bubbagates

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Ok Folks,

RCKen has told me he expects to be at the covering stage for this build sometime over the Thanksgiving weekend if all goes as he expects.

It's time to get in any other covering schemes that you may have. Remeber the prize is either a Hangar 9 Twist or $80.00.

Ken, please let us all know when you are ready for covering. We will go 3 more days beyond that and then SeeBee1 and his daughters will need to make a decision. They are the judges and thier decision will be final.

Currently here are the schemes we have going from left to right. I had to go back through this thread to find them so if I missed yours, speak up.

1.) Submitted by brocja01
2.) Submitted by kerrydel but using butterflies
3.) Submitted by kerrydel but using butterflies
4.) Submitted by kerrydel but using butterflies
5.) Submitted by Minnflyer
6.) Created by Minnflyer for elanasgrumpy
7.) Submitted by tigerdude
8.) Submitted by kerrydel
9.) Submitted by kerrydel
10.) Submitted by kerrydel

kerrydel

My Feedback: (2)

#2 or #3 should be a TOP view. You got 2 bottoms.

Kerry

Edit: Make it #3, since that one doesn't open full size the way it is now.

bubbagates

My Feedback: (32)

kerrydel

My bad []. I just re-uploaded all of yours and changed the order. That way I did not have to do it all over again.

Scworth

My Feedback: (2)

Doing a great job guys, All i have to say is this is an awsome thing for you guys to do for seabee and his daughter.


First i just wanna say for some odd reason my Photoshop isnt working and i had to use paint, Boy did i forget how much of a pain filling in colors without photoshop can be oO, that being said unfortunatly only half the main wing is colored in but you get the point. im sure you can get all the manufactors sponsers logos there.
Edit* wow looking back at it i did a horrible job without my photoshop im gonna see if i can find all my info for my cd key and try again Oo cause dang photoshop>pain lol.

Scworth

My Feedback: (2)

All i have to say again is great job on the build, this thread is Wonderful. <3
Time to get back to work trying to find my photoshop cdkey

bruce88123

Let's bump this back to page 1.

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

As I said in an earlier post, I had planned on getting some work done in here but I decided to spend the time with my family. I know that it sounds like I'm climbing on my soapbox, but urge everybody out there to make sure that you take care of your family before you take care of the hobby. To me nothing is more important than my family. We spent a good portion of the weekend together as a family, and the funnest part was putting up our Christmas lights on our house. We love doing that, and we tend to “over-do� it too. How much? Have you ever seen National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation? Remember when Chevy Chase plugged in the lights and killed the power for half the town? You're getting close!! . When we turned out lights on we got a call from the control tower at the local airport and they informed us that we were blinding the pilots as they came in on final approach!! [X(]

Anyway, back to the build. In our last post we had epoxied in the blind nuts for the motor mounts. Our next step will be to locate the motor mounts and drill out the holes to mount the engine to the motor mounts. First we'll need to place the motor mounts on the firewall. Use 6-32 x 3/4� screws to secure the motor mount to the firewall (picture #1). If you look at the picture you will notice that one side of each mount has a small “wall� on it, this helps to make the mount stronger. You will want to make sure that this “wall� is placed to the outside of the firewall.

What we will do next is place the motor where it is supposed to sit on the mounts so that we can mark the location of the motor mount holes. In my experience in both the real world and here on RCU I've noticed that this process seems to cause a lot of us huge problems. The problems that I've noticed the most is improper distance from the firewall, and more importantly crooked mounting holes in the mounts. Improper distance isn't as critical in this plane because we have an open engine compartment, but in planes that have a cowl this can cause huge problems. In a cowled engine this is really difficult, because if the motor is mounted too short the spinner will rub against the cowl and if it's mounted long it leaves a huge gap between the spinner and the cowl which looks just awful (IMHO). The second (and more important in my opinion) is having the mount holes placement incorrect and/or drill crooked. If the mount holes are placed incorrect you will have a hard time even mounting the motor in the mounts. And if the holes are drilled crooked huge problems can occur. When the holes are crooked and you put a screw in the mount the stress placed on the mount can actually crack the mount in flight, and then having the motor fall off. Definitely not good.

