lov2flyrc

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Had a thought last night while packing an order of G10. Has anyone attempted to glass up a wing with G10? .005 would follow wing contours easily and would provide a ready-for-paint finish that, I would expect to be more durable than the cloth/resin process.
Thoughts?
Todd

Harley Condra

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Been there, done that.
It works very well on thick wings like found in pattern ships. I had a 4' by 8' sheet of .007 G-10 many years ago, and sheeted a foam wing for a Dalotel with it. I first installed spars to stiffen the cores. That was about 1990. That Dalotel is still flying today.

Thin sheets like these don't work well in compression, although they do a good job in tension.

There was a company many years ago (about 1970) that made glass covered wings for most of the popular pattern ships. There were called "Glasskin".
They dent very easily, so they must be treated carefully during and after construction.
Epoxy or spray adhesives work well.
I still have an unfinished set of Glasskin brand wings in the shop.

Harley Condra
BVM REP
JetCat REP

Gordon Mc

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The Mick Reeves Hunter uses "pro-skin" wing sheeting similar to what you are describing - dunno what the thickness is.

See http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=1264661 onwards

Wayne22

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Know a guy who made his own sheets layed up on a sheet of glass with carbon fibre TOW mixed in (......lot of experience - he knew what he was doing) . I believe he used a foam core, but used these to create very thin wings...the planes were very fast. He even put one on floats just to show it could be done

t_burley

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Todd, as the guys above stated it works great.

Jose Guitieriz is now back in Florida. he owns "fliteskin" which is bascially
the same thing. he is building a DH Hornet, and has done the wings this way.

here is his link

http://www.fliteskin.com/

EASYTIGER

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I've had some minor experience in two different forms with fiberglass sheeted wings. One was to use fiberglass sheeting(the equivalent of Proskin or G-10) over a balsa framed wing. I found it dented easily, came out pretty heavy, and didn't seem that strong. And dealing with wingtips and leading edges and such was an issue...see below. That wing went into the trash as an experiment gone wrong. Might work better on foam cores.
My other experience is with a few JD Enterprises/ITP kits, which come with foam wings preskinned with fiberglass sheets. Works fine, but you are left with balsa tips and leading edges and such that need to be faired into the fiberglass parts, and then either coated with resin or primed until they are paintable, and getting the whole process level was more work than doing a balsa-sheeted-and-then-glassed process would have been.
So, I think it's do-able, but I can't think of a good reason why.
There was a good article on installing Pro-skin in RCJI just recently, but the guy did it because he had no luck with glassing before, for whatever reason, he got the mixture wrong, and messed up some wings, so decided to try proskin.

Jetmutt

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I am interesting is sheeting two built up wing panels that are 24 inches in span with proskin (0.010 in thick) from Meek Reeves. I searched RCU and noticed that there are quite a few model with wings sheeted in this material. I also noticed there were a few posts recommending against it stating that the material is temperature sensitive and would warp. I would like to hear from the modelers who built there wings from this material on how it is holding up to the sun and their experience with it over time.

I am also thinking of using G10 material .010 in thick that is readily available here in the US. I suspect that G10 and proskin are the same type lamination.