those plans. First class job all round.
Thanks also to all the other forum contributors who answered my queries. This build guide
is my way of saying thanks and I hope future cargo twin builders benefit from it. Now
stooping procrastinating, download the plans and start cutting!