Before we can place the engine on the mounts to measure it we need to install the spinner backplate onto the motor crankshaft. Picture #2 shows the backplate and the crankshaft spacers that come with the spinner. It's very rare (ok, next to impossible) to find a spinner backplate that will fit exactly on the crankshaft and this is where the spacers come in. The slide over the crankshaft so that the spinner backplate sits correctly on the shaft. Finding the correct space is very simple. Just find the spacer that fits your crankshaft and slide in into place. Picture #3 shows the gap in the spinner backplate on the crankshaft of our motor. Picture #4 shows the spacer that I selected to use here, and picture #5 shows the spacer and backplate in place.

So I'm going to try to help give you a pointer or two to help avoid these problems. While I'm no expert at this, I've found a few tricks that help me. First determine the distance from the firewall your motor will sit. In most models it's usually easier to measure the distance from the firewall to the back of the spinner. Most kit instructions will give you this distance, but if not it's pretty easy to determine this yourself by getting the measurement off of the plans (of course you want to measure it twice right? ). In the case of this kit the distance was given to us in the instructions, and that was to locate the back of the spinner 4-3/8� from the firewall. I have always had a very hard time using a ruler to measure the distance from the firewall to the backplate of the spinner. No matter how carefully I measure the distance, it always seems to be wrong when I get it all put together. I finally came to the conclusion that wasn't how accurately I measured the distance, but instead it was HOW I was measuring the distance from the firewall to the backplate. When I tried to measure using a ruler I just couldn't get the ruler into a position to get an accurate measurement, so I needed to come up with a better way to measure this distance. Picture # 6 shows my solution, I cut a craft stick to the length that I will set the spinner backplate away from the firewall. In picture #7 you can see how easy it is to get the motor set in the correct place now (I do apologize for the blurry picture, but you can still get the idea of what's going on). Even though we have this stick cut that doesn't mean that we need to forget about accurate measurements, “measure twice, cut once� still comes into play here. So check several times to make sure that the motor is in the correct position. In picture #8 you can see another tool that is hard to live without once you have used it. This is the Hobbico center marking tool. It has an outer tube that ends in a cone that you place in the hole of the motor mount, and on the inside there is a small drill bit that you extend out and drill a small guide mark with. Picture #9 shows marking a hole. This tool makes it easy to accurately mark the center of your holes. It's really important to get your mounting holes centered on the motor. If you don't the stress placed on the motor mount will cause it to break, and usually in flight is when it will break. When you drill the holes in the motor mount you want to drill them perpendicular in the motor mount. If possible you will want to use a drill press to drill out the mount holes. Clamp down the motor mount so that it is sitting level when you drill the holes. You can use a square to check that drill bit is at 90° to the motor mount. When you are satisfied you can now drill the mounting holes. Don't rush your drill, but rather drill the holes only as fast as the drill bit will cut (picture #10). If you don't have a drill press you can still get fairly accurate holes. Position the motor mounts in a vise and use a hand drill to drill the holes. Just keep an eye on the position of your drill and take care to keep it as straight as you can while you drill. Picture #11 shows the completed holes, and picture #12 shows how the motor sits with the mounting bolts in place.

More posts coming soon.
Pictures
1. Positioning the motor mounts on the firewall.
2. Spinner backplate with provided crankshaft spacers
3. Gap between the spinner backplate and the crankshaft
4. Placing backplate spacer on the crankshaft.
5. Spinner backplate in position on motor.
6. Spacer created to position motor on motor mounts.
7. Using spacer to set motor in place.
8. Center marking tool
9. Using the center marking tool to mark where to drill the motor mount
10. Drilling mounting holes in the motor mount
11. Motor mounts after engine mounting holes have been drilled
12. Test fitting the motor on the mounts



