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light and strong enough for light electric motor battery set ups, the secret to strengthening depron is carbon and light wood rods and strips, light weight pushrods & Horns are now available.
GWS (pico stick) motors and radio gear work fine and for seat of your pants performance brushless units are coming down in price every day, as are lipo batteries !
So this kind of quick and easy model flying is within everybody's reach
Depron was successfully used in the 2005 M.A.V. world challenge in Seoul, Korea,
and now is the preferred material, depron is the future of ultra lightweight flying model aircraft. The only limit is your imagination.
Developed primarily for use as thermal and sound insulation
Depron is very common medium for use in the food industry.
Food trays are quite useful if you can find large unused ones to make light weight model parts from.
Depron is actually polystyrene (EPS/XPS) plastic and the (EPS) means expanded while (XPS) means extruded. For our purposes, we’re only interested in the stronger, denser XPS Depron which also happens to be closed-cell foam.
Open or Closed cell refers to its structure and because open cell (sponge type) foam soaks up all fluids (water & glue) it’s just not suitable for a model plane. The superior closed cell foam takes much less glue and is easier to waterproof. Its sealed surface adds considerable strength as well as making it very easy to apply non-solvent depron friendly paint or ink finishes.
You don't have to worry about grain direction and splitting like with balsa wood, although depron can show a sort of grain on the surface, this is not consistent as this forms as the styrene cures in the manufacturing process, within the core of the sheet the cell formation is consistent, like balsa wood the inertia effect is quite low and at only 20 grams per square foot, it is considerably lighter than the equivalent 95g psf of balsa.
You can paint your depron masterpiece with foam friendly water colour paints, or non-solvent marker pens, always do a test on a scrap piece before committing to your model.
With depron the name of the game is experimentation, build yourself established designs, or reach out with your own designs and above all enjoy your modelling.
HAPPY FLYING
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