The Lazy Bee by Andy Clancy
Update 22 april 2006, As possible many of you have read this ia an artcle dating back to the year 2000, My first Bee flew untill 2002, after that it was totally soaked with oil. Now in 2006 after 4 years of a Lazy Bee less life I found another one, I was lucky to buy one ready built. Instead of the IC engine this one is equipped with a brushless motor Typhoon 10/15 and a Kontronic 1000 ESC and a 2200 Mah (15c) Lipo 3s1p packet. This combination flys even beter than with thr IC engine.
In all these years of a Lazy Bee less life I kept on being an absolute fan of Andy Clancy designs. This means that I built a Stagger Bee, and a Turbo Bee an building a Sky Baby. When the Yard Bee will be aviailable with Hobby People i will not hasitate to order one, so i'm also very curious how the Clancy Bee Liner Low Wing will look like. For anyone of you reading this and know how to get plans for building the special wing (wingeron) for the Staggerbee please mail me
2000
After 3 years of intensive flying, my Lazy Bee needs some repairs, still it is my most favorite model to fly with.
How to fall in love with a Bee
A few years ago i saw these little adds in magazines like the American R/C modeler. That was it, I was direct in love with this ugly bird. It was in the same time that I had lots of trouble learning to fly r/c airplanes and this plane seemed to be the solution for this problem. First I had to lend a few dollars to order the catalog, but when it arrived (after 6 weeks of long waiting) the decision was just a moment later taken. I ordered the Lazy Bee including almost everything needed. When you see the amount of dollars you just don't realize the real price (in Dutch guilders it doubles) but it wasn't the price of the Bee that delivered me gray hair but the transportcosts US $ 30 and the importtaxes also about US $ 30.
What did I find in the Box.
It was a small box just filled until the last bit of air was pushed out. The lazy Bee is mainly built out of spars 3x3mm (sorry metric size only I am Dutch) a few wingribs (7) en some other prefabricated pieces of wood (Liteply and Balsa) and ofcourse al the other materials like the Trexler balloon wheels, the covering (Litespan) and a video, shame, I was forgotten that you people in the Us use the NTSC format and we in Europe use mainly PAL. So it took a while before I could see this video.
Building a Bee
The building manual was very clear to me and contained some nice tips. The building of this kit was not much of trouble for me and went quite fast with the tips from Andy Clancy. It is important that, before you start building, you sort out the all of the spars on soft and hard. Making of the laminated tips looked more trouble than it actually was. Because I am not a very patient person I used the tip from Andy to dry the glued wingtips, stabilizer and rudder in the oven with a temperature of about 100 degree Celsius. Drying the wingtips took some 30 minutes and the other parts needed plus/minus 10 to 15 minutes.
Covering the Bee has been done with LITESPAN (it looks like paper, but is very strong). It is simple to do, you have to use a heat sensitive glue like Balsaloc (ROBBE) "paint" the plain with this glue where needed (like the edges) allow the glue to dry and then start working with your iron and heatblower, litespan shrinks when it cools down. For the decoration are templates provided with the buildingplans, ofcourse use them only if you like this style of decoration.
My choice of engine was a O.S. Fp0.10 (1.7 cc) this was in my experience a good choice. The Lazy Bee will fly easily with this type of engine and an perform most of the aerobatics without any trouble. For the controls I just used all the standard servo's and a 500Mah accupack and a standard size receiver (multiplex). This was not a specific choice as a reality having these goods in stock. The content of the fueltank is approx. 60cc (2ounces) and this will be enough for a flighttime of about 10 minutes (not constantly full throttle ofcourse).
All these chosen materials made the flightweight of my Lazy Bee 980 grams and this gives a result of approx 29gr/dm2 wingload.
Flying a Bee
As mentioned earlier on this page, it was a pure need to learn to fly with an easy plane, but in the mean time between ordering a catalog, and receiving the catalog (6 weeks) and the ordering everything like the wheels, covering, video (NTSC) and ofcourse the Bee (1,5 weeks delivery time) and building this plane, I had some really good progress in mastering the sticks of my transmitter, and my planes didn't crash so fast anymore. I was now a fullworthy member of the Red Eagles modelflyingclub in Dordrecht (The Netherlands) with a kind of flightlicense.
My first flight was an exciting one, because I mixed up the controls of the rudder. Left was right and right was left, and all this discovering just airborne. It took me a lot of sweat and heartbeats to land my Lazy Bee safely and most of all important - undamaged -. The second flight I switched of the servoreverse of my rudder and now everything was under control. Just 5 meters taking up speed and up she goes, no problems at all. Within 10 minutes I was flying very low circles over our airfield with a diameter of approx 20-25 meters(the circles) . The Photo you see, with me and the Bee was taken 15 minutes after the first flight. Later that same day I took some test to learn more about the flightcaracteristics of my Bee and took her up real high (you know, height and speed are safety to a plane) and closed the throttle to idle and gave up elevator and more up...up...up etc she just didn't want to stall, so this was nice she just descended vertically like a helicopter (there was a little bit of wind 3Bf) With some more wind, like 4 -5 Bf (Beaufort) it is very easy to hover with a Lazy Bee just give enough power to keep altitude and enough up elevator and she stays at the same position, with a bit more enginepower she will climb like a radiocontrolled kite up into the skies. For aerobatics or to be a skyclown you just have to double the rudder movements (I use dualrate, the Lazy Bee is very responsive on the rudder)
Conclusion
after 4 seasons of flying this little ugly duck ,The Lazy Bee, I still love to fly with it, for me this is a real funflyer, inspite of the costs to get this kit from Arizona (U.S.A.) to The Netherlands (Europe) especially transport US$ 30 and the importtaxes also US$30 exc. engine and controls. I would advise anyone not living in the U.S.A. or near a shop that can provide you with a lazy bee kit (in the USA it is not a expensive model,my opinion) to order only the buildingplans and possible the wheels.
Technical Data :
wingspan 101.6 cm
cord 35.56 cm
wing area 33.93 dm2
weight 980 gram
wingload 28.8 gram
length 66.0 cm
engine O.S. Fp 0.10
fueltank 60 cc
channels 3 - throttle, rudder, elevator
photopage 800x600
read more about the whereabouts on Andy Clancy in this newsgroup http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19051
or here a copy of the above mentioned site (text only) clancy text
Ordering a Bee
via Andy Clancy not any more so visit http://www.hobbypeople.net/
or for UK residents Hillcott Electronics, 40 Church Lane, Henbury, Macclesfield, Cheshire, SK11 9NN, Tel ++ 44 (0)1625) 420247
If you want to know more, please mail me .
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eduardengel@planet.nl
Eduard Engel
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