Custom cowls (nose-cones)

[Dillzio]

I've decided to try and meet the challenge of making a home made, super strength cowl that does not look "ugly"

I took the cowl I made pictured above, superglued the two sections together, filed out a nice flat spot on the front and stuck a piece of perspex to it that I had cut to fit. I then drilled the whole thing with airholes, and padded the bottom of it with some 3 or 4 mm aquarium air hose that I had cut open longways.

After giving it a few good coats of paint it's actually starting to look pretty reasonable. The tricky bit is working out how to stick it to the cub that still looks good. I have bought some blue electrical tape to go on the cowl, and some white cloth tape to go around the firewall.

When it's on, I was thinking of putting a decal or some stripes along the sides to make it look more streamline.

Here's the pics

[airphotoky]

Nice work but....

But like cokebuck said, a new cowl is only $2.99

Its true...

[Dillzio]

Well, lately I've just been using the stock cowls. As has been suggested previously, by coating the inside and outside with a few layers of clear packaging tape the thing becomes virtually unbreakable.

[killioughtta]

I have never once done any modification to my cowl and never ever had to replace it because of damage (just when it got dirty and wanted to paint one). They're pretty good, if you ask me. Just fly more carefully. As seen in this month's Model Aviation: "Crashing is NOT an option" article, I build to fly, not to crash so I only mod what will not interfere with flight characteristics and check everything before each flight. I have crashed a lot but the only serious crashes have been because of pilot error (eating crap with silly aerobatics) and none have ever damaged the cowl. This mod (tape in and out) is totally useless since the cowl is so cheap but the tape is so heavy that the cons outweigh the pros.

[Dillzio]

Not if you're tail heavy! A lot of people have to add weight to the cowl to balance the CG anyway.

I should move my battery to fix the CG, but it's sitting so nicely at the moment I'd rather leave well enough alone.

[patmatgal]

You can fly without a cowl and get away with it, for a little while. But the motor would be exposed to the elements and get dirtier quicker, crash and the motor will take all the abuse (cowl only offers a little buffer but at least it's a little) plus it just looks dorky. Here's a pic of a plane I rushed to the field with but forgot the cowl at home, it flew OK but is not something I would choose to do again.


Yep, I was out there flying my dorky plane (and havin' a blast)

[Britpilot]

Go for it Dillzio! Jungle engineering at it's best. You ought to get a job repairing trucks in Africa they would love your ingenuity!

[cubmanlp]

hey guys im new here i got my super cub lp last weeken and bacause im only 18 i tryed to push it to its limit and i did about 3 loop rite in to a pole during the 4th one and it broke in half i had to replace the hole front end and glue the fuse back together. i took a 2 liter bottle of 7up and cut off the cap part and the cut the bottle in half and scred it on it look really good like a c thru cowl people tell me it look like a real coml not a bottle ill post a pic soon