Tony Hallo

The Robart gear is surrounded by the stock units for comparsion. The stock landing gear wire is 6 mm not 1/4" as the instruction manual would have you believe. The bushing provided with the struts has a 1/4" bore so I made new bushings the correct size. They are press/solder fit, these are pushed in then retained with Stay Bright solder. The main struts were shorten 1" to provide an extended height of 1/2" greater than the stock position.

drdoom

My Feedback: (9)

Wow, Very nice..

Tony Hallo

The wheel pants have arrived, I order these from Fiberglass Specialities, number 78 for mains and 67 for nose. The main gear just looked too wide so removed a 3/8" slice from the centerline and glassed the halvesback together. The before and after is show in the 3rd photo.

Tony Hallo

The nose gear needs a little work also. The pointed end will be removed and rounded. To do so I decided to fill the inside with foam, then sand to shape, glass the outside and finally remove the foam. This did not work since the foam must breath to expand, once the foam formed a skin the surface, the inner remained liquid until I began the modification. I tried several attempts and finally removed the expandable foam and filled with blue foam insulation board.

Tony Hallo

I like move around a little so on to the covering. I treat the balsa with hair spray to improve adhesion, hey it's glue. After the 220 grit sand, first coat, then sand with 320, second coat, then final sand with 320. Some say they changed the Monokote forumla, I think they changed the glue backing. The entire plane will be covered in white and trimmed in blue. I did end up re-doing the joint at the centerline after the tail cone was fit, just didn't look good.

Tony Hallo

For the nose gear I used the original bearing block and made a sleeve for the front Robart strut. The sleeve is deigned to allow the gear to slip in and get clamped after the cowl is installed. This allows for a much smaller hole for the cowl.

Tony Hallo

For cooling air exhaust I removed a 1 1/2" long section of the fuselage and made a tapered floor .
A lip was formed on the cowl by clamping the cowl on a shoe and heating with a heat gun, then glassing the inside to hold the shape. Still have a little body work to do but generally it came out the way I wanted it to. It is big enough? I will not know until I try it.

jbarnes

Tony, enjoy reading your thread. Keep it coming!

Tony Hallo

Well it has been a while since I last posted and to be honest progress is slow a best. This rebuilding ARF's reminds me of rebuilding crashes. No fun at all. The rotary drive system is built for the aileron. I installed Robart hinge pockets in the aileron to allow for aileron removal for servo replacement should the servo fail. The set screws are accessible from the bottom side.
I have a little more work then I can cover this wing, set it aside and begin on the other side, I hope the pace picks up but to be honest I can't see that happening. The days are getting longer signaling Toledo is coming then flying season, butI am finding little excitement. I hope things change for the better.

Tony Hallo

With the hidden linkage the wings are very clean. The heary duty DuBro end should be up the task controling the flap. Flap servos are Hitec 5645 while the ailerons are 5955's.

Tony Hallo

Last year at Toledo I picked up these Multiplex connectors with six pins, just perfect for Flap/Aileron or Dual Aileron servos. Ironically I think these were right across the aisle where the Cherokee was on display. I had no plans of buying the Cherokee then. Soldering gave my old eyes a work out. The mount is a piece of circuit board with all the copper etched away. The board is drilled and the plug is held in place by the wires soldered for the rear. DA offers a mount for these connectors, I was just too lazy to order them.

Tony Hallo

The right wing was not cracked at the flap-aileron transisition as was the left wing,I slit the rear spar and CA'ed carbon fiber reinforcementanyway. Work is moving along faster on the right wing since all the development was done on the left wing.

Tony Hallo

This is the covering scheme I plan to use. These Photos were downloaded from Airliners.net, taken in Alliance Ohio just 75 miles from my home. I can remember attending a few IMAA flyins there some years ago. The events were sponsered by the Alliance Balsa Bees, not sure if still held or not. If they do I plan to attend with the Cherokee. Colors are MonoKote Jet White and Sky Blue.

News Flash
http://www.alliancebalsabees.com/eve...?date=20130701
So now I have a target to shot for.

Tony Hallo

The holes for the flap hinges were all buggered up so I cut out the bad area and filled with balsa blocks. I made the drill jig below to redrill the holes in the same plane using a piece of 3/16" brass tubing sharpened on the end. A round file provides the necessary clearance and I am happy with the final results. The hinges are already glued into the wing, after the flap is covered, it will get glued on using Gorilla Glue.

Tony Hallo

The aileron hinge holes were a little loose also. I drilled a piece of 1/4" x 1/2" pine to hold the hinges in alignment while the glue sets. I like to glue the hinges in before covering open bay wings to avoid those drops of glue on the underside of the covering.

Tony Hallo

This is my first upload since the upgrade, file transfer seems faster and I like the progress bar, nice feature, spell check to boot, all good things. The end summer is upon us as I can hear the sounds of katydids in the early evening hours. Reminds me of back to school, so I decided to start building again. The vertical stablizere and bottom are covered, next I'll lay out the light blue strips and finish the covering. It is possible this bird may see the sky in the fall but who knows.

Tony Hallo

The white color is complete, on to the trim sky blue.

Twin_Flyer

My Feedback: (4)

Looking good!!

tailskid

My Feedback: (34)

I would like to know how/why the big plywood in the front - is that bolted to the engine mount or firewall so the plane won't roll off?

Tony Hallo

I can rotate the plane on four sides without it touching the work surface. When it is upside down the rudder hangs over the bench.

Twin_Flyer

My Feedback: (4)

One of those "Why didn't i think of that before!" things...

Nice.

Bill S.

Tony Hallo

Time to fire up the old trusty vinyl cutter.

Tony Hallo

I didn't care for the previous solution for the exhaust so I made some changes. I decided to bend the exhaust tubes rather than use the 45 deg elbows. I cut 4 slits in each tube about 2/3 the way through then gently bend the tube so that the tubes exhaust straight down. The slits were brazed closed with Harris Alumabraze 1070, the stuff works better than I expected .

cmartin3977

Nice Job on the rebuild! I thought about buying the same cherokee but decided against it after I seen the Cheesy upper canopy section that everyone seems to go to on planes like this. I believe I would rather buy a model that has an all wooded top section with scale opening doors to access the electronics instead of that whole entire top section. It just screams cheap. But i do like what you have done with the model so far!!

Tony Hallo

It has been sometime since my last post. Old age and lack of desire has taken it's toll, but I'll press onward. Maybe I just might finish something. Attached are details of the landing gear and wheel pants. As a note the wire used in the kit is 6mm and not 1/4" as I thought. What that old saying measure twice and cut once? The drill the wing blocks to 1/4" and had to make new wires because the originals were too loose. Bending 1/4" music wire require some heat to get tight enough bends.