edwarda10pilot

My Feedback: (3)

Dave:
If your wings are only sheeted from the leading edge to the spar (or there abouts) and the rest of the wings are open bay then you probably have the first generation. From my experience in having owned 2 of the Falcons and two of the Navy Cats, the first generation Falcon 120's had open bay wings that were sheeted from the LE to the spar. Generation 2 had the wings fully sheeted. I am not positive but I believe that the gen 1 planes had a single bolt holding the stab to the boom and gen 2 had two bolts on each side of the stab to secure them to the boom. My experience with both of my Falcons was that you had to be careful when tightening the stab securing bolts is that when you tighten them you are tightening against (i.e. crushing ) the balsa. The inside of the boom structure is ply and then they are sheeted with balsa so when tightening the bolts you are crushing the balsa. What I did with my booms was to take a piece of 1/16" birch ply and cut a "rib" the same size as the stab airfoil. I then cut the film away from the boom and glued the ply to it. Then when I tighten the stab bolts I am against the ply. I am still compressing the balsa but it is not sandwiched between two pieces of ply. On the inside of the boom I put some 2 oz. glass cloth to further give the structure some strength. It has worked very well. I have attached some photos.

My experience with the Falcon 120's (gen 1 and 2) was that most of the structure was hot glued together. On my landing gear blocks, I used some pliers to "remove" the blocks. Once removed, I then cleaned up the area. I then installed some 1/8 lite ply on the sides of he ribs where the gear blocks attach. I then glued the blocks in with Hysol. Once this was dry I then applied some 2 oz. cloth to all of the areas I could near the gear blocks. The other thing I did to the wing was to try to "drip" some thin CA into the wing where all of the glue joints are. With regards to the formers in the fuse, since they were all hot glued in, I knocked them out (rather easily), cleaned the area up and then re-glued them in with Hysol. Did the same with the gear block for the nose gear.

Just my 2c,
Ed