I just recently finished and flew my Electra, and while it has plenty of power and flew basicly right off the board(trim near perfect), the noise is killing me!!

I guess I have moved away from gearboxes on most of my larger models, with about 5 or 6 axi's in use.The noise this thing emits disturbs me to a point where I dont enjoy flying it very much....any tricks to quiet that gearbox?

From : Don Stackhouse

Soooo.... been brainwashed by the antiseptic, saccharine whirrrrr of direct drives? My condolences. I'll bet that when you were a kid you never clipped a card to flap in the spokes of your bicycle's wheels to make it sound like a motorcycle, either. ;-) I dunno, to each his own. For me, the faint, sterile, obviously artificial whine of an IPS drive in a Cub or Tiger Moth is like watching the Indy 500 on the TV with the sound turned all the way down. Personally I find it annoying. Now on an electric sailplane, that's another matter. Those are supposed to be quiet. Seriously, though, there are some options, some of them facetious, some impractical, but some that should help. 1. Learn to enjoy the sound for what it is, part of the "scale-like" experience. (facetious, but don't rule it out!) 2. Do some major surgery on the gearbox frames and propshafts to tighten up the bearings. (impractical, unless you're very skilled in a variety of things like plastic welding, and building wrist watches from scratch) 3. Tighten up the fore and aft play in the propshafts, leaving just enough to allow them to run freely. (practical) 4. Balance the props. (practical, and if you have the old white plastic Gunther props on yours, probably worth doing anyway) 5. If you have the old MPS-1's with the Gunther props, consider replacing them with MPS-1A's (practical, but probably not enough benefit to be worth the trouble and expense). 6. Put some fairly thick plastic-compatible grease on the propshaft bearings and gear teeth (practical, but messy, and also prone to collecting dirt as well as slinging oily residue on the side of the fuselage) 7. Carefully drill out the mounting holes in the plywood plate in the gearbox frames to fit a small rubber servo grommet. Install grommets in the holes with a brass eyelet through each grommet, then re-mount the motors to the nacelles with 2-56 machine screws and elastic stopnuts. You may also need to open up the cutouts in the nacelles so that no part of the gearbox assembly can vibrate against the edges of the cutouts. This will keep the airframe from resonating and amplifying the vibration. (a little more work, but certainly practical, and should be more effective than any of the other suggestions above with the possible exception of #1)

Also, any sources for good pics or three views that would help me with panel lines and door details, etc?

There are some good books you can probably find at the library, such as "Lockheed" by Bill Yenne, among others.

Don Stackhouse
DJ Aerotech