Until next time

Ken

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

Every builder has made a mistake while building that is very embarrassing, or at least is would be embarrassing if anybody else ever found out about it . In my opinion one of the most embarrassing mistakes that I have ever made is build two of the same sides of a fuselage. It may sound like this would be hard or impossible to do, but in reality it's very simple to do. And it's a mistake that quite a few modelers have made over the years. And what makes this mistake even worse is there is absolutely no way to quickly recover from this mistake. You have stop what you are doing and call the kit manufacturer and order the replacement fuselage parts you need to correct your mistake. This is usually a 1 to 2 week setback in your kit building

So now I take steps to make sure that I don't ever make this mistake again. The way this mistake is made is by building only one side of the fuselage at a time. There are two pointers that I can give that will ensure that you NEVER build 2 of the same side of a fuselage. First, lay out both sides of the fuselage and make sure they are mirrored from each other. Second, LABEL both sides of the fuselage, LEFT and RIGHT. Make sure that you will always be able to read your labels as you build. Refer to picture #1 and you will see that I have laid out my fuselage sides and that I have labeled them as left and right sides. Now that you have these done, build both sides of the fuselage at the same time. This way you will ensure that you are building correctly, and you won't have any surprises later on.

In our LT-40 kit the fuselage sides are not one complete piece. Because of this our first step is to glue on nose section to each fuselage side. This is a pretty easy step, but you will want to take some extra measures to ensure that the two parts are flat when your glue dries. In pictures #2 and #3 you can see how I used my magnets to secure the parts while the glue dried. You can use what you have on hand to do this if you don't have a magnetic building system. Just make sure that you can put enough pressure on both parts so that the gap between the 2 parts is wood-to-wood contact. If there is any gap in this joint it will wind up being a weak joint, so take your time here and make sure you have it correct.

After we have the nose pieces glued onto our fuselage sides we're ready to glue on our fuselage doubler. This is an important part to get correctly placed because the doubler will position all the parts of the fuselage as you assemble it. If the doubler is incorrectly installed then your fuselage will be crooked. So take some time to study the plans and make sure you know where the parts will be lined up. In my kit there was some difference between the instructions and the actual kit. In the instructions they show to glue the fuselage side and the fuselage doubler together and then to drill the holes for the wing mounting dowels. But in my kit the holes were already drilled in the fuselage. This was a pleasant surprise because these holes will make excellent alignment marks when gluing these two parts together. Before I assembled the parts I did reference the plane with the parts to make sure that everything did line up correctly using these holes as guides. Since they did line up correctly I was ready to assemble the two fuselage sides. Start by laying the fuselage side and the doubler out beside each other, with the parts mirrored (picture #4). Apply glue to the fuselage doubler (picture #5), making sure that you get apply glue to all parts of the doubler. You will want to make sure that you get glue along all of the edges of the doubler so that you will get a good glue bond. If you are using CA to assemble your plane this is a place were you DO NOT want to use thin CA. Both of these parts are made from light ply and the thin CA just will not penetrate these woods, and this will give you a very weak joint. For this application I recommend that you use thick CA as this will give you a good bond and it will give you enough working time to get the glue applied to the part and put the two parts together before the glue sets. Once you have the glue applied to the doubler “flip� it over into position on the fuselage side. I found that the plastic handle of two of my hobby knives fit the dowel holes perfectly so I used these to align my two parts. I wouldn't recommend using the actual dowels to align the parts because if your glue sets while you are aligning the parts you will be “stuck� with the dowels glued in incorrectly and then you'll have a mess to “undo�. I used my hobby knives because the handles are made out of plastic and even if the glue had set while I was working it would have a weak bond with the knife that I could easily take out. In pictures #6 and #7 you can see how I used the hobby knife to align my two parts, and pictures #8 and #9 show the parts aligned at the holes after I removed the knives. While glue it drying you will need to make sure that the fuselage sides are completely flat, otherwise your fuselage will have a warp built into it. The best way to keep your sides flat is to weight it all down so that it is laying flat on your building surface. Use whatever you need to do weight it down, as you can see in picture #10 I had to get “creative� with the weights I used. Picture #11 shows that I used my weight bags for the other fuselage side. Once the glue has dried you can then remove your sides from the building table.



