Caudron C-450 1150mm

The Caudron C450/460 has been in my bucket list for almost 30 years, in the nineties the plan was almost done and it would have become a balsa construction but never built. About ten years ago I wanted to build it in CNC cut Foam, again the plans were almost ready but.... and now finally it happened and it became a 3D printed one.

This is now my fourth 3D printed design and given the experience I have gained, I wanted to make the Caudron a little bigger. Ultimately, the wingspan of 1150mm is no more than that of my DH Chipmunk, but because this is a Pylon racer, the wings are rather small compared to the fuselage. This makes the fuselage quite large and almost as long as the wing is wide. I can also tell you that the wing has been enlarged by ten percent, I did this by scaling the wing in its entirety and not just by increasing the chord or span. This preserves the proportions, you have to be a real Caudron expert to see it without comparison with the original.

Initially I was torn between the C-460 with retractable landing gear and the C-450 with fixed landing gear and its big wheel pants. It became the C-450, because in my opinion the large wheel pants give the model more character and, as a free benefit, this makes the construction considerably simpler.

In the meantime, I have already completed dozens of test flights with the Caudron and I am satisfied with how it flies. Power setup went from 440W on 3s 2600mAh to 880W on 4s 4000Mah. Even with the light set-up, the Caudron is still quite fast, with 880W it goes really fast without the construction reaching its limits. The Caudron flies as if on rails due to the long fuselage and the semi-symmetrical airfoil makes the plane fully acrobatic, knife edge is a breeze due to the high fuselage. Thanks to the split flaps, landing is still problem-free even with 1800gr, I know racing planes with big radial engines that are much more difficult to land ;-).

There is a small thread on RC groups about the Caudron, here you will find some more photos and explanations.

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?4440423-Caudron-C-450-ready-to-race

There is also a video, back then with the basic set up, I hope to make a new video of the real stuff soon.

https://youtu.be/5fb_n89UCQQ?feature=shared

!!!The Manual is still being worked on, so it will be updated regularly.!!!

The construction of the Caudron,
The model is designed to be printed in LW PLA with parts and reinforcements in PLA+ where necessary.
The LW parts are all printed with 6% Gyroid infill and where necessary there is additional structure internally.
The PLA+ parts are almost all printed solid unless otherwise stated in the parts list.