jdavis

hello! i have a good friend who is an OUTSTANDING builder... i gave him part of a tf f4u kit in trade for another kit he built for me... well, finished it (including having to scratch build the wing, cuz i screwd it up sooo bad!) and now he's moving... so he gave it back to me! beautiful job, he did... except, i noticed something that was tugging at the back of my mind... AH HA! there it is! you see, as good of a builder as he is, he really hasnt done many war-birds, and i think this was his first f4u with flaps... it seems he didnt build it the outter flaps (DOH!), but did the two inner ones.

now i am sure it will fly just fine the way it is, but all the other war-birds at my field will laugh and call him names and wont let poor corsair play in any war-bird games.... as i said before, he is packing to move, so even though he said he would like to go back and fix it, he cant.

so, short story made really long.... i wanna fix it, but as good of a builder as he is, i am not. (though i am learning). one of my biggest problems is getting the silly balsa to cut stright. even if i draw stright lines with rulers and t-squairs, it just never comes out looking good. so, does anyone have any advice on how i can hack off the outter flaps and make it look good? i mean, just looking at it, it doesnt look like it would be that hard... maybe just cutting the skin and then trying to break off the little ribs that always broke on me anyway? (but as i said, he scratch built the wing, so for all i know they wont break as easy as the orig. tf ones did.)

thanks!

-jimbo

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

Just hack them off.

You will need to remove about 3/8 to 3/4" between the leading edge of the flap and the trailing edge of the wing to add hinge blocks, so draw the area and cut inside the lines, then sand them to the lines. Do the same on the sides so you can add a 1/8" cap rib to bothe sides of each side cut.

Once they are removed, you will need to sand the cut areas

Pic added