Pictures
1. Lay our both sides and label them to ensure you build a left and a right side.
2. Attaching the nose pieces to the fuselage sides.
3. Make sure there is no gap between the parts when you glue them together.
4. Preparing to glue the fuselage doubler to the fuselage side.
5. Applying glue to the fuselage doubler
6. Using the dowel holes to align the fuselage side and the fuselage doubler.
7. Using the dowel holes to align the fuselage side and the fuselage doubler.
8. Make sure that the holes are aligned before proceeding
9. Make sure that the holes are aligned before proceeding
10. Weighting down the fuselage sides while the glue dries.
11. Weighting down the fuselage sides while the glue dries.


Until next time

Ken

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

After gluing the fuselage doublers onto the fuselage sides we need to take a few minutes and do a little bit of clean up before we move on with this build. Look all around the edge of the fuselage doubler and make sure it is securely glued to the fuselage side. As you can see in picture #1 there is a gap between the doubler and the fuselage side. We need to go around and take care of any gaps like this. I used a hobby knife to work Elmer's glue into these gaps, and then I securely clamped it all down while the glue dried (pictures #2, #3, and #4).

Another part of cleanup is that we want to clean away any excess glue that has oozed out from under the fuselage doubler. Pictures #5 and #6 show where the glue has oozed out. In these areas there will be parts attached here later on in the build. If we don't remove this excess glue the parts will not fit correctly when we attach them. I've tried lots of ways to get rid of excess glue like this, but the only way that I've found that really works is a plain old hobby knife and some elbow grease. It's a royal pain in the rear end to scrape this glue off , but taking the time to do it makes the difference between an ok built plane and an outstanding build. Trust me, the time you spend will be well worth it.


Pictures
1. Gap between the fuselage doubler and the fuselage side
2. Clamping down the fuselage doubler with the glue dries.
3. Clamping down the fuselage doubler with the glue dries.
4. Clamping down the fuselage doubler with the glue dries.
5. Excess glue that has oozed out from between the fuselage doubler and the fuselage sides
6. Excess glue that has oozed out from between the fuselage doubler and the fuselage sides


Until next time

Ken

seabee1

Ken,
Its Looking Great!!! Keep up the great build My kids love watching you on the cam Always with your feet up!!!

bubbagates

My Feedback: (32)

Isn't it amazing what Ken can get done with his toes

SeaBee. Have you and your kids looked over the submited schemes yet ????

seabee1

They Shure have just let me know when to have them make the call!!!
Jim

bubbagates

My Feedback: (32)

We'll let you know....

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

With the fuselage doublers glued in place, and all the excess glue cleaned up, its time to start assembling the fuselage. A few words on the fuselage first. Sig had designed this fuselage so it's almost impossible to build it crooked. It is built using a large number of interlocking tabs for all of the pieces, and this aids in assembling the fuselage and pulling any warp out of the fuselage. As long as all of the fuselage pieces are in place, and all the interlocking tabs are connected the fuselage will come out straight. When we start applying glue to assemble the fuselage it's important to keep in mind that all of the fuselage needs to be in place when the glue is drying. This will ensure that the fuselage remains straight while the glue is drying. Also, another important point to note is that during the first steps of the fuselage assembly we are putting it together WITHOUT glue, just merely fitting all the pieces together and holding them in place with rubber bands. DO NOT get in a hurry and start applying glue until the instructions tell us to.

As we assemble the fuselage we'll start where we should be already, with both sides to the fuselage laying next to each other mirrored from each other (picture #1). The first thing we will do is flip one side of the fuselage over on top of the other (pictures #2 and #3). We'll need to make sure that the two sides of the fuselage are matched up and aligned with each other. I used the same trick as I did when gluing in the fuselage doublers, I used the wing dowel mounting holes to line up the two fuselage sides. Simply insert the two dowel rods into the two holes in the fuselage side (picture #4), this will line up the two fuselage sides so that they are properly aligned. Once we have to the sides aligned we need to tape the two halves together at the tail end of the fuselage. Wrap masking tape around the end of the fuselage halves so that they are securely connected together (picture #5). Once you have this tape in place you can remove the two dowel rods.

