Your Chrysalis 2M. From the photo's its unclear if the leading edge of the wing is sheeted or not. Please advise.

From : Don Stackhouse

The leading edge is a 3/16" diameter hardwood dowel, no carving or sanding to shape required.

When Joe and I first developed the specifications for the Chrysalis series, we figured that a lot of beginners would be building it. Joe and I have a lot of experience helping beginning builders and fliers, and a pretty good feel for what sorts of things they typically have trouble with. One of those consistent problem areas is carving leading edges to shape, and another one is applying sheeting to D-tube leading edges. We decided that from the very beginning, no Chrysalis would ever need either of those. We use the dowel leading edge to give us a very durable, pre-shaped leading edge, and we did a HUGE amount of engineering work to incorporate shape corrections in the ribs to compensate for covering sag, which eliminates the need for leading edge shape without significantly compromising airfoil accuracy. It was a lot of work for us in the design stage, but it's more than paid for itself in the results.

Also, is the fuse lite ply or balsa?

Both. The fuselage uses lite ply fuselage sides from the nose to just behind the trailing edge of the wing, and basswood longerons along the corners of the tailboom. There is a balsa skin over the outside of the ply and stringers which allows for carving to a nice, rounded shape. The fuselage bottom is balsa, with a 1/16" birch ply skid plate from the nose to the middle of the section under the wing. It's very quick and easy to build, and has proven to be very tough in our tests.

How is the wing joined at the center? Is it two piece or one?

One piece. We are working on a three piece option, which uses carbon tube plug-in joints at the poly breaks, similar to the system we use on the 2-piece wing for the HLG Chrysalis. This results in sections that are the same size or smaller than a 2-piece would be, gets the plug-in joints away from the center (the highest stress section of the wing), and makes it possible to disassemble the wing without disturbing the spoiler linkages.

Could you give me some of the features of the kit other than what you've advertised.

It's very easy to build, and the instructions are EXTREMELY detailed. They're draw on CAD, four sheets (34" x 44" each), and are similar to the instructions for a good plastic model - line drawings, with lots of exploded views and close-up drawings. We've found that drawings are a lot more work than a photograph, but can depict a lot more information with greater clarity. It was an enormous job (many months of work, and the CAD files take up approximately 10 megabytes of disk space!), but you should see the results!

Handling and thermalling ability is similar to a good poly floater, but the penetration is more like a composite "glass slipper" 2-meter. One of our customers commented after his first few flights with his that it thermalled about like his Gentle Lady, but had about TWICE the range. It holds energy very well, and with just a little breeze you can get some very respectable zooms from a small high start. I've tried bungee launching it with 30' of 3/8" rubber tube plus 30' of twine (no parachute), and get typically about 70-100' of altitude without abusing the model.

Roll rate is very good (it will do very nice rolls with just rudder and elevator), and the spoilers are very effective. L/D with the spoilers retracted is in the high twenties, but with the spoilers open it drops to about 2 or 3:1.

The wing spar is strong enough for a moderate winch launch (the bending strength of the main spar alone is a little more than 5 times stronger than a Gentle lady's). The spar caps are 1/2" x 1/8" basswood (better quality and glues better than spruce, so the finished strength is better), with 1/32" birch ply shear webs. The inboard spars are webbed on both faces to form a full box. The shear webs are laser-cut to exact size on carrier strips, so you can use them as a guage during initial wing assembly, then apply each section in one step when it's time to install them. We call them "Laserwebs".

We've winched it quite a bit with no problems. Still, it is a wooden model, so if you have a heavy foot and plan to do F3B style pedal-to-the-metal launches, I'd recommend adding some carbon to the spar caps.

Dynamic stability (the ability to damp out oscillations) is very high, in fact we've been able to set the C/G so far aft that it's statically divergent in pitch, and then let a first time beginner fly it with no problems. It does what you tell it to do. The long moments also do a very good job of signalling lift. In addition, the long moment arms, large tail surfaces and large wing root chord (about 10 5/8") give it a "visual footprint" similar to an open class ship. For some of us with older eyeballs that can be a big issue!

Wing loading is very low (typically about 5.2 oz./sq.ft. without ballast), yet we've penetrated 20 kt. winds at that weight with no trouble. It's so good, in fact, that it was outperforming our older Monarch 2-meter composite ship! BTW, this is what led directly to the development of our new Monarch 'D' 2-meter.

Did I mention that it penetrates very well? ;-)

It's fun and easy to build, a lot of fun to fly, and has contest-worthy performance without the "pucker factor", flying-on-the-edge feel of some of the composite ships. It's very relaxing to fly, yet it will still come home from WAAYYY downwind. A nice way to spend an afternoon in the air.

Don Stackhouse
DJ Aerotech