Great Planes Revolver 70 Rebuild!!
 

Hello all;

As the title says, this will be a detailed documentation of the rebuild of my GP Revolver 70. I'm going to be uploading in the coming days/weeks when I find time and actually sort through the multitudes of pics.
This work was not done by me but rather by a fellow RC modeler and very good friend and boy did he do a great job! It's all back together now and flying great! Hope you all enjoy the rebuild.

A bit of background, I first flew the plane on or around the 25th April 2011, for about 5 minutes and again about a week after for the second time where I got a dead stick.
I tried to set up for landing but as I went cross wind to final I watched the left wing dip and the rest of the plane follow suit. It was a long time ago, and I cannot remember full details of what might have gone wrong.
Perhaps the thing doesn't glide very well or maybe I was simply too slow or too level. All I remember thinking was that something literally pushed the thing down and that was the end of it. The front section was gone, smashed to bits and one wing was bent.
The plane was parked away for a couple of years or so before my friend got the zeal to repair it.
Below I'll link heavily edited maiden video (not much to see though sorry) and after that I'll begin to post the pics and invite the repair man to comment.


Well that's it I'll be back with more.

Here we go!
 

Alright here are the first few shots guys. You can tell this is going to be challenging, I'll let R.N. Tell you guys about it in his own words http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/images/icons/icon14.gif.

So as you should be able to tell in the frist few pics the front of the plane is completely smashed! Most people would just dump this thing and move on, but we're not exactly in a position ( geographically or finantially speaking ) to simply hop down to the local hobby shop and pick up a new one.

( we don't have those kinds of fancy stores in these parts )

Hence the rebuild.

Towards the end you can see what looks like the front is being peaced back together, however this will serve a template of sorts to aid in cutting out new parts for the rebuild.
"sunnybreeze" (R.N.) should be by sometime to comment more on what's shown here...er...I hope...

Back for round two
 

Right! well seems the builder has decided to opt out on commenting so I guess you're all stuck with me.
Anyway as stated earlier the last few pics showed the beginnings of reconstruction which would serve as a template seen again below being fitted back to the frame to get a feel for what
the completed thing should look like. I think it's held together by a bit of thing CA and baking soda.

Now we come to the varous cut outs which will be used to create the new front section of the plane including buld head engine mount and firewall

Test fitting
 

Okay so now lets see have a test fit and see how this jigsaw puzzel comes together

It's starting to feel like hope again!

Alright, getting to work on the front to mid frame bulk heads, sandwitching them together against the existing ones and strengthing up the landing gear plate. I believer that white stuff is marine epoxy with some form of glass filled in there. I can't be sure, but what I am sure of is that this stuff dries hard as a rock!

More test fitting and landing gear plate pics

More test fits
 

Okay some more test fits. I'll upload a walk around video also so you can see it in real time.

Walk around video
 

Alright as promised here is a video of the walk around.

Alright I beleve it's about time to really get cracking now. The bulkhead sandwich has cured lets get going on the firewall etc

How's about a closer look at that landing block reinforcement... wont be braking that bit on landing any decade soon.

Just about ready
 

Just about ready to start gluing things up but first lets make sure our lines are right shall we.. here we see a laser line level being used to make sure everything lines up like it should... Of course this was the perfect excuse to break out this piece of tech and boy did it do a good job!

It has begun!
 

Lets clamp this sucker up!

Adding more frame to our skeliton!
 

Alright, it's lined up and the main parts are glued in place time to start adding some more body to this frame!

Looking a little rough and jagged? lets smooth things out with a little filler putty shall we? How's about a few more close up's while we're at it?

posing
 

A little posing wont hurt nun...right?

Cowl
 

Cowling! Lets get to it!

My Turn
 

At this point the Revolver is back in my hands, and it's not my turn to continue where the master left off to complete this rebuild, put its guts in, cover and fly!
I don't recall If I took shots of the covering process so I'll hold off before uploading more after this last section as I go in search and will be back when/if I find them.. If not however I'll
just upload the few vids I've got of the finished flying plane.
Coming up will be the little work I documented on the canopy work and servo installation, initially I went for high speed high toruqe XQ servos but I had to return these due to some jitter I noticed as I was testing them and just went for my trusted hitech's in the end.
Servos are mounted rearward for the elevators and there's servo mounted mid frame for pull pull rudder. Enjoy!

prepping for the cowl
 

The Cowl was reinforced as well as patched up which makes it a tad thicker than original (heavier too yes) so I've had to make some extensions on my firewall and a bit of sanding to the cowl to get it all to fit. That smalls screw is removed later on.

Right, well that's it for now guys, I'll be back with more later. Hope you've enjoyed the journey so far!
Have a good weekend all.

Paint Jobs
 

It's about time to start spray painting covering hinging and wiring up!

More paint
 

A few more paint shots :D I must admit, using car paint was genious! He did an excellent job!

Lets wing it!
 

Moving on to the wing. I did some nutty things in my wing repair. Using a square dowel spliced into four pieces with a jigsaw, I put three of those slices into my wing.
I wanted to make sure it remained straight! Cutting out the bad bits, puting weight on either end of it, making deep cuts, drenching it all with wood glue and slipping in the slices!
It worked great! That is, if you like heavy wings... I can't fly very slow for approaches with that wing at all especially since I had to use a ton of lead in the other wing to balance... I've since got new wings and working to remove the added ballast in the older wings but that's gonna take some work yet.. It's really in there.