With the fuselage sides secured at the tail it's time start placing formers into the fuselage. As I said above, DO NOT US ANY GLUE AT THIS TIME. As we place the formers in the fuselage we will be using rubber bands around the fuselage to put pressure on the fuselage sides and hold the formers in place. You don't need a lot of rubber bands to hold the fuselage in place, but you do want enough to make sure the formers don't fall out as we proceed. A couple of rubber bands on either side of the former should be enough to hold it in place for now. As we place the formers it's also important to note that you place them in the fuselage correctly, meaning that we need to pay attention to the top and the front of the former. This is where labeling the formers like we did at the start of the project comes in handy. As we proceed with putting the formers in place, and assembling the fuselage, if you have any questions make sure you take the time to reference back to the plans to make sure you understand what we are doing here. We'll start with former #2 (the second former back). Simply spread the sides lift the 2 sides apart and place the former in position. Slide a couple of rubber bands down the fuselage and place one on either side of F2 (pictures #6, #7, and #8). Next we'll put F1 (firewall) in place. We'll do the same here as with F2. Put it in place and put a rubber band on either side of it to hold it in place (picture #9). Since we now have rubber bands holding the fuselage in place, we'll need to put the next former in place a little differently. Just spread the fuselage sides apart a little bit and place the F3 former inside the fuselage (picture #10). Once you have it inside the fuselage rotate it into place (picture #11), and then put a couple of rubber bands around the fuselage to hold it in place (picture #12).

Since there is a limit of 12 pictures per post, I'll spread these steps over several posts.

Pictures
1. Both fuselage sides laying next to each other.
2. Stack fuselage sides on top of each other.
3. Both fuselage side stacked on top of each other.
4. Use the wing dowels to align the two fuselage sides.
5. Use tape at the tail of the fuselage to hold them together.
6. Place F2 former in place.
7. Set F2 in place.
8. Slide rubber bands around fuselage at F2 to hold it in place.
9. Place F1 (firewall) in place and use rubber bands to secure it in place.
10. Place F3 former inside fuselage.
11. Rotate F3 into place.
12. Put rubber bands around fuselage to hold F3 in place.

Until next time

Ken

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

To continue on with assembling the fuselage, the next step is to place the F4 former. Put this in the fuselage the same way that you did F3. Slightly spread the fuselage apart, put the F4 inside the fuselage, rotate it in place, and then place rubberband around the fuselage to hold it in place (pictures #1 and #2). Now do the same thing with F5 former (pictures #3 and #4), and with F6 former (pictures #5 and #6). Now you should have all of the fuselage formers in place, as well as having rubberbands holding the fuselage together. At this point you can take off the tape that you placed to hold the ends of the fuselage together (pictures #7 and #8). You fuselage should now look like picture #9. If you look carefully at picture #10 you can see that the formers and the fuselage are crooked. Don't worry about it at this point. This will straighten out as we place more of the fuselage components in place as we build the fuselage.

Pictures
1. Insert former F4 in place.
2. Secure F4 in place with rubberbands.
3. Insert former F5 in place.
4. Secure F5 in place with rubberbands.
5. Insert former F6 in place.
6. Secure F6 in place with rubberbands.
7. Removing tape from the tail end of the fuselage.
8. Fuselage ends free after tape has been removed.
9. Fuselage with rubberbands holding it together.
10. Fuselage may be a little crooked at this stage. This will be corrected later in the build.

Until next time

Ken

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

To continue on with our build of the fuselage. The next step is to put on part FT-R (fuselage top rear). To put this part on (and all others that follow) we'll need to slide these down in to place under the rubber bands (pictures #1 and #2). With the FT-R we want to make sure that the servo pushrod slot is on the left side of the plane (picture #3). Next we will slide on the FB-F (fuselage bottom front), sliding it into place under the rubber bands (pictures #4 and #5). The last part we'll need to slide into place is the FB-R (fuselage bottom rear), once again sliding it into place under the rubber bands (pictures #6 and #7). At this point we should have all of the fuselage body parts in place (picture #8). As I said above, as long as all of these parts are in place and all of the interlocking tabs on these parts are locked the fuselage will be straight. It's really a great system for putting a fuselage together. The important thing that we need to remember is as we glue the fuselage together in the next few steps all of the other parts need to be in place to ensure that the fuselage is straight as we build.

