The Story of Miles (by Philip Kolb)

The Concept

1. The Design of MILES is following four constraints:
2. It should offer good performance over a wide range of speed
3. It should be easy to build with little experience
4. It should come along with pleasant looks
5. It should be built up in all wooden construction

We’re pretty sure that there are planes on the market which might fit better to one or the other constraint (ie. Better performing, easier to build etc), but we’re also very sure that we managed an optimization of all four constraints with the design of MILES.

The Wing

The three piece wing is a built up rib and spar construction with strong spruce spars and balsa sheer webs all along the span. To keep the coupling of torsion and bending minimal, the spar is kept straight. The polyhedral tip panels are joined to the flat centre panel by strong 6mm steel joiners. The polyhedral layout offers enough stability in flight. A ballast tube is installed in the centre panel. It can be filled with up to 400 grams of lead or 300 grams of steel by detaching the tip panel. The leading edge is fully sheeted; the aft section of the ribs is capped with balsa strips. This offers more than enough torsion stiffness. There is a spoiler to be installed as an option on the top surface of the centre panel to ease up landing approach and rescue from high altitudes. The wing airfoils are flat bottomed for easy build up. They are as thin as possible but as thick as necessary to supply enough strength in terms of bending. The airfoil transition shows 8.7% thickness at the root and 7.8% at the tip with an average camber of 2.2%.

The Fuselage

The box fuselage is designed to be as slim as possible but being able to carry two standard size servos. The wing mount is fully closed to avoid weak points in this area. For supplying enough robustness without excessive weight the fuselage is made from a combination of balsa and plywood parts. Most of the parts are fitted with dents and teeth to lock into each other, so that the construction is easy to manage without misalignments. The fuselage sides are completely doubled with plywood. The wing and the elevator are bolted on by 4mm steel screws and 3mm nylon screws.

The Tailplane

The tailplane is made from light weight balsa. Elevator and Rudder are full balsa construction with flat plate airfoils to be sanded slightly to airfoil shape. This reflects the most simple solution here. The elevator is removable in terms of transport. Both tail surfaces offer very effective control. The agility of MILES is second to none in its class!

Ballast System

To stress the wing and spar as little as possible in high wind launches and zooms the ballast system is installed in the wing, not in the fuselage. It is possible to slide in solid rods of ballast into the wing ballast tube by detaching one of the tip panels. This ballast tube is able to carry a maximum of 400 grams of lead, 280 grams of steel or 100 grams of aluminium. With this opportunity you can easily adjust the speed and gliding range of MILES to the given conditions.

Technical Data

• Wingspan: 1940mm
• Length: 1170mm
• Wing area: 35.8dm
• Aspect ratio: 11
• Wing airfoils: PK-FB_01 – PK-FB_04
• Elevator area: 3.85dm
• Tail airfoils: flat plate
• Weight: 700 grams/750 grams (without ballast)

	[FWMILES] Fineworx MILES 2M traditional balsa construction. Designed for thermal 2M class and just having fun. This kit is a laser cut balsa kit and requires full assembly. It is not ARF.