With everything in place it's time to start gluing the fuselage together. We'll start with former F2. As you can see in picture #9, I lifted up the former away from the fuselage side in order to get glue underneath the former. If you are using CA glue for this build I recommend that you DO NOT use thin CA. Since all of these parts are made of lite ply it will not give you sufficient bonding strength to hold the fuselage together. I recommend that you use medium or thick CA for assembling the fuselage. After I put glue underneath all of former F2 I use weights (picture #10) to hold the fuselage in place while the glue dried. You might be wondering why I only did one former this time instead of getting more of them done at once. Later on I will do more than one at a time, but I wanted to do the first one by itself so have a good base as I glue the rest of the formers in place. As I glued the F2 former I checked it with a square to make sure that it was properly positioned before I weighted it down to dry.

Pictures
1. Sliding the FT-R into place.
2. The FT-R in place on the fuselage.
3. Make sure the slot for the pushrod is on the left side of the fuselage
4. Slide the FB-F into place.
5. The FB-F in place.
6. Slide the FB-R in place under the rubber bands.
7. The FB-R in place under the rubber bands.
8. Fuselage with all panels in place. Make sure you have enough rubber bands to hold it tightly in place.
9. Applying glue under former F2.
10. Using weights to hold the fuselage steady while the glue dries on F2.


Until next time

Ken

Scworth

My Feedback: (2)

<3 this thread, Good job ken doing awsome.

Scworth

My Feedback: (2)

oh yah i found my photoshop cd key here are a few things i was looking at
In the first picture i was thinking the fuselage could be white, and in the 2nd would be covered in the blue.(personally i like the white fuselage but i ono.)
Also For the logos, i was thinking you can probably get clear stickers for all the products much like what i did on the first template i did in paint, and just put it ontop of monokote on the top part of the wing. or on the left and right side of the fuse...(to see the wing idea with having the stickers showing all the companys and payit frwd logo look at top of this page at my other post)

bruce88123

OK Ken, finally some postings. I'll ease up on the PM's now. A little.

bruce88123

In case you guys are wondering, Ken has been sick all week. Hopefully he will be up to building next week.
I'm sure we will get a medical report soon.

Ya gotta be sick if you can't even build. [:'(][:'(]

bubbagates

My Feedback: (32)

I spoke to him about a day ago on the phone and he still sounded like crap so give it some time.

Guess he had his feet propped up near the window to much and caught a cold with the window being open and all

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

Bruce & Bill,
Thanks for the posting and the "sympathy" !!!!

I spent the best part of 4 days flat on my back this week. Not sure what I had, but it knocked me for a loop. I've fallen way behind in this build and RCU in general. I'm going to try and catch up on this build this weekend.

Until later

Ken

Scworth

My Feedback: (2)

Hope you get to feelin better ken

airscooter

RC Ken

Sorry to here of your illness, hope you get back to normal soon.
I have been following your build thread and would like to congratulate you on your craftmanship and attention to detail.
I'm sure Seabee and his daughter will really like thier new plane.
If it's not to late I would like to post a design also, if it is thats fine I am looking forward to the finished product and test flight report.

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

Airscooter and all,
Thanks for the best wishes. I'm ok. I just had whatever crud is going around this year. As an IT consultant I am in a lot of different offices all year round, and I usually pick up whatever bugs that are going around. I'm fine now. I'm just working on getting caught up on everything that I am behind in. I took a huge part of yesterday to get caught up here on this thread. Plus I've been getting back up to speed on this build. But I'm back on track now, and I'll be posting more of the build this week. So now I'm about a week or so behind, so there is still time for everybody to get their covering schemes in before we have SeeBee1 and his daughters choose a winner.

Ken